Monday Morning Marketing Minutia

May 5, 2008 by James
Filed under: Internet Marketing 

If you are a fan of online marketing in any shape or form, it makes sense to keep an eye on the ‘other guy.’ Well that’s what I’ve been doing for ages now, and this past weekend I decided to set aside some time and clean up this website a little. By the way, I’m curious to find out if you noticed or felt the difference when you arrived? Let me know in the comments.

I’ve made these changes based on research and careful consideration. I suggest if you have a blog powered website that you consider the following too.

Here are the changes I’ve made to this site:

  1. Using the MORE tag: From now on (unless the post is really small) I will be using the MORE tag to keep the front page cleaner.
  2. Removed extraneous clutter from the post: I’ve moved the various share, print, tag and category information to the full post view - it’s not shown on the partial anymore.
  3. Added a ‘Related Content’ section: At the bottom of each post/article is a new section that shows you ‘related content.’ Simply click on the link to read another post.
  4. Reorganized the sidebars: The sidebars got a bit of a shuffle. I moved the categories section above the fold so you can see it on every page without scrolling.
  5. Removed extraneous linkages: Because there are newer more convenient ways to enable social networking online, I have removed some of the older ’single’ link features and enabled more complete suite features like ‘Share This.’ One example is that I removed the single ‘StumbleUpon’ button because it’s part of the ‘Share This’ feature.
  6. Added a Subscribe page: Part of this sites purpose is to share content. The best way to ensure this happens is to have readers subscribe to either the RSS feed or the Email feature. This new page explains, shows and handles the task.
  7. Added some commercialism: All the professional sites I could find had some form of monetization on the site. It takes time and effort to produce this site and rather than trying to turn the whole thing into a membership site, I decided to offer a limited amount of advertising. There are a few pixel ad spots in the sidebar and I’ll be considering sponsorship of posts from time to time. If you’d like to secure an ad spot check out the Advertising page.
  8. Cleaned up the post title: There was a bit too much info in the post/article titles, I removed it.

*BREAKING NEWS* I’m also happy to report Google has increased this site’s PR ranking once again and now this site is back to 3. Either way it’s all good today and things are on track. And stay tuned fore more information about Web 3.0, I’ve got some great information to share on the subject. Actually, why not take a moment and subscribe.

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