Do you have a blog? How dressed up is it? I’m not just talking about whether it looks pretty or not. I’m also talking about things that will make your blog an effective marketing tool for promoting your art. What are some of must-haves you need for your blog? Here’s the most important things:

1. A domain name- a domain name for your blog whether it’s a separate name from your main website or a subdomain of your website (eg: yourwebsite.com/blog) is an important part of branding your blog. Even if you are using a blogging service like Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress.com (NOT Wordpress.org…you can find out how they Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org differ here), you should still get your own domain name for your blog. It looks so much more professional than yourblog.blogspot.com.

2. A custom banner- While the generic banners you get with your blog templates work just fine, you can dramatically upgrade the look and professionalism of your blog by using a custom banner. If you’re not any great shakes with Photoshop or Gimp, then you can hire someone to do a professional banner for your blog for about $50 or less.

3. A sign up box for your mailing list- If you have a mailing list for customers or potential buyers, make it easy for them to sign up for your mailing list by putting your sign up form on the sidebar of your blog…even if you already have one on your website. If you don’t have a mailing list, you can learn to set one up by getting a FREE copy of my article series “How to Plan and Start a Great Email Newsletter “.

4. RSS subscription buttons- A lot of people like to read blogs through a feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines. Make it easy for them to keep up with your blog by putting on some RSS feed buttons or links on the sidebar of your blog. If your readers prefer email, consider using a service like Feedblitz or Aweber to deliver your blog posts via email. And please remember to offer full feeds to these folks as well.

5. Links to your website and other social networking sites- If you have a main website or an Etsy or Artfire store, you definitely need to have links to those places on your blog. If you are an Etsy user, there is a free widget that you can place on your blog that show pictures of the items that you have in your store. Be sure to add that widget to your blog. Also, if you are a Twitter user, have an account on LinkedIn, or have a Facebook fan page, you should also have links or widgets that link to those places so people can follow you or fan you.

6. Share links- Finally, make your blog easy to share by adding social networking buttons so that people can easily share your blog posts to their friends on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. You can use a service like Feedburner’s FeedFlare, AddThis, or Share This to add these buttons to your blog. Or if you’re running Wordpress on your website you can use the Sexy Bookmarks plugin.

These tips came from my free e-course “50 Blogging Tips for Artists “. To get more free blogging tips like the ones I just shared simply click here to sign up.

So your turn! What additional bits do you put on your blog to make it more effective? Leave me a comment and let me know!

If you’re looking around for a place to start your blog, chances are that you’ve heard about Wordpress. And if you’re like alot of people, you’ve might have experienced some confusion because there is actually more than one Wordpress. There’s a Wordpress.com and a Wordpress.org

The short explanation is that Wordpress.com is a blogging service, where you sign up for and account and start blogging. Wordpress.org is where you download the actual blogging software to run on your website.

But what does that mean exactly? Is one choice better than the other? Is one easier than the other? Which one is best for you? To help cut the confusion, I made a video that takes you through a tour of both Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org, points out the differences between the two, and gives you some guidelines on which to choose. You can watch the video below:

If you’re just starting out with your own blog, one of the things that you must make a decision on is whether you’re going to offer full feeds or partial feeds to those people that read your blog through a feed reader, like Google Reader.

What’s the difference between the two? A full feed shows your entire blog post in your subscriber’s feed reader. So people that subscribe to your blog via a feed reader don’t have to visit your blog in order to read your blog posts.

On the other hand, a partial feed only provides an excerpt of your blog post, perhaps the first couple sentences or the first paragraph in your subscriber’s feed reader. In order to read the rest of the blog post, your subscriber then must visit your blog to read the rest of the post.

So what’s the best choice for your blog? This is a question almost as old as blogging itself. At first glance, providing a partial feed to those that subscribe to your blog through a feed reader seems like the best choice because that then makes people visit your blog.

However, most popular blogs provide full feeds instead of partial feeds. A lot of savvy blog readers HATE partial feeds. I myself don’t subscribe to blogs that provide a partial feed…unless the content is really, really, REALLY good, and I unsubscribe from those that start doing so. A lot of blog readers I know feel the same way.

Why do a lot of blog readers dislike partial feeds? Think of it this way…if I’m taking the step to subscribe to your blog feed, I’m telling you two things:

1. I’m interested in what you’re blogging about and I want to keep updated
2. I prefer to read your blog through my feed reader (because it’s convenient, it saves me time, etc)

By providing only a partial feed to your blog you’re making it inconvenient for your subscribers to read content that they’re already interested in reading in the way they choose to read it. Putting up roadblocks to reading your blog is not a way to encourage loyal readers.

Okay, so how do you encourage those who read your blog to visit your website if they’re getting your content through their feed readers?

1. Offer an email newsletter. RSS subscribers are still pretty anonymous…you don’t know who they are and you can’t contact them directly. Not so with a traditional email newsletter. If you also offer great content through email, those RSS subscribers will be happy to join your email list.

2. Give your RSS readers exclusive offers to visit your website. If you’re running Wordpress, there are several plugins you can install that allows you to attach a special signature to your blog posts that only your RSS feed subscribers you can see. This is a great way to make your RSS subscribers feel welcome and to place special offers that encourage them to visit your website. One RSS signature plugin that I’ve used with my Wordpress blogs is called “Feed Footer“. You can check it out here.

3. Give your RSS subscribers a reason to visit your website in each blog post. At the end of your blog posts, provide a “call to action” to encourage those that are reading your blog through an RSS feed reader to come visit your blog. You can invite your readers to leave comments, sign up for your mailing list, sign up for a giveaway or contest, or participate in a poll. Just because these folks prefer to get your blog content through their feed readers doesn’t mean that they won’t visit your website if there is compelling reason to do so. Provide that in as many blog posts as possible.

So what’s your opinion? Do you provide full or partial feeds for your blog? Why or why not? Leave a comment and share your opinion!

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ll undoubtedly will run into a “blogging slump” where you have no idea of what to write about next. One way to break through a “blogger’s block”, try digging through your old blog posts for inspiration!

Why is resurrecting your old content a good idea? Isn’t that just being repetitive? Not really. Unless you’re just starting out and your blog only has a couple of posts to read, people aren’t going to read through every single post you write. So refreshing an old blog post is a great way fresh sets of eyes and another chance for it to be circulated to interested readers. Plus you can also encourage fresh traffic to the older parts of your blog and that’s great for readers and your search engine rankings.

Here’s three ways you can breathe life into an old blog post

1. Follow up or update- Is there an old blog post that you can follow up on or update? Maybe you wrote about some issue or a news topic in the past. If it was about an ongoing issue, you can refer to you old blog post and write an update or a follow up.

2. Expand an old post- Is there an old blog post that you wrote that you can expand upon or turn into a series? Or perhaps you can put a new spin on a topic that you wrote about already.

3. Make a collection of past related posts- Have you written a bunch of blog posts around a similar issue or topic? How about rounding up these blog posts and making them into a collection? Simply write a brief introduction, provide the links to your old blog posts and your done! The great thing about these roundups is that they often make great resources that readers love to pass along and refer to over and over again!

These suggestions came from a past show I did on Blog Talk Radio called “How to Get Out of a Blogging Slump“. If you want more tips on this, you can listen here.

Also, if you’re thinking about starting a blog or if you already have a blog and you want to be more effective, sign up for my FREE e-course “50 Blogging Tips for Artists“. Get a free tip in your email every day that will help make your blogging life easier. Sign up now!

A couple of days ago I was trying to get through a backlog of 900+ new blog posts in my Google Reader and I ran across this blog post title on one of my favorite blogs:

“My Head is Exploding”

Now considering that this was a blog that was about marketing and selling handmade items, I paused to wonder what in the heck THAT title was about. If was any other blog, I would have went straight to the “Mark as Read” button (the equivalent of the delete button), but decided to take a quick peek to see what the post was all about. It turned out to be a pretty good post on what to avoid when marketing your handcrafted items.

This minor occurrence in my blog reading day points to a problem that a lot of artists inflict on their blogs and their readers. The “Mystery Meat” Blog Title. That is, a blog title that’s so obscure that you can’t tell what the rest of the blog post is about. While this type of titles might seem clever while you’re writing them, you’re actually cheating your blog out of some very real benefits.

1. You’re missing out on possible readership- I read a lot of blogs and sometimes I get backed up on my reading. So when I’m in catch up mode, I’m relying on the blog title to help me make the decision as to whether I’m going to read the rest of the post or not. In most cases, if I can’t tell by the title what the blog post is going to be about, I’ll pass it over without reading it. And there’s plenty of other readers that do the same.

If you want to make things easier on your readers and also encourage them to actually read what you write, think of post titles that give them an idea of what they’re going to read. Your blog post title is a “mini teaser”. It’s the first thing that your readers will see and it should be something that will make them want to read more.

Won’t an unusual title encourage people to read the rest of the post? Yes it can, but you have to write these very carefully. Make them too vague or unusual and busy readers won’t bother.

2. You’re missing out on SEO potential- If vague titles are confusing to your human readers, then it’s also equally confusing to your non-human readers. I’m talking about the search engine robots and spiders that visit your blog so they can index your post for search engine results. And the most important piece of information they get from your blog post is….guess what? Your blog post title.

Remember that it’s the job of search engines to find the most relevant content on the Internet and organize it in an easy to find manner so that if someone searches for “how to market handmade items” into Google or Yahoo! or Bing, then they’ll get all of the most relevant websites that discuss this topic. And to a search engine spider, “My Head is Exploding” has nothing to do with that topic. Sure you might get listed…but it won’t be on the first page of search results. And that’s the spot that you’re aiming for.

3. You’re making it harder to share- If you’re on Twitter, which of the following tweets are you more likely to click on?

“5 Ways to Improve Your Etsy Sales Now”

or

“My Head is Exploding”

If you’re like most people, you’ll probably pick the first tweet. It’s to the point and you have a good idea of what you’re going to get when you click on the link. So what does this have to do with blog post titles? If you’re including some type of sharing link like “Share This”, “Tweet This”, or “Add This” at the end of each of your blog posts, that’s great because you’re making it easier for your readers to pass your post on to other interested readers.

But! You’re tripping them up by using a mystery meat title for your blog post. Remember that most of these tools automatically uses the the title of the blog post as the basis of the tweet or message you’re sharing. So if your blog title is vague or misleading, your reader will either:

a) Share your blog post as is and the vague title will result in less clicks and less sharing, or

b) Rewrite the automatically generated message into something more appealing…which costs them a bit of time and effort

If you want people to share your blog posts, make it as easy as possible for them to simply click on “Share This” and go…without getting them to rearrange the title. And a more relevant title will encourage more people to pass the sharing along too!

So what do you think? How do you come up with your blog post titles? Leave a comment and let us know!