Radium

Today it’s easier than ever to launch a blog. With so many free and easy to use blogging platforms available you can have a new site up and running in no time at all. Best of all, most of the functionality comes right out of the box. But with that standard functionality comes standard settings. And if you want your blog to stand out in a crowded space, you may want to rethink those defaults.

Here are 5 default blog settings worth changing.

1. Remove extraneous links
By default most blogs automatically link to categories, tags, comments, post dates and authors. Sometimes these links can be helpful to readers but many times they’re unnecessary and can create duplicate content issues for search engines. Every link on your website should add value for the reader. If you have links that don’t add value, remove them. Your readers will appreciate it and search engines will reward you.

Social media makes it possible for small businesses to compete with Fortune 500 companies. In the same way that David took on Goliath, you can compete with your largest competitor…and win. Social media has been hailed as the great leveler, but is it really that simple?

Before social media came along, advertising budgets often limited small business growth. Now, companies can reach thousands of potential customers for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. With social media costing nothing to use, the best offerings would rise to the top and easily be found by consumers.

So has social media leveled the field?
The assumption behind the argument is that social media removes media spend from the equation. And without media spend, the field is leveled.

Developing unique and interesting content is hard work. Let me repeat – Developing unique and interesting content is hard work. Don’t believe me? Try and knock out a couple of blog posts. Better yet, do it in your spare time. In between all of the other work demands you have, try and craft an entertaining piece of content targeted to your audience.

I’m not trying to turn off anyone from launching a blog or spending time crafting great content. Quite the contrary – I believe the value you generate from developing great work is tremendous. But not everyone has time to develop their own content or publish a blog on a regular basis. How can these people get their message out?

Now, before you curse me out and tell me that social media isn’t free – relax, I’m in agreement with you. Investing in social media has a very real cost and it’s definitely not free. But most of the tools to conduct social media are free to use (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.).

Because these tools are free, many companies treat them as such and make no real investment in them. They don’t bother putting together a strategy, mapping out goals or defining metrics and when things get too busy, they simply walk away from them altogether.

So what if more social media sites had a cost assigned to them? What if companies had to pay to create a facebook page or a twitter account? Would this ensure they stuck with it? Would it make the content more relevant to users? Would anything change?

Being a good listener is fundamental for social media success, but listening alone isn’t enough – you need to engage people. If you work for a big company or operate within a large industry, this can mean thousands of conversations a day. So what happens if you miss just one of them?

To answer that question I’ll tell you a short story.

Recently, I noticed my twitterfeed account wasn’t sending blog posts to twitter. I tried to troubleshoot the issue but ended up creating a support ticket on the company’s forum. An employee was quick to resolve the issue (2 days) and I thought I was all set, but now it seemed I had a different problem.

Twitterfeed was working too good. It was double posting every blog post. I went back to the support forum and tried a couple of the common fixes but nothing seemed to work. I was really frustrated but, at the time, I was too busy to look into the issue. So, I simply posted a tweet exclaiming my frustration. (Please disregard the typo.)