Many people are wondering nowadays how can they create a successful blog and how to maintain its success for long time. From corporate blogs to personal blogs, this article will highlight the most important aspects of blogging.
1. The biggest mistake someone can do when creating a blog is by choosing a niche that he/she has no clue about. The second biggest mistake is not choosing a niche at all and just writing about general subjects that burst into your mind. Niche-targeted blogs are the most read ones, that is a fact.

2. The next question is how often the content should be updated. This only depends on what kind of blog it is, what kind of information you will deliver and a few other aspects. For example, you could write only twice a week and have a tremendous amount of readers or you will have to write 1-2 posts daily, depending on where your content is syndicated, where does your traffic come from etc. In the end, more is always better.

3. Stay up-to-date with any news, rumours and gossip related to your niche. You will always find out new things to write about.

4. Always keep it simple when it comes to social bookmarking or any other sharing method, whether it is Twitter or Facebook. There are plenty of plugins to help you achieve this, just upload-install and you are ready to be syndicated.

5. Always communicate with your readers; from replying to comments to adding different polls or any other interaction methods, make your visitors feel welcomed and start building online relationships.

Once you have accomplished the major tasks for a new website, from internal SEO to satisfying content, the best way of getting loyal readers and even some links is to get as social as possible. Syndicating your content through multiple channels gives you a great a chance of new links and new readers through sharing and new traffic sources. It is a terrific way of building traffic, links and referrals.

First things first, the “subscribe to RSS” button should be available on each and every page. But, of course, to get new loyal readers you should create some awesome content that will make the readers say “hey, they really know what they are talking about, I should definitely subscribe for future content”.

Second, as we said in a previous article, social bookmarking and networking should be used at its maximum capacity. There are dozens of social media websites but not all are popular. Make sure each article has a “share” button so that those that find your content great can easily share it on different channels like Delicious, Stumbleupon, Digg and Reddit, these being the most popular social bookmarking sites nowadays. However, a Facebook account is a must. Keep it updated, get likers and interact with your readers.

Video channels are amazing these days, and we are not talking only about YouTube. Create accounts on more popular video sharing sites, start “building” great videos and promote your website through those. Also, not to forget about photo sharing websites like Flickr, those can be another great way of getting social in the online environment.

Last, but not least of all, Twitter ! How did we allow Twitter to be listed last ? Well, Twitter can be amazing and it’s not so difficult to get social and update it frequently. Sign-up and start following people in your niche or related to your niche. They will end up following your tweets as well so keep those flowing on your Twitter page. Another great method is to add feeds from Twitter posts to your website/blog.

As you probably know by now we are very active on our Facebook page as well as on Twitter page so if you are not following us do it now and stay in touch with best UK web design firm.

As we wrote a few days ago, Bing and Facebook have partnered for what some are saying to be a new search results era: the integration of social networking from Facebook to organic search results from Bing. It was just a matter of time for Google to strike back and display their search results details from a social sharing “environment”.

Basically, Google seems to test the waters by adding a “Shared by number+” next to number of related articles, in their news section. This move from Google will show how popular a story is on Twitter or other social sites and it seems to perfectly respond to users’ demands, in simple words: if a story is so popular it really is worth clicking and reading it.

For now, the results come only from Twitter but it can become very helpful while trying to see which Twitter users are quoting or making comments on a particular link in their tweets. When clicking on the “shared by” link the user is taken to a window displaying real-time sharing activity from Google Updates.

This experiment showcases a great feature that every Google News’ user might use and we look forward to seeing how this will evolve in time. Latest signs from social networking and search engines world reveal that sharing becomes a very important part of the search engines results, the web designers from WebCreationUK are keeping an eye on this particular subject as it might be a new step forward for the online environment.

It was just a matter of time before the incredible amount of data from Facebook was to play a major role in search results and it seems that Bing figured this out first. Bing is now showing Facebook-powered results for people search, while the “Like” button will play a great role in search results, for now Bing is one step ahead of Google.

Over several years, with Facebook becoming more and more popular among people and social media playing an important aspect for the online environment, numerous voices were considering it a new Google killer. The impact would have been major, “specialists” say. With their “Like” button, it would have been an easier task for Facebook search engines to rank a website according to how popular it is instead of ranking it according to how many links point to it.

But in the end, it seems that another major player is taking advantage of the “like” button, and this is Bing with the “Liked by your friends” new feature. First and foremost, we must mention that any user that would like to benefit from this feature must connect the Facebook account with Bing. Basically, when someone that has their Facebook account connected with Bing, anytime they are doing a search like “laptop cases” among the organic search results there will be results showing what friends like, only related to this search query. We have tried to do some searches for different terms, however not many revealed Facebook powered “Like” results, so maybe our friends did not “Like” any product related to our search or Bing is showing only highly targeted results when it comes to results triggered by Facebook.

It’s an almost obvious fact that this is just the beginning and social will interfere more and more in the search results, while let’s be frank, people’s opinion matters most, more than the amount a link of a website gets, right? By getting results that in a way your friends recommended by liking, this is a fantastic change in the search experience.

However, by searching for a person’s name on Bing one can find Facebook powered results, and with over 500 million folks registered this is like a great step forward in seeking people you might know.

Will this affect SEO? This is a natural question that comes to mind, whatever business we might run. The simple answer, for now, is no. There will be no top 10 re-rank, no drops in ranking, no sudden movements. All the powered by Facebook results will not influence in any way the organic results.

The web designers from WebCreationUK like this new feature and this is a fantastic sign that social is getting deeper and deeper into search results, so from now on we should all be more cautious on what products/services etc we “Like”, not to mess with our friends from Facebook results. We definitely believe social will get involved more in more in the search results, so keep an eye on our website design blog for more news related to this.

Employees and social media use is a hot topic for many companies. While some companies have banned staff from using social media in work time, others have wholeheartedly embraced it. To help you to make up your mind about social media, here are some top tips from a couple of experts.

The first top 10 list for employers comes from Megan C. Winter of law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP:

1.  Get familiar with Facebook, LinkedIn or other sites that are popular with your employees.
2. Update current company policies.
3. Consider whether your company environment needs a specific social media policy.
4. Prohibit use of the employee’s company e-mail address.
5. Discourage your managers from “friending” their subordinate employees.
6. Immediately get a copy of any post that is the subject of a complaint.
7. Only use social media for employment screening in a consistent way.
8. Warn managers to follow standard policies for recommendations on LinkedIn or other professional sites.
9. Be aware of possible protected, concerted activity.
10. Above all, use common sense.

Meanwhile, on-line social media giant Mashable gives their social media policies:
1. Introduce the purpose of social media
2. Be responsible for what you write
3. Be authentic
4. Consider your audience
5. Exercise good judgment
6. Understand the concept of community
7. Respect copyrights and fair use
8. Remember to protect confidential & proprietary info
9. Bring value
10. Productivity matters.

WebCreationUK can assist you in not only website design but social media. Take a look at our social media package and come speak to us for more information, you can also find us on Twitter and Facebook!

The social network platform MySpace is about to launch a new-look home page. The new user homepage is set to offer a more prominent display of the activity stream and simplify the content discovery experience. It’s rather like Facebook, and it’s likely that the news feed success of Facebook has prompted the redesign for MySpace.

This is the first step in a series of planned changes to the MySpace design. From August 19th, the MySpace activity stream will span the first two columns, featuring shared content and status updates from friends across your network.

There are other sections on the sides of the page for features such as events, games and movies. A new “My Stuff” feature gives quick access to photos, videos and music right from the homepage.

There’s also a new alerts system that collects similar alerts and re-positions them in a more visible location so that users can browse and interact with their alerts.

The new MySpace experience is being described as a Digg-meets-Facebook type news feed. Tell us what you think when it goes live.

WebCreationUK have a social media package available, speak to us for more or any of your other web design needs.