This is a very brief overview of the blog post process/screen:

1. Go to your blog’s website address.

2. Click the “Login” menu item under the “Meta” menu, right hand side of screen. This will bring you to a login screen.

3. Enter your user name and password. This will bring you to the Wordpress dashboard.

4. Click on the “Posts” menu on the left hand side of the screen. A popdown menu will appear. Click on “Add New.”

5. The “Post” screen is roughly laid out as follows:

a. There’s a long text entry field at the very top where you can enter a subject. The subject should be an appealing description of the content within, and you should keep in mind that you should enter key phrases that people might look for when googling for content such as your blog.

b. The next area is a text area where you can enter your blog. (I suggest that you type out the blog in Windows Notepad and save it locally on your computer, then copy the text from Notepad into the blog.)

c. The next area is for an excerpt. Create a one or two sentence synopsis of your blog here, something that gives people more of an idea of the content of the blog.

d. Moving to the right hand side of the screen, the top area is the publish area. When you are ready to publish the blog, click the “Publish” button. You can also preview the blog in this area.

e. Post Tags. Enter 2-5 subjects to which this particular blog entry relates. Post tags should be phrases 1-2 words long.

f. Categories. The categories you enter here will appear on the home page of the blog. You should try to limit your categories to general or important topics for the blog, because all the categories you define will show up on the blog screen.

How to Enter Pictures

1. In the Add New or Edit Post screen, above the blog entry area, there’s a row of tool bar icons for formatting the blog. Above that, there are four icons to the right of the text “Upload/Insert.” The left-most icon looks like a square within a square; clicking on this icon allows you to select images from your computer.

2. Once you select an image and upload it, you can enter a caption (if necessary), edit the image alignment (recommended) among other things.

3. We recommend that when you create images for the blog, try to limit the width of the image to something less than 270 pixels wide. It would be good to settle on a standard width for the photos on the blog so that the entries have some consistency in presentation. Photoshop is a good tool you could use to prepare photos for websites and blogs.

Why should businesses blog?

Blogging improves your business’s credibility online, and adding more content online gives your business a larger digital footprint.

Lakenetwork.net can help your business get started blogging online. In addition to standard web development, we work with businesses and organizations to help improve their social media presence. Call us at (440) 975-9580 for more information or contact us online here.

Related articles

• How to make your blog posts something more, without getting in trouble (blogmistress.com)
• How To Add Flickr Images On Your Blog (johnchow.com)

OK, so you’ve got a new web site. How are you going to get people to come to the site?

Search engine optimization (SEO) used to be the main method of web site promotion. But Web 2.0 has arrived, and now you’ve got a number of tools to use from the driver’s seat of your web site.

Here are some ideas for consideration:

1. Have a blog? Claim your blog on Technorati and get feedback on the popularity of your blog.

“Getting Started with Technorati”

2. Generate compelling blog content that relates to your web site business. Find an educational mission and write about it.

3. Use Facebook. Create a business fan page and post engaging, relevant content on your page. We post information that corresponds to our educational mission (helping people promote their web sites) on our fan page.

Keep your audience in mind–don’t post spam; post information that can really be of use, and interact sincerely with people who are in your networking group.

Social media resources

4. Post your blog entries on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Related articles

• Six Reasons SEOs Love Blogs (searchengineguide.com)
• Three Blogging Tips (best-tutorial.net)
• Build Your Brand Through Social Media (lazerpromotions.com)

Businesses need to be aware of several issues when setting up Facebook accounts and business fan pages:

An individual can only have one personal Facebook account. Using multiple accounts violates Facebook’s terms of use, and may result in having one or more of the Facebook accounts shut down.

Currently, users who want to isolate their business persona from their personal persona are out of luck. Even thought it’s possible to create a business account, business account owners are not supposed to have a separate personal account.

There’s a bit of a way around this: set up a business fan page. An individual Facebook user can set up multiple fan pages, one or more of which can relate to business concerns. Messages from a fan page appear to come from the page rather than the page administrator.

Businesses need to be choosy in setting up business pages. The key administrator for a business page cannot be reassigned. Until Facebook fixes this, the original administrator is permanent. It is possible to assign additional administrators, but the original administrator still retains control. For this reason I recommend that for now, have the business owner initiate the business page setup with Facebook. The owner can assign an additional administrator to the page if that is desired.

Related articles

• Does every small business need a Facebook Fan Page? (startups.com)
• Facebook’s collosal Social Media Fail, where’s Mashable to break this story? (theresabloginmysoup.com)

Our mission is to share information to help businesses and organizations promote themselves on the web.

SOCIAL MEDIA TECHNICAL HOW-TOS

Share your web pages on social media
Addthis.com creates html code you can insert into your pages to facilitate sharing.

Create a business page
Tailor your facebook postings so that official business-related posts come from a company fan page.

Post tweets to Facebook

Shorten your Twitter URLS
Bit.ly is a URL shortening service. Go to their website, insert a long url into a box, get a short bit.ly link that forwards to your long url.

SOCIAL MEDIA NORMS

“The Dos & Don’ts of Sharing”
This article advocates a consistent approach in branding your social media business presence.

Worksmart eMarketing
Social media marketing blog.

What to do:

Consider a “Link to Us” page on your site
Include your logos and HTML text people can use on their sites.

Syndicate your articles to other Web sites and e-mail newsletters. By putting your articles up for grabs in this way, other sites will link to them. Every article should include your site name near the top. Work a link to your site into the article a couple times, but don’t overdo it.

What not to do:

Don’t waste time getting links in guest pages
This early link-building technique no longer carries any weight with search engines.

Likewise Free-For-All pages
These automated directories bring virtually zero traffic to your site, but are a great way to generate a lot of spam and don’t help with search engines.

Especially avoid link farms
These highly automated link-exchange systems designed to generate many links quickly won’t help and might get you penalized by search engines.

Remember, it’s not all about search engines; it’s about getting the word out about your site. Syndication gives you relevant links – and search engines like relevant.

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Lake County Portal:

Lakecountyoh.net, designed and developed by Lakenetwork, is a directory for businesses and people who want information about Lake County, Ohio.

Lake County provides a wealth of prime development property, business and economic resources, skilled laborers, abundant energy, a diverse housing market, excellent education opportunities, attractive landscapes and countless recreation choices, including all that Lake Erie has to offer.

Consider this when sprucing up your Web site for the season:

Make sure the style and design fits your company’s personality. Visitors should be able to recognize your Web site immediately by use of the same branding you use offline.

Organization and ease of navigation are key. If customers can’t find what they are looking for where they expect to find it, they’ll look elsewhere.

Be sure your site works well on all Web browsers. You should test this every time you change design and content.

Other things to check while spring cleaning your site include security/privacy, ease of online checkout, and contact info. Be sure to include all methods of communication such as e-mail, phone and an FAQ section. Make it easy to find out who is your company spokesperson along with their contact info.

Periodically check your search engine position report to see which keywords are working and which aren’t. Finally, monitor social media to see how your company and site are being talked about in blogs and forums.