Those of you who blog regularly will notice on your dashboard that WordPress 3.0 is available. Please do not attempt to update your blog from within the blog itself.  Not only are there security issues with this method, using another method than those previously used confuses the updater [as well as me!] 

While I normally update you all at once I am postponing this update for a while after reading several forum posts and newsletters.  3.0 is not a security update. It is a totally new version, only just out of beta testing.  If you have plug-ins on your blog, and we all do, updating to 3.0 may break your blog completely as developers haven’t had time to update their plug-ins yet.  Rest assured I will keep an eye on it, and I usually update my own blog first to see what happens.  When  3.1. comes out I will evaluate the situation again and advise.

I am hoping that you are all blogging regularly – remember search engines like blogs as well as people.

Surveys are a great way to add interaction to your site/blog, and to find out what your client base is thinking.

Listed below are a couple of things I’ve learned from experience.

• You can put a survey in a post or a page. [Post if you email out to subscribers and want them to see it - Page if you want them to see it only when they visit your blog.]
• Surveys don’t like punctuation.  Use ‘do not’ instead of don’t.
• You can create more than one question and it adds a ‘next’ button automatically.
• Plan your survey on paper first, thinking through the ‘if you answered yes…’ , ‘if you answered no’ and test it first.
• If you only have a single question use a poll instead of a survey.
• Difference between a poll and a survey is the results.  Anyone can see the poll results.  Survey results are private and stored in admin.

I hope this helps you. Today’s challenge is to create a survey or a poll.  I will have more blogging challenges as we go along this journey together.

Marian

Find a free theme.  Google for free WordPress Themes and take a serious look for the items below.

• Do you like the graphics?
• Are they appropriate for your business or venture?
• Do you like the layout?
• Look at how the posts are displayed. (Notice how posts and sidebar items are nicely separated on this layout as an example.)
• Does the theme have Pages – (pages stay where they are – posts move down the page as new posts are added.)
• If you don’t find one you like are you prepared to pay for customization?

Then consider how you want to use your blog. Some of the ideas below may require a plugin to be installed by your webmaster.

• Do you want to offer email subscriptions so that your posts are emailed automatically to subscribers?
• Do you want to conduct polls and/or surveys?
• Do you want to present information only?
• Include graphics displayed in gallery or slideshow format?
• Podcast?
• Video clips?
• Do you want to personalize your blog with custom fields such as ‘today’s mood’; currently reading; listening to; etc.

Blogs are a good way to create interactivity with your customers and clients.  Engaging them in answering questions in a poll or survey, or encouraging comments, starts a two way conversation.  Contact your webmaster now to get your blog.

There’s no reason you can’t, and shouldn’t have both.  They serve different purposes.  If your newsletter/mailing list is used to announce new products, offer discounts etc. then make sure your blog never does.  Your  blog can be more definitive to make you the go-to expert on any subject that you are qualified in.  It is more casual than a website – think of it more like the coffee shop [your blog] in a store. [your website.]

You can set up your blog to allow feedback, comments and questions from subscribers, thus making it far more interactive than a newsletter which is mainly informative.  But wait!  Why not use that newsletter to drive people to your blog and to subscribe? Can you use your blog to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter?  Starting to get the picture here? 

Blogs are also good for search engine status and  are available for the whole world to see while your newsletter is sent to people you already know.  They can work well hand in hand.

Both blogs and newsletters land in inboxes and people will read either or both. This is called Marketing, folks.

I can talk as much as anyone but I realize that short statements are usually better and more effective.

So on a day when I was particularly chatty, I split my text into 4 blog posts and saved them as drafts, to be used in the future.  Now I am a bit ahead of the game and won’t deluge my readers with a looooong blog post.

This is a good technique as it gives me time to reflect on what I’ve written and to revise it, if necessary, without being rushed.

For a long blog post or article, consider using the ‘insert more’ and just send out a teaser paragraph in the email notification. (I’ll be testing that soon.) Remember, we are ALL short on time.

What’s your excuse now? My goal is to encourage you to use a medium that is amazingly popular (and free)  to market yourself and your skills in this economy.  People are not going out as much as they used to, which means they’re sitting home – reading emails and blogs?  You just never know!

A good way to promote your blog is by including a rather nice animated headliner on your website.  The headliner lists the titles of your last 3 posts and is available from your feedburner subscription.  People are more inclined to read an email than remember to visit your blog so make sure you have an email subscription.  The goal is to build up your subscription list.

If you have not created your feedburner email subscription, you must first create a google account. [it's free!] then you would create the email subscription – most of you with blogs have already had this done by your webmaster – but you can go back into your Feedburner account and find the headline animater and play with it until it is the way you like it.  It’s really rather neat.  You can see an example of it here on my website home page.

Unfortunately the Headline Animator for email signatures is rather complex to set up and may hinder delivery, but you can still put a link to your blog in your regular signature.

Of course, it follows that you should become a regular poster on your blog. Set aside one day a week, or one day a month and make that Post Day!  Your posts do not have to  be long, this one isn’t – but it *is* informative.  It tells you something you may not have known and that’s what blogs are all about.  I will be listing some ideas of what to post later on. Subscribe and stay tuned….