Showing posts with label Wordpress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wordpress. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Working on the Next Step
A few months ago I mentioned my intention of moving this blog to a self-hosted Wordpress platform. Well, things are finally in the works. I don't have a firm ETA, but I expect to have everything completed in a few weeks. I've been busy, busy, busy working on the details. In the meanwhile, I plan to keep writing, marketing, growing my business and sharing my experiences here as usual.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
A Small Change Brings Unexpected Results
On Monday I talked about my plans to port the content from this blog over to a self-hosted Wordpress site. I’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know Wordpress better because most (if not all) of my blogging clients use it. Although I hadn’t really expected it, I’ve found that it’s really growing on me.
This past weekend I decided to test out my very limited skills and redo my website (probably not the best idea since to use your website to experiment, but I’m known for making very spur of the moment decisions).
About a year ago, I hired a graphic designer to build a website for me using Wordpress. It was a very basic static site with a blog attached. I never got anyone commenting on the blog (to be fair, I didn’t really do much to promote it either). I was growing tired of the site's appearance, but after paying for summer school for four I couldn’t really afford to pay someone to do it over again right now, so I took a deep breath and just changed the whole thing myself.
Then a funny thing happened. I started getting comments on the blog posts even though I only had two (now three) posts up. Then yesterday, seemingly out of no where, a local mid-size company called me up saying they had found my blog doing a Google search and then set up an over-phone-meeting for today to discuss a possible three month trial project to start.
Considering my very rudimentary experience, I was surprised. I’ve been working on a couple of large ebook projects lately so I haven’t been marketing as much as I should (I know, bad girl!). Was it the change in my new site’s appearance or content? I don’t know. But it hammers home the importance of monitoring your marketing efforts so that you know what works and what doesn’t so that you can spend more time on methods that work.
Have you ever changed something about your business, or the way you promoted it, that resulted in an unexpected positive result?
This past weekend I decided to test out my very limited skills and redo my website (probably not the best idea since to use your website to experiment, but I’m known for making very spur of the moment decisions).
About a year ago, I hired a graphic designer to build a website for me using Wordpress. It was a very basic static site with a blog attached. I never got anyone commenting on the blog (to be fair, I didn’t really do much to promote it either). I was growing tired of the site's appearance, but after paying for summer school for four I couldn’t really afford to pay someone to do it over again right now, so I took a deep breath and just changed the whole thing myself.
Then a funny thing happened. I started getting comments on the blog posts even though I only had two (now three) posts up. Then yesterday, seemingly out of no where, a local mid-size company called me up saying they had found my blog doing a Google search and then set up an over-phone-meeting for today to discuss a possible three month trial project to start.
Considering my very rudimentary experience, I was surprised. I’ve been working on a couple of large ebook projects lately so I haven’t been marketing as much as I should (I know, bad girl!). Was it the change in my new site’s appearance or content? I don’t know. But it hammers home the importance of monitoring your marketing efforts so that you know what works and what doesn’t so that you can spend more time on methods that work.
Have you ever changed something about your business, or the way you promoted it, that resulted in an unexpected positive result?
Monday, June 7, 2010
A Change is Coming: Plans to Switch Over to Wordpress Soon
I’ve been avoiding this decision for a very long time because just thinking about it makes me want to run and hide under the covers (and catch a quick nap), but I’ve finally decided to port the contents of this blog into a self-hosted Wordpress blogging platform. I imagine that it’s going to be a very tedious, and messy process.
The first time I dealt with this delima was when I first decided to blog a couple of years ago. I kept going back and forth between Blogger and Wordpress, and I’m not ashamed to say that the technophobe in me was intimidated by Wordpress, so I chose Blogger instead. I didn’t need yet another excuse to put off blogging, and I found the Blogger platform very easy to learn. I’d heard many expert bloggers refer to Wordpress as "the more professional option", but that’s not the reason for my decision.
I spent 10 weeks blogging over at ProfitableMommyBlogging.com. Those 10 weeks really forced me to get to know Wordpress better and I became much more comfortable using it, and you know what? I really do like it. The platform really is user friendly, and honestly, there's a plugin for just about everything. I won't bore you by discussing the SEO benefits.
TheBlogCoach.org and a couple of other interesting posts have been discussing the problem of Google deleting legitimate blogs as a result of an enthusiastic search to find and eliminate spam blogs. I’m honestly not too fearful that my blog will suddenly be deleted by the Google spam seeking bots. I don't want anyone else using Blogger to be uncessarily fearful of that either. That's not the point of this post. As usual I'm just passing along information that may be of interest.
I’ll continue blogging here, taking my time and aim to have this process completed by Fall. In the meanwhile, here are a couple of other posts on the topic you may find interesting:
The Blogger Status
WARNING: Reports of Legitimate Blogger/Blogspot Accounts Being Deleted Without Cause
The first time I dealt with this delima was when I first decided to blog a couple of years ago. I kept going back and forth between Blogger and Wordpress, and I’m not ashamed to say that the technophobe in me was intimidated by Wordpress, so I chose Blogger instead. I didn’t need yet another excuse to put off blogging, and I found the Blogger platform very easy to learn. I’d heard many expert bloggers refer to Wordpress as "the more professional option", but that’s not the reason for my decision.
I spent 10 weeks blogging over at ProfitableMommyBlogging.com. Those 10 weeks really forced me to get to know Wordpress better and I became much more comfortable using it, and you know what? I really do like it. The platform really is user friendly, and honestly, there's a plugin for just about everything. I won't bore you by discussing the SEO benefits.
TheBlogCoach.org and a couple of other interesting posts have been discussing the problem of Google deleting legitimate blogs as a result of an enthusiastic search to find and eliminate spam blogs. I’m honestly not too fearful that my blog will suddenly be deleted by the Google spam seeking bots. I don't want anyone else using Blogger to be uncessarily fearful of that either. That's not the point of this post. As usual I'm just passing along information that may be of interest.
I’ll continue blogging here, taking my time and aim to have this process completed by Fall. In the meanwhile, here are a couple of other posts on the topic you may find interesting:
The Blogger Status
WARNING: Reports of Legitimate Blogger/Blogspot Accounts Being Deleted Without Cause
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