Archive for the ‘Blog Management’ Category

Many of my blog management posts are written around the struggles that I have had and have overcome in the blogging world – but this post isn’t about me.

It is all about you…and your blog struggles you shared with me today on twitter!

Earlier today, I asked my followers what their biggest blogging struggles were. Many shared the same frustrations, and these were the 4 most common that I found (credit given to the first who tweeted it):

jeffespo: @kirstenwright Sticking to the content schedule
DesireeW: @kirstenwright My blog challenge is “creating the content ideas”. I feel like I’m repeating my topics a lot.
TellingKids: @kirstenwright biggest struggle for me is getting other people excited about what I’m blogging. Looking for growth.
studionashvegas: @kirstenwright time to write in it.

Now, onto the solutions!

@jeffespo: The easiest  way to stick to a content schedule is to create it in a place that it is always looking at you, but that you can also move things around easily. I use an outlook calendar to manage this blog (and my clients blogs) so that when I come up with ideas I simply add it as an appointment. If I want to make changes, add notes, or even work on the post, I can do so in there. Also, if I decide to move things around, it is as simple as dragging and dropping. This allows me to know what is coming and still feel comfortable with changing the future.

@desureew: Repeating topics can be frustrating – the good news is that even the best bloggers do it! We repeat topics because we understand them well, and we have a lot to say about them, which is perfectly fine. The way to keep it from being redundant is to share the message in a different way, using different ideas or different lines of thought. We all learn differently which means that having more than one way to say the same thing can actually make it easier to understand for a wider audience. If you still feel like you are struggling with new topics, try taking a week (or two) where you write nothing about your usual topics – go in a completely different direction or area of focus.

@tellingkids: This is one that we all face, and can be very disheartening. We all want readers, comments and participation. The big questions is how do you get it? Unfortunately, I am no problogger or Chris Brogan, so I don’t quite have the secret to thousands of readers. What I do know is that delivering good content, sharing it with your followers and providing consistency will work. It takes time to build an audience, but even the top bloggers had zero comments once! Remember why you started your blog, why you enjoy doing it and write with heart. The audience will come. One other trick I have? Call out your readers! Ask them good questions and give them a reason to want to start commenting. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

@studionashvegas: Time, the one thing we all wish we had more of (well, that and money). Time is always going to be a struggle unless you can start thinking of your blog the way you think of anything you do everyday. You never run out of time to use the restroom, and even if it’s late, you always eat, right? Blogging needs to be in those categories if you want it to work. Just put it into your schedule like you would a workout, a phone call or a party and then do not let yourself skip it. If you schedule it and then force yourself to do it, you will. It is tough at first, but over time it will get easier (just like going to the gym) and then it will become second nature (like eating) and you will want to do it more often!

Do you have other blog struggles that I didn’t cover? Share it in the comments and I will answer!

For most blogs to be successful, they need to have at least 3 posts a week. There are a few rare occasions that a writer can get away with once a week or once a month, but that is usually because they are already famous and people would read them no matter what. For the average blogger, consistency is key. And, in order to be consistent, a blogger needs to come up with lots of great ideas to share with their reader. Luckily, most blogs have a wide variety of topics they discuss. For example, while this blog is mostly about business ideas, writing, blog design, blog management and social media, it also stems off into funny marketing ideas, news stories, random anecdotes from my life and interesting photography and art. Having this many topics to write about gives me a lot of space to find great ideas and a lot of different places I can search for content. But, after two years of experience writing and coming up with blog posts, I have discovered a couple ways that I can count on to consistently deliver ideas:

Reading other peoples blogs. Other writers work can be helpful in lots of ways – it can give you something to argue against, add to or look at from a different angle. It can also jump start your mind onto different areas of the same topic. I read about 30 bloggers daily, including Ike Pigott, Steve Woodruff, Suzanne Broughton, Ari Herzog, Jon Buscall and The Incslingers. In addition to business blogs, I also read a lot of humor blogs, like Faliblog, and AwkwardFamilyPhotos. While I don’t usually use their posts as starting points, sometimes the topic or idea behind the humor will stem an idea (if not, at least I’m laughing!). In fact, I have used an image from awkward family photos (turned out it was @emilyquestions son!) in a post.

Searching through flickr’s creative commons. You can browse through photos that other people have taken, all over the world, and you can use most of those images as long as you give the author credit for using it (and you’re not making money off it). This one can take time though, as searching by keywords is tough. But, I have definitely wound treasures there and I have written entire posts just because I want to use an image I found. Today’s image is from one of my favorite photographers who shares her work on Flickr – D Sharon Pruitt – I have used many of her shots in past posts.

Taking in a change of scenery. I recommend taking a short walk everyday, outside if you can, to see what is new around you. Are the flowers blooming? Is there a new decoration in someones office? Simple changes in your environment can create a mental release, allowing you to gain a new perspective or motivate a new idea. I also recommend that if you’re going to get out and wander, bring your phone or a camera, so you can snap a picture if something really motivates you to share. It is always better when you can visualize what spurred the idea rather than having to try and remember it all the way back to your office.

While the above three do tend to consistently deliver for me, there are still days that I hit rough patches and even the ol’ standbys aren’t working. On those days, I get a little more inventive. Here are just a few of the things I have tried to get some new ideas for blog posts:

• Call someone to talk about life.
• Listen to music, and sing.
• Take a shower.
• Do laundry.
• Clean the house.
• Go for a drive.
• Garden.
• Watch a stand-up comedian (love Tosh.O)
• Color with crayons.
• Scream. Loudly.
• Ask your twitter friends.
• Don’t write a post.
• Re-organize my office.
• Send emails.
• Change clothes.
• Do accounting.

The most important thing to remember, is no matter where you come up with ideas – keep writing! The more you jot down ideas, notes and potential topics, the easier it will get to turn them into real blog posts.

What other ways do you find blog ideas?

This morning, at 11:33, my wordpress dashboard went from this:

To this:

And I went from having a normal day to the ledge of a cliff in 2 seconds flat. I screamed. I freaked out.  And I tweeted. Luckily, I have some amazing twitter followers and tech friends, and @thevixy, @ikepigott, @jonmrich & @lorennason …you are my twitter heroes. You 4 kept me *relatively* sane when the world came crashing down…and my entire blog went kaput. You told me to breathe, found me articles on what might have happened, reminded me that you read my blog, and have many posts in your RSS readers and suggested solutions, including calling my hosting company and asking them if they could restore my database. Which is where Lunarpages came in – and was incredible. They were able to restore my database and recover every post (even my drafts!) and all my pages.

This near catastrophe taught me three things:

1. Twitter is awesome, especially when you make the effort to make real friends out of your followers. When you need them, they will be there. And, they will help you calm down, figure out the right solutions and talk you off the edge of insanity. Anyone who says social media and virtual relationships are silly just isn’t doing it right.
2. Backup your blog more often!! Luckily, even if Lunarpages hadn’t been able to save my database, I do backup my blog. But, I only back it up once a week…which meant I would have lost 5 posts that had been published plus the 15 I have scheduled for this month when I am on vacation (yikes!). So I need to backup more often – especially during times that I put a lot of new content onto my site.
3. My blog really means a lot to me! I have always enjoyed my blog – it is fun to write and I share great advice that some people read. But, I hadn’t ever thought about how much it meant to me until it was completely gone. The pages didn’t worry me as much – as I knew what was in them and could have re-written them. It would have taken time, but not that big of an issue. However, the thought of losing 2 years worth of thoughts, emotions, ideas and creativity nearly sent me into shock and made me realize how much I appreciate this blog!

So again, thank you to my amazing supporters and for talking me through this – I couldn’t have managed without you!

A couple weeks ago, I talked about how you should choose colors for your website, and today, I want to continue with picking a blog layout. While many of these principals will correspond with a complete website as well, I am specifically focusing on just blogs…not a blog integrated into a website.

When you create a blog layout, there are 3 areas you need to think about:

Navigation: Your blog should have at minimum a contact page and an about the author page. These pages will allow the reader to interact with your site more effectively. But, there are many ways to show off that navigation. The design for GalleyGirl utilizes the traditional top navigation, which is most common as it is the easiest to find and use. Another great option is in the sidebar, either as text or as buttons. I prefer the buttons like in LifeIllustrated. Of course, there is also the footer navigation. This one I don’t usually recommend as it can be forgotten about very easily, so I don’t have an example of it…but it can be done.

Content area: The type of content that you share is going to heavily affect the layout of your page. If you are sharing videos, you will need the content width to be at least 650px wide (about the width of my content area. This will allow for large videos that are easy to view within your blog. This way, you don’t need to direct them to youtube. if you are just sharing text, you can have a narrower content area, even just 400px wide is okay. This will allow for wider sidebars. Finally, if you are sharing mostly photos, you will want a content area that is as wide as possible – in fact having no sidebars would be ideal so that you can have 850px+ for the pictures.

Sidebar: RSS Feed button, email button, twitter, facebook and more. This is where people expect to find the ways they can connect and subscribe to your content. While some blogs are moving this to the header area, it is still most commonly accepted in the sidebar (either to the left or right of the content). Your sidebar can also include advertising, links to other sites you recommend, your categories and archives. In fact, you can pretty much put whatever you want on there. Whether it is simple, like MarnieStyle or busy with buttons like OrangeCountyDailyPhoto, it is a great place to keep things you don’t want your audience to miss.

Of course, there are tons of ways to combine these 3 into the perfect design, but the more you know about what you want, the easier it will be when you talk with a designer!

104 weeks, 730 days, 470 blog posts and a lot of lessons later… writing this blog has been one of the most challenging and rewarding pieces of my business, and life. I love this blog, and every single person who has commented, read and lurked here. It is a place for my ramblings, thoughts and business advice. Even more, it is a place for learning. Especially for me. So in honor of my 2 year anniversary, here are the 24 lessons I have learned in writing Wright Creativity (one for every month I’ve had it):

1. Spellcheck doesn’t always work. Six looks a lot like sex when you are reading quickly…proofread closer!
2. If you are getting rude comments, you’re doing something right.
3. There are at least three sides to every topic – and it’s guaranteed you’ll get to hear all of them!
4. Just because you find the topic interesting, doesn’t mean your readers will.
5. The posts that become the most popular will surprise you.
6. The more you write, the easier it gets, but the easier it is to repeat yourself.
7. Use pictures. People like pictures. Especially of cute animals…like this:
   
8. Being funny is not easy. Neither is being clever. So if it doesn’t come naturally, don’t try it.
9. It is okay to decide you never want to write about a topic again…and then change your mind.
10. Archives are forever.
11. Linking to another bloggers site is the sincerest form of flattery.
12. I am never going to be famous from my blog, but that’s perfectly okay.
13. If I can help one person with what I write each day, I did my job.
14. Getting comments is like Christmas morning. Seriously.
15. Ask questions. A lot of them.
16. Narrowing your categories will improve your writing and focus.
17. Take a notepad or your phone everywhere, just in case you think of a blog post.
18. Use plugins.
19. Make sure you save while writing, even if you think wordpress auto saves.
20. Posting 5 days a week is easier said than done. But, it is worth trying every week.
21. Formatting in posts is imperative, and it makes it easier to read.
22. Titles, while they may be obnoxious to come up with, are helpful and needed.
23. If you can make it into a list, it will get more traffic.
24. I will probably keep writing this blog as long as people keep reading it.

Colors bring out an emotional response in everyone – and while it may not be the same emotion in all of us, there are some commonly accepted ties to certain colors. Pulling a small segment from a 2004 article written by Naz Kaya, Ph.D. and Helen H. Eppds, Ph.D., professors from the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors at The University of Georgia:

The color red has been associated with excitement, orange has been perceived as distressing and upsetting, purple as dignified and stately, yellow as cheerful, and blue has been associated with comfort and security. Moreover, some colors may be associated with several different emotions and some emotions are associated with more than one color. Red, symbolically known as a dominant and dynamic color, has an exciting and stimulating hue effect. It has both positive and negative impressions such as active, strong, passionate, warm, but on the other hand aggressive, bloody, raging and intense. Green has been found to have a retiring and relaxing effect. It too has both positive and negative impressions such as refreshment, quietness, naturalness, and conversely tiredness and guilt. – Relationship between color and emotion: a study of college students

The article goes further in depth to analyze the difference in reaction to principle hues (i.e., red, yellow, green, blue, purple), intermediate hues (i.e., yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple), and achromatic colors (white, gray, and black). While it is not necessary to go into this level of analysis when choosing colors for a website design, the understanding of colors is imperative for a successful response to your design.

Before taking on any new web design project, I always follow these three steps to choose the colors for a website:

1. What am I trying to sell? Selling fluffy pillows needs different colors than selling chainsaws – and not just because they appeal to different genders. The product or the service will be a huge determinant in the colors that you choose because of the emotion you need to product to incite. There are many products that people will not buy without a connection – and others, they want to feel as disconnected as possible when purchasing. Knowing the difference will help in choosing the colors.
2. What type of person will visit this site? As different as men and women are in their color choice – so are different types of women. A teenage female, a college age female and a mother of 4 will all react to colors differently. So it is not enough to just define the gender or basic age group – you must get down to the details. For some sites, they may appeal to many generations and all genders, which can make design difficult, but needs to be understood to have any chance of getting it right.
3. What do I want the visitors to feel when they see the site? Some sites, you want them to immediately react. Some, you want them to browse and feel welcome. Still others, you need to get them to share the information. We are accustomed to reacting to colors in traditional manners. Red, yellow and green have (and will always be) associated with stoplights. Therefore, most people will see stop, caution and go, when they see the primary versions. But what if you make them tones of the colors? It changes the reaction!

Once I have determined the product, the person and the action for the site, then I can move onto picking the colors. When I need to play with colors, I most often work in photoshop. I create 5 boxes (the average color palette for a site is only 5 colors, not including black or white), and make each one a different color. I play and test them until I get a set of 5 that I like the shade and the combination. But, there are also a lot of great free tools you can use to do the same thing! I recommend checking out:

1. 0 to 255 This is a great tool for finding shades of a color. For example, say you love this color pink but you want to turn it into a gradient – and not one that goes into white. Using this tool, you just enter the hex code (the six digit number that starts with # that defines any color) and it gives you the entire shade scale – like this! Then, you can choose any other color and then turn it into your gradient.
2. Kuler from Adobe Do you have trouble knowing which colors go together? Then kuler is your hero. Simply click “create” and place the hex code of a color you want to start with in the center box. Then, using the different rules, you can create a color palette that matches perfectly! Personally, I love using the complimentary and compound rules for websites. You can also look at other user created palettes for inspiration if you are feeling really stuck.
3. Colour Lovers I get lost in this site very easily – there is so much to do! From creating a color palette or seamless background , to browsing other users designs, I can spend hours on here. I recommend checking it out when you have a lot of free time, just so you can get used to it and find out everything that really exists. My favorite piece of the site? Trends! It shows color palettes for some of the most popular clothing fashions, web and print designs.

What do you think about colors? How did you pick your site colors? Let’s talk!

Yesterday I opened the floor to the conversation about web design – and the 10 questions any good web designer should ask. While these are great questions, and extremely important, it is also imperative that you ask your designer questions before you decide to hire them.

These questions will help clarify the scope of the work and eliminate a lot of the stress of working with someone new. Everyone will have their own concerns, but these are the 10 questions I believe everyone needs to get the answers to:

1. What are the payment options/deposits?
2. What is your process for designing?
3. How long will my project take?
4. How many rounds of edits do I get?
5. Can I contact your past clients?
6. Can I see the entire site active before placing it onto my website?
7. Do you input all the content from my old site (some designers charge more for this)?
8. Can you provide help with my copy and SEO too?
9. Do you offer training (especially important with new wordpress sites)?
10. Do you offer support after my site has gone live?

There is no right answer to each question, what matters is that the answer makes sense to you, to what you are paying for and to what you expected from your designer. At the end of the day, the best results, and the happiest clients will be found where there is a clear understanding of the project and what it entails.

What other questions would you ask a web designer?

Categories are simply the large ideas that you cover in your blog. Usually these are found in a list on the sidebar of the blog for your readers (like mine) to find easily. Categories are extremely important for a lot of reasons, but mostly for organization and search engine optimization. Categories make it easy for your readers to read more posts in certain topics – and tells search engines the topics that are important to your blog.

This post is going to cover the thought process behind how you create categories in general, then I will show a quick tutorial on the two ways you can create (and edit them) in wordpress.

Creation of blog categories should be one of the first things you do when you start deciding on the content. You can change or add more later on, but you need to at least get started. Categories will help you in creating your first few posts, and will give you a strong backbone for your site. They will help you to come up with content when you are struggling and will help you to define your blog and its readers.

The easiest way to start creating these categories is to think about what you want your site to cover, and start jotting town topics. If you think you can write 30 posts about a topic, it would probably make a good category. If you think you can write only a couple posts, then we can use it as a tag later on. Once you’ve written down all the topics you think you want to cover, then go back and group them together. For example, I write about twitter, facebook, linkedin and foursquare, but they are all under the category “Social Media”. Once you’ve started grouping your categories, you should have between 5-15. Less than that, and you are not dividing your topics out enough. More than that and you are getting too specific, leave the ‘specifics’ for tags.

If you are having trouble creating your categories, you can also think about it from your readers perspective – what would they want to click on? What categories would they want to read? What can they expect from you? Many times thinking from a different perspective will give you a chance to come up with better categories. Once you have created your 5-15 categories for your blog, you are going to add them into wordpress so you can start using them. Luckily, wordpress makes them very easy to create and very easy to change.

To create a category in wordpress:

1. Login to your wordpress account
2. Click on “posts”
3. Click on “categories”
4. Type in the name you want for the category (don’t worry about the slug)
5. Add a description of the category if you want (some themes will display this)
6. Click “add category”

Once you have added your categories, they will be available to check off when you are writing a new post. I recommend never selecting more than 2 categories per blog post.

Now, if you want to change a category, you simply go back into the categories menu (step 1-3), then

1. Click on the category you want to change
2. Type the new name/edited name for the category
3. Change the slug to match (make sure to keep the – mark between each word)
4. Click “update category”
5. This will update all the posts in that category

Finally, now that all your categories are created and imputed into wordpress, you need to start writing. This is where creating a blog calendar can come in handy. Start with your first category and work your way through, coming up with at least 5 blog posts for each, then place them into the calendar. If you are writing 4 times a week, have 10 categories and 5 blog posts for each category (in the beginning),  you will have 3 ½ months worth of blog posts ready for you!

No matter whether you are a business owner or an employee, planning for downtime is imperative. Planning for downtime is realistic – but it can also be difficult when you are busy. When you are overwhelmed with work it may feel like it’s never going to slow down so you don’t worry. Then the slow down hits…like a ton of bricks on an unprepared business. So, be prepared, know what you need to do before you need to do it.

As a business owner, this should be obvious – all businesses have slow times and having a marketing strategy constantly in place can help. But, you will never fully avoid slow times and you need a plan for dealing with it. If there were only one thing you were to do during the down time it should be refocus your customer service! Customer service tends to fall to the wayside when business is super busy because it isn’t always the top priority. Unfortunately this means that not all your customers are being treated the right way, so it is less likely they will come back. The minute things slow, think hard about how you deal with the new customers, the current customers and the past customers. What about problems that you have with customers? Work on improving all areas of customer interaction with your company so when business picks back up, you know you’re in top form.

As an employee, slowing of business may not seem as important, but your job relies on the fact that the company you work for stays productive and profitable. If they don’t have customers, you don’t have a job. On the same token, it is important to not overstep your bounds. But, you can still help and tread lightly – showing your business owners that you care and are dedicated. So what can you do? You can suggest new ways to build business without high overhead costs. Look for events you can attend for minimal cost, look for new social media strategies, and find ways you can get more conversation around your product or service. Even if your job isn’t in marketing or business building, if you have ideas, you should share them. Creativity is not only reserved for certain people.

What do you do when you notice slowing of business?

What wall did you break through?

What mountain did you climb?

What did you do that they said couldn’t be done?

Go ahead, brag, boast and share…I want to know!