Archive for the 'Blogging Tips' Category
Tips on Adding Images to Your WordPress site
Thursday, April 19th, 2007Is there a maximum or minimum size to use?
To keep the download time to a minimum and to have a good quality image, make sure that your image is no bigger than 500 pixels along the longest edge and no smaller than Here are some free software programs that we have used and find really good. You can use any of these to edit your images. Both require you to download software to your computer.
The Gimp – an Open Source software program that is available online and has many of the same features as Photoshop. Available for Windows, Unix and MacOS X systems.
Cost: Free
Picasa Photo Editing by Google – a free software from Google that allows you to locate and organize photos on your computer. Has simple editing tools to add effects and edit images. Gives you the option to share photos online. Available for Linux & Windows systems – no MacOS version yet.
Cost: Free
For more info on other editing tools visit the About site at Top 8 Free Photo Editors for Windows.
- Visit Blizzard University for an online tutorial about adding images to your WordPress site,
- or Download the pdf here Adding images to your wordpress site
Early Adopters of Business Blogs
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
Early adopters of business blogs are really starting to see the results of their blogging efforts especially in the organic search results. This can be seen in a recent search on ‘Women’s Yoga Retreat’ in Google. The Home Ranch blog post is listed 4th in the results of about 807,000 matches.
The Home Ranch started blogging nearly a year ago and the recent upgrade of both the site and blog design really gives them an edge over other companies that offer the Colorado Dude Ranch experience.
Another site that is seeing the results pay off is the Winter Park Blog. Read the rest of this entry »
Blogging Tip #5 - Add year to dates in posts
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007Blogging Tip #5
When adding a date of an event in a post, remember to add the year so that if the post is found later there is no confusion as to when the event is taking place. So always create your date such as January 26th, 2007 or Jan 26th, 2007. Then when people find the post via the search engines they know it is not next week, but was last year.
Blogging Tip #4 - Image Sizes For Your Blog
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006Blogging Tip #4
Image Size Matters: Always resize images that you are using online to 72 dpi and a max length on the longest edge to 500 pixels. This will allow up to upload a nice sized image for people to view but will not eat up bandwidth in a download. Those people that are on DSL or even the few that are still on dial up will be very thankful and might just stick around on your site long enough to view the images.
Blogging Tip #3 - Break up that thought
Friday, December 8th, 2006Blogging Tip #3
When you are posting to your blog, if your post has a number of headings, then you might look at breaking it out into a more than one posts. This has an advantage in that you will be able to create more ’site pages’ on your blog but also the search engines will have a better chance of indexing the page for the right topic.
Say for example, you are writing about a local restaurant called ‘The Blues Club’, you give a description, and directions. Then you want to write about a band that is playing at the club. Start a new post for the band, give a bio and mention that they are playing the Blues Club and then link back to the previous post. This gives you two chances to mention the club and an extra chance than if you had made one post with all the info, to show in the search engines for ‘Your Town & Blues Club’ search term.
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Blogging Tip #2 - Break up text into smaller paragraphs
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006Blogging Tip #2
When adding text to your blog, break it up into short parargraphs to make it easier to read online. In a printed document it is easy to read large blocks of text, while online people can get lost more easily and end up leaving the page because it is too much eye strain.
Online people tend to ’scan’ read so by breaking text into smaller sections you make it easy to scan.
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Blogging Tip #1 - Write to your blog regularly
Saturday, November 18th, 2006Blogging Tip #1
When people get a new blog they are all excited and ready to roll. They go at it will gusto and then crash and burn about a month later. Or they get the training and then just never find the time to work on it again until weeks later and can not remember where to even start.
If you are using a blog to promote your business then add an engaement to your calender to blog on a regular basis. Two to three times a week would be great, if you cannot manage that, then at least once a week is the minimum.
Readers will not come back if they never see new content, saying that though, you do not want to burn out on blogging. So try to keep up with posting and if you do not have much to add, or do not have much time, maybe try a adding a photo or talk about another local business. There is lots to say when you are spreading the word and networking.
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