Phew! demo site

The benefits of blogging

phew — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:42:17 +0000

Blogging can be really invaluable for small businesses. It's one of the best ways there is to build a relationship with your customers and potential customers. And it's free, which is always handy!

Blogging lets your customers get to know you. If we're not careful, the web can feel really impersonal, so blogging is wonderful because it lets people see there's a real person behind your business. It also gives you a chance to let your visitors know more about what you do, and to see your passion for it.

Every Phew! website comes with a blog. But if you don't want to blog, or if you're not quite ready to blog just now, that's no problem – we can set up your site without it. It's easy to turn it on later if you want.

The blog sidebar

phew — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:41:00 +0000

The blog sidebar is different from the sidebar that appears on your pages. That allows you to use the two for different things – there are lots of sidebar options that are really useful on blog pages. For example, you can show:

Recent posts
Recent comments
Blog categories
Blog tags
Archives of old posts

But of course you can also show any of the other options which I talked about on the sidebar page. People often post small ads in their blog sidebars – either for their own products and services, or for products they're affiliated with.

Social media sites such as Twitter are one of the best ways for small businesses to build relationships with their potential customers. So I've created a 'Connections' widget especially for the Phew! website. It shows links to your accounts on places like Twitter and Facebook, with some cute little icons. You can see it at the top right.

You can use as many or as few of those 'Connections' as you like, so if you don't have, say, a Linked In account, then you don't need to show that option. The RSS option is easy, though – your blog has its own RSS feed automatically.

Spreading the word – helping people share your posts

phew — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:08:18 +0000

The little button that you can see at the bottom of this post makes it easy for people who like your post to share it with their friends. By clicking that button they can post it on Facebook, or Twitter, or add it to a bookmarking site, such as StumbleUpon.

Of couse, if for any reason you don't like it, it can be turned off. Everything's optional!

Comments and CommentLuv

phew — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:10:19 +0000

Part of what makes blogging such a great way to build relationships is that your readers can leave comments on your blog. If you click on the title of this post it'll take you through to the individual page for this blog post, and you'll see there are some comments at the bottom.

It's easy to manage comments with WordPress. If you want, it'll send you an email whenever anyone leaves a comment, so you can respond quickly. You can choose whether you want to allow anyone to post, or whether you'd rather check comments before you approve them. It comes with built-in protection against spam comments, too.

And I set up your Phew! website with a lovely plugin called CommentLuv, which shows links to your commenters' own latest blog post. It's a great way to encourage discussion and build a community. (Of couse, if for any reason you don't like it, it can be turned off. Everything's optional!)