How To Blogging Video Tutorials

Posted by Yaacov in Blogging for landscapers, Web Hosting, websites on December 4th, 2009

I’m about to publish a series of videos covering everything about blogging starting with installing the software on a webhost to tweaking themes. Here’s a tentative table of contents.

  1. Installing Wordpress
    1. Creating a database, username and password
    2. Downloading the latest version of wordpress and uploading the files to your webhost
    3. Installing the software
  2. First tasks
    1. Changing the admin password from the autogenerated password
    2. Setting the name you want displayed on your posts instead of “admin”
    3. Setting the date and time to your zone
    4. Changing permalinks from landscapestartup.com/?p=1 to landscapestartup.com/about
    5. Deleting the “Hello World” post
    6. Deleting default blogroll
  3. Pages
    1. Standard pages that every landscaping blog should have
    2. Answer questionnaire  to make the best copywriting possible for each page
  4. Setting up the posts
    1. Add general categories for organizing blog posts
    2. Talk about tags
    3. Demonstrate uploading and inserting images, video and audio to a blog post
    4. Formatting blog posts. What do all these buttons do?
  5. Adding new themes
    1. Where to get themes
    2. Free vs Premium
    3. Tweaking a theme
  6. Adding plugins
    1. What is a plugin?
    2. Essential plugins
    3. Can you really have too many plugins?
  7. Search Engine Optimization
  8. Lead Generation
    1. Landing pages
    2. Contact forms
    3. Email subscriptions
    4. Phone calls
  9. Advertising online
    1. Search engine marketing
    2. Facebook
    3. Local blogs and websites
    4. Craigslist
    5. Forums

Please leave a comment with any suggestions or topics you’d like to see. Videos will start uploading on Monday.

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Are you targeting your local market?

Posted by Yaacov in Blogging for landscapers on August 1st, 2009

Here’s a great example of creating content for your local market. I’ve had several people ask me about late blighto in Teaneck, NJ. At Garden Observer I reported the out break and as you can see below that report is now easily found by people searching for information.

late-blight-teaneck

I’d like to invite you to test out gardenobserver.com as a place to publish news about what’s going on landscapingwise in your area. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.

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Is a Question and Answer Section Appropriate on Your Website?

Posted by Yaacov in Advertising, Blogging for landscapers on July 20th, 2009

Over at Garden Observer I’ve put together a section where users can ask any gardening or landscaping question to be answered by an expert or other knowledgeable users.

When potential landscaping customers come to your site, they aren’t always dying to hire you and only you. Driving around town they see dozens of landscapers. Online there are even more itching to get their business.

Imaging if they came to your site, found you’ve offered tons and tons of help to people needing advice and found that you are truly an expert who loves what he’s doing. Who’s going to get the landscaping job once it gets bid out?

So start offering great advice on your site. Someone else already is.

P.S. Do you want a free business account on gardenobserver.com? I’m giving them out for a limited time.

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