Everything Typepad

Answer the QotD for a Chance to Win Three Months of TypePad & a Blog Tune-Up

Last month we annouced a new feature, Question of the Day on TypePad, designed to inspire posts on the rare occasion (insert wink emoticon here) when you're suffering from a case of blogger’s block. Last week we introduced the QotD feature into the new TypePad, and to celebrate its arrival, we're hosting a friendly competition amongst TypePad bloggers.

For the next five weeks, whenever you answer the QotD, you’ll be automatically entered into our QotD contest. Each week, we’ll pick our favorite QotD answer and that blogger will win three months of free TypePad Pro. In addition, we’ll also be showing the love by linking to our favorite answer on our @sixapart Twitter stream.

At the end of the five weeks, we will carefully read through every single QotD answer and the one that makes us laugh, cry, smile, or nod in agreement the hardest, will win the grand prize: A Blog Tune-Up from TypePad Services.

Entering is easy. All you have to do is answer a QotD in your TypePad blog. The more QotDs you answer, the more chances you have to win. It's as simple as that, but if you want all the details, you can read the official contest rules here.

Answering the QotD might spark an idea for a question you'd like to see answered by other TypePad bloggers. If that's the case, just email your question to [email protected]. If your submission is chosen, we will publish your question, along with a “submitted by” message and a link to your blog, so not only is it a great way to connect with bloggers, it’s also a chance to get more readers to your blog.

In the meantime, we invite you to answer today’s QotD for a chance to win three months of Free TypePad and a Blog Tune-Up. Good luck!

Building your small business brand: free webinar

One of the things small businesses (and anyone looking for work or to build brand recognition ) struggle with is branding and more importantly, the role of their personality in their brand. It's one thing to set up your company, decide on your product line, website, and marketing but it's another entirely to work out how your business is different to the next small business who is selling roughly the same thing. Often, the answer is, You.

Small businesses have the natural advantage of being able to build their personality into their customer's experiences. That personality is unique and a great point of distinction in cluttered marketplaces. Consumers are also increasingly looking to do business with someone they can trust and find a connection with. So how do you make sure that your brand is reflecting your personality well and how can you communicate that brand to a wide audience?

Learn from the experts

Cue Kirsten Dixson, personal branding guru, consultant and author of Career Distinction: standing out by building your business brand. Kirsten not only helps individuals and  businesses define their "authentic" brand but also helps them communicate it effectively.

Join our free branding webinar

We are excited to announce that Kirsten is joining us in the TypePad Small Business Center tomorrow (Wednesday 29 July) at 11am PST to talk to us about personal branding at a webinar that is open and free to any one who wants to join.

Get a free branding consultation

Even more exciting is that Kirsten will be offering two "360 Reach Premium" branding consultations completely free to two lucky people who join the call.  "360 Reach" is the first and leading web-based personal brand assessment that helps you get the real story about how you are perceived by those around you. Get the critical feedback you need to expand your  business' success.

So if you have questions about your About me page, or your Facebook profile please join. If you have a friend who is not making the most of their naturally effervescent personality as part of their business offering, get them along for what will be a truly enlightening session.

Go to the TypePad Small Business Center for more information on how to join.

Ask Miz Ginevra

This is a new feature we introduced in this month's TypePad newsletter - in which your intrepid community manager answers your most pressing TypePad questions.

How do I add a banner image to my blog? - question submitted by Meighan of My Love For You is a Stampede of Horses.

Meighan likes to have different banners for her blog, submitted by her creative guest artists, and she asked us about how to best make this happen easily in the new TypePad over in our Get Satisfaction forums.

There's a couple of cool ways to do this, and I won't dig too far into technical whizbang details, because we've got a super-slick updated knowledge base. Of course, you can always open a help ticket with your TypePad One support team, too - we're always here to help.

If you've got a plus account or higher, you can use the theme builder to help you along in this process, without having to muck around in the code.

Before we get there, though, you may want to start out by making your custom banner first. I've used Picnik for loads of photo editing. You can also check out our guidelines on sizes and some more details about best practices for your blog layout.

Want to make some adjustments to your banner easily without going into advanced templates? Just check out the highlights from Professor Wibbels' class on how to make sure your banner is fitting the way you like with just a few lines of custom CSS. (If I can do it, anyone can!) Pressed for time? Want someone else to help you build a new banner? Our experts are here to help, too.

Have a favorite banner you want to let us know about, or a blog designer you love working with? Please let us know in the comments.

This Week's Release: New TypePad, bug fixes, and more

HI everyone! A quick update on this week's release for features and fixes. A huge thanks to everyone on Team TypePad for their hard work.

If you're previewing the all new TypePad, we're always adding new features as we go, and fixing bugs too.  You'll find a great new feature under your Settings -> SEO page.

An SEO-friendly way to present your blog to the world by adding the ability to choose the order of the post/blog titles in the html title. SEO experts often say that showing your post title first, then the blog title, is a better way for search engines to find your relevant content and get you more readers. 

 

More features and fixes for people trying the new TypePad:

• Stats: Fixed some problems with stats where the stats page wouldn't load for some customers.
• Stats: Fixed the pageview counts
• Spell check: Fixed the spell checker problem where misspelled words were being highlighted, but no new words were being suggested.
• Dashboard: Fixed pagination issues
• Dashboard: Fixed long post title displays
• Dashboard: Fixed avatar displays when the image was not found

You'll see all sorts of other cool new stuff for the new TypePad in the weeks to come, so try it today!

For everyone (classic TypePad and the new TypePad) we:

• Registration: Made registration improvements for our EMEA customers
• Sharing: Removed the word “blogging” from Twitter "share this post" updates
• Spam: IP Banning is now working as expected for full and partial IP's
• International: tons of improvements to our localization processes

Heads Up: "Logged Out" Issue During Compose

[UPDATE: This issue was fixed on Monday, July 27. Please let us know if you have any issues. Thanks.]

A few TypePad bloggers over the last week have encountered a problem when they are writing a post. The issue occurs when they are asked to log in after they have begun writing a post. When they log in, they lose the content of their post.

We have identified the root cause of the issue and are currently testing a fix. We expect the fix to be released on Monday, July 27.

We want to make sure there no one else has this problem. Here are a few tips, especially if you are going to start a long post:

• Change your post to "Draft" mode and save frequently while you are composing.
• Publish your post via email. (For the new TypePad, you can find your blog-via-email address is prominently listed on your blog dashboard.)
• And as always, use web best practices like logging out of your TypePad account when you are not posting and log in when you are ready to post or comment.

Again, this issue is not widespread, but we want to be extra cautious and provide some suggestions to help you. We know writing posts is the most important experience for your blog.

Thanks to everyone who have provided feedback to help us troubleshoot the issue.

If you have any questions, please open a ticket and ask our TypePad One team.

What's your favorite TypePad blog?

Everyone always asks us how to find more and new favorite blogs. We've got a great selection here on Everything TypePad, featuring some of our best TypePad bloggers, as well as some great contributions from blogs.com, and an archive of the now-retired featured.typepad.com still exists too.

We  love to feature bloggers in our monthly newsletters, on our Facebook page, and with our @sixapart Twitter stream too.

Anne Marie reminded me this weekend that we should feature more new blogs - so let us know in the comments: what's your favorite TypePad blog, and why? You can also submit new featured blog suggestions via email.

Six Apart is going to BlogHer

Six Apart Media and TypePad One are heading to Chicago this week for the BlogHer09 conference! We're helping blogging megastars Mamapop with their sounds-too-fun-to-be-true Sparklecorn Extravaganza, (check Kirtsy's crib sheet complete BlogHer event listing).  Plus, we'll be helping people get switched onto the new TypePad and giving away some cool stuff like an iPod Touch, t-shirts, and more. Stop us and say hi - we love meeting new people.

Top Reasons to Love The New TypePad

Updated - everyone now has the chance to try the new TypePad - just click "Preview the New TypePad" on your dashboard.  We wanted to highlight the the top reasons that people are loving it.

• Fun: Connect with your readers and commenters, and share your blog with your social network. Reply to comments and keep the conversation on your blog moving.
• Easy: Compose and create with TypePad’s streamlined navigation. Click to common actions instantly from your dashboard.
• Connect: Your TypePad profile lets your readers learn who you are and discover your other blogs. Update your profile with your name and avatar, too, and share your blog with more people.
• SEO: change your post URL on the fly, reorder your blog title and post titles, and add more keywords on more levels.
• Help: TypePad offers world-class support and services - we've got a sleek new updated knowledge base for the new TypePad. Want a new design, more visibility, or sharper blogging skills? We're here to help in our TypePad One design studio.
• Now with more awesome: We’re making the new TypePad the blogging platform you’ve been waiting for, with feedback from you. There's so much that we're doing this year

Want to see more people who are loving the new TypePad? Check out our Twitter favorites or check out what our Facebook fans are saying.

There's lots more features you've requested coming in the new TypePad, so many that we can't build them all at the same time! This is just the beginning of some great new blogging experience you've been asking for. We made this with your feedback (and a huge thanks to our Beta team too!) so we know you're gonna love it.

Ready to try the new TypePad? You'll find the button to preview the new TypePad on the upper right hand corner of your dashboard.

Want to give the new TypePad a try? Just leave us a comment!

Add spark to your blog with a custom footer

Have you noticed Typepad's new blog footer option? We introduced it to you briefly last month, but now we'd like to tell you a little bit about how to make it work for you!

Regardless of your account level, you can use some HTML or Javascript to add an advertisement, an image, or even some text (such as Copyright information) to your footer. This simple customization is a great way to add some spark to your blog.

Here, we have added a leaderboard ad to our footer:

Simply navigate to Weblogs > Design > Content and tick the box next to Blog Footer. Then, click the pencil icon to customize the content. To add custom text or code, select "Advanced". As an example, the following code can be used to place a leaderboard ad in your footer:

<p align="center"><a href="http://www.typepad.com"><img src="http://www.vivalabands.com/images/ferret_leaderboard_ad.gif" border="0"></a> </p></p> <p>

You can add HTML code, text or script there. Then, save your changes and you're done!

Our Pro and Business Class subscribers can also use some Custom HTML and CSS to place an ad or image above the blog banner.

Want to set this up on your own blog? You can use the code below:

</p> <p><div style="position: absolute; top: 10px;"></p> <p>YOUR AD SCRIPT or other content you want to display above your blog banner. This can be script, code or text. </p> <p></div></p> <p>

Now, add the following code to your Custom CSS area. (Edit the height to match the height of the content you are displaying above the banner area)

#banner {padding-top: 110px;}

Customizing the footer is a great, easy way to add some value to your blog!

(While we're talking about ads, did you know that Six Apart Media creates custom advertising solutions that empower marketers to connect with their target audience and help foster community? It's true, and we have a brand new home on the web: take a look!)

Why does my business need a blog?

For a start up business establishing itself  online today the options available are multiple and varied. Should you get a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, a website and a blog? Not to mention Friendfeed, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon? Do you need any of these? Do you need all of them? How do they work together?

Recently we have found a few small businesses creating their online presence entirely on Facebook. This caused us some alarm.  There are many reasons why you should "own" the space that presents your brand, creates your leads and establishes customer interactions.

Denise Wakeman of  biztipsblog and buildabetterblog experienced another of these draw backs of resigning ownership to another site,  in a very real way last week. Her Twitter account was suspended due to (unfounded!) "suspicious activity". Suddenly access to her clients was cut off. The list of followers she had built was inaccessible. The links to her content were gone.

Fortunately for Denise, she had her own blog where she had produced and archived her content and built her customer database so it was not the end of the world. In addition, her Twitter account was reinstated a little while later and she is back tweeting with the best of them. But had she based her online presence on Twitter alone those hours would have been even more nail biting.

These are just one reason to choose carefully when it comes to your online presence. Businesses need to be building equity on their own sites and using the social networks as outposts in communities to draw more traffic back to their sites.

Denise, a business blogging expert and consultant, has many more examples of how to set up your blog and social media presence for business success. She will be joining Andy Wibbels in the Small Business Center on Wednesday 15th July at 11am PST to talk about to launch the most effective online presence in a webinar entitled Top 5 tactics for a successful business blog

Please forward a link to this event to any one you think could benefit. It's totally free and open to any one.