Syndicating Your Content

On Wednesday, February 17, 2010 from 10am to 12pm Pacific Time you can learn how to create, and use, a WordPress.com blog.

If you want to really start getting your message out to the world, blogging is the tool you need.  It’s the beginning of syndicating your passionate message, world wide!

You can bring your blog into many of your social networking sites, making it a very effective tool increasing your online visibility and elevating your credibility. Now is the time to start blogging!

In this online webinar, using desktop sharing tools, you’ll work with me learning:

• What is a post
• What is a page
• What is the sidebar
• What is the content area

Dashboard Orientation

• What are the settings and what do they mean

How To Create and Manage A Post/Page

• Adding Images So your blog will also be visually appealing
• How to use the Timestamp
• Tags – what are they and how to use them
• Categories – what they are and how to use them
• Linking Strategies in Posts/Pages Linking keywords or phrases helps the search engine know what text is more important than other text
• Keyword Strategies

Managing Links, Categories and Comments

• Links – Creating them, managing them
• Managing Comments
• How to control them through the settings
• How you find out about comments on your blog
• How to determine whether you spam them or not
• What to do if you get a negative comment

Click Here To Register

Syndicating Your Content

Syndicating Your Content
Show Notes: February 8, 2010

 

 Blogging Tips [14:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (38)

Today’s show shares how RSS and Blogs start the content syndication process.

Sites or services discussed:

HootSuite – check out the Hootlet
Google’s Reader – subscribe to blog rss feeds with Reader

Jason Grigsby of Cloud Four discusses the bloat that’s crept into web site design processes and how to combat it to keep your WordPress installation lean and optimized. He shares tips and tricks for caching, choosing the right resources for your blog, compression, and other optimization strategies for your WordPress-powered site.

Let me know if you have any questions about the video, or your WordPress blog.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
10am to 12pm Pacific Time
1pm to 3pm Eastern Time

What You’ll Learn Blog Orientation

• What is a post
• What is a page
• What is the sidebar
• What is the content area

Dashboard Orientation

• What are the settings and what do they mean

How To Create and Manage A Post/Page

• Adding Images So your blog will also be visually appealing
• How to use the Timestamp
• Tags – what are they and how to use them
• Categories – what they are and how to use them
• Linking Strategies in Posts/Pages Linking keywords or phrases helps the search engine know what text is more important than other text
• Keyword Strategies

Managing Links, Categories and Comments

• Links – Creating them, managing them
• Managing Comments
• How to control them through the settings
• How you find out about comments on your blog
• How to determine whether you spam them or not
• What to do if you get a negative comment

Click Here To Register

Internet markets today understand the immense benefits of hosting their blogs on their own domain.

If you are serious about wanting to earn money on the internet, then you will need to set up a blog and host it on your domain. Outlined below are some of the main benefits which you can enjoy from hosting your own blog on your domain.

• If you have a blog hosted on your domain, you have control over everything about your blog. You can have your own layout and design for your blog, which means you can have a blog that matches your website logo. You can make your blog as unique as you want. This gives you an edge against other competing blogs in the same niche which may have similar layouts. You also have complete freedom to do anything you want with your blog. By hosting your blog on your domain, you can control your blog in many ways you want and you can add any features you want.

• By hosting your blog on your domain name, you make it easier for people to remember your blog.

• Hosting your blog on your domain means that you can develop and promote your own brand using your blog. You can make your blog headings similar to your website. In terms of search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising, this is very important because you will be advertising and optimizing your own domain and your own brand. SEO is also effective to do with your own domain name that includes your keywords. This will increase your blog’s visibility on search engines.

• By hosting your blog on your website, you have added security. This means that you don’t have to worry about losing your information or getting locked out of your account.

• You present a professional image by having your online business logo on your blog. This gives you ad edge against other competing website or blogs.

• Hosting your own blog gives you much more flexibility and extendability, meaning you can more easily monetize your blog, creating passive income.

Based on the advantages outlined above, if you are serious about your online business, you must consider hosting your blog on your own domain.

Join the conversation and let me know what you think by commenting!

Thomas Mangum, Virtual Coffee, interviewed me today for his online radio show.

 

 Thomas Mangum, Virtual Coffee Interviews Debra Simpson, Syndicating Your Content [30:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (164)

We discussed why you’d want to syndicate your content and some of the ways to develop your own intellectual property to sell online, as passive income.

Of course, I discussed blogging, in particular using WordPress as a launching point. I then shared about importing your blog into Facebook and Linkedin. I shared some tips on creating your first ebook to give away from your website as a list building tool.

Let me know what you think about the interview by commenting.

According to Wikipedia….A blog (a contraction of the term “weblog”) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Personally, I think blogs are the beginning of your ability to syndicate your content online. If you have a passionate message, your reach expands online. The world can now be your oyster.

I like blogs as websites. You can easily add audio and video, as well as a variety of “widgets” that will help you do almost anything.

So where do you start?

I suggest getting a free blog at WordPress.com and start there. You won’t have the flexibility at WordPress.com that a self-hosted blog like Syndicating Your Content or North San Diego Business (the blog I built to show the business community in my home town what a blog was) has, but it will give you a good feel for blogging. If it’s something you find works for you, and your business, you can always self-host it down the road. All the work you put into your WordPress.com blog can be brought over to a self hosted blog.

(shameless pandering here…) If you join my email list (up on the right), you’ll get access to my private members only page. On that page is a video “Build A Blog In 90 Mins” which will walk you through an overview of WordPress.

When you create your account at WordPress.com secure your name and business name as usernames.  So, my blog would be:  debrasimpson.wordpress.com, or syndicatingyourcontent.wordpress.com. The reason for securing your name and business name is so that no one else can start a blog with your name or bus name. In fact, you should tie up your name at as many of the social sites as possible, especially if you well branded.

Now you can start syndicating your content, or passionate message. One of the first things I would do is create links (you’ll find “Links” on the left side of your dashboard) back to your business, or html website. Just “Add New” link, and fill in the blanks.

This will help the search engine spiders find your traditional site as they index your blog content. That’s one of the beauties of blogs, they are naturally search engine friendly. Just the act of posting will create activity. Make sure to include some of your keywords in your blog content, and if you can use them as a text link, all the better.

So, your challenge…get a free blog at WordPress.com and start playing with it. Try it for a three months and see if it doesn’t help drive more traffic to your website and raise your visibility in the search engines.

Add to the conversation by commenting.

If you use the FireFox browser you may be familiar with FireFox’s addons. One of the addons I use regularly is ScribeFire. ScribeFire can really help you with posting to your blog, or if you are like me and other bloggers, your blogs….

With ScribeFire you can set up your blogs in the admin area and when you are surfing the web and find a site, post, or article you want to reference, you simply tap F8 to launch ScribeFire.

With ScribeFire you can post to your blog, add images from your harddrive or Flikr and even videos from YouTube. You can categorize your posts, even use the timestamp to publish them at a later date. If you’re referencing other online sources, ScribeFire can be a great tool to use in leveraging your time.

If you have any tools you use to make your blogging easier, I invite you to share by commenting.

Penny Haynes, Commercial Creation Center, and I had a discussion about using audio and video in combination with social media as a way to leverage business on the Internet.

Penny took an informal poll over at LinkedIn, asking about which social networking sites other business owners and professionals used. The usual suspects were mentioned, in addition to a few that aren’t well know.  The sites discussed were:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Plurk
• FriendFeed
• YouTube

Bottom line, if you really want to maximize your social networking, it’s imperative that you gain your site visitor’s trust and multimedia can do that for you. It’s getting easier and easier to create audio and video. The Commercial Creation Center is a push button system to let you do just that, reach out to your community in a very personal manner.

If you are already using audio and video, feel free to share your experience, what has worked and what didn’t.

Friday, June 27th, I’ll be talking about Blogs and Blogging at the Free Friday Webinars in our ongoing effort to Conquer The Digital Divide. The webinar starts at 3pm. If you haven’t been to one of my webinars before, you’ll need to sign up here. 

Are you wondering about blogs? Did you know that you’re reading a blog right now? Are you wondering what the advantages of a blog are for your business? These are some of the questions I’ll be answering during this 30 minute webinar.

If you have specific questions, use my contact us form to share them with me ahead of time and I’ll be sure to incorporate them into my presentation.

So, grab a drink of your choice, log into my online classroom, turn the speakers up and take some time to Conquer The Digital Divide.