Science for SEO: business

November 28, 2008

Why I used Blogger

I'm often asked why I use blogger to host my blog, being a knowledgeable SEO person, and also a computer scientist. "I should know better" is the main idea. I advocate using Wordpress instead, and tell everyone else to do so when they ask me what they should use for their blog...for their business.

Wordpress is better:

You can host it yourself - unless you mess up it's highly unlikely to go missing
There are tons of tools for SEO and templates, etc...
Highly customisable
Search engine friendly
Publishing is fast
You can extend it as far as you like

But:

Can be a pain to install
If you host yourself it requires dosh
Bit harder to install Adsense

Blogger is better for noobs:

Easy to setup
Login is using your Google account
Lots of templates available
Silly easy to use
Free
Easy to add little apps
Easy to sort out your template how you want it with drag and drop and customise HTML
You can easy get Adsense on there

But:

not so customisable
.blogspot doesn't look too professional for businesses
Doesn't support all the Wordpress plugins

Feel free to add to the list, it's by no means exhaustive.

Why did I do it then? Well it was a bit of an experiment and a way of showing my colleagues that if you engaged yourself in your blog properly and were genuine in your intentions, then any blog platform would work. I hosted my travel blogs with blogger prior to SFS and they got a lot of traffic without me doing a great deal.

Hang on...I did do quite a bit. But it honestly hasn't been hard or something I'd consider as work. For both my travel blogs and SFS, I have been involved in relevant communities. On Twitter my followers and the people I follow are all into the same stuff, I use Sphinn for SFS and I am involved there. I do submit my posts, but that's what it's there for and it's all about sharing with the community. I am involved in forums, and Linkedin groups. That's about it actually.

In short - I'm involved socially in my area of interest. I interact, I share, I help out too when I can, I take the time with the people I connect with. I like them, i hope they like me too, and I love what we talk about. I write (I like to think) good content, and I take the time with my posts.

How much time a week do I spend on my blog? humm..maybe an hour a day. I take Saturdays off and the odd busy day. It's a hobby but it has served me well, I've had quite a few job offers (thank you I'm flattered), and I've most importantly met some excellent people.

If you're running a business, use Wordpress, but honestly, it won't work if you're not involved in your community. A blog isn't an extension of your website that you call "blog" - it's a gateway to information share and a whole interesting community. You can reach clients, but you can also learn too.

If you're running something personal, honestly this blog is proof that any platform can work for you as long as you're dedicated and passionate.

that's my 2 beans about it anyway :)

November 16, 2008

The power of twitter - a personal experience

I began using SlideShare a few weeks ago, it's a place to share presentations with others in the community, they can download them, favourite them, view them, embed them in their own sites and blogs. It's a great source of information on a wide variety of topics, and it supports open office, which Google presentation doesn't. It worked great and I began using it to share info with the Uni students and colleagues and so on.

For about a week, it stopped working and I could no longer add my presentations. I'd begun to rely on it, and suddenly it was letting me down (it is in beta, so lets not be too harsh, and it is a free service!).

I vented my frustration on Twitter saying something like "I will never use SlideShare again, it won't let me upload anything and I can't see where to contact anyone". Within a few hours, SlideShare were following me and also asked what was wrong, how they could help and pointed me to their "contact us" link that I couldn't find. I explained my issue via Twitter and they explained what the problem was.

What they achieved?

Me actually bothering to go back to try the service again, and when it still didn't work, I decided to leave it for a week and see how it goes then. Without their Twitter intervention, I was a lost cause to them and their product.

Obviously if it does never work again, I'll use a different service altogether, but the important thing is that they made me feel valued and understood. I think a lot of companies should learn from just this one instance, and I know many like Dell already look after their customers and users this way, not to mention potential customers.

Time to get on board those of you who haven't yet!