Articles on Blogging and Blog Strategy

Experts of all types will tell you that you need a blog and that you must publish new content to your blog A LOT. But …

How do you get started? How do you find the time? What do you write about? How will it benefit you? How can you maximize your ROI? How do you get people to pay attention and read your blog?

Below you will find:

  • A collection of articles on the dos and don’ts, ins and outs, and pros and cons of blogging for business
  • First-hand insights on how we use our blog and the strategies we put into play to ensure our blogging efforts generate the results we want
  • Tips, tools, strategies, and more to build a successful business blog

Genesis SEO Settings Guide

March 13, 2013 | By | 32 Comments
WordPress Genesis SEO GuideAt Bourn Creative, we build our custom designed WordPress websites exclusively on the Genesis Framework by StudioPress.

The reasons behind our choice to develop our custom themes on the Genesis Framework are numerous, but a few we often highlight are that the Genesis Framework is very flexible/customizable, coded extremely well, and has been built with SEO as a priority (SEO — the art and science of being found online through organic search).

After all, a beautifully designed website means nothing if consumers and search engines can’t find you.

Genesis already has most SEO requirements built into the framework. As a result, a separate WordPress SEO plugin isn’t necessary, which means one less plugin to manage, and keep updated.

Get Our Genesis SEO Settings Guide & Instructions

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design Tips & Strategy, WordPress Tips & Resources | Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Adding Google Authorship To Your WordPress Site

March 1, 2013 | By | 32 Comments

(AKA: Getting Your Photo To Show Up In The Google Search Results)

Google Search Results Page Showing Author Photo

Facial recognition is a powerful marketing tool and authors, business owners, and bloggers alike are taking advantage of it.

When searching Google, you have more than likely noticed that photos are now appearing next to some of the listed search results on the search engine results pages — and you may have even been influenced by those photos when deciding which link to click.

Getting YOUR Photo to Show Up

Adding your photo to Google’s search results can easily be accomplished in a few different ways with a WordPress site. In fact, the process is nearly identical using three of our favorite WordPress tools:

Learn How to get your photo to show up next to your pages and posts in the Google search results

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Client Attraction, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design Tips & Strategy, WordPress Tips & Resources | Tagged With: , , , , , ,

3 Steps to Turn Your WordPress Site Into a Lead Generating Machine

February 25, 2013 | By | 26 Comments

Last week Brian and I both gave lightning talks at the Sacramento WordPress Meetup. Brian’s talk shared the 5 must have plugins we recommend for every WordPress website.

My talk covered how to turn your website visitors into clients and customers — more specifically I talked about website strategy and three steps you can take to turn your website into a lead generating machine.

How to Make Your Website a Lead Generating Machine:

Creating a complete small business website takes comprehensive strategic planning of the content and user flow, the user experience, the sales funnel, the design, the navigation menus, the page templates, and more. Usually my website strategy presentation is an hour long, but for the Sacramento WordPress meetup, I was limited to only 10 minutes!

These are the three website strategies I shared in my talk — the strategies I think are most important for a website owner to understand:

  • STRATEGY 1: Use the Know, Like, Trust, Conversion approach to naturally lead your visitors to take action
  • STRATEGY 2: Create multiple opportunities for visitors to find your key money content
  • STRATEGY 3: Eliminate all unnecessary distractions from your sales funnel and conversion pages

Now, let’s dive deeper into each of these three strategies:

Learn Three Website Strategies to Turn Visitors Into Clients & Customers

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Website Design Tips & Strategy, What's Up With Jen, WordPress Tips & Resources | Tagged With: , ,

A Behind the Scenes Look at a WordPress Website Makeover

February 7, 2013 | By | 42 Comments

Today's Innovative Woman Magazine WordPress Website MakeoverRecently we launched a brand new custom WordPress website for Today’s Innovative Woman, and wanted to share some of the behind the scenes strategy for the site and insight into why we built it the way we did.

At Bourn Creative we view the primary role of design as problem solving. While the visual look and feel is important, it must first and foremost support the overall site strategy.

Today’s Innovative Woman is a magazine for women entrepreneurs and business owners with print distribution of more than 10,000, visibility at events around the country, and a strong online community.

While the original WordPress theme worked great when the magazine was first launched, Today’s Innovative Woman was was quickly outgrowing the site. With a booming community, growing subscriber base, and influx of guest writers and featured experts, not only did publisher Cathy Alessandra need a new custom WordPress site, but she needed a whole new online strategy!

Read More About The Redesign For Today’s Innovative Woman

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Brand Design & Brand Strategy, Website Design Tips & Strategy, WordPress Tips & Resources | Tagged With: , , , , , ,

3 Biggest Mistakes Business Owners Make When Setting Up Their Website

November 14, 2012 | By | 13 Comments

Startup Website MistakesWe’ve received the call for help from a desperate business owner time and time again — A business owner loses control of their website due to a soured relationship with their web developer or IT consultant, and now that things aren’t so friendly, the provider is holding the business owner’s website hostage.

Sometimes the business owner wants to move their hosting, or switch from an old HTML site to a new WordPress site — and they can’t because they technically don’t own their domain name.

Sometimes the business owner just wants to make a simple change to their website — and they can’t because they don’t have a content management system built into their site, and their provider has disappeared.

Sometimes the business owners needs to get access to the files on their website or in their hosting account — and they can’t because they don’t own their hosting and they don’t have access.

Don’t let this happen to you! Here are the three biggest mistakes these business owners made when setting up their website — and how you can avoid making the same ones:

Learn The 3 Biggest Website Mistakes You Need to Avoid

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Website Design Tips & Strategy | Tagged With: , , , ,

What Your “WordPress Consultant” Isn’t Telling You (About WordPress)

November 12, 2012 | By | 29 Comments

Lies Your WordPress Consultant Is Telling You And Why You Shouldn't Listen to ThemSo I’ve got a pet peeve, and I’ll admit, that may not be a big surprise if you’re a regular reader of our blog!

I get irritated when people who need help turn to consultants — supposed experts — for help and are misled or fed incorrect or outdated information simply because the consultant doesn’t know the answer and they don’t want to admit it.

This drives me especially CRAZY in the WordPress world. Lies, myths, untruths, and false information about WordPress is being fed to business owners left and right — and it’s perpetuating false beliefs.

Let me explain. I LOVE WordPress. All of our sites are built for WordPress and I love the fact that it allows our clients to have total control over their websites. But this ability comes at a price.

Now anyone can open a hosting account, install a theme, and plop in a custom header can call themselves a WordPress web designer or WordPress consultant. There are even some calling themselves WordPress developers that can’t even read PHP!

Why? Because WordPress is a “Hot Topic” for entrepreneurs who want to start online businesses. And for some “Hot Topics” mean easy and fast cash.

Read More Truths and Lies About WordPress — And Get a List of BIG sites using WordPress

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, WordPress Tips & Resources | Tagged With: , , , ,

5 Fast Ways to Get Readers to Unsubscribe

November 7, 2012 | By | 12 Comments

Fast Ways to Get Subscribers to UnsubscribeBuilding a responsive list of engaged subscribers that have given you permission to market to them is a common goal for many business owners. But often there is so much focus on building the list, that the most important part — nurturing subscribers after they have signed up — is forgotten.

Retaining subscribers once they have joined your list and continuing to build your relationship with them is the key to growing a responsive, engaged list. Unfortunately, some simple mistakes can sabotage your list building efforts and get your subscribers to unsubscribe and leave your list in droves.

Here Are 5 Marketing Mistakes That Cause Readers to Unsubscribe:

Learn 5 Fast Ways to Get Readers to Unsubscribe

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Email Marketing & List Building, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , ,

Soliloquy Slider WordPress Plugin Review

November 5, 2012 | By | 8 Comments

Soliloquy Premium WordPress Slider Plugin That Allows Multiple Sliders Throughout a WordPress SiteSoliloquy is a premium slider plugin for WordPress offering ease of use and superior performance.

We bought the unlimited developer license and have since used the Soliloquy Premium WordPress Slider Plugin on several client sites and love it.

On multiple sites we’re currently working on — and the new www.fabulousafter40.com that we just took live — we needed the ability to have multiple sliders with different settings on the same site, and to create both image sliders and video sliders (See screenshot at end of article).

Unlike many free slider plugins, Soliloquy handled multiple sliders on a single WordPress site with ease, and it is super easy for our clients to use and update.

Check Out Soliloquy’s Features and More Screenshots

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Website Design Tips & Strategy, WordPress Tips & Resources | Tagged With: , , ,

How to Beat The fear of Blogging

September 14, 2012 | By | 17 Comments

Blogging for Business Fear

As a business that blogs, I am surrounded by other businesses that blog. I live in the space where all businesses blog — don’t they?

Nope. More businesses don’t blog than do blog. It’s just easy to forget that fact when you live in the blogosphere every day.

We’re a Sacramento web design firm, and the other day I was searching online for other Sacramento businesses that blog for business — not businesses that have PR firms updating their blog with mediocre content all about them, but businesses in the Sacramento region who “get” what blogging is all about and maintain thriving, consistently updated blogs.

The results of my search were dismal at best.

We may be a design firm located in Sacramento, but because of our blog, we have readers and visitors to our website from all over the world, which translates into businesses all over the United States and world reaching out to us to design and build their websites.

Just last week we received contact form inquiries from business owners in New York, the UK, Iraq, Canada, Houston, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Australia.

With these types of results possible from blogging for business, I am baffled why more business owners don’t do it.

Blogging Tips to Help You Beat The Fear of Blogging and Get Started

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy | Tagged With: , , ,