Wild Card Wednesday - Must Love Blogs! New Weekly Columns + Best Practices for Bloggers

I've noticed a big spike in readership after starting my social networking, marketing, and technology-themed posts.  Since I really like researching and writing about these topics, this pleases me.

I believe theaters will greatly benefit from embracing new technology and social networking as a way to actively engage their audiences.  Though I still write my blog posts with artists and theater companies in mind, I'm aiming to make them applicable to small businesses and individual artists trying to get exposure on the big, fat internet.

For now (beginning the week of June 6th) my blog will be posted at between 9pm and 12am PT every weekday with the following topics:

• Marketing Monday- These blogs take a look at marketing trends, media and social networking.
  
• Tech Tuesday - Here you'll find new (or under appreciated) technology and tips to use it to your advantage.
  
• Wild Card Wednesday- Though open topic, here is where you'll most likely see interviews and guest columns.  I also like to have a gap mid-week in case some big news breaks that can't wait until its designated theme day.
  
• TED Talk Thursday- We all need a little inspiration to get us through to the weekend.  Here's where I'll post and discuss an inspirational TED Talk that I find relevant with that week's news and posts.
  
• Fun Friday- I'm still an artist, and I know a lot of artists.  This day is reserved for showcasing creativity.  To apply to be showcased, go ahead and send me an e-mail with a sample of your work.  Videos, comics, jokes, paintings/drawings, photography, music and (short) creative writing are all perfect to submit.

Are you a blogger or interested in blogging?  

3 Recent Articles for Best Practices in Blogging:

1. The Blueprint for the Perfect Blog Post.  While I'm against standardizing all blogging styles to fit one model (that would make for a boring blogosphere), B2C blogger Brian Rice makes some excellent points:  Keep the blog clear, to the point, and able to be scanned for quick reading.  Be helpful by linking to related posts and sites, and make it easy for readers to share the posts!
   
2. The Four Pillars for Writing Exceptional Blogs.  Featured on Problogger, this article was contributed by Leo Babauta from Zen Habits, a blog that has 12,000 readers and made it into the Technorati Top 500 in 5 months.  Babauta writes that "content is king" in drawing readership and lists four tips for producing great content.  Largely common sense, the advice is a worthy read.
   
3. Blog Marketing Strategy: 7 Steps to Social SEO Success.  Once you've written the perfect blog filled with high-quality content, how do you get people to see your work?  Lee Odden's lengthy post on toplinkblog.com takes a little time to digest, but offers fundamental tactics for getting your blog viewed by the readers you seek.

Finally: Do You Need Blogging Buddies?

I hope these articles will help you type your way to blogging success!  One final article to check out is the B2C post on the benefits of having a blogging buddy.

If you have a blog and are searching for a blogging buddy, go ahead and post it in the comments section below.

Please click on the +1 button if you found this blog to be useful!

-Danielle Loebs

LED Keyboard photo courtesy of technabob.com, Awesome Face Buddies picture created by me.

Google Social Search or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love SEO

He's excited about SEO.
Image courtesy of makefive.com

This week, in my efforts to collect web marketing tips for theater companies, I realized that one of the most important items was one I knew very little about.  Boy was I intimidated.  Knowing virtually nothing of algorithms and hearing phrases I didn't understand (FYI, "living in a post-Panda world" has nothing to do with the availability of delicious orange chicken) left me determined to figure out this all-important acronym.


What is it, you ask?  Why, SEO of course!


SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  Basically, SEO is the method you use to get your website to appear at or near the top of the page when people search for you (or when they search for things that describe you, like "entertainment near <your city>").  While you can certainly hire an SEO expert to help you with boosting your website to the top of the search rankings, here are a few basic tips I've picked up to help get you started.


7 SEO Tips for Your Theater Website:

1. First and foremost: decide the content of your site based on what is best and most relevant for your audience.  Ultimately, you're going to be found by the right people if you are providing the content they're looking for.  A theater company's website may not be found very easily by potential audience members if they only refer to themselves as a "performance collective," for example.
   
   
2. Do try to include words and phrases in the content of your website that you think potential audience members will use to describe you in a search.  Make a short list of phrases you would use to find a theater like yours and then ask your coworkers, friends and family to do the same.  If you see big similarities in these lists, you'll have found some great key words and phrases to include on your website.
   
   
3. Just make sure you try to get 2 or 3 of those key words on the home page of your site.  This will help the search engine direct users to the correct starting page.  To gauge success of these keywords, keep an eye on your site ranking in search results and see if there is movement.
   
   
4. Write a page or blog post on your site that’s dedicated to each of your top keywords.  This is also a good way to show your customers you know all about the specific product or service in which they are interested. Picture yourself explaining to a friend or relative in five minutes what you do in that specific area.  The write up need not be more than 200–300 words and should list the target keywords no more than two or three times. Remember this should be as natural and easy to read as possible, but have the keywords mentioned in a way that makes sense.
   
   
5. Post links to your site (or relevant updated pages) on your social networks.  Link it to your theater's twitter feed and facebook page.  Some of what helps a site earn a high search ranking has to do with the amount of traffic the site is generating.  At the very least, it will be easier for friends to share with one another.
   
   
6. Ask your friends and colleagues to post something about your theater company on their website, and return the favor.  Ideally, when they mention your theater's name, they can highlight it as a link back to your main website.  When done in a relevant way that provides value to the reader, this sort of link exchange makes good business partnerships and helps boost both sites.  Consider yourself an amateur concierge helping fans of your work reach something else they might like (much like Amazon.com does with purchases).
   
   
7. Also, search engines tend to favor sites with more external links pointing to them from a variety of sources over websites with few back links (if any).  In other words: search engines view relevant links to a website as a vote of confidence.

Google Social Search: Social Networks to the Rescue! 

Maybe you just can't seem to crack the right keywords to get your site out front and center.  After all, nearly every theater company's website has the words "theater," "theatre" (which is the British spelling that Americans still seem to love), or "play."  If you get TOO specific, your audience won't know how to find you.  

Don't worry, your friends and colleagues will now be able to help in an even bigger way.  A darling video from Google explains how:

Though Social Search was launched in 2009, the new updates have an effect on webpage rankings.  Like the video explains, if a friend of yours has linked to your page, Social Search will move that page up in rankings since the search engine will deem the page more relevant to you.  The more people in your local network who recommend or link to your page, the more likely potential audience members for your theater (aka locals) will find you when they search.

So as all these tips seem to sum up, know your fans and treat them well.  Good deeds on the internet are usually rewarded.