Articles by Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty

How to Play Around With Google Suggest to Come Up with Content Ideas

[Updated November 1, 2022] Google is pretty much the only search engine that matters. Yes, others may be used more in certain regions, such as Baidu (with around 8% of overall usage, followed by Bing at 7%, according to Smart Insights). But even with those and other search engines, Google takes more than 77% of…

Ann Smarty

To Host or Not to Host: How Vulnerable Is My Blog to a Security Breach?

As a social media communications professional, I’ve always said that a blog forms a central anchor for your social media strategy. While other social media channels enable you to engage and interact with your customers directly, it serves as your true “channel”: your blog is where you can speak most directly and at length with…

Ann Smarty

12 Tools That Make You a More Productive Blogger

There is a general rule of thumb that states a blog with quite aggressive content and SEO strategies will take at least 4-6 months to become profitable on any minor scale. Keep in mind this is with continued and consistent effort as well as significant investment of time (and money). How long does it take…

Ann Smarty

Secondary Customers: Talkers, Influencers, and Social Media Power Users

I’m a social media power user. My social media weapon of choice is Twitter where I have over 60,000 followers. I make sure I send them a stream of useful information and when I share a post that speaks directly to them, they re-tweet me sending more traffic to the post or product I am…

Ann Smarty

Why Start Your Small Business Social Media Marketing with a Blog

Social media is an important medium that every small business should be embracing to help develop new business, understand what others are saying about them and/or their competitors, engage with and increase the loyalty of their customers and fans, and potentially even provide another avenue for customer support over social channels.  There are many choices…

Ann Smarty

How Does a Business Generate Traffic from Social Media

Websites live and die by the amount of traffic that they get. Until recently SEO seemed the only way a business could get traffic and the SEO company that could get a front page listing for a highly competitive term could write their own paycheck. Until now. We are now in the social media era…

Ann Smarty

What to Do about Passwords: 5 Tips for Password Management in a Social Media World

Due to password reuse, a lot of people are at risk of these sorts of events leading to a hijacking of social media channels. Password reuse is the practice of using the same password across multiple sites or properties. For instance, you use the same password for your webmail account and Twitter or Facebook. Losing…

Ann Smarty

How I Doubled My Organic Search Traffic with Text Optimizer (Updated)

A writer’s knowledge of search engine optimization doesn’t have to be too advanced: it is enough to know how to use Yoast SEO plugin and understand that content is important. It is also useful to perform very basic keyword research before writing content to try and find searchable angles. Not much is under your control…

Ann Smarty

Today competition for traffic is fierce. Every day new bloggers join the flow of information competing to be found. Even if you have the advantage of already enjoying lots of visitors and page views, it is a brave website owner who assumes that the success of yesterday will be automatically replayed forward into tomorrow.  Audiences…

Ann Smarty

Turn One Research into Dozens of Awesome Articles!

[Updated June 29, 2022] Alright, full disclosure time: I love doing content research. For some people, it is the most tedious, boring, long and agonizing part of writing for the web. But to me, it’s the quiet fireplace time with my cup of coffee that will get me busy for the next week or so…