Why You Shouldn’t Use MS Word With Blogs
by Melody
Most people use word processing programs such as Word or WordPerfect to create documents. These programs work great for ebooks, print items, attachments, etc. However, they often wreak havoc with blogs.
Blogs, such as WordPress and Blogger, have a style sheet (CSS) which controls the text, among other things. When you write your post or article in Word and then copy and paste it directly into your blog there is often a code conflict or extra coding from Word is left behind. When this happens, you may see a multitude of problems.
A few of the most common are:
Font Style and Size Problems: Font styles and sizes may be different. You may see multiple fonts within a single post or different fonts for different posts. It’s important to use a single type of font throughout the entire blog so that it looks more unified and professional.
Spacing Problems: When paragraphs are not uniformly spaced throughout your blog, it can be difficult for your visitors to read your articles. If they don’t read, you will may lose sales. Often times, paragraph divisions are missing or some have double spaces between sentences where others are single-spaced.
Punctuation Problems: Quotes, apostrophes, and ampersands may appear as strange symbols. Have you seen a post with a diamond and a question mark instead of an apostrophe? The cause is often a code conflict with Word or another word processor.
RSS Feed Problems: When quotes, punctuation, and text don’t appear correctly, your RSS feed may be affected. In some cases, the feed can become invalid and is relatively useless to you.
This problem isn’t limited to only blogs. Many article and press release directories, online forms, web page editors, autoresponder programs, etc have the same type of conflicts. It’s important to eliminate as many conflicts as possible to ensure you maintain a professional online appearance.
So how do you use your favorite word processor to add articles and posts to your blog? Simply write your article in the program of your choice and save it as usual. Then copy and paste the article into Notepad and save as a .txt document. Notepad will strip away the formatting code that Word and other word processors add.
Be sure to read over the article once more after you put it in Notepad to remove any strange symbols left behind. Also, using the ‘Format’ option at the top of Notepad, make sure ‘Wrap Text’ is UNCHECKED. This will allow your paragraphs to naturally wrap to the default settings of the blog or CMS.
When you are ready to add your article to your blog, copy and paste directly from Notepad. Once the text is pasted into your blog, you can add formatting such as bulleted lists, underlining or bolding text, etc. This should be done using the text editor included with the blogging or content management system you are using. Yes, this does add an extra step to the process but in the end, you’ll have a much more professional looking blog.
Note: I’ve worked with some blogs that have a paste from word plugin or option available. With some of them, the tool worked great but with others, there were still issues. This is why I didn’t recommend using it.
So, You Want To Start a Blog
by Melody
Internet marketers often use blogs as a way to promote their products or services. Blogs have become quite popular because the constantly updated content allows the search engines to index them quickly and easily. If you’re thinking about starting a blog, there are a few things to consider.
Blogs, or web logs, started out as online journals where people posted thoughts, news, and articles for keeping up with family and friends. It was also used with the intent of drawing traffic to their web site. Nowadays, people may use a blog as their main website, forgoing the need to learn extensive website building software.
If you are blogging for your business, and especially if you use it as your main website, you will want to have your own domain name and hosting. Not only does it look more professional, it also shows that you’re serious about your business. When you’re serious about your business, it shows. Customers feel safer and tend to purchase more from businesses they feel are credible.
There are several blogging options available today. The two most popular ones are Blogger.com and WordPress.com. Both of these offer a free hosting service or you can host your blog on your own site. The main difference between them is the look of your domain name - either yourbusinessname.blogspot.com, with a free service, or yourbusinessname.com using it as your main site, or yourbusinessname.com/blog using the blog separately.
You can get your blog up and running quickly, eliminating the need for all unique content with each post, by quoting reference material found on other blogs and web sites relating to your topic. This doesn’t give you free reign to copy other people’s work. However, if you find things related to your topic interesting, it’s likely your readers will as well.
It’s best to write about topics that you find interesting. When you write on topics you dislike, you may become frustrated and lose interest altogether which can cause the quality of your articles to suffer. This will become apparent to your readers very quickly.
Draw attention to your blog by linking to and posting appropriate comments on other people’s blogs. Reciprocal posting is common for blog writers, which will lead to an increase in traffic to your blog. Be aware that you post to other blogs that have a similar targeted market.
When creating your blog, make sure you have a comment form and your email address readily available so your visitors can send feedback. At first, you may not get much feedback, which can be frustrating. The more interactive content you add and the more you leave comments on other people’s blogs, the more comments you will receive.
Having a blog can help you increase your web site traffic, which should result in increased profits. The best part is that blogs are quick and easy to get started. If you decide later on that you don’t have time or it’s not drawing in enough profits, you can always delete it with no hassle and very little money is lost.