Philadelphia Social Media Marketing, Web Design, Internet Marketing and SEO » Wordpress

[How To] What To Write On Your Business Blog

Seth Goldstein — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:42:55 +0000

Image Credit: flickr/cambodia4kidsorg

As a Philadelphia Social Media Marketing company, Goldstein Media helps companies of all sizes setup a blog. Many of our clients are new to online publishing and blogging is a daunting task.

Here are some of the tips we give our clients to help the get started writing on their blog.

Schedule a specific time every week when you plan to write. If weekly is to much of a commitment sit down monthly and write a few blog posts and schedule them to be published throughout the month.
Write about what you know. Write about topics that are relevant to your company.
Don’t “Fake It.” The worst thing you can do it try and seem like an expert on a topic and make a fool out of yourself. This will cause a loss of credibility not only for your self but for your company as well.
Look at the FAQs section on your site and those sites of others in your industry. Answer these questions in long form. This can produce compelling content and also help your site rank better in the search engines.
Look at trends in your industry. Look back a decade and look forward a decade. Talk about the changes that have happened and what you expect for the future of your industry.
Look to social media and the trending topics being talked about on those networks. Talk about the stories that are relevant to your industry and business.
The World is constantly changing. Major news events can often be applied in some way to any industry.
Interview experts in your industry or in your company.
Use different forms of media. Search engines and people alike enjoy different types of content on your site. Post a video to Youtube and embed it on your site.
Share interesting data that your company has mined. Create infographics that people can share on their sites (be sure to include your credit line in the graphic).
Listen and respond to your audience. If people have comments turn your answers, where appropriate, into blog posts.

Hopefully these tips are helpful. If you are interested in learning more about what Goldstein Media can do for your company. Please reach out to us: 215-352-5216 or information[AT]goldsteinmedia[DOT]com.

Critical Update to WordPress. Please Upgrade

Seth Goldstein — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:02:53 +0000

I just got an email from Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress. The core development team found a major flaw in the code of release build 3.0.3.

First off, happy holidays. I hope this time of the year, chilly for many of you, has given you time to enjoy family, friends, and loved ones and reflect on the year before and the year to come.

My last message to you this year is an important but unfortunate one: we’ve fixed a pretty critical vulnerability in WordPress’ core HTML sanitation library, and because this library is used lots of places it’s important that everyone update as soon as possible.

I realize an update during the holidays is no fun, but this one is worth putting down the eggnog for. In the spirit of the holidays, consider helping your friends as well.

You can update in your dashboard, on the “updates” tab, or download the latest WordPress here:

http://wordpress.org/download/

The official release announcement is here:

http://wp.me/pZhYe-qt

Merry WordPressing in 2011,

If you’re on a maintenance contract with Goldstein Media you’re already updated. If not please update your sites or give us a call to arrange a time for us to upgrade your sites for a fee.

Happy New Year Everyone!

-Seth

Bookmarks for January 9th through January 11th

Seth Goldstein — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:00:34 +0000

These are my links for January 9th through January 11th:

3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology –
Is This KFC Ad Racist? [YOUTUBE VIDEO] –
Facebook Founder on Privacy: Public is the New “Social Norm” –
Twitter Argument Leads to Alleged Murder [REPORT] –
38 ways to optimize and speed up your WordPress blog | WP Garage –
iPhone Beats Droid, Nexus One And Droid Eris In Touchscreen Performance –
Can the Skiff save the magazine industry? – There has been quite a bit of talk about Hearst’s Skiff ereader and we got a hands-on last night before the show closed. The device is about as big as a Kindle DX (11.5-inch display and a very thin bezel) but quite thin (.25-inches). They use a metal board spun-coated with e-ink instead of a glass sheet for the screen, which will definitely prevent the heartbreak of shattered ereaders for the next generation of readers. It uses Sprint’s 3G network.

Bookmarks for January 6th through January 7th

Seth Goldstein — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:00:01 +0000

These are my links for January 6th through January 7th:

HootSuite Now Lets You Update Your WordPress Blog – HootSuite, the popular Twitter app geared towards businesses and power users, has just issued yet another update to their web-based client, featuring the ability to post to the WordPress.com blogging platform, URL and content previews, and trending topic explanations.
iTunes Browser Previews Now With Actual Music – Back in November of 2009, Apple finally rolled out a web browser preview for music in the iTunes catalog. It let you view the albums page, see all the songs included on the album, their length, as well as price for individual tracks.
Graphic.ly Creates the Digital Comic Book Store – During Microsoft’s keynote at CES 2010 this evening, Steve Ballmer showed off a very cool mobile and web application called Graphic.ly, a platform that aims to be the ultimate digital content delivery system for the publishing world.
2010 Census Turns to Facebook to Maximize Impact, Reach Young Adults – As the year 2010 gets underway, so does the federal Census in the United States — only this time around it has gone somewhat digital, incorporating Facebook and other digital media to spread the word about being counted.
HOW TO: Erase Your Online Past [HUMOR] – These days, it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep a good name unbesmirched. Surveys indicate that as many as half of hiring managers use search engines to screen job applicants, and 1 in 10 have rejected potential employees because of damaging information on the web. Even if there’s no one out to get you, it’s likely that you’ve left your own e-trail of embarrassment: FacebookFacebookFacebook photos, blog comments, cached web pages, YouTubeYouTubeYouTube videos — all these things can provide the world with evidence of your previous poor judgement and wrongdoing.
Echofon 3.0 Gets With the Twitter Times – You have plenty of options when it comes to using Twitter on your iPhone. But Echofon just made a big move for your attention by releasing version 3.0.
Video: Google’s “F*ck You iPhone” Phone. The REAL Google Phone (Satire, NSFW) – As we’re all well aware, Google released the Nexus One yesterday, the first supposed “Google Phone.” But it’s hardly an iPhone killer. For that role, Google has something much more sinister in mind. Meet the “Fuck You iPhone” Phone.
“Inspired” By Formspring, Tumblr Launches Nearly Identical “Ask Me” – Popular microblogging service Tumblr has just launched a new feature called “Ask Me."
The Oscars of Twitter: Shorty Awards to Honor Creators of Short-Form, Real-Time Content – Last year, SawHorse Media, a Twitter aggregator that pioneered the concept of lists, put together the Shorty Awards. This contest and ceremony was intended to "honor the best producers of short, real-time content."
5 Great Blogs For Funding Advice – ReadWriteStart – The best advice we can give you is to know your audience. You don't try to sell booze to pregnant women, you don't make God-jokes in Utah and you don't get a term sheet without tailoring your pitch. Investors are already blogging about what they want from potential portfolio companies, so if you're looking for funding you should be reading their blogs. While we know there are plenty of useful investment-related blogs, here's a list of five to get you started.

Bookmarks for December 30th

Seth Goldstein — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:00:01 +0000

These are my links for December 30th:

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus On Charlie Rose – Charlie Rose welcomed Zynga CEO Mark Pincus on his show last night for a 15 minute interview. Pincus says 60-70 million people a day are playing social games on Facebook and MySpace, and 1%-2% are willing to shell out actual cash to enhance gameplay. Mobile social gaming is still small, just 5 million – 6 million/ day, he says. But mobile is a fast growing platform.
Evernote Reaches Two Million Lifeloggers, Half Of Them Are On The iPhone – The idea of a life recorder that captures every moments of your life on video is still a bit of a tech fantasy, but an early version of the life recorder already exists. It is called Evernote, the popular iPhone (and now Android) app which lets you record your memories by snapping geo-tagged photos, making voice notes, or just text notes and making it easy to search through them. Evernote does not yet support video recording other than as an attachment (for premium subscribers), but when that becomes more practical it will.
10 Things You Need for Your Social Media Road Trip –
Palm Pre and Palm Pixi Headed to Verizon? – The Palm Pre is headed to Verizon sometime in early 2010, but now BGR is reporting that the Palm Pixi will be coming to Verizon, too.
Hot PCB – Printed Circuit Board Design, Fabrication, and Assembly Industry Blog » Blog Archive » When a Tweeter becomes a Twiddler – We have all experienced that moment where we open our email again even though we just minimized it and there was nothing new. Or we have refreshed our facebook/twitter to see if anything new has popped up. Or we’ve closed a browser and out of habit opened it up again even though there is no need. Or you end up staring aimlessly at your monitor wondering “what can I do?”
SEOmoz Decision Making Flowchart – SEOmoz caused a stir this week by publishing a “study” that allegedly showed NoFollow tags were still effective in sculpting the flow of PageRank.
This of course flies in the face of what Matt Cutts has said on the issue, and the data in the study doesn’t seem to actually be all that solid. But hey, why let that get in the way of a good link bait post, right?
Twitter API Is Becoming Far More than Just an API for Twitter – Webmonkey – Twitter’s API has spawned hundreds of mashups and third party software apps, but now it’s growing even further — outside sites have begun mimicking an API to piggyback on Twitter clients.
Web Designer – Defining the internet through beautiful design » Blog Archive » What has blogging done for the quality of writing on the web? – IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to read much of the IT press these days without coming across an article about Twitter, how it’s going to save the world, and how it isn’t. I don’t want to add to that discussion here (except maybe I already have) but its soaring popularity got me thinking about how easy it is to get one’s voice heard on the web these days. Twitter is a special case – technically it’s micro-blogging – and it is typically used to provide short updates on what people are doing there and then. But it is a form of blogging, micro or not, and it is blogging in general I think I have a problem with. Wikipedia defines a blog as “A type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
Is Social Media Killing Your Business? | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing – Social media for the small business is a catalyst, a tool, a way to create awareness and deeper engagement – it’s not a way to take orders.
10 Questions for Brian Williams – TIME – Brian Williams doesn't get Twitter. Calls it a time suck and a waste of time. He misses the point completely and it's really sad.

Link Report for September 30th through October 29th

The Link Report — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:23:33 +0000

This is the Link Report for September 30th through October 29th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at

Mobile And Social Platforms Want To Be The King Of Local Search – The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 31%.

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips – Begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

Why Branding Matters to Small Businesses – Search Engine Guide Blog – The power of branding and why branding is key to success.

How to Earn Respect in Social Media – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Just because you sell a product or a service that is the top selling or highest rated in the industry doesn't mean people will listen to you when you arrive. Announcing your arrival doesn't gain you immediate respect. You won't suddenly have a band of followers once you strike up a conversation or answer a question or two on a topic.

Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy is Brilliant – Recently, in addition to giving you suggestions to which friends you might add to your profile, Facebook also started enticing users to reconnect and engage less active users. The campaign has partly backfired, as some of the recommendations were dead people and ex-lovers, but I still think it’s brilliant, and a good sign that Facebook has a clear strategy laid out for the future.

Similar Images Search Graduates from Google Labs – Back in April, Google launched a new search feature in Labs that allowed users to find similar images.
Initially rolled out for select images only, the capability is now being rolled out for what seems to be the majority of images in Google image search. This is particularly useful when search terms include homonyms, we think; and we applaud Google for removing a major pain point in our searches for pics of Tesla the band as opposed to Tesla the scientist or Tesla the automotive brand.

BuddyPress.org – BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.

Balancing Blogging and Twitter: How the synergy can work well

Seth Goldstein — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:41:16 +0000

WebProNews has put out a great video interview with Google’s Rick Klau, at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, about how to use blogging as a great supplement to Twitter and how the two can be a great communication tool for people and businesses. Rick points out great points about how blogging isn’t dead. In fact it’s still a very important part of the Web and communication.

More WebProNews Videos

Daily Link Report for September 23rd

The Link Report — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:00:06 +0000

This is the Daily Link Report for September 23rd

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

SEOmoz | Followed Links from Four Unexpected Sources – Great follow links

Is Microsoft’s DRM Patent for P2P Networks Too Late, or Ahead of Its Time? – If Microsoft’s freshly granted patent for a digital rights management system sounds like a 2003 idea coming to fruition in 2009, that’s because it is — the patent that was granted yesterday was filed six years ago. The newly codified bit of intellectual property is a DRM system that’s distributed over peer-to-peer networks, decentralizing a processing mechanism that traditionally resides on a central server. The entertainment industry has used DRM to prevent unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material, but it’s been largely abandoned by the music business in response to customer demand for unprotected files.

Will Cuil’s New Streaming Feature Put It Back on the Map? – I thought this thing was dead. My god. Die already. You're not Cuil! Get it?!

Twitter Gets an Unofficial App Store [INVITES] – One of Twitter’s fundamental strengths is its third-party ecosystem. From sending tweets, tracking stats or sharing media, there are web apps, desktop clients, mobile apps and services that add value to the microblogging juggernaut.

Greatly Improve Your Physical Workspace with Small Changes – Office – Lifehacker – Many of us spend quite a lot of time in our workplaces yet spend precious little time thinking about how that workspace is laid out. It's time to assess the state of your workplace and improve it.

The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog – Blogs – Lifehacker – You took the leap and installed WordPress to host your own blog because you want complete control over how it looks and works. Now, it's time to power it up, lock it down, and make your blog completely yours.

Google Wave Team Gives Up on Internet Explorer | Smarterware – After “countless hours” of work, the Google Wave team has thrown up their hands and decided not to make Wave work in Internet Explorer natively. Instead, they released Google Chrome Frame, an IE add-on that puts Chrome’s backend inside Internet Explorer. Next week another batch of Google Wave invitations will go out, and IE users will have to install Chrome Frame or switch to Firefox or Safari to try Wave. (The screenshot is the prompt IE users will get when they try to log into Wave.)

Why Your Company Needs Social Media | Search Engine Journal – There are case studies abound of how big brands such as Zappos, Jet Blue, Comcast, etc. have put social media into action and the success that they’ve had with it. Can small businesses be just as successful using social media? Absolutely! There are many advantages of using social media during the sales process for customer service, sales prospecting and customer retention for small businesses.

Google Says, Referrer Spam Does Not Hurt Your Google Rankings – Referrer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referrer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. Sites that publicize their access logs, including referrer statistics, will then end up linking to the spammer's site, which will in turn be indexed by the search engines as they crawl the access logs.
This benefits the spammer because of the free link, and also gives the spammer's site improved search engine placement due to link-counting algorithms that search engines use.

Apple: New Nano Not Banned By Health Club Chain – Tech Trader Daily – Barrons.com – The hot button topic of the day among Apple (AAPL) obsessives was the theory that the new video-camera equipped iPod Nano might be banned in health clubs. That would not be good news, given the number of people that buy iPods specifically to listen to music while working out.

Link Report for September 22nd through September 23rd

The Link Report — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:00:03 +0000

This is the Link Report for September 22nd through September 23rd:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

Google Steps Where Many Have Stumbled: Sidewiki – By 2001 web startup Third Voice, which let people annotate websites via a browser plugin, was done. Website owners just didn’t like the idea of people “defacing” their websites with comments they couldn’t control. But the idea has lingered (really), and now Google is taking a shot at their own version of the service. It’s called Sidewiki, and it just launched.

Microsoft’s Courier Tablet Is ‘Astonishing’ – Technology News Briefs | Newser – Microsoft’s foray into tablet computers looks to be “astonishing,” Gizmodo blogger The Paperboy raves after getting a look at leaked photo of the Courier, which has two screens and opens like a book. It has touch-screen and stylus capabilities, and is in the “late prototype” stage, sources say.

Courier: Microsoft Has an Apple Tablet Rival, And It Looks Impressive – microsoft courierAlthough the Apple Tablet remains one of the most hyped (and mysterious) upcoming devices, it’s now not expected to launch until February. In the meantime, a variety of other innovations are looking to steal some of its thunder.

STATS: 84% of Social Media Programs Don’t Measure ROI – We talk a lot about the rapid adoption of social media in a wide array of industries. According to an August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 86% of professionals in a variety fields said that they have adopted social media in some way.

Microsoft Pri0 | How much Razorfish, Windows Live and Microsoft Mobile Services make | Seattle Times Newspaper – Microsoft announced the financial impact of some reorganizational changes it made to some groups this morning, and gave some interesting detail on how much these businesses earned and lost. It looks like Razorfish, the digital ad agency that Microsoft just sold, lost money last year.

WordPess Security Tips: 2 Easy Ways to Keep Hackers at Bay! – Tips, Tricks, Helpful Guide, News and Info from Article Maniac – It's wise to collect and use good WordPress security tips and techniques to prevent hackers from wreaking havoc with your blog.

Google Crowdsources Reader, Docs and Search Features – Google has just opened the floodgates. With millions of users, it's only natural that the company is prioritizing features and crowdsourcing new product ideas. In a recent blog post, the company has revamped Google Product Ideas as a series of separate feedback pages for iGoogle, Google Docs, Google SketchUp, Google Ad Planner, Google Custom Search and as of today, Google Reader.

Picasa 3.5: Ruining Your Good Name with Face Recognition Tagging – Say goodbye to your controlled web presence and say hello to Picasa 3.5. Google released Picasa 3.5 with a slew of new features including facial recognition and name-based batch tagging, faster geo-tagging and better web uploading functionality. The service is so good at finding your mug and tagging it that wild photos from yesteryear can resurface and wreak havoc on your reputation.

Google Wave: You need to pay attention to this. – Jason Kolb re: the Future of the Internet – So here's the deal with Wave: If you deal in technology, and you get this one wrong, you'll miss the boat. And it's a big boat. If, on the other hand, you get this one right, you have the potential to do some incredible innovation.

Yahoo! Search Gets a Massive Revamp | Search Engine Journal – There you go, Yahoo has just announced a major revamp of its search portal, particulary the search results format. According to the Yahoo Search blog the new Yahoo Search format aligns with the previous changes recently made on Yahoo’s other products such as the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Messengers video calling feature.

Link Report for September 18th through September 19th

The Link Report — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:00:19 +0000

This is the Link Report for September 18th through September 19th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

Social media on marketers’ menu for 2010 – Trends & Ideas – BizReport – While email remained the most popular media among marketers for use next year (56.8% "realistically" plan to use it), social media isn't far behind. Over half (56.3%) "realistically" plan to include it in future marketing plans, found the Center for Media Research.

Business Implications of Facebook Lite: Advice for Social Media Marketers and Businesses on Facebook | Suite101.com – Facebook Lite is a stripped-down version of the Facebook social media application that went live in September of 2009. Facebook has stated their intention to be the service of those users who do not have high-speed internet connections or bandwidth to support the main site.

Local companies embrace social media to bond with customers | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ – We've heard a lot lately about the power of social media services like Facebook and Twitter to connect people, spread news and even influence world events. Tens of millions of people are signed up for one or more of these services that connect folks with shared interests or concerns.

The New AIM: Less Clunky and Annoying, More Social – PC World – I use AOL’s instant-messaging network all day long, but I’m not sure when I last used the AIM software itself (with the exception of the iPhone version). I’ve associated it with feature bloat, annoying ads, and a sort of old-timy, Web 1.0 feel. So I long ago switched to other clients that support the AIM network (Apple’s iChat when I’m on a Mac, GAIM when I’m on Windows, and the Web-based Meebo anywhere and everywhere).

Blueprint: A CSS Framework | Spend your time innovating, not replicating – Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.

Ultimate Cheat Sheet Colllection – Hungred.com – Cheat Sheets are handle for web development. Usually, these sheets are either printed out and pasted on the wall of your working area or they are placed on your computer as wallpaper. Referencing in this way makes working faster and more effective. Here are a complete list usually used by most designers and developers during web development. Enjoy!

Tutorial: How to change plugin table structure in WordPress – Hungred.com – Some of us will have problem updating or changing your table structure in your WordPress plugin after it has been released to the public. Many people will come up with different ideas to change their existing plugin structure to a new one. Idea such as checking for that particular column existence either through pure SQL or mixture of SQL and PHP. However, the approach here may be a bit overkill. There is a much simpler way.

RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 – RedBeacon is a new service that made its public debut at TechCrunch50 that further streamlines this process by bringing the OpenTable model of online transactions to much broader spectrum of services.

Google Launches New Ad Marketplace; Display Ads Will Never Be the Same – You’re probably familiar with Google AdSense and AdWords, Google’s (Google) flagship advertising products. It’s how Google makes its billion of dollars. Highly targeted text ads appear on Google search and third party websites that are part of the AdSense program. Advertisers buy ads based on keywords, with more popular keywords costing more per click than less popular terms.

MediaPost Publications Study: Half Of Ad Impressions, 95 Percent Of Clicks Fraudulent 09/18/2009 – Click fraud continues to plague online advertising, but many just want to sweep it under the rug. Radar Research managing partner Marissa Gluck calls it "the dirty little secret of the online ad industry that no one wants to talk about."