April Tara » Blogging

Where in the world is April Tara?

April — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:53:38 +0000

AprilTara.com will be undergoing some changes very soon. In order to maximize effectiveness and narrow my focus, I’m going to consolidate three sites – AprilTara.com, CherryBombPromo.com and RockStarBlogDesign.com – which means that the focus here will continue to be about social media marketing and online resources but geared mainly towards indie musicians and unsigned bands. That’s where I’ve been putting all my energy for the past year, that’s where my passion lies, and that’s where I feel I can be the most helpful.

There will still be some general info that applies to anyone interested in social media – like the recent hoopla over Facebook privacy issues – so stay tuned and keep watching for posts!

Do you need to blog regularly if you have a service-based business?

April — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:56:37 +0000

Earlier this week, I had a nice long chat with a friend and colleague of mine who started her business around the same time I started mine. We were discussing some of the things we’ve learned over the past year and one of the topics was something along the lines of advice we’d been given and how much of that advice we now agreed or disagreed with.

One particular piece of advice I remember getting that went against everything else I’d been learning was that, if you’re running a service-based business, you shouldn’t be worrying about blogging. The advice-giver said it was just one more thing you’d have to fit into your schedule and gave an example of one particular service-provider who had plenty of business yet they don’t even have a blog.

This didn’t really sit well with me but every time I’ve started to feel guilty for letting my blog go stale, that little piece of advice would pop into my head and I would wonder “do I really need to be blogging regularly anyway?”

Since I don’t have an answer to this question, I decided to ask people I trust and admire: Michael Martine, Grant Griffiths, John Haydon, and Danny Brown.

When I say “ask”, what I really mean is that I fired off an email at 1:30 a.m. sucking up to them and telling them how awesome I think they are (I do!) and by the time I woke up and checked my email this morning, they had all taken the time to respond which really says a lot about what kind of people they are to take time out of their late-Friday/early-Saturday to share their thoughts with me. Great guys, I tell ya.

Ok, enough of my rambling….here’s what they had to say:

From Michael Martine

You need to be blogging regularly if the date of post publication shows, because people have a bias against what they perceive as “old” information on the web. If you’re not displaying dates, then it doesn’t matter as much, but it still matters. The reason why it still matters is that regularly updated sites get crawled and indexed more frequently by Google, and this is generally better for your search rank position (provided you’re doing other necessary search optimization tasks). If you’re using WordPress self-hosted and you have the Google XML Sitemap plugin (which you should), then you can alter its settings to tell Google to crawl your content according to the frequency with which you publish.

People crave consistency, so establishing a rhythm is key, regardless of how many times a week you post. Posting frequently means you’ll generate more content at a faster pace, and the more relevant content found via search, the better for a site’s search ranking.

Your readers will respond favorably or unfavorably to changes in posting. Pay attention to their reactions, and adjust accordingly. On Remarkablogger, the majority of my readers indicated in a poll they’d rather receive larger doses of content less frequently. When I delivered, my numbers shot through the roof. You’d think posting less frequently would mean less traffic, but that has not been case. I now receive more traffic.

From Grant Griffiths

Short answer, yes. And to even be more knee jerky, why wouldn’t you want to post regularly if you have a service-based business?

A service business is just that, it is a business. And like any business, you want to market and promote your business. You want to be found and you also want to be known as the place to go for information about your particular type of service-based business.

In fact, it has been shown that in today’s business world, 75% of those looking for a service-based business are going to the internet to find what they need. And if you have a presence online, you are going to be found. But, more than that, you need to make sure you can be found and blogging will accomplish this.

Blogging as a service-based business on a regular basis also positions you as a thought leader or opinion shaper in your particular area of service. There is no reason that a service-based business should not be blogging on a regular basis.

From John Haydon

Yes, yes yes! In order to create trust with folks, you need to give them value first – then they buy. Blog posts (to me) are ways to give away free stuff to thousands of people at a low cost (you write the post only once, but it gets read a thousand times). You’ll notice that all of the successful real estate agents teach people how to buy a home or select a mortgage.

The second reason is SEO. I rank #1 on Google for “how to make a Facebook Page”. Part of that result is due to the sheer amount of posts I have on Facebook. I’m no expert, but I think Google also looks at how current an article is.

Note: John also followed up his email with a link to this post about relationship management.

From Danny Brown

I’d say you need to be blogging as regularly as you have something worthwhile to share to your readers (whether they’re potential clients or not). It doesn’t even have to be about your particular service, but an off-shoot of it that’s still relevant. It’s a great way of showing your skill sets, knowledge and passion all under one cool roof. But… if it’s just filler for filler’s sake, this will come across and put you back a bit.

So… yes, but only if it’s “worth it”.

Now watch the other guys completely contradict me

Nope, Danny, they didn’t! In fact, all four of you gave some great advice! And it confirms some of my own thoughts, especially when it comes to two of the main reasons I think blogging is a great “tool” for marketing your business – you’re providing fresh content for the purpose of search engine ranking and you’re providing value to your clients and readers who may become clients.

Thanks again to Michael, Grant, John and Danny!

To anyone else who may be reading, what do you think? Do you have a service-based business? If so, how has blogging (or not blogging) affected your business? If you don’t have a service-based business but you’re a consumer, would it influence your selection of a provider if they were blogging regularly?

Headway theme rocks my world…and my blog

April — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:12:12 +0000

Have you seen my new blog design? I am absolutely in love with it! And Clay Griffiths is my new hero because he’s the designer behind the new Headway theme (as well as the son of my friend Grant Griffiths) which is the theme I’m now using.

Now on the surface, it may not be obvious why I’m just so tickled with Headway because you’re just seeing the standard stuff – header, sidebar, posts, footer. The beauty of it is under the hood. Kinda like seeing a beat up rusty old Camaro then popping the hood and seeing an absolutely immaculate 502 big block engine! (Ladies, keep reading, I’ll have an analogy that makes more sense in a minute.)

But you can’t make a car look pretty just by throwing a kickass engine in it. So just imagine if, by turning the key in the ignition, the exterior magically transformed and you were left with a shiny custom paint job. That’s how easy Headway is! Well, not literally…but close.

From the minute I installed the Headway theme, it took me all of about 30 minutes to get it looking the way I wanted. Thanks to a “drag and drop” layout editor and theme options that allow you to choose font styles, size and colors right from the menu, what usually takes me a couple of hours was done in a fraction of the time.

I didn’t have to tinker around the CSS at all. In fact, I only added one single line of code and that was to use a tiled background image instead of a solid color. One. Freaking. Line. You can also edit each page’s layout so that, for example, your ‘About‘ page doesn’t have a sidebar but your ‘Blog’ page does.

Now, with all of that time I saved, I spent some time playing around with different layouts, widths, colors and other style changes. Changes are easily made, whether its the location of your navigation bar or whether the ‘Comments’ link on each post goes under the post title or to the right of it. No minor detail overlooked! Even adding a favicon (that little image that shows up in your browser’s menu bar when you visit a webpage) was as easy as just pasting the link to the location of your icon file.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to it that I haven’t discovered yet and I had to force myself to move away from the laptop because anyone who knows me knows how much I love customizing WordPress blogs. I can totally see myself changing my blog design like I change purses. (See, ladies? You know what I mean, right?)

Don’t just take my word for it. I want you to see what others have said about Headway and how they’ve customized their own blogs using it.

Here’s my good friend John Haydon’s post about why he switched to Headway. He’s got some great videos that will let you take a peek under the hood. (See the differences in how his blog looks compared to mine? Headway works great for both business and personal blogs…not that mine’s “personal” but it certainly doesn’t look as ‘professional’ as John’s.)
Danny Brown is also using Headway but not just as a blog theme. He’s donating 50% of any profits he makes from affiliate links to the 12for12k.org charity.
And another post from another friend, Michael Martine a/k/a Remarkablogger who, even though he’s a devoted Thesis user and has not switched, is still very impressed with Headway and has a better detailed explanation of why than I do.
Of course, you can always get more details and take a tour at the Headway Theme website.

P.S. Just a quick disclaimer…yes, those are affiliate links and I would earn a small commission if you were to purchase Headway through those links. My opinion of Headway, however, would be just as high even if I never made a single penny from singing its praises.

100 Top Blogging Tips

April — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:03:21 +0000

I’ve got a little treat for you, courtesy of my friend Carrie Lauth.

Carrie put together a handy little guide called “100 Top Blogging Tips” that covers everything from setting up your blog to topic ideas.

You can download your free copy of “100 Top Blogging Tips” here.

Thanks Carrie!

A planner for freelancers

April — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 03:42:22 +0000

I have come across some great time management and productivity resources, some of which I’ve been able to implement and some that just don’t work well for me. So what I’ve ended up doing is combining some of my favorites.

Here’s what I do:

Yearly Business Planning

At the end of 2008, I had written a blog post about setting goals for the new year. In that post, I mentioned Alice Seba’s Planning Calendar that breaks down your plans for the year into monthly, weekly, even daily chunks to make it easier to lay out your goals and then the actions you need to take to achieve those. I’ve been using it since 2009 started (although not as diligently as I should be) and its making a big difference. It helps me look ahead and schedule projects and ideas a few months from now instead of feeling like I have to do everything now.

Blog Planning

This is one that I still struggle with. Thanks to the Blog Planner I downloaded from Blog Energizer, I can plan my topics ahead of time and even set up a posting schedule for multiple blogs (last count: 4 active and 3 badly neglected blogs). Its a great little tool and I keep it in my binder so I can jot down topics that come to mind. Then at the beginning of each month, I come up with topics to fill in the blank spaces and voila! A month’s worth of blog topics.

But I’ve come to the realization that planning is not my problem. My problem is action. I can plan stuff out but when it comes down to budgeting my time and plugging those plans into a schedule, I can’t find a balance between adherence and flexibility.

Planners for Freelancers

Well today I was reading through all of my RSS feeds and saw that Charlie at Productive Flourishing published a freelancer’s version of his popular planner pages. I’m so excited to try it out! He’s been putting a lot of work into this and I know it wasn’t easy because “freelancer” can mean so many things and we all have very different ways of working. So finding something that will work for everyone is difficult. (I even donated a few bucks to encourage him and let him know his efforts were appreciated.)

So if you’re a freelancer, definitely head over to Productive Flourishing and download Charlier’s planner for freelancers. And even if you’re not a freelancer, Charlie’s original planners are an excellent resource too!

50+ Ways to Improve Your Productivity as a Freelancer (freelanceswitch.com)
Time Management For Anarchists (lifehack.org)
Four Forgotten Productivity Enhancers (kevineikenberry.com)

Hey Label Daddy! Send ME to BlogHer!

April — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:43:16 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me talk about my mission to find a sponsorship to attend Blog Her ’09 in Chicago this summer. Well the wonderful ladies at Mom Dot and the very cool guys at Label Daddy have partnered to provide one lucky mom with a FULL sponsorship – travel, hotel, registration – to Blog Her this year. How cool for a company with Daddy in their name to support Mom bloggers! But then again, Moms are probably their biggest customer.

Now I’m not going to be a total phony and tell you that I’m a dedicated Label Daddy user because I haven’t got around to buying any yet. But I think they are VERY cool, very useful and just flat out CUTE. Even though I don’t own any yet, I did sign up for their affiliate program last year because I knew I’d end up buying from them eventually. And those of y’all that know me have probably heard me say that I don’t promote products as an affiliate unless its from someone I trust or its a product I would or have used myself.

I wanted to be all funny and creative with my post and tell you how I’ve been using my Label Daddy labels but since I don’t have any (yet!), let me tell you how I would! (This will give me some practice so I can work on my “elevator speech” when I’m actually IN Chicago AT Blog Her representing Label Daddy!)

*ahem*

You know how you go to pick your child up when school gets out and you’re sitting there waiting for your little one to come out? (I swear, my child is always one of the last ones out! I think my little social butterfly stops to chat to anyone and everyone on the way out.) Well have you ever noticed how much these kids can all look alike when they’re all bundled up, lugging around backpacks as big as they are?? I can’t even count how many pink coats and Hannah Montana backpacks I’ve seen! And if your son has a black coat and a Spiderman backpack, good luck picking him out of the crowd!

I’ve even had to send my daughter back to school the next day with someone else’s hat or gloves in her backpack because she brought home the wrong ones. Poor kid, she has like 3 different sets because I’m the type that always buys extras in case she loses one. And there are always the hats or hoodies that never make it home.

Well here’s what you need to do. Put away those ugly black permanent markers and get some personalized clothing labels from Label Daddy. Stick ‘em on coats, backpacks, sweaters and jackets.

Then get another set for their sports gear. When every single kid on your son’s Little League team buys the same bag, if they were all using the full color photo stickers from Label Daddy label no one wouldend up chasing down the wrong kid in the parking lot to switch bags or calling the coach at home to figure out which one of the three kids named “Ryan” left his hat in the dugout.

They’re also perfect for daycare and playdates. Stick one to your toddler’s sippy cup when you meet the other Moms at the playground. Hide one on the inside of the baby doll’s dress in case she absolutely refuses to leave Baby at home.

Seriously, who can keep track of all of this STUFF kids have? I’m a single mom with three kids who all seem to have been born in the Bermuda Triangle because stuff always just disappears. Even if they just had their hands on it half an hour earlier, they will give me a blank stare when I ask them where it is. So if they can’t even hang on to something before it even leaves the house, can you imagine how much they’d lose if I let them take any of it with them somewhere?? Oy!

Anyway…LabelDaddy, I would love to represent you this year at Blog Her. I’ll even stick your labels on my OWN stuff – coat, purse, cell phone, laptop – when I go. After all, can you imagine how much my kids would tease me if I came home from BlogHer with the wrong suitcase? Oh it would never end!

No related posts.

My guest post on WAHM 2.0

April — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:20:02 +0000

I wrote a guest post for Sparkplugging’s WAHM 2.0 about Social Media Overkill.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you’re using social media effectively without it monopolizing your time online. And while you’re visiting Sparkplugging, be sure to read some of the great posts there.

Here are some of my recent favorites:

From ‘Freelance Parent’ – What’s an acceptable freelance turnaround time?

From ‘Marketing Eggspert’ – If you can’t do good marketing, get out of the kitchen

From ‘WAHM 2.0′ – How Kelly McCausey sorts her PLR

Update on WordPress SEO Secrets

April — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:09:15 +0000

I’ve got good news! Remember how I posted this morning that I would have more info for you tomorrow about the launch of “WordPress SEO Secrets”? Well I have a sneak peek for you so you can get a better idea of the kind of info available to you as part of the course.

Now this is just the text stuff. Don’t forget about the audio and video that will be included. I’m tellin’ ya, this is good stuff being released. Only 24 hours left!

Word Press SEO Secrets Sample

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Do-it-yourself Tutorial seo blogging

Secrets of WordPress and SEO

April — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:29:39 +0000

Using WordPress may be one of the easiest and most effective ways to maximize your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. Let’s take a look at some of these WP-specific SEO tricks.

Anatomy of a Post

Here’s what the search engines are looking for when they’re crawling through your site and determining rankings:

Titles: Keywords, the terms people are using when they perform a search, are very important in titles. Titles appear at the top of a browser window or in a browser window tab. The problem with blogs is that your headline automatically becomes the title unless you have a plugin that allows them to differ.
Post slug names: The post slug is the virtual file name of a blog post. For example, the link to this post is http://www.apriltara.com/2009/01/secrets-of-wordpress-and-seo. The slug section of that link is “secrets-of-wordpress-and-seo”. That’s the info search engines are interested in. If I’d named this post “You’ve gotta read this!” or just used the post ID number, the search engines would have no idea what the post is about. Be sure to use “pretty permalinks” so that you have more control over the slug because you’ll need to edit the slug for SEO purposes. You want to use important keywords in the slug, just as you do for the title.
Headings: In your WordPress blog, you can use various heading levels when writing posts to break up the content into sections. Search engines pay attention to keywords in headings. Many people don’t know how to see the controls for headings in WordPress. You have to click on the “Kitchen Sink” button on your WordPress toolbar which looks like a small box with a bunch of small boxes inside of it. Many people have seen it but never clicked on it, mistaking it for some kind of color palette. Unless you have some WordPress plugins that add extra buttons to your post toolbar, the “Kitchen Sink” should be the last button on the right, just above the text area where you enter your post content. Once the second row of toolbar buttons is revealed, use the “Format” drop-down to set headings.
Text content: Of course the content of the post must be relevant to a searcher’s needs. Use the same words in the post the searcher would use in a search (keywords). Use them as frequently as you can while still sounding natural. It may help to read your post out loud to yourself to make sure it doesn’t sound awkward. Think of it this way: if your searcher has a question, you want your post to be the answer.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much to learn about about optimizing your WordPress-based site to achieve excellent search engine rankings.

Tomorrow, January 7th, a study course covering SEO for WordPress will be available. WordPress SEO Secrets: Search Engine Optimization Magic for WordPress Blogs will walk you through all of this, step by step, using text materials as well as audio and video recordings. Stay tuned and I’ll have more info for you at launch time! I’ll be sharing the details on my blog and in my newsletter so be sure to subscribe to my blog via RSS or email and subscribe to my newsletter using the sign up box to the right.

The Power of Plugins

April — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:08:41 +0000

Andy Beal recently posted his own list of 21 of the Best WordPress Plugins which includes some of my own personal favorites and some that I’m definitely going to try out.

Whatever your blog may need, whether its SEO, advertising, or some technical tweaks, there’s probably a WP plugin out there somewhere that can do it. When I install a new WP blog for a client, I include 3 plugins as part of the installation because without plugins, your WP site isn’t going to function at the level to which it has the potential.

At the very minimum, the 3 plugins I recommend for every blog are these:

Akismet – Without spam protection, you’ll find yourself wasting a lot of time moderating and deleting comments. As a little experiment, I set up one of my WP sites without activating Akismet to see how bad the spam issue really is. I was getting slammed with like 40 comments at a time with nothing but junk and gibberish in them and I was getting them on multiple posts. Total pain in the rear and a waste of my time.

All in One SEO Pack – You don’t need to be an SEO expert and you probably have no desire to even mess with all of that technical algorithm stuff and spending hours reading reports and guides about how to climb up the search engine ladder. Using the All in One SEO Pack makes it a little bit easier. It’s not going to do it all for you but it will at least cover the basics.

cforms II – Every blog should have a contact form. You want your readers to be able to reach you, right? Well I prefer using contact forms over just posting your email address on the sidebar somewhere. And for your readers, its more private than leaving a comment. I know there are a lot of contact form plugins or templates out there but I’ve been using this one for a while without any issues.

So there you have it. Not as comprehensive as Andy Beal’s list but its a good start. And if you need any help finding or installing WP plugins, just let me know.