WP Blog Host's Blog » social media

6 Things I Tell People Who Are Looking To Start A Blog

John Hoff — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:00:08 +0000

When thinking about starting a blog, you are sure to have a whirlwind of questions.

Here are a few tips I give to newbie bloggers when they’re just getting started. Please note that I have included a bunch of links in this article in case newbies are looking for more in depth discussions on the topics below.

1. What is it going to cost you?

Ok, I stoled this question from a buddy of mine, James Chartrand. I really like that question because as an experienced blogger it’s my responsibility to educate newbies as to just how much time and sacrifice goes into blogging. Blogging takes huge chunks of time away from your family life, personal time, and just about everything else.

2. Get a self-hosted WordPress blog as opposed to a free one.

I’d say this is probably the one I hear the most – “I want to start a blog but I’m not really sure if I’ll like it, so I’ll start out with a free blog and then purchase my own down the road.” It’s even worse when they tell me they want to start a business and they want to know where they can get a free blog.

I have way too many issues with this logic. Just thinking about it makes my toe hairs itch.

I mean, who builds a business, empire, or something else you plan to invest such a large amount of time in on something that is free and limited?

There are many advantages to a self-hosted WordPress blog and with our company you can start one for around $10 and then $10 a month (hosting and domain name). That’s a small price to pay for such a big investment. Many people say they want to “test” it out first before they spend lots of money. It really doesn’t cost that much.

Ok – like I said, I have way too many issues with going the free blog route. If this is what you’re considering, read these other articles for more information on why free blogs are a bad idea:

3. Choose the right hosting company for your needs.

A while back I wrote an article, How To Choose The Best WordPress Blog Hosting Company. In the article, I mentioned how you should pick a web host which is in line with your needs.

Do you need:

Phone support?
Someone there who knows about blogging?
Someone you can talk to when you have WordPress questions?
Do they provide services that allows you to grow if your blog becomes successful?

Also, don’t believe people how say you need cPanel with Fantastico if you plan to use WordPress. Someone somewhere started that nonsense. While Fantastico is a nice feature because it has an auto installer of WordPress, it’s not necessary because it’s not the only option for easy installs of WordPress.

Our company doesn’t use Fantastico, but take a look at the programs we offer which installs are as easy as giving usernames and passwords.

4. Focus what you write about and are you passionate about it?

Blogging is an on ongoing process. You might think you have a lot to say but trust me, it fades quickly. Imagine writing 3 articles a week for 5 years. Do you really have that much to say? Realize that the ongoing process is all about you learning and converting that knowledge into something useful for others.

To stay the course, make sure you’re really interested in that topic. That’s the key to longevity in blogging, if you ask me.

5. Why do you want to start a blog?

What’s the purpose? Is it to make money? Gain fame? Learn something?

You first have to understand what you want to get out of blogging; only then can you devise a plan to get you there. Work your plan backwards if you have to.

Also, realize that the goal of your blog may change down the road. That’s ok, but always remember why you are blogging and strive to reach that goal you’ve given yourself.

6. Try installing WordPress on your own.

If you plan to be a WordPress blogger, I suggest you try installing it on your own when you’re first starting out. Doing this will give you a jump start and insights into how WordPress is organized.

Got any other tips?

Share below.

UPDATE: Not sure why, but for some strange reason I forgot to mention blog security. I always urge new (and seasoned) bloggers to think about securing your blog. The easiest time to do security upgrades is when you first install your blog.

Though I stress this point, most people skip this step until they get hacked. It’s kind of like the person who never cares much about installing a home alarm system until after they get robbed.

So point 7 is think security.

1 Great Reason to Use blip.tv vs. YouTube for Videos

John Hoff — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:00:42 +0000

A few days ago I published a post, How To Install WordPress Manually and Why Beginners Should Do It. It was my first time using blip.tv to broadcast my videos and I have to say, I’m very pleased with the results.

The one great reason I think to use blip.tv to broadcast your videos over YouTube is video quality.

Basically, when you upload a video to blip.tv, it seems the video quality remains pretty much the same as what it looks like right after you record your video and watch it on your computer. When I upload videos to YouTube, on the other hand, I get a little loss in video quality.

Take a look. The two videos are the same videos I uploaded from my computer to both sites. You’ll notice in addition to a little better video quality, blip.tv did not resize my video when I copied and pasted in my embed code.

blip.tv version

YouTube version

YouTube does have one distinct advantage over blip.tv.

Can you guess what it is?

Popularity.

I’m sure more people will see my videos on YouTube than blip.tv simply because YouTube is so popular. So for now, I’ll upload my videos to both sites, but the ones you watch from my blog will be embedded from blip.tv.

Have you started video blogging (vlogging) yet? If not, you might want to consider it. I think we’re on the road to seeing a lot more of it.

The Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing and Does It Teach Us Bad Habits As Entrepreneurs?

John Hoff — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:14:58 +0000

Craig Newmark, owner of Craiglist.org
A social media entrepreneur that
does more than sit at home all
day at the computer in his PJs

Image by AP/Stephen Chernin
source Wired

So much has already been written on how powerful of a marketing tool social media can be that I don’t want to spell it all out again here. Visit Problogger, Dosh Dosh, and sites like those to learn more.

The major downside I see with social media is how much time and effort it can take to create a profit.

For example, I’ve been seeing a lot lately on how to grow your blog. One of the more popular ways is to comment on other people’s blog in order to get those bloggers to in turn visit your blog and read and comment, in other words, return the favor. This is probably one of the best ways to quickly build your comment section and community.

But as an entrepreneur trying to succeed in business and needing to make money, you have to ask yourself, “so this is a community of what exactly?”

The interesting thing about this is that I’ve noticed when I comment on other’s blogs, many of them will come over and comment on mine ( much appreciated! ). However, if I stop commenting on their blog it seems they stop commenting on mine.

What does this tell us? Just how targeted is this means of marketing? How long does it take to read 30 blog articles, write your own, comment on your articles and elsewhere, etc.? What is the return on investment? If you’ve put in 5 hours a day blogging only to see you’ve made $20 for the month, that comes out to $0.13 per hour of work working 5 hours a day for 30 days.

OUCH!

If, however, your primary reason for blogging is to create a community and your business path is to simply market your blog and generate some income from there, the above strategy is definitely something you want to do.

The positive side of things is the longer you do this, you’ll end up making more than just $20/month, hopefully.

Other sites like Digg and Stumble Upon are great for getting your blog articles traffic and linked to, but just how targeted is that traffic? Sure the traffic might be targeted for your article, but 9 times out of 10 your blog articles aren’t pushing your product or advertising your services. In fact, authority sites like Problogger show us how we’re not suppose to market directly in social media.

The instant a blogger feels like you’re trying to push your product on them too heavily you risk losing them. When you run a Stumble Upon campaign, for example, the advice is not to push your actual product’s landing page (e.g. web hosting), but rather an article that provides information.

Most people using social media sites are looking for information and news, not a new tea cup.

Investing Time In Social Media Marketing Business-wise

Pros & Cons

By social media marketing, I’m referring to:

Spending time creating and marketing a MySpace and Facebook profile
Working at getting your articles popular on sites like Digg and Stumble Upon
Participating in online forums
Guest Blogging
Commenting on other blogs to get more comments on yours

As I see it, these are some of the pros and cons of social media marketing. Can you add any?

You can work from home
You can be a bit lazy
Not expensive to do
Eventually you can make a name for yourself
You gain permission marketing
Google gets to know your website better (SEO)
Ease to connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime
Can build relationship marketing
Forces you to keep learning

Consumes A LOT of your time
You can be a bit lazy (yes, that was a pro, too)
Business and product growth is typically slow at first
Not a direct marketing method
Can easily become non-targeted (e.g. you write a great article, unfortunately it has nothing to do with you making money)
Not great if you’re anti-social
Your community might not buy from you but still require a large portion of your time
Need of staying interesting and appearing fresh
Your communication skills online could severely hurt you
At times can be very non-personable

As I mentioned at the top of this article, the main problem I have with social media marketing is time. It takes SO much time to write articles, read blogs, comment, respond, network on social sites, visit forums, etc. I actually like doing those things (to a point), but as the owner of a web development company and a father of two, it’s very difficult for me to justify spending too much time in social media.

I by no means am putting down social media. Heck, when starting our company our primary focus was to not be corporate and to be more social. I took a hint from Craig Newmark over at Craigslist.org. He’s the “band leader” of Craigslist, so to speak. That’s exactly what I’m doing here at WP Blog Host. I give a face and voice to our company just as he does his.

There are of course success stories out there where entrepreneurs invest most, if not all, of their time in social media marketing. The technology is here to stay and I look forward to see where it goes. I think every entrepreneur needs to be a web entrepreneur to some extent.

The Reason For This Article Is This

I don’t want new younger entrepreneurs thinking they can sit at home in their PJs, build a website, and socialize a little on the Internet and expect to become highly successful.

Can it happen?

Sure, anything’s possible.

T Edwards from Poverty101.net said something that made me think in his comment on my last post:

Getting out and pounding the pavement may not fit the internet business plan but there is definitely a need for a lot of behind the scenes marketing, development, programming, monitoring, revising, etc to build a successful online business.

I do agree that this seems to be the “idea” of social media marketing – the idea that you don’t have to go out and pound the pavement. And you can be successful by not doing so. But for me, Craig Newmark is the ideal web entrepreneur.

He socializes online AND pounds the pavement. That’s how you become highly successful. That’s the difference between $150,000 per year profit and $5 million.

In my next article, we’ll take a look at the way old school entrepreneurs did things and what lessons we can learn from them and how it might apply to building a successful business online.

Building A Business Through Social Media Vs. The Old-Timer's Way To Business Success

John Hoff — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:38:01 +0000

We all know the economy sucks. We hear it in the news, we read about it in print media, and we read about it online.

I see shows on MSNBC and CNBC with people arguing with one another about how to better our market and we see experienced entrepreneurs shelling out helpful advice to help your business grow.

Then I get online and read articles and blogs which teach us about the effectiveness of social media marketing and how many people use this as their only means of marketing and building their business.

For example, they leverage social media sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, and del.icio.us to help drive “targeted” traffic to their site. Another idea is to comment on other people’s blogs in order to get other bloggers to comment on your blog as a strategy to get your website noticed and talked about.

With so much noise trying to give direction in this sour market, I can see how it might be difficult for an entrepreneur starting a business try to figure how to either start a new business or save their existing struggling one.

With the Internet comes a whole new wave of business possibilities and marketing techniques and it’s easy to get caught up in spending way too much time online. Sites like problogger.net and Dosh Dosh offer great Internet marketing and blogging tips.

That’s great, read those and expand your knowledge. But try not to get too caught up in the success of a few of these sites which rely heavily on social media marketing only. There is a lot to be learned from those who did business before the Internet was ever even conceived of.

Lately, I’ve been concerned that new web entrepreneurs growing up in the information age are forgetting the lessons learned by their predecessors and are getting too comfortable sitting at home in their PJs while they “work”. Entrepreneurs back in the day had to do everything by hand. They had to get out and network and actually pickup a pen and write on paper.

They knew what it took to build a successful businesses from the foundation up to generate wealth; and they weren’t lazy (well, some might have been).

In my next post later this week, I want to talk about how blown out of proportion I think social media marketing has become. It’s the new fad, the in thing to do, and lets us be lazy and work from home.

I’d be willing to bet if we were to interview 500 highly successful entrepreneurs at random, most of them don’t work from home in their PJs spending a majority of their time blogging and using social media. Not that there’s none, but few.

Following the next article on social media we will take a look back at how things were done before the Internet and what we can learn from our predecessors.

So here’s a couple of questions for you to ponder. How much time do you put into social media marketing for your business? Are you blogging for business or pleasure? Is your blog a tool for your business? How much time and effort can you afford to put into one tool for your business?

What Is Social Media and Why You Need To Know About It?

John Hoff — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:43:20 +0000

Well the short answer to the statement in the title of this article is that social media is where users interact with other users online. You should know about it because it’s the way of the future.

Social media (also referred to as Web 2.0) is just beginning to really catch on with the general public and either you will embrace it or just forget about it because you don’t understand it. If you choose to ignore it, you could be sinking your ship. Like I point out in my blog article Using Social Media To Market Your Business, you don’t have to be a computer-wiz to comment on other’s articles, like this one, and leave a link to your site below your name. Click through the links in the Social Media side above and see how people use them.

Why It’s Important To Know About

Imagine if when the first televisions came out you as a business owner avoided using them because you didn’t understand them. What avenues of business would you be neglecting because you were set in your ways of only using print media? As technology changes, so does the buying behavior of your customers. If they’re adapting and using new resources for buying, you need to be there; otherwise, you’re likely to be left behind and close up shop.

Imagine one day they build a refrigerator that monitors and inventories the items in it. Is it connected to the Internet? Can it automatically order items for you when you’re low? If you’re a normal brick and mortar store and not networked in, you would lose out. This example is to show you how when times change – so must you.

Another reason social media is important is learning. I can’t tell you how much I have learned from others in this media and mostly learned it all for free. In college I took a few marketing classes you could say. But I have gained real world insights by reading real marketer’s blogs and participating in forums.

What Social Media Junkies Do

Social media junkies typically have a blog, post comments to other people’s blog, participate in message boards, have a Facebook or similar website profile, create and share videos on YouTube or their own website, refer each other to others, and can connect with anyone and nearly everyone in the world.

If your business is in a rut and you have yet to enter into the social media realm, give it a try. You might be surprised.

Using Social Media To Market Your Business

John Hoff — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:20:34 +0000

Article by John Hoff

Social media marketing is basically the act of making use of blogs, forums, and other social media tools and websites (click the ones in the picture above) to market your services or product. You don’t have to be a computer-wiz to comment on other’s articles, like this one, and leave a link to your site below your name. You also don’t have to be a computer pro in order to participate in an online forum.

Marketing Differences

There are major differences between how social media marketing and traditional marketing work and how you use them.

Traditional Marketing

In traditional marketing you typically blast your audience with some sort of sales pitch.

It might be a TV commercial or an ad you placed in some entrepreneurial magazine. The problem with advertising on billboards, TV, in newspaper ads, etc., is that it’s basically a shot in the dark that anyone is going to listen to you. You try and place your ad where your audience may be (i.e. put your recipe book commercial in a slot during a cooking show on the Food Network) but how many people are really listening to your commercial?

Check out one of my favorite marketing books, Purple Cow. In it he shows you how all these forms of marketing are practically useless if you are just average.

Even if you have a “very good” TV commercial that’s probably not good enough.

Why?

Because everyone else is very good. You’re just one in a bunch. He shows you how in order to survive in this branch of marketing (and any other) you have to be “remarkable.” Trust me, buy this book, read it, and learn from it. It’s worth the money . . . and I typically don’t advertise for others this strongly unless I feel it’s really worth it.

Looking at the picture above it becomes obvious that traditional advertising can be VERY expensive. On the other hand, looking over to the social media side of the picture you will find most of the marketing you do over there will either be free or come with a very low cost (your Internet connection and maybe the cost of your website).

Social Media Marketing

This is going to sound weird. Marketing in the social media realm is to not market at all.

No this is not a paradox I’m describing. There is one huge difference you need to understand between our two diagrams above.

On the traditional side you do not interact with your audience whereas on the social side you do. If you use your blog as a sales pitch or use forums to sale your website or services, you’ll lose. Readers will consider it spam. To use this media for marketing you have to keep in mind who these users are and why they are in a forum or reading a blog. Do you like spam Emails? Probably not. Well they don’t get on the computer to read a bunch of spam blogs either. Instead, they are looking for something.

Take my blog’s content, for example.

Do you see anywhere in this article that I’m advertising that fact that WP Blog Host hosts websites? Other than the link up at the top left, and mentioning it now for informational purposes, no (though you will see me talk about our services from time to time).

You’re probably reading this article because you want to learn something. Learn about marketing. If I were to shove hosting down your throat you’d click away from my site, probably never to return. But instead, you’re sticking around and I’m marketing to you silently.

My hopes are that you read through my blog, participate in our forum, and begin to understand that “hey, this guy might know something and I want to tag along with him. Maybe this company which is not nearly as big as Yahoo! will be more helpful and interested in seeing me succeed.”

But maybe you already have a website and you’re happy with your web host.

The idea is you might “spread the word” about my site and company and it only goes from there. Maybe you have a blog with 10,000 readers and you reference my site. Maybe not only you sign up to receive my blog via Email but so will others you talk to. Does this marketing strategy make sense?

What you must do in the social media realm is gain your reader’s trust and be useful to them. It’s called permission marketing and it’s the best marketing you can do because the people who you are marketing to want to hear from you.

There are various forms of social media advertising. You can use a blog, comment on other’s blog, make use of community forums, create some kind of funny video on YouTube, etc.

Just remember, don’t spam your services or product. It will be a waste of your time and other’s because readers will ignore you and even begin to spread the word about you (and not in a good way).

One final note. Don’t betray your social media contacts (blog readers and other users) by giving out their personal information to others. If they start receiving spam Emails because of you, you can forget gaining people’s trust.