Guest Post - Our host is Ben Taylor, Ben is taking a look at the changes we can expect to social media in 2014.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.
October was a big month for social media. Twitter finally ousted HootSuite and other third-parties by introducing its own Scheduled Tweet program. It also added the option of allowing people who follow you to send you direct messages (you used to need to be following them first). Facebook, meanwhile, has added the ability to edit posts. Google+ is also creeping into other Google properties, requiring the use of real names in comments and posts.
So what do these changes mean for bloggers? Will they need to change their social media tactics to benefit from these newest steps? Let’s look at each platform and examine how a blogger’s day-to-day might change.
Twitter
First, the addition of Scheduled Tweets to Twitter will simply make it easier to schedule Tweets concerning articles and webcasts for those who already do so via HootSuite. For those who haven’t been using HootSuite, of course, this can be a golden opportunity to begin scheduling Tweets to increase their blog’s visibility. Take care when scheduling Tweets, however- if you make a blunder or Tweet in poor context, you’ll find yourself under fire faster than you can delete the offending message.
Guest posting has become important for both marketers and for bloggers. The influx of fresh content, sometimes quality and sometimes not, is a good way to make sure that your blog is always up-to-date. Twitter’s move to optionally allow followers to be able to direct message you could be a godsend for bloggers who want to encourage easily filtered guest post offers, especially around the holidays when time to post is scarce. This new feature, paired with an announcement on your contact page, could make for very easy perusing of guest post ideas- all people must do to pitch is follow you and send a direct message to you with a short pitch and their email.
Facebook
Obviously, the ability to edit statuses will cause a good amount of havoc. Once a post has been changed, any replies to it won’t make sense anymore. However, bloggers can use this ability to their benefit. This is good for bloggers because nothing hurts traffic worse than misinformation. Adding hashtags or adding a note about a significant reblog or comment can also increase your traffic without needing to make a new post altogether.
Also, if you’re posting a snippet of an article onto your Facebook page to increase prominence, it’s comforting to know that you can edit that snippet if you need to improve the grammar or change the URL. Especially if you need to change something for accuracy in an article, it’s important to be able to edit your Facebook post as easily as you can edit the article, itself.
Google+ and YouTube
Also in the social media news, there has been much nay saying concerning Google’s ambition to connect all of its services and force users to post everything under their real name, notably YouTube comments. Google has been trying to boost its social media platform, Google+, to little success in the past 2 years. The incorporation of YouTube into this network is a calculated way of ensuring that Google+ gets traffic and becomes more heavily used.
For the average person, this is not a welcome change. For the blogger, however, this can be exceedingly useful. Your most valuable asset when blogging is your reputation and especially your name. Having your name attached to your activities should be a positive when trying to gain traffic to your site. The downside might be a loss of privacy and a need to take more care in what you post. But as successful bloggers are people who manage their online reputations fastidiously, these things shouldn’t be intimidating.
The bottom line is that social media is evolving in ways that benefit bloggers. That is, if you’re willing to put in just a little extra effort.
By Guest Author - Ben Taylor is a social media studying, coffee drinking, hat wearing child of the digital age. He currently writes for social media optimization company, Eloqua.
Guest Post - Our host is Bev Sninchak, Bev is looking at using a style guide on your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.
So, you've taken the leap and decided to jump into blogging, whether for business or personal reasons. You've got plenty of content and information to offer, but do you have a style guide yet? If you're scratching your head and aren't sure what that is, you're not alone. Unless you have been involved in the writing or publishing community for a while, you may wonder what a style guide is and why it's used.
Simply put, a style guide is a set of rules and regulations you follow when writing your blog posts. For instance, a style guide makes sure you maintain conformity when dealing with numbers, punctuation, citation, quotes, and much more. Style guides are used for many things, including by publishers to maintain consistency in content published in magazines, newspapers, books, and more.
By developing a style guide for your blog, you can ensure your posts are uniform in their execution and delivery. Readers will appreciate that your content is understandable and doesn't vary wildly from post to post or from blog to blog (if you host more than one).
Here are some pointers - as well as a list of pros and cons - that will help you decide if you need a style guide and what to include in it.
Guest Post - Our host is Louise Harper, here Louise will run you through he latest Google algorithm update and how it will affect your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.
The Internet is agog with talk of the Hummingbird update so when the guys at Spice up your Blog suggested I cover this as a topic I jumped at the chance as it would give me a chance to fully understand what it is all about and hopefully help educate you, the reader. I quickly realised I needed some expert assistance if I was to unearth what the Hummingbird was all about so I called a ‘techy’ friend of mine who works at a creative agency in London. Big thanks to Ben for his time and I hope you enjoy this article and learn everything you could need to know about Google’s latest update.
On August 30, 2013 Google launched a brand new search algorithm called Hummingbird. For those of you who don’t know, an algorithm is what Google uses to sort through websites in order to return the best answers to search queries. In a way you could think of it like a spell. It combines lots of different elements in order to concoct the desired results. In this post we will explain the purpose of Hummingbird and how it will affect us bloggers.
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| Google named their new algorithm Hummingbird as the two have speed and precision in common. |
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| An increasing number of people now perform searches using the voice activated technology on their smartphones. |
By Guest Author - Louise, a born and breed London girl currently work part time as a business writer. Having agreed with Spice Up Your Blog, Louise worked alongside Ben at The Pink Group to create a essential guide on how Google's latest update will affect bloggers.
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