Archive for the ‘Blogging for Business’ Category


Finding the ultimate anti-spam barrier

February 25th, 2010 by Glenn

If you operate a blog with comment facility, or have an online enquiry form on your website, there are spammers who will try to get their spam to you.

New Maths QuestionWe have an anti-spam plugin that adds a simple maths question to comment forms and online enquiry forms. A lot of spambots find this a barrier, whereas a simple maths questions is easy for human visitors.

We’ve just updated the wording of the question to make it as easy to use as possible. Well, hope so anyway. And we’ve also added a small pop up link to explain why we have the question there.

So why do spammers try and leave comments on your blog posts?

Some spammers like getting comments published on blog posts in the hope it gets them a link. Even though we nofollow all comment links, it doesn’t stop spammers wanting to try.

And enquiry forms? Well, some spammers like using your online enquiry forms to send you junk mail.

There are a few lines of defence to try and reduce the number of spam comments/enquiries that get through.

Firstly we run the Bad Behavior plugin – this plugin recognises various patterns and signals that are present when spambots are trying to do their stuff.

Secondly we have our maths question. Personally I think the maths question is friendlier than the Captcha images that many websites use. Maybe a good captcha would stop even more spam, but I find that the combination of Bad Behavior and the maths question cuts spam right down.

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Blogging means more visitors to your website

July 11th, 2009 by Glenn

Here is a graph showing the trend in number of visitors to Phil Walcott’s Gay Rainbow Connection website over the last month (Phil was our OM4Tourism Hidden Jewel Winner for the NT in 2008).

Visitors trends to Gay Rainbow Connection

Visitor trend for GayRainbowConnection.com

Phil is currently touring the world with his GALTA hat on, and using his blog to keep everyone updated about his trip. The spike you can see in the number of visitors correlates almost exactly with Phil getting active with his blog.

Blogs are particularly effective in increasing the number of search engine visitors to your website. And as Phil is clearly such a natural when it comes to blogging, I think he’ll do particularly well.

Search engines seem to pay attention to how frequently a website is updated and send more love to those that are active. Each new blog post adds relevant content to your website, expanding the number of keywords you are indexed for and thereby increasing the number of searchers who might find you. And finally, blog posts are a great way of reaching out to other bloggers, and that gets you noticed and is a great way to earn you links.

And finally, a quick live example of trackbacks. Phil -because I am linking to your excellent post wrapping up your GALTA activities in London, you’ll see a Trackback appear in your dashboard. Approve the trackback – just like a comment – and an excerpt from my post will appear in the comments section of your blog post.

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Five Secret Benefits of Blog School

February 29th, 2008 by Julia

As of this week all four Blog School groups are now up and running for the term, including our new teleconference based group. I am delighted with the diversity of business people who have enrolled. It also prompted made me think about how our bloggers get more benefits than just learning to blog.

Community

I think being part of a community is a real benefit. Blogging and building a site in isolation can get lonely at times. Blog schoolers are part of an interesting and enthusiastic group of forward thinking business folk.

Inspiration

Mixing with people from other industries can be stimulating and inspiring. How someone else tackles a problem can give you some fresh ideas about how to work on your own.

Focus on The Customer

Running a business involves juggling lots of different pressures and it is possible to lose sight of who your customer is and what problems you are solving for them. Blog school helps keep you in touch with who are you talking to and what you need to say.

Support

Blog schoolers are part of a group who want each other’s sites to prosper. They are prepared to give feedback and post comments on each others sites. This early support is so helpful in establishing a sustainable blogging practice.

Fun

Blog school is not all work. It is a chance to make friends with really great people. Laughter is part of learnng and it happens naturally when people relax and work together.

If you missed this term’s Blog School keep an eye out for next term’s dates. Be assured we will make you feel very welcome.

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Using a blog for effective online marketing

October 14th, 2007 by Glenn

Blogs are great for marketing. But not if your definition of marketing is interrupting your prospects, or promoting your service instead of helping them solve a problem. Interruption marketing and blogs don’t go together.

There are a lot of misconceptions about blogs, and whether they are useful for marketing or not. But if you approach them from the perspective of sharing information to help readers solve a problem, then blogs are excellent marketing tools.

A recent post by Seth Godin expresses the concept concisely:

The most effective marketing use of blogs seems to be when the advertiser/marketer uses the blog as an opportunity not to sell a product, but to attract people who are in the right mindset. Joel Spolsky rarely writes about his product, but that’s fine. The people who read his writing are the very same people who need his product, and his proximity to the valuable ideas (and his reputation) makes it not such a leap to go ahead and buy what he has to sell.

Attract people in trouble–>Help solve their problems–>Build your reputation–>Sales happen.

You can read the full (short) post if you click here.

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