Craig McGinty

Community at the heart

The most successful websites are often those where the users rule the roost, where site owners offer a base from which their readers and users grow a community on the web.

Today Steve Rubel, who is a leading figure within Edelman PR, outlines how newspapers and their websites could move forward to once again become essential to their readers.

He writes: "In short, they need to become destinations where almost all value is created by the 'readers', not by the publisher or journalists."

The Future of the Newspaper is as a 2.0 Platform

How book reviews help your business

ONE of the things that I rarely see on business blogs are book reviews. I wonder why?

They are a really effective way of giving your website a certain gravitas and if you are reviewing books in your field it shows an awareness of key trends.

There is no need to write a thousand words that would grace the pages of a literary supplement, just provide an idea of what the book is saying and how it has had an impact, or not, on your own thinking.

Ways to build a better blog

THE Pronet Advertising blog highlights Five Ways to Building A Better Blog which does just that, and provides so real valid points.

Deep down if you put all these things in place, yet forget about the most important element 'the words on the page' then you will struggle.

But if you can help people answer their questions and become a useful resource that others can dip in and out of, then you are sure to draw an audience - something that Brian Brown does on his site, who pointed me to this piece.

Getting the best out of Flickr

WACA Originally uploaded by thisperthlife.

PHOTOGRPAHS and the internet really do go hand-in-hand and one of the best examples is Flickr.

Within a couple of minutes you can have your own portfolio of pics up and running that you can share with people and use to explore the work of other photographers on the site.

Chatting on the radio

I AM planned to be chatting with Allan Beswick on BBC Radio Manchester tomorrow afternoon at around 1pm.

I will be talking about blogs and how representatives of charitable groups, business owners and individuals can use them to publish their words, video and experiences.

And I've told myself not to get too animated about it all and gas on endlessly, like I do to most people when I get onto this subject.

A tag cloud for TypePad

ONE of the difficulties of managing a big website with many articles on it is making sure your readers can find what they need easily.

Although search engines can help with this, some way of ordering or 'tagging' individual articles is a great way of pointing people to items that may interest them.

Comments as testimonials

YOU can't beat a virtual slap on the back from a reader of your website should they leave a great comment on one of your pages.

It can add a real spring to you step to know you've helped someone or lightened their day with something you've written.

But the problem is that a few days or weeks later and this comment has slipped down the list and can't be seen by others so here is a simple way to use blog comments as testimonials.