Tag Archives: blogs
Taking Your Site Web 2.0 Series – Part 1: Why I Made the Shift
Why I Made the Shift
Although I’d spent the majority of my professional life in media and technology, I only started to blog and really use social media in the last two years. Having a technical background, I used to take great pride in coming up with elaborate uses of Flash… you know, showing off. It was labor intensive stuff though and most of all not very easy to update. In fact, the last static version of my site had laid dormant for four years. Needless to say, it had very little traffic and I was paying a monthly web hosting fee to boot. Even if I did update it with a bunch of new stuff or go through an entire redesign, a few weeks or months later I’d still have the same problem.
Now there are great Content Management Systems out there like Drupal that make web updates easier but there is still a learning curve when it comes to creating a compelling site that is also easy to change. However, most of us are individuals, small businesses and entrepreneurs with limited resources. We don’t have the time or the desire to learn a new CMS. We realize that our web site, Facebook page, Twitter accounts etc, are there for us to tell our stories and connect with like minded others. The more time we can spend telling those stories as opposed to figuring out technical issues the better.
And that brings us back to why I made the move to a blog instead of a static site. Once somebody has checked out your ultra cool static web site, why would they want to come back? Other than email, can they communicate or interact with you there? Realistically, how often can you update your static site and if you pay someone else to do it, how much will that cost? Do you pay for monthly web hosting? These are all questions I asked myself.
Perhaps the greatest thing about making the transition is that I have increased my web traffic exponentially while cutting the yearly cost of hosting to less than $10. I use Posterous, which allows me to simply send an email message from my phone or laptop and post it directly to my blog. I can include video, audio etc. I can also make posts from the web which allows me to use my technical knowledge to tweak and customize them. If I run across content that I like, I can reference it immediately, add my own commentaries and send it out to my Facebook and Twitter feeds all on the fly.
Now, I have the digital infrastructure to tell my story. In fact, I have created several group blogs such as AdYouth and The Media Diversity Blog all by leveraging free social media tools. So, in the coming days and weeks, I’ll fill you in all the details about how to leverage social media tools like blogs, video, podcasts, Twitter and Facebook to tell your story.