Craig McGinty

TypePad's bailout program for journalists

I HAVE long had the belief that freelance journalists could use a blog to run a news service in their speciality and laid out some first steps in a piece called setting up a blog.

And it looks as though it is going to be something that journalists, both freelance and staff, are going to have to seriously consider as redundancy stalks many a newsroom.

So much so that when TypePad offered a Bailout Program for Journalists they were taken aback by the interest, as many, many people signed up to learn more.

Having used TypePad for around five years I do think it is the best option for people who want to spend time writing and not tweaking and updating code.

So if you do take up the option offered by TypePad and want an un-official answer to questions feel free to leave a comment below and I'll do my best to help.

If you want to take a look over what others are doing these sites that I've been involved with are run off TypePad:

Landscape Juice
IVY Paris News
Cheap Flight News

Google's very helpful SEO guide

GOOGLE has released a useful .pdf guide on how to make your website more SEO friendly so that search engines can read your site and index it correctly.

The Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide offers advice on the importance of Title tags for your site, using text for links, best practice for images and a wealth of other handy tips.

But it is not too technical and if you have already put together your own website I'm sure you'll be able to pick up a few pointers and additional tweaks you can make.

And even if you have employed someone to create your website then you could use the guide to 'tick off' as many of the features as possible on your site and work with your designer to ensure search engines can track you down.

Blog posts and Twitter talk at Social Media Cafe

THE first Social Media Cafe (#smc_mcr) in Manchester turned out to be a great success with around 80 people turning up.

And the variety of skills, backgrounds and interests was also impressive and I am sure the networking and conversations generated have enabled some new connections to take place.

The event was hung around the talk of the death of blogging, with myself, Martin Byrant and Chi-chi Ekweozor ably guided by Sarah Hartley.

Also a thank you to Julian Tait for the organisation side of things as he made it very easy for people to chat and see where others were from.

On to the talk and clearly if you put a gaggle of bloggers in a room and ask them if blogging is on the way out, they are not likely to agree, although shorter forms of communication such as Twitter have enjoyed massive popularity.