Facebook has a nice RSS publishing feature that lets you reproduce your blog in the Notes part of your profile. Your blog updates will also appear on your Wall, alerting friends that you have something new to read. It’s not always obvious how to set up or change your RSS settings, so here’s how you do it.

On most Facebook locations (home, profile, feed, etc) you have a left hand menu with a Notes link – click on this.

Now choose any of your existing notes and select ‘View Full Note’

Under the Subscribe menu on the left hand side click on ‘Edit Import Settings’

(The shortcut to all of these is to go direct to http://www.facebook.com/editnotes.php)

The ‘Import a Blog’ page will tell you if you are already importing an external blog to your notes. If you have a feed imported and want to cancel this, just select Stop Importing.

Or, if you want to import a new blog you can type in the name of the RSS/Atom feed for that blog. You’ll need to check a box to confirm you have the right to have Facebook reproduce the content.

I went through this recently as I was turning off the feed from my infinite42 blog into my profile page. It worked perfectly. My blog is still imported into the infinite42 Facebook Page and I think this provides a more appropriate location for readers to access my posts.

Photo by Ack Ook on Flickr under the CreativeCommons license.

Blogger is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get blogging but one of its main problems for serious use has been the lack of any Analytics for measuring traffic and visitors. Well now there are two ways to get your Analytics info so you can start keeping tabs on who is visiting and what they are reading. One shows you stats from within the main Blogger cockpit and the other gives you a tracking code so you can link directly into your Google Analytics reports.

Analytics is especially important if you’ve integrated your Blogger blog into your own website, because it’s important to be able to see how visitors arrive at your blog and why and how they are clicking through to the pages of your main site.

So, on to the two alternatives:

1. To check out Blogger’s own Analytics page, find the Stats tab in the Settings page. You’ll see page views and traffic sources such as referring websites and search keywords used to find your blog. What you won’t see is detailed analysis of navigation, time on page, exit rates, etc. More importantly (in my opinion) you can’t see how readers are clicking through to your main website (if you have one)

2. You can now add your Google Analytics tracking codes to your Blogger blog. If you’ve integrated your blog into your main website, you can use the same tracking code and will now be able to see detailed Analytics for your blog and website combined. This is great because you’ll now be able to see how people read your blog posts and how they click through to your main website pages. Plus you get all the detailed analytics data that’s missing in alternative 1 above.

If I’ve convinced you that option 2 is worthwhile, there’s a nice tutorial here on adding Google Analytics to Blogger

Note it’s very wise to back up your blogger template. Also because you’ll be editing the template code itself, you’ll need to be careful of any layout designs you’ve created using the template designer.

Photo by brockvicky under the CreativeCommons license on Flickr

Should you integrate a blog into your small business website or use a standalone blog site? Does it matter? Which one is best for visitors, or branding, or SEO?

It’s a good question, but probably misses the most important issue, which is whether to blog (or not). In my opinion, it’s one of the most useful things you can do for your small business, since it’s great for connecting with customers, sharing info, getting feedback, getting ideas straight in your head, and so on. So whether you choose to integrate your blog or not, your priority should really be to just get started.

So what’s an integrated blog anyway? It just a section of your website where your blog appears. It’s probably under the same URL as your main site, and possibly under a separate directory such as www.yoursite.com/blog (I’d recommend that – see later). You can integrate your own blog pretty easily using open source platforms like wordpress or moveable type.

The alternative to this is to run a separate blog site, possibly using a hosted blogging solution such as wordpress.com or blogger. The great thing about these are that they are really easy to set up and get going. You can customize them too using standard templates.

So how do you decide whether to integrate? Instead of making up your mind for you, here are some things to consider:

1. Either way, the main thing to focus on is whether visitors see a common theme/brand/message between the blog and your main website. If that means the blog is part of the main site, then good!

2. Can a hosted blog be customized to look the same as your main site (or at least very close?)

3. If you use an integrated blog, such as wordpress.org, it’s good to keep this in a separate section or directory, so it’s 100% clear to readers that they are reading a blog

4. Which is best for SEO? I don’t think it makes much difference (see the PS. at the bottom)

5. With a separately-hosted blog you’ve got two sites to promote, instead of one. That’s twice the amount of link-building and socializing to do. This isn’t completely black and white though, since you can (and should)  interlink the two sites.

6. Do you think your readers would benefit from finding all your content in one place (blog, main home page, product pages, about me and personal info, info pages, etc)?

So having read through these points, which would you choose for your website and blog?

PS. I’d be careful about getting too hung up on blogs for SEO. The value of a blog post for Page Rank (etc) is very low on it’s own, so it won’t contribute much to your overall site ranking unless it has a lot of inbound links. Unless you’re a high profile blogger, you’re probably not going to attract too many links to each post. Of course if you get your niche & keywords right then you certainly can attract plenty of keyword traffic through your blog. I’ve seen many sites that are only blogs and they catch a lot of Google traffic.

Image credit: dorineruter

That’s a good thing, right?

The problem is that people tend to only research their vacations a few times a year. They may only be interested in our site in January when preparing for a summer trip. This is bad news for return visitors through the year.

So what should I do about this? More importantly, what can you do?

I could remind customers about our place at the same time of year as our last contact – maybe with a message from our autoresponder. If they contacted us last February and stayed at our place in the summer, we might want to remind them about it again this February.

Can we afford to leave it for a whole year though? What if they did their research already in January? If we miss them by a week, we’ve lost a potential booking.

What we really want is to keep customers coming back to our site throughout the year. This will keep us and our place in their minds and maximize the chance that they will think of us again when they are planning their next vacation stay.

So over to you. What can you offer your visitors to keep them coming back through the year? If your site is just a few photos of your property and some description, I’ll guarantee its not going to be too compelling for them to come back to!

OK – here are some things you can try:

1. Write a blog about the holiday location. Heather Bayer does this really well at the cottageblogger.com Write about events, new offers, places to visit or updates and improvements to your place. Keep it fresh, open it up for comments and get involved in some discussion!

2. Build a discussion forum around your place. Give customers the chance to talk about their experiences, share vacation tips and tell stories. This is a great way to build interest, and it also shows that it’s not just you who thinks your place is great.

3. Use an autoresponder to send out regular messages to existing customers. Keep customers updated with availability offers and new information about your property

4. Try and catch them on Twitter or Facebook

5. If none of these work, use a calendar and pick up the phone!!

When you get customers back to your site, you can welcome them back with a personalized welcome message or some special info that only customers can see – maybe some special offers or some photos or a private discussion forum.

Of course all of this assumes you’re providing a great place to stay and that your customers want to book with you again…

A couple of people took this the wrong way and said it was inappropriate to poke fun at guests.

That wasn’t the point. Here’s my view:

1. Adding a blog to your vacation rental website is a great way to build interest and personality (and pages) to your website and online presence. You can blog about the area, about tourist attractions, special offers, or updates to your property. Oh, and you could also tell the story about the guest who complained that your Florida place was too hot in the summer.

2. Feel free to be funny anywhere you like on your website. People remember when they laugh. Humor helps to break down barriers and shows you are a real human. Keep it clean and don’t overstep the mark though. If you are not naturally funny, this might be a risky approach.

So which place would you rent? The one with a website with a few pictures and some descriptions of the rooms? Or the one which also had the author’s blog which told you all about the area and some of the great experiences they’d had working with guests?

I know which one I would choose!

This is a nice endorsement of my work. I love writing stuff that other people like – who doesn’t?

It’s also proof of the principle: good content beats SEO.

In other words, create something that people love, or find useful, or enjoy reading, and you don’t really need to worry about keyword density, long tails or meta tags. Why? Because if people love your work they will (re)visit it and vote for it by linking to it. Links to your stuff are hugely important for PageRank: lots of links will get you higher in the search positions.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s still important to think about SEO. We’re working in a competitive world, after all, and everything you do to get yourself an edge is (probably) useful.

There’s a limit to how far you can go with SEO though. Instead of spending hours optimizing your new page, or blog post, or Squidoo lens, get started on creating another one.

Make sure it’s good though!

If you have a business with a guestbook (vacation rental, restaurant, tourist attraction) then this can be a great source for customer feedback. Other customers will read the guestbook and hopefully see all the positive comments from your satisfied previous customers.

If your guestbook is, well, a book, then the problem is that the only people who can read this are those who are already physically there. Those people are probably already your customers (or are likely to be very soon).

You can improve on this by putting a guestbook on your website. This makes those positive comments visible by anyone in the world who has an internet connection.

The problem with this is that your guestbook is probably written by you. Your customers might provide the original comments but you’ve probably entered them yourself. Did you make any changes? Maybe you left out some of the less positive ones. Even if you didn’t, there’s always a slight suspicion that this can take place.

If you have a blog then you can open it up and allow your readers to add comments to your posts. Why not create a post called “Guestbook” and invite your customers to start commenting. It’s a great way to get real feedback and your website visitors will appreciate your honesty and openness.

Does this make you feel slightly nervous? Are you worried that negative comments might appear in your guestbook?

Well, if your customers are complaining, why is this? Is there a problem with your product or your service? If so, you’d better get this fixed anyway. Stop reading this right now and go fix it!!

Assuming you don’t have a defective product, the best way here is to respond positively to the complaint. If your customer stayed in your vacation rental and there were no saucepans, tell them how you supplied some new ones immediately. If your restaurant customer’s food was served cold, apologize and say you reheated it immediately (joke). In general, customers understand that problems occur occasionally, and they will like you if they know that you correct problems for them.

So what do you think? Why don’t you throw away the old book and start connecting to your customers via the blogosphere? Positive comments only please!

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]]> http://www.infinite42.com/blog/throw-out-your-guestbook/feed 3 http://www.infinite42.com/blog/announcing-the-end-of-this-blog http://www.infinite42.com/blog/announcing-the-end-of-this-blog#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 20:17:09 +0000 dr.richard http://www.infinite42.com/?p=26 The End. Fin.

This is my final post. After today there will be no more updates to this blog.

How does this make you feel? A little bit sad, maybe? It probably makes you feel like checking some of my previous posts. You’d better take a look before it stops and you lose the chance to benefit from all the great wisdom…

The truth is this isn’t my last post, but this demonstrates a technique that is often used to raise interest in a product, or a website.

“Available for one week only”

“$10 now but the price will be $30 after 15th May”

…and so on. I’m sure you are familiar. If you use this technique on your website then remember that you need to be authentic. If you’re pulling the product then don’t put it back 2 weeks later. If you do your customers may get angry and they may tell other potential customers that you are a fake.

Also don’t forget that this works for the short term only. “Available for one more year” doesn’t really have the same pull, does it?

I was wandering around the National Gallery in London today and staring in wonder at the amazing works by Rembrandt, Monet and Da Vinci. What is it that makes these so special? After all, they are just pictures, aren’t they?

It struck me that one reason is that here you are viewing the original work. This makes a big difference. It doesn’t matter how many copies you’ve seen on postcards, in books or even online. When you see the original the effect is amazing. You know that this is the source of all the copies. This is the piece that the artist worked on in the first place. You know it’s been touched and looked at and admired by many thousands of people.

How does this relate to a website? I knew you’d ask.

The internet is great because it allows easy replication of content and distribution worldwide. This means that the internet is full of copies of original work. Think about it. Bloggers copy posts from other blogs (if they are kind they will link back to the original work). Writers take original content and change it (just a bit) and build their own site. The worst is when you claim credit for someone else’s work (you are a fake).

The problem here is that this is not adding much value and certainly not creating anything original. What happens when you find something on the web that is original? You take notice. You read it. You might contact the author. You might even spread the word about it. These are good things for website owners.

What can you create for your site that is truly original? It doesn’t have to be a Cannelleto or a Cezanne. Above all, don’t be a fake.

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]]> http://www.infinite42.com/blog/are-you-original-or-a-fake/feed 1 http://www.infinite42.com/blog/ideas-for-unsuccessful-blogs-1 http://www.infinite42.com/blog/ideas-for-unsuccessful-blogs-1#comments Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:48:17 +0000 dr.richard http://www.infinite42.com/?p=22 Write something that everyone else agrees with.

This is a great way to guarantee that your readers (the ones that are left) become bored and uninspired by your writing. If you write the same as everyone else, why should anyone read your stuff?

Successful blogs usually involve some discussion through the comments and the best way to get this going is to be interesting. Take a stand on some issues and be controversial. There are a million other voices out there – why should anyone listen to yours?