Promote your website using Social Media

As I just finished reading through Chris Brogan’s latest post entitled It Won’t Matter, it reminded me of the vast disconnect that exists between the people running large corporations like Comcast Cable services and the consumers who are forced to deal with their painfully poor customer service.

Comcast touts on their commercial advertisements about the wonders and features of their cable service in a concerted effort to gain your respect. Then when a consumer like Chris steps in and uses their service he is slapped in the face with a horrible customer experience.

As I travel across the globe via the internet, I arrive at a lot of websites that leave me feeling with that same sense of despair and it becomes clear to me that there exists that same level of disconnect between bloggers and their potential readers.

As bloggers, we tend to approach our blogs with certain level of naivety. When it’s our blog, we tend to overlook it’s shortcomings…the same shortcomings that send some visitors running back to their search engine of choice.

Here’s six simple tips to start fixing that issue today:

1. Start or Keep Blogging: Just as Seth Godin made clear recently, the best way to learn something is to get out and do it and learn from your successes and from your failures. You’ll learn more on the job then you’ll ever learn on the sidelines.
2. Get a Fresh Theme: Sometimes it’s a great idea to grab a new theme for your site. Your theme might have been the best thing since sliced bread when it was released but over time it becomes outdated and newer, better themes become available. Here’s a few resources that might help you find something: Elegant Themes, WooThemes, and Mashable’s recent list of free themes.
3. Learn Something New About Blogging: Every day you should be working to learn a new way to improve your blog or to improve it’s design.
4. Tell a Story to Make Your Point: On my personal site, NicholasCardot.com, I use a lot of stories to illustrate the truths that I’m trying to convey to my readers.  For a great example of this, just check out my most recent post, An Unforgettable Tale of Heroism and Friendship. I’ve found that these types of posts are incredibly effective.
5. Inject some humor into your article: If you can make your readers smile while providing them with the information that they really want, you’ll win them over every time. There are few people online who are funnier than Jordan Cooper so if you’re ready to take your comedy infusion to the next level then don’t hesitate to checkout his blog.
6. Focus on Quality…not just quantity: Although Chris Brogan is completely accurate in his observation that people who post more frequently get more traffic, Larry Brooks at ProBlogger.net is also correct when he asserts that if the quality of your articles is poor then nothing is going to help. So is the secret quantity or quality? Both.

Now I simply have two questions and then I’m going to turn the microphone over to you. First, what do you think about these six tips? Second, what would you add?

Okay. Now it’s your turn.

I’m sure that for many of you a trackback is as foreign to you as seeing a full set of teeth at a Willie Nelson concert. However, if you’ve been blogging for any time then I’m sure you seen the word around the blogosphere.

A trackback is actually much simpler than it sounds. Let me break it down for you like my 1st grade teacher used to do for me. If you link to another blogger’s article from your blog, then a link back to your site will appear in or around the comments of their article.

Using trackbacks has many advantages and in this article I’m going to explain why you need to jump in and start taking advantage of them. In fact, you should probably get started right now by linking to this article.

1. It’s one of the best gifts you can give a blogger.

Just link to someone’s article and you are presenting them with a tremendous compliment and a gift that is really going to benefit them.

Check this out. One of the best gifts that you can give to a fellow blogger doesn’t even cost a penny. Not only that, but you can give it at any time of the year.

Remember how upset your wife was the last time you forgot her birthday and didn’t get her anything? Most bloggers won’t get upset with you when you don’t link to their posts, but they probably will be very excited and thankful when you do!

2. It helps drive traffic to your site.

You might be surprised how many people browse through the comments and trackbacks and click through to the user’s websites. I do this nearly every day at the blogs I follow. Those bloggers who are linking out to others are the ones that I want to hang out with…because I want them to link to me. Smart bloggers think this way. We network with those who can help us and who we can help in return.

3. It increases your authority to Google.

Any trackbacks that don’t contain the ‘nofollow’ attribute count as a positive vote toward your page in the eyes of the Google search engine… just like the trackbacks below. Not all trackbacks, however, will increase your Google authority. In fact, on many sites they don’t. This is actually exclusive to some sites as many avoid this.

Google’s search bot only follows certain links. Links with the ‘nofollow’ attribute either do not count or count very little towards your . Most webmasters add that tag to comments and trackbacks to avoid getting spammed with people’s useless comments just because they want to build the page rank of their own sites.

At Site Sketch 101, we don’t use nofollow on trackback links. If you link here, we’ll share the link love right back to you. This is a great reason why you should consider both commenting on and linking to our articles.

4. It helps you build relationships with other bloggers.

Relationships in every area of life are extremely valuable assets. I’m sure you’ve seen the action movie where a spy calls in a favor from an old CIA operative that he knows.

Blogging is no different. There are things you can accomplish when you have friends that you just can’t get done on your own. You can drive traffic to their site and they can drive traffic to yours which can push both of your stats higher and higher. You may have a big event approaching and you may want to ask them if they would share about it with their readers.

But you have to build a relationship with someone before you can start calling in favors.

Linking to one of their articles is a great way to get the ball rolling in a new online relationship. Linking to a site tells the author that you are excited about their work and that you are not ashamed to let your readers know about it!

5. It builds your own credibility.

A lot of bloggers are afraid to link to other websites or blogs because they fear losing their visitors.  That is the attitude of a young, insecure blogger. Online leaders know that you will gain even more visitors because of the credibility that you gained by sending someone to a high-quality resource or website. If people are really pleased with the site that you sent them to then they will respect you and want to come back and see more of your links and resources that you share in the future.

I have been blogging for quite a while now. However, Twitter, for me, is a fairly new way of promoting my content. Twitter has become an important factor in spreading the word about my blog posts. However just tweeting about my re-tweet did me no good, since I had no audience.

They say if you build it, they will come.

Content is what draws people to your blog, but I have found that content is just as important when it comes to self-promotion on any social network. When people come to my blog, they come to see what I have written, or because they have need of a certain topic. When people follow me on Twitter, they do it because they enjoy or have need of the topics I tweet about.

What I found is that my content was not enough. I tweet about technology, sure. However, since I am just one dude, I can only cover and have an opinion on a certain amount of topics within the tech industry, and even with three other authors on my site, the amount of different topics we cover just can’t make a dent in the overwhelming amount of news coming out of the industry.

Therefore, just tweeting about my content did not increase my audience at all. What was a poor tweeter to do if no one was actually reading my content?

I decided to sit down and figure out why. The scope of the content I was able to push out to my few followers was not as broad as it needed to be. Since it was just my content, the breadth of information being put out in my Twitter stream was not very wide.

What did I promote on Twitter?

While still keeping my topic narrowed down to the technological theme, I started to consistently re-tweet other’s content to go along with my own. This widened the scope of content within my stream, and has doubled the amount of followers I had a week ago. Now even giving in to the fact that some of those are probably spammers, I have finally been able to create a stream of content that more and more people are interested in.

Now, this might not be the case for you. If your topic is already broad enough, you might be able to garner enough of an audience that will spread the word about your content. My problem was that there was not enough content in my stream to generate interest. By increasing the quantity and quality of information I was promoting, I have been able to generate that interest as I could never do before.

For the past week, the online world has been buzzing about the latest installment of the Digg interface. The new Digg, Digg v4, has been hailed by many as the biggest failure that Kevin Rose has yet to create.

The public backlash has been horrific for the new Digg. Hordes of Digg users have been migrating to sites like Reddit and Mixx and the top news portion of Digg’s website was being slammed with direct links to Digg’s competitors like Reddit.

For the first several days after the official launch of the new Digg, users had been met with nonstop server errors presented with comical images and quotes. After two months of beta testing, the Digg team had massively underestimated the resources that the new system would require with the full traffic load.

Is the New Digg really on the Road to Recovery?

…Or has the new Digg destroyed the empire of Kevin Rose?

But the good folks over at Digg have been working hard. Kevin Rose and his army of cohorts have been toiling nonstop to make amends for their tragic launch. They’ve fixed the ‘front-page’ algorithm. They’ve re-added timestamps to the articles in the top news section. Perhaps best of all, the errors that were so harshly slapping us all in the face are now fading as a distant memory.

The new Digg is shaping up and users are starting to find their way around. In fact, I’m starting to enjoy it so much that I’d like to invite you to follow me on the new Digg.

What will the future hold for the new Digg?

If you look throughout the interwebs, you’re going to find conflicting opinions about the future of this new system. Some believe that it has great potential while others think that the site has crossed the point of no return.

Consider the questions below and then join me in the comments section as we discuss the future of the new Digg and what it could mean for us as bloggers.

• Will the new Digg make a full recovery and continue to see the growth that they had enjoyed previously or will they continue to wallow in the backlash of an upgrade fail of epic proportions?
• Has the Digg team created a flawed system so dramatic that they’ll never recover or is this a strategic business move that will position them for even greater growth by attracting a new, more vibrant audience?

Why do you want to create a business website? The obvious answer is to make money online. However, creating a mere web design won’t be enough unless it looks professional and your market can see it.

To ensure that you succeed online, your web design must depict professionalism and it must be accessible by your market especially when they are actually searching for your services. This is the ultimate way of winning the trust of your market and growing your business.

So, how should you create your web design? Well, here are some powerful techniques that will allow you to create a winning web design.

Explore Your Competitors

Research and development is an important part of every business, because it helps you determine what steps you should take to effectively compete in today’s tough business world. It is also important when you are ready to create your business website.

You need to see how your competitors have created their presence online. The purpose of this exercise is not to copy anything, but rather to determine how you can come up with a better and more effective design.

Create Your Strategy

Once you go through the designs of several competitors, you now need to sit down with your designer and discuss how you can beat them in terms of professionalism and elegance. Your audience won’t be able to see you physically, so you will need to create an engaging atmosphere/design that will make them stay on your site.

If your target market will realize (after visiting your site) that they will get what they are looking for, they will surely spend some time on your site and eventually become your customers. Hence, quality design with quality content along with strategic placement of content will help you win the trust of your market.

Write and Organize Your Content Nicely

Now, as your content (along with the design) will help you win the trust of your market, you need to ensure that your content is powerful, benefit-oriented as well as visible. There is no need to hide your most powerful punch lines somewhere down. Make them visible to grab the attention of your market. Ensure that your copy can engage your visitors and eventually convert them into customers.

Create Simple Site Navigation

Make it easy for your visitors to browse your website. You must have come across dozens of websites where you felt lost due to excessive links all over the page. Don’t give the same feeling to your target audience because it can put anyone off. It’s not good to make it difficult for people to find your products. You need to make their lives as easy as possible.

Be Found Online with Your SEO-friendly Site

All the factors that we have discussed above will be useless, if your market is unable to find you. One of the best ways to reach your market is through search engines. If you reach them – right when they search for your products – your chances of converting them will increase significantly. So, ensure that you create an SEO friendly site to increase your visibility in search engines.

So, folks, based on experience, these are some powerful tips that will allow you to create an effective web design and grow your business.