blogging

Marketing Monday: make shared blog posts look good

December 1, 2014 by Moran Media

When you post to your blog, you can share to facebook, twitter, google plus, and other outlets there are small previews that show up on social media (as seen in the images above). Every few cycles it seems like things change, but for now, this is how posts on facebook look. You will notice that the posting on the left looks much more attractive, something you will want to click on more than the one on the right. (And if your post doesn’t have an image, the odds of people clicking it are pretty slim, people like pictures over just text).

How can you make facebook links look pretty like this?

I have discovered through trial and error that what you need to do is when you add an image to your blog post* you need to post the full size image, not the small or medium image. (as seen in the image to the left) This works best with images over 600 or 800 pixels in width. Using the featured image option in wordpress also helps. (As you can see from the image on the right.)

*Assuming you are using a wordpress install as your blogging platform which is what I recommend to all of my customers. If I built a website with blogging enabled, then it is built upon the wordpress software.

You can always change the image size once you posted into the blog post by clicking on the pencil icon on your image and typing in the size you want, as seen below.

This also works on tumblr and google plus, look below for the examples of both using the medium and the full size image formats. Thankfully twitter just handles all images the same way.

Any questions?

Marketing Monday: Scheduling posts with wordpress

November 24, 2014 by Moran Media

I’ve spoken about scheduling before, mentioned how I often write these posts ahead of time and set them to post on mondays so I don’t get behind. This helps because I will get spurts of time and writing energy, and can pile up posts. This post will be the third in my current queue.

How do I schedule posts? Well if you have a website set up by me, you most likely have a wordpress install. I like using wordpress because it’s easy, it’s clean code, it’s open source, and again, it’s easy. You don’t have to know code to use it, all you need to be able to do is to use a word processing program and you can use wordpress.

There are two forms of wordpress: .com and .org. WordPress.com is the free (with the option of paid extras) blogging website that you log into wordpress.com to write your posts, and your site is likely yoursitename.wordpress.com. WordPress.org is where you download the program wordpress from and install onto your webhost, make database files, and set up the same software but with more functionality, on your own site and your site is more likely yoursitename.com (or .org, .net, .info, ect.). This is what I install for many of my clients.

In both variations you can schedule posts. You fill out your post as you normally would, enter a post title, add and image, write your post, fill out categories, tags, SEO, and more. The only difference is you are going to choose when to post. On the right side of your posting window you will see what I have in the image on the right. Under Publish immediately you will see a blue link that says edit, click that and you can enter the month, the day, the year, and the time you’d like to post. Once you click OK the big blue publish button turns to schedule. Once you click that your post is saved but won’t post until that date. If you make the date in the past, it will post immediately but be backlogged amongst posts from the date you chose as if you had written it then.

Thanks to the scheduling option of wordpress you can time travel throughout your site. This helps when planning time off, or dealing with busy workloads you know are coming. For example, I have a bi-annual project I work on that I clear my schedule for, my goal is to have posts ready for those weeks so my audience is still getting content even though I can’t stop what I’m doing to write it then. With the publishing tools on wordpress the post still gets pushed to facebook, twitter, google plus, linkedin, and all the social media I try to engage. (Well talk more about that in the future.)

What do you use the schedule tool for most?

Don’t Stop Blogging

October 21, 2013 by Moran Media

I always tell my clients that they should be updating their website’s blog at least once a week. That an active blog means their page isn’t static and it gives customers, clients, their community, a reason to come back to their site, and it gives google a reason to crawl it. I also tell them that if they have something new they need to post it! Yes I am terrible at taking my own advice. When I start working for a client I am only thinking about their needs, so my page often goes without updates.

Like most advice in life, it’s often not followed by the one that gives it.

Truth of the matter is that you get busy, and sure, I know the best tricks to handle that. Write a bunch of blog posts ahead of time and let the auto schedule publish them at the right time. Again, not followed. Heck, I have designed and redesigned a bunch of sites over the summer and haven’t even put them in the portfolio let alone made a post about them.

It’s hard to remember to promote yourself when you’re running around busy actually working, and when it’s a one woman shop you can’t delegate these small tasks on someone else. Most of your life you have been raised not to brag, and when you post about yourself or your product it can feel like bragging.

Still, these tasks need to be done. When a new customer comes to your site and sees you haven’t posted anything new in a year they get the impression that you’re not an active business. They have no way of knowing you’ve been busily attending to your customers because they only see your inactive site.

What’s the solution? Well it isn’t going back to business as usual. It’s time to try something new, create a new routine for yourself to get you back into blogging and updating your site. Perhaps give yourself a reward each time you complete a post? It sounds simply and possibly silly, but we as humans respond well to positive rewards. Find something small that you value and reward yourself with it, something as small as a relaxing bath, or playing your favorite game on facebook, an extra hour of TV, a muffin, you name it! Find something to reward yourself for good work.

Besides, if you blog/brag about the good work you’re doing, you will likely start feeling even better about what you do.