Do a little research and get credible websites to link to yours.

This is vital, because Google in part determines the credibility of your website based on who is linking to you. There are a variety of strategies out there are far as “earning” links, but in my opinion the best way is for your team members to contribute guest articles or posts on relevant industry blogs.

Action Items:

1) Who is writing important stuff about your industry? Ask yourself what you read to stay on top of the latest trends. Many of these outlets offer opportunities to contribute guest posts. In other cases, you could earn a link by providing a relevant quote for a story to a news outlet.

2) Get a competitive analysis and find out which credible sites are linking to your competitors. In many cases, these websites are looking for additional companies or experts in your industry. Blueberry Ln. happens to provide these in the form of a comprehensive report.

Brainstorm ideas and create a blog.

What have you learned on your way to becoming an expert in your field? What is a shortcut that is going to save a potential client from hardship or annoyance? I call these helpful tips “little goods.” Providing tips or insights via your blog shows that you care, and that you value the time of your reader.

Creating a blog is a good 1-2 punch with getting credible websites to link to you, too. In my experience, someone is 100x more likely to link to an interesting blog post than your newest product offering. The trick is to marry the two and write in a way that garners respect but also keeps things light and fun.

Action Items:

1) Come up with a list of 5 “little goods” and start outlining and writing.

2) If you don’t already have a blog, Blueberry Ln. is here to help. We create new blogs for clients every month and can help guide you through getting started.

Don’t just create a social media profile, plan and use it creatively and professionally.

Social media is unfortunately a buzzword that turns me off. Whenever I hear Twitter this, Facebook that, I think “here we go again…I’m going to get an earful about how important it is to have a __________ account.” Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not important to have an account, it’s important to use it to engage others.

Similar to researching and thinking about your expertise as a business owner in the above action items, your “little goods” can translate well to social media, too. There are concrete, valuable things about posting and tweeting your companies “wins” or links to your website, but social media is a 2-way conversation.

Action Items:

1) Seek out conversations involving questions about your industry. For example, if you’re an insurance agent, what is the difference between term life insurance and whole life insurance? If you’ve already created a blog post that answers this question and then notice someone on Facebook is asking, this creates a perfect opportunity to not only direct them to your website/blog, but also to follow up and ask if they had any other questions that you can answer.

2) Invite questions — hold an informal Q&A on Facebook or Twitter. You can help answer some good questions and simultaneously build the trust and credibility as an expert who is willing to listen and respond.

I hope this is helpful to you! Please feel free to contact us with any questions or to inquire about hiring us to help with your SEO or website needs. We’re here to help.

The post Three SEO Tips for Small Business Owners appeared first on Blueberry Ln..

I’ve mentioned having an “Eureka!” moment on this blog before, and I can’t think of a better term to describe what it feels like to successfully integrate Mailchimp with a website contact form. Blueberry Ln. is now proud to offer the ability to automatically add a person to the mailing list of your choice when someone contacts your company, requests information, or otherwise communicates via a web form. This is especially easy if your website is built with WordPress.

Mailchimp is great and inexpensive for small to medium-sized businesses. We’ve been recommending it to all of our clients that aren’t already set up with another mailing list system or software. We use it for our mailing list, too.

So that’s that. If you’d like to learn more or hire us to help accomplish this for your business, please get in touch!

Have an excellent and safe holiday weekend!

The post Hire Us To Integrate Your WordPress Contact Form with Mailchimp appeared first on Blueberry Ln..

A few years ago, I helped operate a popular Cubs podcast called Cubscast. If you’re a Cubs fan and an early adopter of technology, maybe you heard of it. More than likely, though, this is news to you. We were on the cutting edge of podcasting, having started in 2005, and all told over 650 episodes of the show were recorded/produced over a stretch that lasted 6 baseball seasons. At its peak in 2010, we had over 25K listeners on a monthly basis. It was a nice run, but I’m not bringing it up to toot my own horn. Podcasting was and is part of something termed (for lack of a better term) “new media,” and we at Blueberry Ln. are blown away by how far a simple idea can get down the tracks.

Cubscast, for example, began when a few Cub fan friends that lived in various places around the country decided to hop online 3 times a week and commiserate. We never thought anyone would actually listen. One of my friends had the grand idea of trying to get actor and well-known Cubs fan Joe Mantegna to appear on the show, and he actually did. Due to this it seemed like we had an audience from about Day 1, Hour 1. A generous article in the Chicago Tribune didn’t hurt, either.

Cubs fans around the country were in serious need of a community like ours, as well as regular and on-demand updates on the team without the false dramatics of sports talk radio. Over the next few years, we enjoyed meeting many of our favorite Cubs players, and were invited to a variety of press and team functions. It was a thrill to be a part of. Many of the “walls” I had assumed existed, didn’t. Anyone could have done what we did with Cubscast. It took some initiative and hard work like anything does, but at the core we were just a few Cubs fans having a good time and figuring it out as we went along.

The model that is proven by Cubscast, and by a thousand other cases, is one where passionate people stumble upon a need that they’re specially-equipped to meet.

Therein lies the question.

What are you passionate about? What’s something you really enjoy doing? Consider how you can share your passion with others. Take it from a guy that never expected to meet Ernie Banks or Fergie Jenkins, if you can harness that passion and create something, you’ll enjoy it whether anyone pays attention or not.

The post With a Simple Idea, Passion and New Media, “Walls” Don’t Exist appeared first on Blueberry Ln..

Do you have a passion for website production and experience managing web designers and/or developers? If so, please read on.

Blueberry Ln. Web & New Media is expanding rapidly (we hired several web developers in the Fall) and now we’re looking for some additional help organizing all the projects and relationships. I’m proud of our work in the last year, and the transition of the business from a one-man shop to a boutique web agency. If you or someone you know is ready to contribute to the success of a growing company, we’re all ears.

This is a freelance, work-from-home opportunity that is perfect for an organized person that has a knack for technology and the web.

For more details and information on how to apply, please view the job posting on LinkedIn or on Craigslist.

Please pass this on if someone comes to mind that would be a nice fit!

The post We’re Hiring a Web Project Manager appeared first on Blueberry Ln..

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that baffle those of us working with WordPress. My goal on a recent project was to grab snippets of the latest blog entries and display the text without images. That’s easy enough using the default WordPress
< ?php the_excerpt(); ?> feature, which strips out any tags including images.

Unfortunately, the_excerpt needs a little love if you want to add a nice “Read more…” link or change the number of characters displayed for each post. By default the number of characters is 55. You can search on this until you’re blue in the face because developers have hacked up various solutions to this over the years, but many of them no longer work in WordPress 3+.

No worries, though. All you need to do is add a few filters to your theme’s functions.php file, customize to your liking, and call it a day.

Change the Excerpt Length

function new_excerpt_length($length) {
	return 20;
}
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'new_excerpt_length');

20 is the number of characters in the above example, so change to whatever you’d like.

Change or Remove the Default [...] Text

function new_excerpt_more($more) {
	return '[.....]';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more');

If you’d like to get rid of the [...] completely, just remove the brackets and everything in between the ” marks above. You can also customize this filter to insert a nice “Read more” link at the end of your excerpt.

Add a Read More Link to the Excerpt

function new_excerpt_more($more) {
       global $post;
	return '... <a href="'. get_permalink($post->ID) . '">Read the Rest...</a>';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more');

Customize away!

The post WordPress Tip: How to Easily Customize Excerpt Output appeared first on Blueberry Ln..

For the longest time I’ve preached the following to my clients:

“Never let your blog become stale! Updates are so important! The last thing you want to see when you visit a blog is that it’s years out-of-date.”

As of today, it’s been over a year since I posted here. So to those good people that I preached the above to, I owe you an apology. I still hold true to the belief that blogs exist to be used, and used frequently and well. Unfortunately, this one has fallen out of date under my watch. That’s something I’m aiming to fix this Fall as Blueberry Ln. undergoes some long-needed updates and changes.

First and foremost, I’m happy to report that I’m in the process of bringing on board additional developers to help with the workload. The last year has been an incredible time of growth for the company, in both the number of projects and clients, and also in the lessons I’ve learned as a business owner. I’ve become a huge Shark Tank fan as well, and actually had an opportunity to meet the Sharks last Friday, which was a thrilling experience. More on that to come soon.

If you’re visiting Blueberry Ln. for the first time, welcome. If you’re about to apply to work with us, go ahead and mention that you read this post in your application. I’ll be happy that you know a little bit about the last year of my life, and I’m eager to learn more about you as well.

Big thanks to all our clients (a.k.a. awesome people) that inspire me on a daily basis in addition to keeping the lights on. Can’t wait for the next chapter! Stay tuned, it’s going to be exciting.

Andrew

The post I Broke the Cardinal Rule of Blogging appeared first on Blueberry Ln..

Staring at website code day in and day out can do some wacky things to a person. Like any line of work that is repetitive at times, an outlet is necessary. Many web developers turn to video games or music. A select few (myself included) follow a sports team or two. A very select few (myself not included) opt for exceptionally tight pants. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that taking a short break from coding has been extremely valuable to me. An approaching deadline and plenty of caffeine also have proven their worth.

It’s amazing what great things have come from determination and a little sleep deprivation. For me it’s always the smallest thing that will keep me up until it’s fixed. A page that is a single pixel off in Internet Explorer 6, a jQuery animation that isn’t as smooth as it should be, or any other garden variety of things most annoying to developers. Did I mention Internet Explorer 6? (Cough) Is this mic even on?

The more annoying or outlandish the glitch, the better it feels when the perfect bit of code is written. Or maybe not just written, but tested and verified to actually be working. That is my ah-hah moment, when the pixels align and Firefox and Internet Explorer agree on my code. It’s the best feeling in the world to get those issues solved, to have conquered the summit, so to speak. Everything after is like running down the side of the mountain. Still have to be cautious and watch the footing, but the momentum is there.

All in a day’s (or night’s) work.

The post On “AH-HAH” Moments appeared first on Blueberry Ln..

For just about everything I can think of in this life, someone has gone through it before me. In a few instances, though, the opposite is true. As a web developer over the years I’ve been a sponge, soaking up as much knowledge and experience as I could. Despite taking awhile to get this blog started, I hold out some hope that someone will be thankful they’re reading an entry, and that perhaps my experience will help them out. Maybe a year from now, or maybe today. Who knows.

More than what I decide to write about, the chance of the above paragraph becoming a reality almost entirely depends on you, the reader. If I’m not answering a question you’re asking or discussing something you’re interested in, do yourself a favor and close this browser window and read your local paper’s website for the next few minutes instead. Wait, don’t, that’s just an illustration. Let’s just assume I’m relevant. Hey, you found me, so that’s your judgment call.

In my conversations with clients and potential clients, one of the very first things I do is try to gauge if I need to be the lead talker or the lead listener. 95% of the time I choose “listener” because the more I know about a client’s situation the smarter my answers become. Whether or not it’s the polite thing to do depends on the situation. Case in point…

A few years ago a potential client found me and we started the client/provider courtship thing — they debriefed on the project details, I put together an estimate and sent it over, and then we went back and forth back and forth back and forth back and forth. All told it was probably 10 calls and another 7-8 emails. Finally they let me know I was too expensive and I wished them the best of luck with their project. Cue the sad music.

However, this is a situation that was salvaged because of open communication and timely advice. When everybody is on a tight budget, including me, it’s one of the first and last things to come up. Ultimately this client budgeted for an inexpensive site, and I wanted to keep my pricing in line with similar projects I’d completed. During our back and forth time, though, I was able to answer a variety of questions about the reasoning for my costs. I broke down everything line by line and took some time to explain things in a friendly way. Also, the potential client answered plenty of questions about the reasoning for their budget, which was entirely out of their control. A potentially contentious series of conversations stayed professional (happy music now).

The end result today is that while I don’t have a new client (yet), I’m aware of very specific challenges this client is facing, and they know I’m ready and willing to help. For a developer, that’s just about as good as it gets. Also, we just connected on LinkedIn. Hmm…maybe they’re asking for a second date?

The post The Timing of Good Advice appeared first on Blueberry Ln..