Just Say ‘No’: 6 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Have a Blog
I have taught our blogging workshops long enough to recognize a certain person. You may recognize her, too. In fact, it may be you. After one of my classes, a student who had been very quiet throughout the session came up to me. She wore a deep frown.
But then she broke into a grin.
“Thank you,” she said.
” For what?” I asked.
“For giving me permission not to blog,” she said.
And she isn’t the last one to say that to me.
Too many blogs
Every social media expert on the planet has one or two or three blogs. All our friends and colleagues are doing the blogging thing.
It’s easy to see why someone might think their business will go down the toilet without one. In our workshops, we walk people through the benefits and the commitment required to be a successful blogger.
6 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Blog
1. Your customers don’t go online. This is a big one. Obvious example: Say you are a service station owner. Do your customers go online to learn about your products and services? And if they do, will their habits in buying gas change as a result of reading your posts?
2. It would take you four hours to write a post. Depending on what you charge clients for your services, the marketing benefits you get from blogging could be eaten up by spending a half a day noodling with one post.
3. You don’t have anything to say. Maybe this is true and maybe it isn’t. But related to reason #2, if you are constantly stressed out because you don’t have a topic, if you have to reach deep every time you come up with a subject, this might be too time-consuming and draining an experience for you.
4. You have something to say, but you aren’t a writer. This may be good or bad, depending on what you think “writing” looks like. But if you get tongue-tied every time you sit down to write, or you have an inner critic, say, your 5th grade teacher, who just won’t let up on you, maybe you should rethink things. (Or maybe you should hire someone to blog for you.)
5. You and your computer don’t have much together time. I hear this frequently. “I’m away from the office a lot.” Part of blogging is posting. But another key part is responding to your readers. If you don’t recognize them with a comment, they might not come back.
6. You have to be careful about what you say. Maybe you are an attorney or a psychologist. If you blog under your business identity, weigh carefully whether you risk someone construing your personal post as professional advice.
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Backup Buddy Plugin – A Dream Come True
If you have read my blog, attended my workshops, or even casaully discussed WordPress with me, you know my feelings about backing up your files. Yes, most servers and hosts do it routinely, and yours might be one of them. But I don’t like to rely on them.
I always recommend using WP DB Backup plugin for your database which it basically all of your content — pages and posts. But what about your other WordPress files. And all the media you have uploaded? Yes, you can back those up usually using an FTP client, but maybe you don’t have the know how or the time.
I know what you are thinking.
This sounds like an ad.
Well, in a way maybe it is. But PlugInBuddy.com from iThemes, has come up with Backup Buddy. It’s great. And it backs up everything.
A side note. I was concerned the otther day when a client that I was doing consulting told me another “so called” WordPress expert told her to just use the export tool, and that will backup everything. Not! What are these people anyway, giving away wrong info!
Yes, I am an affiliate for this, a few bucks in my pocket. And yes, it’s not a free plugin. But damn, it’s great. And well worth the money!
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So Many Choices, So Little Time – Which Theme is the Best?
Whether it’s from clients, or attendees of my workshops, I often get asked, “What theme do you think is the best?” Wow, now that’s a loaded question!
Why do I get asked that so often? And is there really an answer? To be honest, no.
What is happening is there are a lot of WordPress “so-called experts” out there who have found one particular theme they like, or a series of them from a certain theme developer. Why the “experts” decide on pushing it could be several different reasons:
- They have learned a particular theme inside and out, and have decided it’s too much work to explore other themes.
- They have a vested interest in it, which may be financial.
- They bought the developer’s licence and fso it costs the nothing to offer the “free premium theme” as an incentive to hire them to create your blog or website.
- They feel the theme has worked miracles for them, and believe it will do the same for you.
- They are just simply biased and too stubborn to budge an inch.
Now I’m not saying this is bad, or that the themes they recommend won’t do the job. It’s just the limitations set upon the client. And although they may think that their “selected” theme is the greatest, it’s only their opinion, and doesn’t necessarily mean that they understand your needs.
So back to my question and my answer. I use and recommend a large variety of themes for my clients. The commission I get on an affilate ad, or the hype that may come from big name bloggers, don’t play into my decision. Why? Because finding a theme that will work for you is very important to me.
When searching for a theme, think of everything you want it to do, plus all those forseeable needs down the road. Talk to you developer and ask the hard questions. Ask around. See who else is using that theme and find out what they were able to do. If you find a theme that has been highly customized, be prepared to either dig in yourself or have someone do it for you. And if you don’t find a theme that will do it all for you, make sure what you settle on will still make you happy.
Remember, no one theme does it all. At least, not yet…
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What You Need to Know About Your Blogs’ Readers
In one of my workshops, Savvy Blogging with WordPress, I always share these stats. You may find them very interesting.
1. The 90-9-1 rule:
- 90% of your readers are lurkers (they read, but do not comment).
- 9% contribute from time to time, but other priorities distract them.
- 1% participate frequently and account for most of the comments.
2. Most won’t read your whole post carefully
- The average readers spends 96 seconds reading the average post.
- 79% of readers scan, rather than read.
- Only 16% will read the whole page.
Although you may feel every blog post doesn’t fit this mold, on the average, this is what we are looking at.
So be patient, provide excellent and useful content, and be consistent. You will get the readers you want.
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Protect your wp-content folder if using a CPanel hosting account
If you are hosting with someone like Bluehost.com, Hostgator.com or any other host with WordPress installations on a cPanel.
Case in point. Let’s say I know www.thisdomain.com is using WordPress. So I simply go in and type www.thisdomain.com/wp-content. An index page will come up like this in your browser window..
And if I was to click on 2010/ I would get access to all images uploaded the this WordPress default file. So I could easily download everything they have uploaded to their site. Sometimes you can do this to the plugin and theme directories as well. Or if I typed in www.thisdomain.com/wp-content/uploads the same thing will happen.
This can be a very big security risk if you offer subscriptions, paid material or other information that you don’t want easily grabbed.
How to solve this…
Sign into your hosting account, and click on your cPanel. At the very bottom, go into the “Index Manager” and select No Indexing for your site and it’s directories, or if you choose, just certain directories. If you don’t, users will easily be able to rip content, plugin and theme information from your site.
It will either go to a 404 page not found, or directory not found.
As always, with WordPress, be safe!
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