Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

So, you want to make a website? Whether business or for personal, there are several general guidelines you should follow. These are made to be flexible for most types of websites, however may not work for everyone. After webmastering several sites for almost 8 years now, these have been guidelines I have followed when creating projects. Some have flopped, and some have succeeded, but these have always been a great guideline to follow.

Because this is so long, I will be breaking it into parts. This is Part 1 of this series.

What is the focus of your website?

Do you want to have a business? Do you want a free entertainment site? Do you want a personal site? This is where you as the website owner/ webmaster have to decide what you want on your website content wise. You could register a domain, buy web space at a webhost, but it is the content you need to have down or at least a nice brainstorm plan for your site-to-be. The content will help you decide the rest of the mood of the website, especially when it comes for your visitors to navigate your site. Without focus, you could have a very disorganized website.

When brainstorming, first list the major areas of the website you wish to have more emphasis. Then, underneath each main category, go into detail of what you want. For example, you might want to consider:

- Will you need a membership script?
- Will you need a content management system?
- How do you want your site designed in order to help brand your business online?
- Will you need to invest money?
- Who do you want to target?
- What do you want to sell?
- What is the purpose of your site?

All of these issues are important when embarking on a new website venture.

Factors like considering what kind of audience your site will reach are extremely important during the brainstorming process. This involves age, gender, personal quirks, ethnicity and more. Obviously a website for dentures may not appeal to a younger audience, while a website of hard core rap may not suit those who are died hard country music fans.

You might want to do a survey to find out what might be best for your website? You might also want to check out sites in your niche that might give you insight what people are expecting and how you can capitalize and make your site both unique and be THE PLACE to go to.

Lastly, what kind of accessibility do you want your site to have. Do you want it totally PC, W3 standard and cross browser compatible, or are you willing to take a few risks to make your site happen?. Although it is best recommended to have a site that is cross browser compatible, not every design and coding technique will allow this to happen. This will always fall back with who you intend on as an audience for your website. It is important in this part of the process to keep in mind cross browser compatibility and try to apply as much as you can to your site.

What factors have helped you determine your site’s focus? What tools or sites do you like to use in order to find out the best way to both target your ideal audience?

A lot of people have different opinions on how this happens. Some are in their stage of experience in blogging that they are new and others have been writing for years. However, there are some elements like Onibalusi Bamidele writes in his article What are the Elements of Successful Bloggers? that do help make the difference between a normal everyday blogger and successful blogger.

A successful blogger is one that can influence people. (By the way, Micah Baldwin has a great article and slideshow on his article A Community of Influence that defines influence, how it is measured, and much more.) It does not matter how many people it is. If you can influence one person, you have succeeded. How you reach many people depends on your own goals – whether you are going to try to reach out to a target audience and how much time you want to invest.

You have to be knowledgeable about your topic. An author cannot convey a convincing story if they do not know what they are writing about.

You have to like what you are talking about – be passionate. You could like just about anything, but pick the one that you know you could talk about and connect with others. This topic is one you could pick apart and creatively share with others in a way that they are encouraged to add their own ideas or might adopt yours.

Authenticity. Liz Strauss writes about this in her article What Makes a Blog Compelling? – She is right. (And by the way, she is extremely successful. I hope to have the privilege of meeting her again in person soon.) People can figure out fast what a person is like, so you have to be yourself.

Encourage conversation, and be active. You might see a post on another site that you thought did not quite cover everything you wished it did. Of course, you could leave a comment, but why not blog about it and leave link back to the original article if you have a lot of interest in the topic. Not only are you creating content, but you are carrying on a conversation. Make sure to be involved in that conversation and not make it look like you were just trying to pimp links into your site.

To you, what makes a successful blogger?

Yes!!! You can write about anything you want. Sometimes you might be in a light mood and want to convey that to your readers. It does take some talent and believe me, I am not the funniest when it comes to writing. My humor is a bit dry sometimes.

Marko Saric writes A humorous day in the life of a new blogger. He also asked on the side:

Most bloggers tend to write very serious blog posts. That is good as many people are reading blogs to learn new things. But I feel it can be too serious to only write about serious topics. Once in a while it could be a good idea to mix it up and do something more humorous. What is your view on this?

There are plenty of bloggers who write without being the next standup comedian. There are sites that are dedicated to bringing a dose of funny. Of course, life is not all about giggling all the time, but as a blogger you should write naturally. If you feel there is an anecdote to share, do it, especially if it is relevant to what you are writing.

Do you like to share a a humorous thought on occasional with your readers?

(Hey, if you have a good joke, feel free to share it too. I am up to read a few.)

It is funny how recently the show House, M.D. had a character that was a blogger. In fact, this sparked a bit of conversation in the blogging community too. For example, I found How much is too much to share by Lady Grier. In the episode it seemed that she had to blog about everything going on in her life, even when she was facing death’s door. She was even asking her readers on advice on how to proceed with her medical procedures. It was a bit bizarre there.

For one, if you are comfortable giving out personal information – fine, but remember that you should probably retain something that only you know or nothing will seem special or sacred. Plus, even if you think people like to hear about how you went to the bathroom, details on how you have sex with another person (specifically naming that person), what was on your grocery list, or your minute-by-minute updates – you are wrong. There are a lot of people who will not say anything because they are kind and have a lot of reserve. On the other hand, there will be people who are turned off by that behavior.

Please note that there are sites that address intimacy issues and adult topics, so if your site is focused on this, great, but also remember to make sure your partner is okay with you divulging information about them.

Freedom of speech has always been a touchy topic for a lot of people. It is not that you are not allowed to say something – it is that you might want to not say it because it might be too much information. (Also known as the TMI, WTMI or WTMFI.) And no, this is not including profanity into the mix. This is including things that really have no business in public and could actually be hurtful if there is backfire.

Your readers are important, but in the case of putting decisions of your life in their hands, you are not being true to yourself. (This is what happened in the House M.D episode.) This is not the type of person that shows leadership qualities and how they influenced so many people. Doing this will probably turn away readers faster than anything else.

Have you read blogs that had a little too much information? What are your thoughts on this?

Some would argue that it is not worth it and is only a system to track traffic. In fact a lot of the traffic they track usually depends on whether or not your visitor installed the Alexa tool bar. So how does Alexa put together a number for each site?

According to Alexa’s FAQ How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined?, traffic rank is determined by the number of uses of their toolbar. The uses are divvied between page views and reach. Even if you visit a site multiple times, your visit is only counted once. Again, this is solely based on Alexa users.

So what could this mean for some people who want to improve it?

This means that you should probably encourage your visitors to download the Alexa toolbar. For those who have websites already, it might be a good thing as there are plugins for Firefox that you can install and monitor your Alexa rank without even directly visiting the site.

Does Alexa Rank Really Matter?

Yes, it does. A lot of ad systems and advertisers look at these ranks to figure out how successful a site is and gauge how many people they could possibly attract through purchasing advertising. Others think of it as a site goal to make a certain number. That is fine too.

People need these type of systems to find some sort of progress. Please do remember that it does take some work to achieve these types of goals. Some webmasters will succeed faster than others due to their website’s topics and their influence within social networks as well as other online communities.

Dan Keller writes in his article How to Improve your Alexa Ranking. You might want to hop on over there and read his post. I do want to note that even though he mentions webmaster, you can pretty much exchange it with your target audience and you will do fine.

Do you know your Alexa rank? Have you already downloaded the Alexa Toolbar? Should website owners pay attention to their rank at Alexa?

Many social media consultants will say that you really should write in your own words when you blog. I agree. However, there are some problems that do come up in what is good blogging and what is not.

I am not a grammar Nazi. I actually was one years ago and you know, I really had no right. I am dyslexic and have often spelled words wrong or mixed up wording.

But for others who are in the same boat, you can still write in your own words, but you need to be conscious of your articles. For those who want to reach a lot of people and have several writers, it might be ideal to ask someone to proof your blog post.

If English is not your first language, a lot of people understand, but you can also benefit from getting a second opinion. I used to be married to a guy (we are still friends) who spoke Spanish as a first language and often writes exactly how he speaks. The verb tenses and sentence structure are not the same. I was lucky that I studied Spanish for 8 years before I ever met him because I probably would have never understood why he said things in such an awkward format. A lot of other languages have a somewhat similar story when translating to English.

In doing so will only increase the chances that your blog will be understandable to others who know English as a second, or third, or more language. There are quick dictionaries that are online like Dictionary.com to help with vocabularly issues too.

Remember, your writing just needs to be understandable and be able to provide a way for the reader to connect. It does not have to be perfect. Even in English, it can be hard to find the right words.

Do you sometimes have problems finding the right words? Is English your first language or is it secondary language?

Brandon Cox writes a fairly good article at Fuel Your Blogging called Tips for Managing Multiple Blogs. The post talks about manage several blogs.

I think firsthand that anyone can agree that you should know what you can do in the time that you have available. Life happens and as I have always said – Blogging should NEVER be a chore. Managing multiple blogs might have that effect.

You do not have to have a team to blog on your site and guest posts are optional, but allow fresh material every so often. But if it is your site, you should be the one doing the work at your own pace. This extends to managing multiple sites. There is no need for a schedule.

Here are my tips:

1. Like any basic web design student, always brainstorm the focus of your website. Who do you want the site to target? What topics are you going to cover?

2. Be clear with your site’s focus. Do you already cover certain topics on another website of yours? STOP!!! Make a clean break and make sure the material you write stays on one site or the next one. Cross-posting does not necessarily hurt a website, but webmasters should not practice it too often. You want to drive traffic to your site – insert a small section for a feed from your other site on your sidebar.

3. Be prepared to do the work in engaging people in conversation. If you want your site to survive, you need to step into the conversations too. This also goes for making an effort to return comments.

4. Never set your blogging schedule in stone. Things happen that you have no control over.

5. Know when you need help or it is too much to handle. Having a website means work and it is multiplied with each extra blog you create.If you cannot handle it, look for people who might want to join in and contribute.

6. Do NOT blog solely because you want to make money. You have to have traffic for that in order to make money. This also means you have to have some type of good content to attract traffic. Blog because you want to share your knowledge in something interesting that another person never knew about. There have been so many websites that have gone down the hole because of money.

7. Get the basic handling down with one site before trying another. If you cannot create one successful site, then why start another one?

8. Do not do things in halves. Be committed to each of your blogs. You will have to divide your time, and surely one of them is your favorite, but it is important to dedicate enough time to update and allow your visitors to stay interested.

A lot of the above I have blogged about for the past few years. And by the way, you should check out Fuel My Blogging too. It is a great site.

Do you manage more than one website? What are your suggestions for others looking to run multiple blogs?

Is Facebook becoming the place to go to even when it is not a rainy day? Aaron Wong wrote Facebook: The Leaky Faucet of Time in response to Mashable‘s article Facebook Is the Web’s Ultimate Timesink. He put to the fact that the Mashable article said that according to Nielsen Ratings that Facebook users are spending an average of 7 plus hours online – per month.

Why is this happening? Well, there are several things:

• Social Game Applications
• Discussion forums
• Facebook can be used by a lot of mobile phones
• Easy access to news
• Unobtrusive advertising

I have to admit I use Facebook more than 7 hours a month… and probably more than 7 hours a week. Why? Well, most of it has to do with all of what I listed above. I am a social gamer and have a separate site called Game App Geek where so far, my boyfriend and I rate and review game apps from several places, including Facebook. Another, I connect with people over business and make new connections. Some of these connections are even from Twitter. I am a fan of several news places. Because I have a busy live stream, sometimes it is easier for me to catch the news in Facebook. I can also bookmark these places.

From Aaron’s article, he asks:

Is 7 hours per month too much? How much is too much time spent on Facebook? It seems that the trend is for increased time spent. Can Facebook replace television as family entertainment?

My response to Aaron’s article was that I did not think 7 hours a month was too much. I do however recommend that anyone who almost lives in front of the computer to make sure they have an exercise schedule in between all the internet surfing. Just typing and moving a mouse does not get calories burning.

As for family entertainment, the computer is not a place for the family to have quality time, not even Facebook, unless the household had a network. It is probably better to break out the Wii. At least with that, 4 family members can play at the same time.

What are your thoughts? Are People Spending Too Much Time On Facebook?