15th Nov 2014

The tech side of BloggingTools and Tips to get you ahead.

If you take a print magazine with a million person circulation, and a blog with a devout readership of 1 million, for the purpose of selling anything that can be sold online, the blog is infinitely more powerful, because it’s only a click away.

“”

– Timothy Ferriss

Evans M.evans@weareasilia.comwww.weareasilia.com

#blogging #seo

Do you blog? If not, why? Think about it.

Benefits

• Share your knowledge, passions and interests.• Build an audience.• Connect with people.• Create a reputation.• Become a better writer.• Become a better (idea) presenter.• Get business and enquiries.

Where to write? The drafts?

Tools I use and why I like

Evernote•Mobile app - lets me write drafts on the move and offline.•Lets me access my blog notes/drafts on other devices when online.•I can email a note/draft to someone for review.https://www.evernote.com/

Wordpress•I love the features and user interface.•Lets me customize and extend my blog’s functionality a great deal.•Mobile responsive themes and backend.https://wordpress.com/

Do you know a guy? Who knows people?

That one that seems to be well connected. Always.

What is SEO? (Search Engine Optimisation)

• A search engine is that guy. Yep, that one!

• You ask them if they can hook you up with something.

• Because they’re well connected, they recommend some options to you depending on what you ask for.

• SEO means doing things that will increase the chances of search engines knowing about you (your content). And recommending you.

• So when people ask Mr. SE for something, he can say, “Hey, I know someone who can help you with that.” and gives your address. Booyah!

More on SEO

•The title of your page, the url and the meta description is like the ‘C.V’ or snippet Mr. SE shows people about your content.

• Better put your best forward otherwise people will respond, “No, thanks” and not get to know you (click through).

• If Mr. SE recommends you and many people seem pleased (click through, seem engaged and share you) then Mr. SE thinks more highly of you and ranks you higher on his list of recommends. Game recognise game.

• The more good recommends he makes, the more popular Mr SE becomes. He’s got a reputation to keep as well.

How do you get noticed by Mr. SE? How to get his ‘respect’?

Think about it. Try.

SEO: Get known and become a favourite

Get known•Page structure. The title, meta description, headings, content (quality). The HTML.•XML Sitemap. A guide for Mr. SE on how to navigate your site.•Update sitemap after new content is added and ping Mr. SE. Tells him, “Hey, I got some fresh stuff. FYI!”

Become a favourite•Have good structure. HTML structure.•Be people-friendly. Useful content and good presentation so people are more engaged and share your content. Good UX.•Market. Share with target audience online. Get many visits and Mr. SE will think highly of you.•Be consistent.

Practically speaking...You can do this without being a techie.

How?This is how I do it on Wordpress...

Wordpress SEO by Yoast (a plugin)

•Wordpress is already quite a good platform out of the box. This plugin takes things a notch higher.•Does the techie stuff for you. Quite neatly.•Guides you to make a good SEO title and meta description based on your blog post’s focus or topic.•Shows you how your piece will be displayed on Google through a snippet preview.•Analyses your blog post and scores the copy using Flesch Reading Ease. Good for readability.•Page analysis also rates your content against several SEO items you can improve on.• https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Got ideas for consistency?Consistency is a critical success factor in blogging.

Editorial Calendar

•Helps with planning and scheduling content publishing.•Wordpress supports scheduling out of the box.•Editorial Calendar Plugin lets me:

• See scheduled posts in calendar view• Move posts to different dates by drag and drop• Create new posts on a particular date and make quick edits

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/editorial-calendar/

•A good thing with scheduling is that you can schedule a month’s or more worth of posts and leave it to your blog to publish them.•“Keep calm and let the blog work for you.”

Would you like a virtual assistant? One to help share your blog posts to

your other platforms & channels? Always.

How about making the internet work for you?

•Make the internet work for you.•Create recipes – combinations of triggers and actions for channels (apps) you use regularly.•See some of my recipes below. Each time a blog post goes public it’s shared to my FB page, Twitter handle and Google+ page via Buffer.

•“Keep calm and let the internet work for you.”•https://ifttt.com/

IFTTT (If This Then That)

•Drafted 2 months worth of blog posts on Evernote. •Put them on Wordpress (www.baileros.com/blog)•Improved SEO and readability with SEO for Wordpress.•Scheduled them with the Editorial Calendar. •Setup IFTTT to share them when they get published.

Recap (And what next?)

I can now relax, have an adventure, enjoy the offline world, live new experiences and write new drafts/posts (Evernote offline). Repeat the cycle. Focus on creating content.Use tech to make my blog-life relationship and balance better.

“

”@evansmusomi