Squarespace Releases Facebook Page Support

October 22, 2012 in Social Media, Blogging Strategy

The folks at Squarespace continue to refine Squarespace 6, the newest version of the content management system and blogging platform. Last week they released a handful of new features, including social media profile support for Facebook Pages.

When Squarespace 6 first launched this summer, Facebook support included gallery and tab integration and social link integration with your personal profile, but you couldn't override your social links on your website to display your brand's Facebook Page URL.

With the change announced on the Squarespace Service Blog on October 17, Squarespace released support for Facebook Pages when integrating social links on your website.

Displaying Your Facebook Page on Squarespace Social Links

Squarespace's Facebook Page integration interface is intuitive and lightweight.

Integrating your brand's Facebook Page with Squarespace is easy. Access your Squarespace website's administrative settings, and navigate to the Connected Accounts menu. Add a Facebook connection, and use to drop-down to select the appropriate Facebook Page from the Push Target field.

Squarespace templates that support social links will now display your Facebook Page link instead of your personal profile link.

(Note: You may have to uninstall, then re-install a Facebook connection to support brands.)

This menu can also be leveraged to create a default posting format for your Facebook statuses when you publish new content on your Squarespace blog. You can use dynamic fields, such as your post titles, URLs, and authors.

How important is Facebook to your Squarespace website? Is it critical to the success of your brand, or is there another social network that is even more important than Facebook?

Generating endless blog ideas with Qualaroo and Squarespace.

Generate Endless Blog Ideas Effortlessly with Qualaroo

October 15, 2012 in Internet Marketing, Blogging Strategy

Done right, the business benefits of blogging are boundless. In fact, 57 percent of consumers report reading blogs and nearly two-thirds of them are swayed by what they read. And yet, so many websites have terrible blogs, or lack them altogether. It's a shame.

Luckily, a nifty feedback tool exists called Qualaroo, and can help generate a nearly endless list of ideas for your blog simply by asking visitors what they'd like to read about. Let's take a closer look on how to bolster your blog idea generation process with a Qualaroo survey on your blog.

Getting Started with Qualaroo

The best way to create a helpful blog with a lot of readers is to start by asking readers how you can help them. Qualaroo (formerly KISSinsights) facilitates this process by placing simple, non-obtrusive questionnaires on any page of your website. Pricing starts at free and sign-up is limited to a few basic steps.

Creating a Survey to Generate Blog Ideas

Once you're set up with an account, you need to place the Qualaroo code on your blog. It's a process you only need to do once regardless of the number of surveys you create in the future. The steps listed here are for a Squarespace website, but you can modify as needed for your own blog if you're not using Squarespace.

From the Qualaroo dashboard, click on the View code link in the account listing area.

Installing Qualaroo code on a Squarespace website

Next, copy the snippet of code to your clipboard. As the Qualaroo help text indicates, we're going to paste it into the <body> section of your website.

Copy the Qualaroo code to your clip board. This code is asynchronous, which means it won't add to your page's load time when you install it. — Copy the Qualaroo code to your clip board. This code is *asynchronous*, which means it won't add to your page's load time when you install it.

Find the area of your website's administrative controls that allows you to insert template-wide code into the <body> section of your site. The best place to insert this code on a Squarespace website is by going to Settings -> Code Injection -> Footer.

Note: You can place the code in the footer of your <body>, not right after the <body> tag like Qualaroo suggests.

Creating a Survey to Capture Ideas for Your Blog

Once your Qualaroo code is on your blog, you can create your very first survey using the shiny green button from the dashboard.

Custom surveys are always an option, but there's actually a survey perfect for generating ideas for your blog straight from the list of pre-canned questionnaires. Scroll down and select the question, "What topics would you like to see us write about next?".

Qualaroo provides a large list of ideas for other surveys to put on your website in addition to your blog.

Next up, define the pages of your website on which you want the survey to appear. If you want the survey to only show up on your blog, enter only the part of the URL that is common to all your blog posts (e.g., "http://www.bigpictureweb.com/blog/") and be sure to check the box to Show survey on any sub-page in this section.

Tip: Enter "http://www.yourwebsite.com/" and check the Show survey on any sub-page in this section to make the survey appear on every page of your website.

Creating a Qualaroo survey on a Squarespace blog.

You'll want to consider these points as you continue to choose from the many helpful options that accompany each Qualaroo survey:

Don't spam your surveys to everyone who lands on your pages. Be polite and wait for a while (e.g., 30 seconds) before asking for feedback.
Only ask for feedback once per visitor
Consider scheduling your surveys, especially on large sites, to avoid letting too many surveys run at one time
People who complete your survey are engaged visitors. Use the custom Thank you message options to further leverage the attention of your most engaged users.
Consider how the survey appears on your website and use the options available to adjust accordingly

Click Finish when you're done fiddling with the survey options to officially launch your new favorite tool for coming up with ideas for your blog.

Reviewing Responses to Qualaroo Surveys

Qualaroo will send you an email when the responses start to roll in, and you can access survey responses for any questionnaires you create from the dashboard. In a few short days you'll wonder how you ever lived without Qualaroo at all.

Qualaroo survey responses are an ongoing source for new blog post ideas.

Far too many websites go bare because their owners run out of blog ideas. Don't let this happen to you.

Take a few minutes to set up a Qualaroo survey on your website and you'll be receiving your own list of blog post ideas in no time. If you get a suggestion you find particularly helpful, I'd be honored if you'd come back and share it with us in the comments below.

Creating Effective Newsletters with Squarespace and Mailchimp

August 20, 2012 in Internet Marketing, Content Strategy, Blogging Strategy

Newsletters and email marketing can be a tremendous asset because these mediums permit you to communicate from a greater position of trust and credibility than those who engage through social media or search engines marketing alone.

I've been trying out MailChimp since moving to Squarespace 6 because of their codeless integration. As you'll see in the steps to come, MailChimp and Squarespace now work together with virtually zero effort. And with both paid and free options available, they've made it simple to add email marketing to your current blogging and content marketing strategy.

1. Creating a MailChimp Account

I've had a monthly newsletter focused on Squarespace tips for over a year now, but I wanted to give MailChimp a try now this site is built on Squarespace 6. To sign up, I just gave MailChimp an email address, a username, and my password, and I was off and running.

So far the newsletter creation tools, list import and management tools, and overall experience with MailChimp has been outstanding. They have a powerful email tool set for bloggers and small businesses, and their user interface is about the smoothest I've seen in the email marketing space.

For starters, I'll be using MailChimp's free account, which is available to lists up to 2,000 subscribers. After a few months, I'll determine if I want to upgrade to remove the MailChimp badge from my newsletters (or if I want to leave it on to earn MonkeyRewards) and unlock other features such as MailChimp's Delivery Doctor, Inbox Inspector, or Time Warp.

2. Creating a MailChimp Subscription List

Once the account was created and I was logged in, it was time to set up a list of subscribers to the Big Picture Web newsletter. I navigated to Lists, then selected the Create List option in the menu. Since I already had an existing email list, I imported my contacts using an Excel spreadsheet. You'll need at least one active list in MailChimp in order to connect with Squarespace 6.

3. Creating Newsletter Subscription Forms Connected with MailChimp

Next, you'll want to head over to your website where you'll create a form on your Squarespace 6 website that enables people to sign up to receive your newsletters. Take, for example, the subscribe page on Big Picture Web.

Create a subscription page on your website with an embedded form block. Make sure that each field of your form corresponds to a field in your MailChimp subscription list.

Once your form contains all the proper fields, edit your form's settings and go to the Storage tab. Click the MailChimp connection setting to launch the connection wizard.

Connecting Squarespace and MailChimp

The API connection sequence prompts you to log in to your MailChimp account directly from your Squarespace website. Enter your username and password and log in.

Select Your MailChimp Subscription List

The last step is to select your MailChimp newsletter subscription list from the available options in the Squarespace interface. Save your form settings and your connection should now be in place.

From this point on, anyone who fills out the form on the page you've created will now be added to your newsletter subscription list in MailChimp automatically.

4. Link to Your Subscription Page in Squarespace

At this point, you'll want to let people know that your newsletter is available. Find a few strategic places to link to your newsletter signup form on your website, including your blog sidebar, footer or even your header navigation. Change up your creative and calls-to-action to see if there are positive changes in signups from month to month.

Why Create Newsletters if I'm Already Blogging?

Social media can be a cacophony of updates where important information is often quickly lost in the stream. Search engines are a crapshoot and rely on whatever is contextually relevant to the consumer at any given moment. While these channels are important and have their own merits, it can sometimes be hard to sustain a conversation.

Email, on the other hand, provides you with an opportunity to deliver content and information that you deem important it a place where it's almost certain to be seen, the inbox. And unlike other forms of advertising, consumers subscribe to newsletters. If you're doing it right, your audience will permit you to promote your services if your newsletter content provides enough value.

Squarespace's new MailChimp integration made me change my email newsletter provider of choice because they made integrating and maintaining subscribers a breeze. And the email creation and delivery tools they provide haven't failed to deliver yet. So far, I'm really happy I made the move.

What questions or thoughts do you have about email marketing? Do you use Squarespace for your blog and have you tried MailChimp for your email marketing. Do you prefer another service?

Claiming Google authorship on Squarespace

How to Claim Google Authorship of Your Blog on Squarespace

July 16, 2012 in Blogging Strategy, Internet Marketing

People are more likely to trust other people than they are brands or websites, according to Edelman's 2012 Trust Barometer. That's why Google started showing the authors of articles and pages alongside its search results.

This week we show you how to earn more visits to your website by tapping into people's natural tendancy to trust people over brands through using Google authorship markup for the articles in your Squarespace blog.

How Does Google Authorship Work?

The way Google's authorship system works is simple. If Google knows who wrote the article, they'll pull in information from your Google+ profile alongside your articles when they display in the search engine results. It usually looks something like this:

If trust is all about people, then adding your personal information to your articles is a nice strategic move towards using the web to build trust.

Adding Google Authorship to Your Squarespace Blog

The process to claim search engine result authorship is pretty simple. All you need to do is connect youru authored content to your Google+ account. Here's how.

Step 1. Create a Google+ Account

In order to be listed as an author in Google search results, you must be on Google+. Register for a free account or upgrade your current Google account (be sure to circle me so I can circle you back).

Step 2. Fill Out Your Contributor List

Next, you need to completely fill out the contributor list in your Google+ profile. Simply list the names and URLs of the blogs/websites for which you write content.

Step 3. Add Your Author Tag to Your Work

Finally, add your author tag to each of your articles. Your author tag consists of a link to your Google+ profile URL with "?rel=author" added to it. (Note: Squarespace 6 customers see the comments below for instructions for you).

Code: by YOUR NAME

Sample Authorship Link: by Josh Braaten

The easiest way to do this is to take your authorship link and add it to one of your blog's HTML snippets. I added this link to my blog page's HTML Snippet 3 in my blog's footer to automatically tag all my blog posts with authorship:

Once you've added all the code, test it out. You'll know you did it right if you see your authorship details appear in Google's rich snippet testing tool.

Trust in People vs. Businesses

According to Edelman, trust in businesses has fallen from 2011 to 2012, with only 53% of the informed public trusting businesses in 2012 compared to 56% in 2011. Among the general public, trust in businesses is even lower.

At the same time, people are voicing more trust overall in individuals. In 2012, Edelman reports academics (68%), experts(66-68%), and even a "person like yourself" (65%) as more credible than the very businesses they represent. Google's authorship can help you market your the articles you write for your brand or business as a person as opposed to as simply just another page on a website.

Edelman 2012 Trust Barometer credible sources

Who do you trust more? Do you find company statements and communications to be more official and therefore credible, or is the human touch of individuals that pave the way for belief and trust? What do you think of Google's authorship? Tweet me (@jlbraaten), G+ me, or leave a comment below with your thoughts on trust.

How to Build a Great Blog, by Choice

May 21, 2012 in Blogging Strategy, Content Strategy

Success is less about being lucky, but more about what you do to take advantage of the luck you get. This is one of the many insightful findings Jim Collins and his team of researchers discovered about great companies in the book, Great By Choice. Turns out, much of what it takes to build a great company applies equally well to building a great blog. Learn what it takes to build a great blog, by choice.

Elements of Greatness

Collins and his research partners defined success as companies who beat their industry competitors on average by a factor of 10. Their research showed that all of these companies shared three essential behaviors: fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia. Let's apply these concepts to blogging as way of understanding them:

Fanatic Discipline - This habit is all about having a purpose for your blog and being utterly relentless in your pursuit of this goal. If you want to have the best blog on a given topic, you need to be mono-maniacal in your consistent approach to publishing great content in that area. It also means having discipline in setting up goals to measure against your objectives, and then measuring your output against these goals.
Empirical Creativity - Demonstrating this behavior entails not looking just to best practice examples or case studies for what to do with your blog, but moreso to evidence, direct observation and practical experiments in tandem with bold creative initiatives to define what works for you. Test things out constantly, and double down on the stuff that works.
Productive Paranoia - Being great means never getting too comfortable. Productive paranoia is about staying hyper vigiliant and attuned to new tastes and threats in your industry. It also means having safety measures built in. Don't rely on just one source of traffic, and build relationships with your audience to future-proof your readership.

Great By Choice focused on the greatness of companies such as Southwest Airlines, Microsoft (during the Bill Gates era), and Progressive Insurance. And while none of these companies relied on a blogging to achieve greatness, the same might not be true for the companies of the future.

Instituting the habits of fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia into your blogging will help bring your blog from so-so to greatness, and in the process it might just do the same for your business.

Have you read Great By Choice? Either way, what do you think of the elements of greatness as described in this post?

Image credit: Flickr