Planning how to use your blog VS your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, G+, etc: what is each one for?

This article describes working out how your blog relates to the other communication tools that you use (sometimes called your "social media strategy"), and how members of a community-group can work together to so that their blog, Facebook page are used well. 
It includes a template that you can use to record your own group's decisions about how to use these tools, and a worked-example of such a template.Your blog vs your email, facebook, twitter, photo albums  

Recently, I used Blogger to make a new website for a community choir. It replaced an older website that was expensive to change. 

As we talked about what the choir needed, one challenge was that some people thought that "put it on the website" or "put in on Facebook" was the answer to every issue that involved communicating with members: It took a lot to explain that Facebook and the website are not actually places where existing members look regularly. (Some members are older, and don't even have cellphones that receive SMS/text-messages, much less computers and broadband connections).

Also, people were talking about putting videos of our concerts onto YouTube, and I realised that we would need to work out ways of doing this so as to show us at our best, and not get us into trouble with copyright laws.

I didn't use this jargon when I was talking to them, but the idea I had to get across to the commiittee was

To get a message to people who aren't looking for it, use a "push" not a "pull" or "by the way" message

That means to use email, text-message, phone call, face-to-face, rather than the website or Facebook page or wall.

I also had to get them to understand that we were not linking our blog and our website- but that the blog would be the website:  it delivers all the features that we need, and most importantly is very easy to update.

Working with the committee to understand their goals and month-by-month activities, I developed this set of questions:

• how do we communicate with people (email/txt, Facebook, website, pictures, local newspapers)?
• who is the audience for each tools we use (members, potential members, audience, other choirs)?
• what types of messages to do we send?
• who is responsible for sending the messages?
• how they know that it's time to send a message, and what it should say?
• what can each committee-officer send without getting permission from the committee?
• what needs to be checked by someone else (or maybe even the whole committee) first?

Showing this in a table helped people to understand the big picture, and the role of the website and the other things that we use.

Your blog & social networks
Downloadable template

It occurred to me that people doing the same thing for their own club, organisation, sports team, non-profit, or even small business, might also like this table. 

So here is a blank version of my template (MS Word format) that you are welcome to download and adapt for your own situation.

What the template includes

Is this a social-media strategy for your blog?

The format above is good for helping a membership-organisation work out where their blog/website fits into their overall communications tookkit: social media arejust one of the ways that clubs can give messages to people (members, friends etc) and get feedback from them.

But if your core product is your blog, and you want to use social-outposts to promote it, then a slightly different planning approach is needed. In this case you need to get messages to:

• People who casually visit your blog (via search results, friends recommendations, backlinks), and whose preference for keeping up with what you do is via some other network, AND

• People who hang out on the "other network" and might notice your content in the other place and then visit your blog as a result.

To meet these needs, you need to put links to all the material on your blog into the other social networks - as well as using whatever content promotion techniques work best on that network. You probably also want to put some follow-invitation links on your blog, too. This is unlike the "website as targeted communications tool" approach, where you only put certain, very specific content onto your blog/site.

I'm still working on the fundamental difference between the two approaches, and what sort of worksheets might help people to plan for the 2nd case. Any suggestions on what I need to cover?

55 Tips for Bloggers - Keep Them in your Mind

These are some of those things which I always keep in mind while blogging, Hope they will help you as well.

1. Write about something that you love
2. If you are serious about blogging buy your own domain
3. Make sure your domain name include keyword related to your blog
4. Use a short and easy to remember blog name and blog url
5. Use WordPress, it's better than Blogger in many ways
6. You can use many useful WordPress plugins
7. Blog with consistency
8. Write at least 1 post a day, take rest on Sundays if you want to
9. Proofread, it solidify your content
10. Use examples, some easy one
11. Interact with some expert bloggers
12. Backup your blog on daily basis
13. Get rid of the sidebar calendar or any things that can stuff your sidebar
14. Choose your niche wisely and make sure that it is neither too big nor too small
15. Participate in online forums, mostly of your niche
16. Put a link on your signature, but don't spam
17. Content is king, so keep is unique and original
18. Customize your blog template
19. Keep it simple, your blog template or it's content
20. Keep doing social bookmarking
21. Start joining some blog network
22. write “Top 10 lists"
23. use tags
24. use pinging services
25. write “How to” articles
26. use Feedburner
27. encourage readers to subscribe
28. have some spare posts for emergencies
29. put an RSS subscription icon on every page
30. use readable fonts
31. Don't write long posts
32. just be yourself
33. avoid duplicate content in any way
34. interlink your blog posts
35. read as many blogs as you can
36. focus on important content only
37. use meta tags wisely, don't do keyword stuffing
38. Use basics of SEO
39. use pictures in your examples
40. Give value to your readers
41. place ads wisely
42. be patient
43. consider getting a co-blogger, working alone may not be sufficient
44. share what has worked and what has not worked for you
45. link to other blogs as often as possible
46. make it easy for visitors to contact you
47. use effective titles
48. always answer to questions and comments of your readers
49. offer useful tools or resources to your readers
50. list your best articles
51. talk directly to your readers
52. make your URL structure efficient
53. mention your sources or references
54. consider adding podcasts
55. Write long and interesting list like this one

Removing the attribtion gadget by unlocking and then removing it.

I have not checked the Blogger Terms and Conditions to find out whether you are allowed to remove the Attribution.   Even if they don't mention it today, a requirement to keep the statement could be added tomorrow.   This advice does not mean that I, or Google/Blogger, are saying that you should/can/may/must remove the attribution statement.

---

How to remove the Attribution Gadget by unlocking and then removing it?
1  Go to Design > Edit HTML.

2  Take a backup:
Download a copy of your template:  this is a backup - save it somewhere safe, in case things go wrong.
3  Find this section in the template:

<!-- outside of the include in order to lock Attribution widget
      <b:section class='foot' id='footer-3' showaddelement='no'>
<b:widget id='Attribution1' locked='true' title='' type='Attribution'/>
</b:section> -->

The simplest way to locate it is to use your browser's search function (Edit > Find in Firefox, similar commands in other tools), and look for "lock Attrib".




4  Change

locked = 'true' 

to

locked = 'false'

5  Preview the template change, to check that everything else is ok.  If not, fix the problem.  (The attribution will still be showing at this stage.)

6  Click Save Template


7  From the Design > Page Elements tab, edit the attribution gadget.  It will now have a Remove buttonon the left hand side.  Click this, to remove the gadget from your blog.

8  If you want to, add an an alternative attribution notice.

Can you put Posts onto Pages in Blogger?

Ever since Google introduced "pages" into Blogger, people have complained that their posts all go onto the "home page", and asked how to put posts onto different pages in their blog.

The standard, but unsatisfactory, answer is

"Sorry, that's not how Blogger works.   So called "static" pages in Blogger are meant to be used for reference information that doesn't change often, which you don't want to be part of your regular post-feed, but which you do want users to have easy access to."

Luckily it's easy to set up your blog so that it looks like your posts are on different pages, even though you and I know that this isn't how Blogger works.

The only aspect that some people don't like is that their posts all show up on the "home page" was well as the topic pages, but even this can be worked around, at least sometimes.


Follow these steps:

1  Forget about using Blogger's static Pages.  Delete the Pages gadget if it's already on your blog.

2  Categorise your posts by add Labels to them.

3  Make the "pages look alike" menu bar:

Put the Labels gadget where you would put the Pages gadget if you wanted to make a horizontal menu bar with it.  To add the Labels gadget:
Post-Sept-2011-Blogger (aka the new interface)  Layout >Add a gadget > Labels
Pre-Sept-2011-Blogger (aka the new interface)  Design > Page Elements > Add a gadget > Labels

NB If your blog has some Labels that you don't want to have "pages" for, then set it to show only some of your Labels:

OR

Put a Linked-list gadget where you would put the Pages gadget if you wanted to make a horizontal menu bar with it.   Too add a Link-list gadget:
Post-Sept-2011-Blogger (aka the new interface)  (Layout  > Add a gadget > Link-list),
Pre-Sept-2011-Blogger (aka the new interface)  (Design > Page Elements > Add a gadget > Link-list),

Then - add a link to the list for each Label value that you want a "page" for. 

The HTML to use for each Label value is http://YOUR-BLOGS-URL/search/label/THE-LABEL-NAME

You can also add other items (eg individual Posts, or even Pages if you really must have them) - see the menu bar at the top of this site for an example of this.

4   If you don't want all posts to appear on the "home page" was well as the topic pages, set your home page to show zero posts, by setting  "Number of posts on main page:" = 0   on:

Post-Sept-2011-Blogger (aka the new interface)   Layout  > Blog Posts (edit),
Pre-Sept-2011-Blogger (aka the new interface)     Design > Page Elements > Blog Posts (edit)


Alternatively, you could use a technique similar to Showing a Gadget only on the Home Page  to not show the Blog Posts gadget on the home page.  the condition to use is !=  instead of ==)   If you do try this, then I strongly recommend that you consider the various options for giving your blog a home page, and make sure you accept the disadvantages of editing your template.


Job Done!

It really is that simple.  Your readers should no be able to click on the "pages" in your blog, and see a list of posts about the Page that they chose.   Even better, if some posts relate to more than one topic, they will appear on both of the relevant pages, not just one.

Don't forget to test your blog, to make sure that the menu bar is working how you expect it to and that it looks OK, in all the browsers that your readers are using.

I'm keen to hear if this approach works for you. 

• It is a "good enough" alternative to "real pages"?
• Are there any other side-effects of using Labels to "pretend" to be web-page titles?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments box below.