Archive for Blogging – Page 2

Building Your Business Brand Through Social MediaHow’s Your “Business Brand” Doing on Social Media?

It’s an important question. There are business brands that got started entirely through social media and succeeded in going viral. For instance, Wine Library (Gary Vaynerchuk) and “$#*! My Dad Says” (with William Shatner). Both of these multi-million dollar businesses have been built entirely on social media branding.

How can you use smart brand-building techniques to improve your brand with social media?

First: Define Your Business Brand

Before you do anything – before you even sign up for a social network, define your brand. Answer these questions:

  • What does your business brand stand for?
  • What’s the “vibe” of your brand?
  • What are your primary spoken and unspoken messages?
  • Who are you targeting?

Everything needs to fall in line with the brand you define. Your profile photos, the color of your pages, the content you post and everything else needs to match the brand you want to create.

Select Your Primary Social Networks Read More→

Avoid Ping SpammingHave you ever hit the Publish button on your WordPress post only to realize there was a mistake? Did you fix it really quick and hit publish again?

Have you even done it more than just a few times?

I have. I’ve hit the publish button by mistake. I’ve found a typo or two after the fact more than once.

Doesn’t seem like a big deal. So what? You could be guilty of…

Innocent Ping Spamming or False Pinging

Whenever you publish a new post, your blog pings (notifies) the ping services you have listed in your WordPress Admin Settings (under Writing). This in turn notifies search engines and blog directories and services to index your new content.

WordPress pings by default, whether it’s new content, edited content, or even when you schedule future posts. Now, it may be that WordPress 3.1 has fixed this but I can’t find any evidence that it has.  So unfortunately, when you edit and republish, pings are sent out again (and again each time).

If you do that too many times you can get temporarily (or permanently) banned from the services.

In light of this, I wanted to share with you an important tip to help you avoid being tagged as a ping spammer until the core WordPress install takes care of this problem.

Get the free WordPress plugin to avoid ping spamming

cbnet Ping Optimizer

(Search for it in your “Add New” Plugin area, or get it through the link above.)

Once you install and activate the plugin, you can set it up however you want. (You’ll find it under the Admin “Settings” section.) I have mine set to ping only once within 30 minutes.

Your turn…

Did you know about this potential for being banned from ping services?

Have you even published and republished a post within a short period of time?

Don’t you think you should protect yourself from being guilty of false pinging?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments… and if you have any other tips for cool wordpress plugins!

I’m a WordPress Plugin Junkie!

Monday, April 4th, 2011

yslow and firebug firefox addonsAdmittedly, I have WAY too many plugins on my blog. I just love them! Whenever I read about one that sounds really cool, I have to have it. That’s just all there is to it.

I’m a plugin junkie!

Well, today I spent hours trying to improve the performance of my blog. In fact, I started obsessing about it and wouldn’t let it go. I knew it was loading slowly and had to find out why. And fix it fast.

Are you familiar with YSlow and Firebug? They’re Firefox Addons. YSlow is designed to help you improve page loads for sites and blogs. Firefox helps you find (edit and debug) coding problems.

I’ve had them both installed for quite a while, but I don’t have YSlow set to autorun. Today I checked my blog with it and to my stellar shock, I had a failing grade! (My sincerest apologies to my readers. I’m working on it.)

What slows your page load times?

  • images
  • css
  • javascript
  • plugins
  • apps
  • and a bunch of techie stuff I won’t bore you with

What did I do to improve my page load time? Read More→