Mozak Design Blog

Why Add Images to Your WordPress Blog?

Grab a copy of the White Pages off your shelf – if you still own one! – and flip open to any page. Where does your eye go first? Are you pulled into the content? Do you want to read more, or are you tempted to simply slam the book shut and stick it back on the bookshelf?

When visitors come to your website, you have a choice. You can make it inviting and pleasant, or you can make it just about as appealing as the innards of the phone book. The only difference? Images.

Images – photos, illustrations, or other graphics — are often the first thing visitors look at. If the image is compelling, visitors stay to check out the text. If the image is poor quality or unappealing – or non-existent! – visitors leave. It’s really that simple.

Here are some ways effectively using images enhances your blog:

1. They break up text. Facing a page of black-and-white text is daunting. Images can give the eye a place to rest, breaking up the flow of an otherwise monotonous page.
2. They lead into the text. Since people look at them first, the images provide a starting point for the rest of the blog post. Good images are like flashing arrows that say, “START HERE.”
3. They introduce the topic. Picking an appropriate, related image gives the reader an idea of what to expect from the post. For instance, a photo of a street sign that says “Bumpy Road Ahead” lets the reader know that the post is about challenges or change.
4. They support the post content. A diagram, graphic, or other image can further illustrate the post’s content. A flow chart of a sales funnel, for instance, gives you another way to explain the concepts you’re presenting.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, you can’t afford NOT to use images in your blog posts. They may be the most powerful tool you have.

I’ve got an idea … now what?

1. Write a contact. How frequently do you get stymied for which to express in an email to a friend? Probably not very often. So rather than telling yourself you’re writing A Article (which can sound intimidating and important), tell yourself you’re writing a contact to some friend. You can even do this inside your email program. Put your headline in the subject line, keep your point and call to action in mind, and begin writing. Then you can cut and paste to your blog publishing software, editing a little when needed, and you are done.
2. Outline it. This is probably my favorite method, though it gives some people uncomfortable flashbacks to ninth grade English class. Write your title, after which list 3 or 4 main points you’d like to make or examples you need to include. Flesh them out, and you’re done!
3. Speak it. Record yourself referring to the topic, or just take a seat with a friend and talk through your posting, taking notes of points and ideas generate as you chat. (Bonus: If your audio recording is pretty coherent, you can release it as being a podcast on iTunes for added value for your money).
4. Just write. Take a seat, start typing, and see what comes out. Don’t edit yourself until you’re done. Then go back and reformat, tighten, cut, and expand when needed.

Writing is as difficult or as simple as you allow it to be. Many of us originate from backgrounds where we were told we weren’t good writers, or that our spelling and grammar were atrocious. But don’t allow that to stop you for those who have something to say!

First, blog writing is not like the essay-writing I was graded on as students; it’s much more conversational. Second, no one (probably not even your ninth grade English teacher!) is going to be grading your blogging efforts. Third, great writers, even Stephen King, Scott Turow, and Problogger Darrin Rowse edit their work. And if they do not, they must be.

What is the Objective of a Business Blog?

Recently I’ve been noticing that a lot of my customers know that they need a WordPress Blog for their business’ website but they are unsure as to the why. As a result, it is unclear to them what to do with their Blog once it is created. These conversations have prompted me to share some of the ways I see a Blog impacting a Business’ Website & Customer Base.

So, what is the objective of a Business’ Blog

1. To establish a relationship with a potential client

   • There are 4 tiers of connecting with a client
     1. Website Home Page
     2. Blog Posts / Website Internal Pages
        
     3. Newsletter / RSS Feed
     4. email
     5. phone call
   • Each of these items offer a level for your customers to connect with you. Some customers may know that they are ready to work with you and will call or email your business. However, for those that are unsure you need to offer them options of connectedness. If a customers only options are a phone call or browsing the website; you will find that your business will lose many potential customers.
   • Instead by offering stepping stones of connectedness customers can start by browsing your site and wordpress blog to learn about you. They may then choose to be on you Blog Rss feed or your Newsletter mailing list. Then with time they will be ready to take the step of a phone call or email. The key point here is you are meeting their need to build a relationship with your business on their terms
2. To add new content to your website on a regular basis
   • New Content simple means new text containing information on things relating to your business. There are 2 key reasons new content is valuable
     1. New content gives your customer a reason to come back and look at your website. Especially if they are on your Rss feed
     2. New content attracts the Search Engines to your site resulting in them viewing your website at current and relevant.

3. To increase the quality of relevant content

   • Google’s goal is to provide searchers with websites holding information on what they seek. The more relevant content you have on your wordpress  website & blog, the more your site is seen as a valuable resource. This results in a higher placement in the Search Engine Results.
   • A high content Blog allows you to keep the remainder of your business’ website sales oriented and not content dense. This is key as most customers prefer to scan headers and lists. Not wade through paragraphs. A WordPress Blog allows those paragraphs to remain on your website without compromising the sale portion of your site.
4. To be able to add content without the assistance of a web designer
   • It is essential that you are able to control the content of your Business’ Blog on your schedule not your web developers. There is nothing more frustrating then needing a edit done asap and having to wait on another.
5. …. I’d love to hear your comments on how you see your WordPress Blog impacting Your Business!

I need to Blog … But what shall I write!

Many business owners resist starting a blog in the first place simply because the idea of coming up with things to say on a weekly (or more frequent) basis is daunting. But assuming your business is in a niche you love, you should never face a shortage of topics to write about.

Truth is, if you’re excited about a subject and open to comments and discussion, the choices for interesting posts are endless. Still, there will be instances when your writing well runs dry. That’s why I suggest you make a list of ideas so you’ll have prompts for a good start.

Here’s just a handful of places to find ideas:

On other blogs. Follow the leaders in your industry to find out what they’re talking about. You can provide your own personal perspective about the latest topics, or you might want to predict what will happen next. For example, if everyone’s talking about the challenges of outsourcing overseas, you could write about the legal considerations of outsourcing to freelancers abroad, or maybe about cheap places to outsource domestically.

On forums. Reading industry forums can provide you with a fly-on-the-wall view of what people are experiencing, wondering about, and doing in your industry. Even though you may not want to actively participate, you can eavesdrop on what people are saying and create a blog that answers questions or adds new insights.

In the news. Some of the best blog posts are those that describe how a current event impacts a particular niche. If it’s time for the Olympics, for example, and you have a photography blog, you could discuss the very best lenses and methods for capturing action shots. A marketing blog could cover the ways the International Olympic Committee is selling the Games, and a fashion blog could talk about how the Games affect fashion.

In the past. Recent or more distant history is an excellent place to find ideas. A recipe site could include descriptions of old-time cooking, or talk about how the average American meal regimen has changed over time, or provide recipes still in use today that haven’t changed in the past hundred years.

The overall idea with a blog is to use it as a lens for your niche. Your job is to check out the world as it relates to your market, letting people know what’s important, interesting, and noteworthy. As you scour newspapers, books, TV, and the Internet for related ideas, ask yourself, “How does this impact my market?” You’ll get a good idea of how to begin. And if you love what you do, the rest will come quite naturally.

Remembering Your Audience

When online entrepreneurs speak about blogging, they usually consider all of the ways it can help them. They wax nostalgic about traffic, sales, and their soon-to-be-achieved “expert status.” But what they often forget is always that to achieve traffic, revenue, and attention, you need to provide something your audience wants. If you are centered on your organization and what blogging can do for you personally, you are going to alienate your potential customers.

Getting the Most out of Your Images

Catchy Blog Headlines

You’ve heard it before: People DO judge books by their covers, plus they judge blogs by their headlines. If the headline isn’t entertaining or compelling, your potential readers will expect the same as the rest of your blog post, infact they may not bother to take the time to read it.
Let’s face it, writing great headlines can be a challenge. After all, you need to make it catchy in addition to incorporating your keywords for seo purposes. But if you keep your focus on your readers, you will find that there is a lot of crossover between what the future prospect want and what the engines like google want. After all, the various search engines desire to deliver the ideal results with their users.

Below are great tips for writing effective post headlines:

• The point of your posting. Each post needs an individual call to action, along with a single point. Picking a headline that supports this aspect may help make sure the all this post stays on topic.
• Put the keyword first. Engines like google give higher priority for the words at the beginning of the title. So if you feel writing about parsley’s many benefits, rather than writing “Twelve Powerful Many benefits of Parsley,” rephrase so that it is, “Parsley: Twelve Powerful Health advantages.”
• Keep it short. Common wisdom is the fact that Google will simply display as much as 66 characters in the title and definately will crop the remainder. That’s one more reason to place your most important words up front.
• Make it interesting. The best titles certainly are a bit mysterious or clever. Just don’t sacrifice clarity in the interest of cleverness! You’re far better off going with a straightforward title than being so obtuse that somebody scanning titles on the internet doesn’t have idea what your post will likely be about.
• Make a promise… and deliver. Tell people what you are planning to tell them, and then spend the rest of your post delivering on that advertise.

Headline writing – like most of online marketing – is really a balancing act. You must balance clarity with interest, and cleverness with SEO. Simply do your better and turn into in keeping with your look.

Adding Images to Your Posts

Remember when you were in second or third grade, and you went to the school library? Sometimes you’d pull a book from the shelf and take a look at it, only to quickly put it back in its place. Why? It had no pictures – just pages and pages of black text on a white background. How unappealing!

Today’s web surfers are much like typical second-graders. If you don’t show them something besides text, they’re going to put you back on the shelf faster than you can say, “hopscotch.”

Now, what if you’re not a master photographer or an artist who can whip up line drawings at the drop of a hat? Are you destined to a life of being ignored by all but the bravest of readers? No! There are many ways you can incorporate photos, clip art, and other images on your pages:

1. Take the photos yourself. You don’t have to be Ansel Adams, especially with today’s cameras and auto-correction. If you can take a photo and crop it, you can upload it to your blog quickly and easily.
2. Get “creative commons” images. Go to flickr.com/creativecommons for millions of images you can use for free on your blog under the creative commons license. Typically, this means you can use the image for non-commercial purposes (e.g., you can’t use it on a sales page or on the cover of your eBook), if you provide attribution to the photographer. That’s as easy as including a caption with his name and a link to his Flickr site).
3. Embed video from YouTube. Do a search on YouTube to find interesting and relevant videos for your market, and use the code provided to embed the video on your site. Also check out sites like Vimeo for more options.
4. Subscribe to a stock photo site. You pay a monthly fee or buy a pack of credits you can use to pay for one-time use fees, and you’ll have access to thousands of high-quality photos and images. Good stock photo sites are www.clipart.com, www.istockphoto.com, and www.dreamstime.com, and there are many others as well. Just Google “stock images” or “stock photos” to find all the stock photos you could want.
5. Use clipart from your computer. You can also use clipart from your computer, though you may want to be careful with this one, as many “old school” clip art styles can make your site look dated. Not sure what to use? Check out some of the leading blogs in your market and follow their lead.

Including images in your post makes your page look more interesting and entertaining. Of course, for best results, those images should also add depth to the point you’re making in your post.

Standing Out In a Crowded Room

With more than 100 million blogs on the internet – and more being added every day! – it can seem like an impossible task to get your poor little site noticed. But it is possible to make a niche for yourself, even in a very competitive market space.

Here are ten ways to create buzz around your blog:

1. Write great content. It sounds simple, but it’s true. If you want people to want to read your stuff, and refer your friends to your site, write content worth reading. Then do it again, and again, and again.
2. Interact with other bloggers. There are many bloggers in your niche, and instead of viewing them as competitors, see them as potential partners. Comment on their blogs, retweet their messages on Twitter, join their Facebook pages, and so on. Make yourself their supporter, and they’ll be more receptive to helping you out when they can.
3. Add eye-catching images. Lots of people are scanners, and they’ll pop over to your blog to just see what’s happening. Strong images are a great way to grab their attention; long blocks of text are a turn-off for most people.
4. Add audio and video. Adding other media forms is a way to mix things up and keep them interesting. While any one particular visitor might skip an audio, another one might be dying to hear your voice!
5. Keep things relevant. Comment on the latest trends in your industry, or relate top-of-mind news stories to your market.  For example, if everyone’s talking about reality TV, can you take a spin on the most popular show for your market? Be the go-to expert.
6. Interview “big names.” While you may not be able to compete with the “celebrities” in your market when it comes to traffic, you can divert some of their traffic your way by interviewing them. This is a great place to bring in audio and video.
7. Do a giveaway. Find something people in your market would really like, and hold a contest or giveaway. (Hint: The more tightly tied the prize is to your market, the more targeted your traffic will be).
8. Integrate your blogging with other social media. Tweet about your best blog posts, and add a tweet stream to your blog.  For most popular blogging platforms, this can be done easily with a blog widget. Post your blog links to your Facebook page and LinkedIn profile too. Build a Squidoo lens and add your blog’s feed.  Audios and videos should be added to podcast and video sharing sites as well as to iTunes.
9. Guest post. Guest posting means appearing on other blogger’s sites. It allows you to reach a new market, complete with the stamp of approval from someone that this new market already knows, likes, and trusts. For more information on guest blogging – including how to hold your own “blog tour” – visit Nicole Dean’s blog at nicoleonthenet.com.
10. Interact with readers. Your audience is your bread and butter. When they comment, you should be appreciative AND responsive. Engage them in conversation, either in the comments section of your site, or via email. Never ignore your readers!

Very few bloggers – even those who consider themselves “professionals” – do all these things. That’s why there will always be room for someone new at the top – someone who’s willing to do the things others aren’t. Someone like you!

SEO vs. Readability

Have you ever done a Google search on, say, refinancing your home mortgage? Your results might look something like this:

“Mortgage refinance home mortgage California home mortgage.”

Or, “Refinancing mortgage home mortgage refinance loan.”

You take one look and say, “Hunh?” Suddenly you’re wondering if you did your search in English or Pig Latin. But the real issue here is that the website creators had a bad case of SEO overload. They are attempting to rank higher in the search engines by stuffing as many keywords as possible into the headline and the content on the page.

While this kind of keyword-stuffing might have fooled search engines in the past, Google has gotten wise to it.  Google now also uses LSI, latent semantic indexing, to evaluate the relevance of websites.  This means that Google looks for related words that would occur in a typical text on a certain subject.

In a normal post about refinancing a mortgage, for example, there might also be mention of comparing interest rates, speaking to loan officers, going to banks, pulling credit reports, improving credit scores, and so on.  If Google doesn’t find at least some of those words and phrases, the site might have a problem.

Your human visitors have an even lower tolerance for keyword-stuffed gobbledygook.  Remember that you want to build an ongoing relationship with your readers so they’ll come back again and again.  That won’t happen if your page is filled with phrases like “refinance lowest rates YOUR STATE mortgage refinance now,” no matter how interested they might be in refinancing their mortgage.

So here’s the bottom line: Sure, you should have a good idea of the key terms people might enter into a search engine to find the content you’re putting on your page. But once you have used those words or phrases in your title as well as a couple of times in your post, stop worrying about them and write for your readers instead. Hit the points you wanted to make. Deliver on the promise in your headline. Place your call to action. Once you’re all done and you’re in the editing stage, make sure you did the following:

• you mentioned your keyword phrase at the beginning and the end of your post
• you linked to any other posts on your blog with related information
• you linked to other resources or posts on the web.

See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Just remember that ultimately, the search engines are trying to find the best results to serve to readers who are looking for readability and usefulness. So make your posts readable and useful, and you’ll keep your readers happy, and the search engines too.