I spotted the following ‘valuable’ piece of advice from a web designer based in Northern Ireland (via Twitter) and it’s a lesson worth learning…
OK, so you’ve thought about a fantastic name for your company and it’s time to purchase your website domain. Before you hit the purchase button, it’s always a good idea to run your decisions past someone else.
Why? Because, by shortening two words or more by simply removing the spaces in your business name, your domain name could attract an unwanted audience. Read more…
One of the best things I like about blogging is being able to write about anything, at anytime, from (almost) anywhere.
Today, January 6th 2010, the UK has been gripped by ’snow fever’. The main TV news, tabloids, social media networks, everything and everybody has had just the one subject to talk about – snow!
The image accompanying this article is of my koi pond and garden, taken with my Nokia N95 mobile phone at 8.00am. Looks pretty doesn’t it? Read more…
Have you set yourself any blogging goals?
If you have, great. If you haven’t, I’d suggest you should.
A common blogging goal is to reach the milestone of X number of followers. Aiming for 100 initially, then 1,000, then 5,000 and so on.
Many Twitter users, perhaps even the majority, strive towards achieving a specific ‘followers’ goal.
Yesterday (May 13th 2009) Xavier Lur had 66,988 followers on Twitter! Read more…
What do Bloggers and blog readers love?
Their partner? Perhaps.
Their Children/Parents? Probably.
Lists? 100% guaranteed.
What about a list of lists? Absolute utopia!!!
Here’s a top 40 list of lists for you to dribble over, all related to building, managing and marketing a website.
They have been grouped in to categories to help you find the juicy bits you’re interested in easily. Read more…
It took me some time to realise that there are a number of significant differences writing for the web when compared with conventional writing. In fact someone else told me my online writing style was pants. He was right!
I was over-elaborating, writing in long sentences and even longer paragraphs. I needed to learn the fundamental differences, and thankfully a very experienced freelance copywriter I’ve known for years steered me in the right direction.
What’s so special about writing for the web?
Reading from a screen can be hard on the eyes. This may explain why ongoing research (which started as far back as 1997) consistently concludes people rarely read web pages word by word. They scan pages for key words and phrases. Only 16% read word by word. Read more…
When I took the decision to start blogging three years ago (with a now defunct blog) I jumped in with both feet and made a lot of mistakes. No wonder I hardly got any readers.
Here are a few tips and pitfalls to help you.
Read more…
It’s surprising how many times I am asked that question, often by ’seasoned’ web users, who are used to sending emails and looking at the internet every day.
A Blog (“web log”) is usually written by one person and updated regularly (in theory at least). Blogs tend to be written on a specific topic, and believe me there are blogs on virtually any suject you can think of – even knitting needles! Some of these topics have spurned whole communities, putting people into contact with each other where they can share ideas, learn new skills, and even do business with people they’ve never even seen or spoken to from anywhere around the globe.
Read more…
