Underground Web Designs Blog

It’s pretty common knowledge that having a blog can be a huge boost to your online business, but where do you find the time to write in it? Did you know you can automate many blogging tasks, so you don’t have to spend extra time doing them? If you take just 30 minutes to set them up you’ll never have to worry about them again.

1. If you have a wordpress blog, turn on the Askimet pluggin. Every wordpress blog comes with this pluggin included, just log in to your wordpress admin area and activate the pluggin. In order to activate it you will need a free account at www.wordpress.com, which you can get in a few minutes. Once you have your wordpress.com API key and plug it into the Askimet pluggin, Askimet goes to work protecting your blog from comment spam. If you’re just starting out as a blogger comment spam may not be a problem for you yet. In this case, Askimet is a preventative measure. As your blog gets more popular you’ll soon have almost as many spam comments as you have spam in your inbox. Take preventative measures now by setting up Askimet so you NEVER have to deal with comment spam on your blog.
2. Batch your posts. Have you ever sat down at your computer and felt like you could pump off 3 or 4 posts all at once? When you are in the mood to write make use of your post time stamps to save yourself some time over the next few days. Most bogging platforms allow you to edit the time stamp on your posts, and if this time is set to a time in the future, your post will not be published till that time. Next time you feel like writing 5 posts all at once time stamp them into the future and watch your blog update itself over the next week without any help from you!
3. Make use of Aweber’s Blog Broadcast feature and your blog’s built in RSS feed. Every good blogging platform should automatically provide you with an RSS feed of your posts. Make sure that it is easy for people to subscribe to your feed. Put a big button in a prominent possition on your blog that links to the feed. People who subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed will be automatically notified of your new posts as soon as you post them — without you having to lift a finger! Another powerful way to get the word out about your blog is to use Aweber’s “Blog Broadcast” feature (this only works if you have people on your Aweber subscriber list). Simply input your blog RSS feed URL, the number of blog posts to include in each e-mail, and the template you’d like to use and you’re set! Now every X number of posts your loyal subscribers will get an e-mail letting them know what you’ve recently written about… all without you doing anything except write the posts!

Technology was meant to make our lives easier, and in the world of blogging it has certainly come a long way toward doing that! Following these three tips will help you avoid hours of checking through spammy comments, allow you to write when you feel like it and still post consistently, and help you broadcast your blogging efforts without lifting a finger. Never do manually what you can automate!

It seems like every time you check the technical section of the news you see something about yet another “social networking” or “social bookmarking” service. As a business owner you may just shrug and move on, if you read the technical section of the news at all. Social media isn’t something you can just ignore though, especially if you want to get the most from your website.

Social media sites –sites that facilitate communication between peers– are among the largest websites for a reason: people like to talk to eachother and share their opinions. Now, your business may not be in the area of social networks, or even in the area of communication. That’s ok. No matter what your area of expertise is, social media is still an important concept for anyone who does business online (and if you have a website, you do business online).

How can you use the popularity of social media to boost your business and increase sales? Well, it’s both simple and difficult. The concepts are simple, but pulling them off can be easier said than done. The best way to leverage social media is to get people talking about your product or service. A good first step is to post fun, interesting, or educational videos on YouTube, and be sure to leave the comments open. Another good idea is to start a blog. Blogs are very easy to create and maintain, and best of all they provide a place for people interested in your topic to agree, disagree, and discuss what you write about.

There are some people that think that since social media is so powerful they should throw everything they have at it, in as many places as they can. Others will even offer their “services” to put your videos, articles, or links on hundreds of social media sites. Beware of such “spam” tactics. Remember that the power of social media is in people talking to each other and sharing things they like. If you post something on one popular site such as YouTube, and people like it, they will tell their friends to come check it out. If you put a video on 100 video sharing sites and nobody likes it, your reputation may well be tarnished.

If you remember that social media sites are the ultimate democracy then you will be able to make full use of them to grow your business and sell your products. If you forget even for a minute that anyone can (and will) make it known to the world if you mess up, you’ll soon find out that social media has a downside as well.

One of the first steps to getting a website is choosing a company to host your site. This process doesn’t have to be hard, and can be made all the easier if you know what to look for. Cheaper is not necessarily better when it comes to web hosting. As you evaluate hosting companies, keep the following five tips in mind:

1. Bandwidth. Get as much bandwidth as you can afford. Bandwidth is the amount of information people can transfer to and from your site in a month. The more bandwidth you have, the more visitors your site can support. If your site runs out of bandwidth your site will “go down” until you purchase more. For small business sites, make sure you have at least a few gigabytes, and watch how much bandwidth you use closely. If you are anywhere over 80% of your bandwidth it’s time to upgrade your hosting package, as a sudden spike in popularity could easily push you over the top and bring down your site.
2. PHP Support. Check to make sure the web hosting package you are looking at comes with PHP support. There are many web softwares (forums, blogging platforms, etc) that are written in PHP. These softwares are often available for free, but will be of no use if your server does not run PHP.
3. Server Uptime. Do some research into the hosting company you are interested in and find out how good their server uptime is. Uptime is simply a measure of what percentage of time a host’s servers operational. Remember that if a server goes down, you won’t loose your website, but nobody will be able to view your site until the server is fixed and running again. For this reason it is important that the server you choose has a high uptime rating. Usually a quick google search using the web host’s name and “uptime” will turn up some comments on whether that host offers good server uptime or not. Don’t host your site with a host that has a poor uptime rating.
4. Add-on Domains, Parked Domains, and Sub-domains. Even if your website is a simple one, you may find yourself wanting to add extra domains (web addresses) in the future. For those that don’t know, parked domains are simply domains that are re-directed to current site. This way you can have two or more web addresses pointing to the same site.Sub-domains allow you to replace the “www” part of your domain with anything you choose, so you can have mail.yourdomain.com, testing.yourdomain.com, or anything else.Finally, add-on domains are almost separate hosting accounts, though they share the same resources as your main account. Add-on domains can be handy for small side-projects that don’t really fit on the main site, but don’t warrant the purchase of an entire new hosting account.
5. e-Mail Accounts. As your business grows you will want to have business e-mail accounts that end in @yourdomain.com and in order to do this you will need to use the e-Mail account features of your web host. Most hosts offer more than enough e-mail accounts with their hosting packages, but check the number anyway. You don’t want to find out after you’ve bought a hosting package that you only get 10 e-Mail accounts with it.

Keep those 5 tips in mind as you shop for web hosting and you will avoid many costly mistakes many new website owners make. Above all, use your common sense. If a deal looks too good to be true (like some of the “free hosting” options out there), it probably is. Your website is worth the time it takes to choose a good host.

UndergroundWebDesigns.com is hosted with Bluehost.com, a solid webhost that I have used for several years with no complaints. They have one of the best hosting deals I’ve seen, excellent uptime, and quick customer service. If you’re in the market for web hosting, I give them my highest recommendations.