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Changing your business blogging habits can bring more visitors to your site, get more people aware of your brand and ultimately generate more interest in you products or services. Follow these simple steps for business blogging success:
Step 1. Stop selling your products
Step away from the keyboard. Stop it, right now! I've seen so many business blogs fall into this trap.
A blog is a communication tool and shouldn't be used for blatant self promotion. You should be offering informative information and resources that will ensure that your readers bookmark and subscribe to your blog.
If you feel the need to promote your products and services you should try to do so in an informative and useful way. Stay away from over-used marketing buzz words that make you sound like a car sales person. Your product or service should complement the article, it should never be the primary focus.
Ask yourself the following questions before posting an article.
- Is this article a useful resource for my readers?
- Will existing readers find this information helpful?
- Is this article free from blatant self promotion?
Step 2. Stay on track
A great way to lose readers is to start blogging about something completely not related to your industry. Stay focused and keep on track. A successful blog finds interesting ways to write on a broad selection of topics while keeping them in-line with their business and previous blog entries.
Try to avoid writing about negative aspects of your industry unless you are providing a service or toll that fixes the problem. Never (and I mean never) publish articles that slander or attack your competitors.
Ask yourself these following questions to ensure your blog article is on track.
- Is this article relevant to my industry in any way, shape or form?
- Have I ensured that this article will note alienate or confuse existing clients and reader?
- Can this article be interpreted as slander or defamation of my competitors or industry?
Step 3. Post often, post quality
By having a regular posting habit you communicate structure, commitment and determination to your readers.
I post articles twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday at 9am. A great way to do this is to write your articles in advance and then schedule them for release. This gives your readers the opportunity to schedule blog reading into their week.
If you stop posting on a regular basis you can watch your readers slowly disappear. Be sure to keep up the hard work. But don't get caught up in the posting race, always publish quality articles for your readers. If you can't keep up with the demand then it might be worthwhile posting once a week (or even once a fortnight). The choice is yours. I have seen many successful blogs that post articles once a month.
If you are getting low on ideas for future blog entries you may want to ask yourself the following 3 questions:
- Can you think of any useful information in your niche that will be of benefit to your existing readers?
- Have you considered writing a case study or overview of an existing customer or client?
- Can you add to the conversation or provide new insight/information on current events or details in your industry?
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I have a real treat for you today. After Tuesdays post introduced you to binary numbers I thought it would be fitting to release some of the Binary Clock Screensavers that I have developed over the years.
Binary Clock Screensaver #1
Click here to download (879kb)
The first offering is a screensaver clock I developed many years ago. This has been sitting around since its development and has never been released publicly, until now.
The time is display in binary numbers horizontally across the screen. The top row is the number of hours, the middle row is the number of minutes and the last row is the number of seconds.
Binary Clock Screensaver #2
Click here to download (837kb)
The second screensaver was developed several years later and is simply an updated version of the first one. Red lights display the time, instead of 1's and 0's we have lights that are either on or off.
In the same fashion as screensaver #1: The time is display in binary numbers horizontally across the screen. The top row is the number of hours, the middle row is the number of minutes and the last row is the number of seconds.
Binary Clock Screensaver #3
Click here to download (856kb)
This has been my all-time favourite. It has been released on other websites (including my personal blog and a screensaver service that was released a few years ago). It is based on the binary clock that you can purchase from ThinkGeek.
It may look a little more complicated at first, but it's actually a little easier. Instead of having to calculate the entire value for hour, minute and seconds you simply work out the number for each digit. Also, instead of being displayed horizontally they are displayed vertically.
Have a look at the photo supplied by ThinkGeek which explains how the clock works:
If you like the look of all the above screensavers then I highly recommend downloading them with a single click by clicking here.
These screensavers are free from viruses, free from spyware, free from adware but best of all free to download. If you have any questions or suggestions about these screensavers please post a comment below.
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As humans we have a total of 10 fingers (5 fingers on each hand). So it's only natural that our counting system is based on groups of 10. Now just imagine for a moment that humans only had 2 fingers. Would a counting system with the group of 10 be logical? Probably not. And this is the exact predicament we have with computers.
All computers are created with 2 fingers, but we refer to them as switches. They can only be in one of 2 positions: on or off. When you enter a dark room you turn the light switch on, doing so changes the switch from 0 (off) to 1 (on). This is how a computer counts.
And now it gets complicated...
Each column in our number system represents a grouping of 10. The number 13 is made of 2 parts: 10+3. Meanwhile 113 is actually 100+10+3.
In binary it's a little different (but the principle is the same). We just substitute 10 with 2. Instead of 10 we have 2, instead of 100 we have 4. So the number 3 is 11 in binary (2+1). The number 6 in binary is 110 (4+2+0).
With this in mind, take a look at the following which outlines the calculations needed to count to 31 in binary.
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On Australia Day we celebrated the wedding of the year, our wedding. Although my opinion may be a little biased.
Growing up my wife Annie was a volunteer surf life saver and always loved the beach. So the ceremony was held overlooking O'Sullivan Beach with the reception located a bit further up the coast at Christies Beach Surf Lifesaving Club.
Computers have always been a big part of my life and I wanted to include them in the wedding. We were lucky enough to have booked a venue that featured an overhead projector. I developed a program that displayed all of the guests photos taken throughout the day.
We wanted to give everyone the ability to easily upload photos
A lot of people at the wedding would not be familiar with computers and would not understand how to upload the photos. I needed to create a software program that is easy to use and required minimal interaction. It had to be a simple 3 step process.
The Solution: After purchasing a 31-in-1 card reader I developed a software application that automatically downloaded photos off any memory card. Guests simply put their card in the reader and waited until the green light stopped flashing, the program did the rest.
Only wedding photos would be displayed on the screen
The software needed to be automated, we didn't want anyone to be stuck on the computer sorting through photos all night. Unfortunately software is not able to determine the location of photos, so we had to work out some other way to automatically filter them.
The Solution: Our ceremony started at 3:15pm. So I made the software ignore any photos taken before 3:00pm or any photo taken on previous days. This ensured that the photos on the screen were only those from our wedding.
The Result
I'm glad to say that the software turned out to be a complete success.
All evening our guests were commenting on how much of a great idea it was and its ease-of-use. It also become a great talking point as new photos made their way onto the screen.
It was an excellent way for us to collect photos from different perspectives throughout our big day. The following day we were even able to look at all the downloaded photos and even keep some that we probably would never have seen.
Facebook friends can see all of the photos by clicking here.
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