No worries. Follow these simple steps to publish a new Blog post:

Below the following steps are some screenshots to help guide you along the steps to submitting an article… If you are already familiar with WordPress you probably won’t need this guide…

1. Click on ‘Posts’ (from the left side menu)
2. Click ‘Add New’ (also left side menu). You should now see a page titled “Add New Post”
3. The first box is for the Title of your article.
4. The second box is for the article content. You can either paste your article into this box, or type your article (if it’s not already written). If you are pasting from Microsoft Word choose the “Paste from Word” option . You’ll find that by clicking the ‘Show/Hide Kitchen Sink’ button . There are also options for styling your content.
5. To add an image click the ‘add an image’ icon next to “Upload/Insert”. (If this is your first article submission you won’t yet have the ability to add an image.) You can add an image from your computer or from another URL (another website). It is recommended that you choose the ‘From Computer’ option. If your image comes from somewhere else online, find the image and save it to your computer first. If you are adding an image from your computer click ‘Select Files’ on the ‘From Computer’ tab. A box should come up that allows you to browse your computer to find the image you want to upload. Once you have find the right image, select it and click ‘open’. The image should now be uploaded and you’ll be presented with some options regarding how you want the image displayed within your article (size, aligned to the left, right or center, etc). Click ‘Insert into Post’. You should now see the image within your article. If you want to adjust something click on the image and you’ll see one icon that allows you to adjust the options and another icon to delete the image. After editing image options click ‘update’ to apply the changes.
6. Once you are done with the article content, and any images, add an excerpt into the box labeled ‘Excerpt’. The excerpt is typically one sentence, or paragraph, long and it is the article excerpt or ‘teaser’ that will be displayed on your Blog page along with the article title. (If your blog is designed to show excerpts on the Blog page, rather than the entire article ).
7. You typically won’t need to do anything with the other boxes: trackbacks, custom fields, Discussion, etc.
8. Add “tags” to your article in the ‘Post Tags’ area. Tags are keywords or topics related to your article. If your article is about ‘freedom’ and ‘economics’ using those as tags will help people find your article among other articles of similar topics.
9. Categories: Choose an existing category or add a new category. Simple. The difference between a category and a tag is typically that your category is the main topic of the article, whereas tags are sub-topics and other keywords related to the article subject.
10. Now you’re ready to publish your article. Click ‘Publish’.

The post WordPress: How To Write a Blog Post appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

Google loves WordPress. I love Google and I love WordPress (it’s very search engine friendly). It makes Search Engine Optimization easy!

If you can operate Microsoft Word, you can probably use WordPress.

It lowers the bar for what it takes to maintain websites. Although WordPress began as a blogging platform, it’s now so much more.

No software needed. Have a laptop and wireless connection? Go to the nearest wi-fi hotspot if you want and blog about your cats or your business. (You can even easily blog from your iPhone or Android phone with WordPress’ mobile app!

WordPress Kills Spam. That’s right, you won’t have to worry about a flood of spam comments (Just enable the built-in Akismet plugin).

Not just a blog. WordPress has a feature called “pages” which allows you to easily create pages on your website. For example, you could add an “about me” page with your biography. You can even create an entire web site using pages in WordPress, with a custom home page and your blog as one of the sub-pages.

Widgets for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more. You can add “widgets” to your sidebar and rearrange them without touching any HTML code or messing up your blog. Just drag and drop the sidebar widgets around, and instantly you can have fun stuff in your sidebar.

Customizable. You can make WordPress do just about anything by simply finding the right plugin.

If you ever get tired of how your website looks, simply create, or find, a different WordPress Theme.

Right about now you might be asking yourself “What do I need a Web Designer for if WordPress is so easy and will do all of this for me?” Your Web Designer will be there to setup WordPress and give it a look customized to your brand. Your Web Designer can also setup and customize features and plugins for you to ensure that your site is all ready to go, ready for you to take over, and ready for business!

Choosing a WordPress-based website leaves you in control. It’s also a future-proof solution considering that WordPress is steadily growing as the most popular website platform.

The post Why I love WordPress appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

Though podcasters’ web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

Now that we’ve covered what a Podcast is… Is a Podcast right for you?
In this age of instant communications you can’t afford to only make direct person-to-person contact with your prospects, customers or employees once a quarter. You need a podcast to get your message, in your own voice, in front of these key audiences on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Podcasting is the easiest and most powerful way to make the connections you need now. Podcasting is a leading edge, cost effective, personalized way of delivering your company’s message.

Podcasting is especially useful for those businesses and individuals that are involved in some type of education, whether that be financial advice, branding, marketing, or any other type of business that includes some kind of training or education as part of the service they offer.

If you  offer seminars or speak at  conference and other events it would be a good idea to create a podcast of that speech so that others may enjoy it later. If your business involves any type of education a podcast is a good way to reach a broader audience and this way you won’t be limited to only getting your message out to a live audience.

Not all podcasts are free.  Some business might consider putting out a series of valuable educational podcasts at a cost.

Podcasting is not for everyone.

Dave Taylor, of Intuitive.com, explained in his article, Why podcasts won’t help promote your business, the downside of podcasting:

“…podcasting is just a fad and will shortly vanish from the proverbial radar screen, particularly for savvy businesses and entrepreneurs seeking smart and effective methods of promoting their business or service.

“Allow me to explain…

“But first, quickly, how many of you are reading this because you’ve subscribed to the RSS feed on the weblog? Ah, lots of raised hands. I thought so.

“Those of you that aren’t and are reading this on a standalone Web page, how many of you came across it because of a link from another site or as a search engine result, either from someone like feedburner or technorati or a more traditional search engine like Google or MSN? More hands up, eh? Yeah, I kinda thought so.

“Aggregation, automatic analysis of content and findability are all key concepts that are driving the evolution of the World Wide Web and the Internet itself. Search engine optimization is of interest purely because more findable material is more frequently seen than hidden content.

“Into this growing, surprisingly efficient and effective hurricane of textual information, a veritable tsunami of data that never stops building, surfboard at hand or not, comes new communications media, media that do not enjoy these same efficiencies of consumption. Namely, podcasts.

“And podcasts really just don’t work.

“Until we have high quality automated audio parsing and transcription systems to instantly index new audio content, we’re stuck with the highly inefficient mechanism of actually listening to the material to determine if it’s of value or not.

“That’s the efficiency side of my problems with podcasting. The other side is whether it’s engaging or not.

“In a word, I think that podcasts are boring and are just not useful additions to my data library. I can’t excerpt them, I can’t pull pithy stats out of a transcript, I can’t forward it along to colleagues or clients, and I can’t even store them for later relistening (one 30 minute podcast takes as much disk space as thousands of blog articles).

“But weblogs, well, weblogs are a natural, just made for effective business communication, whether you’re one of a three person firm, solo, or a member of a Fortune 50 corporation. And that’s why I’m taking the first day of the Blog Business Summit to share with everyone exactly how to get the very most out of blogging for their own corporate needs, from competitive intelligence to customer communications. And, no, we won’t be podcasting it.”

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