With a Little Help From Your Friends: More on Blogs

Marketing is a continual learning process. The more you know, the more you realise how little you know. The Internet is an invaluable source of information, whether you subscribe to professional mailing lists, or follow strands on professional networks like LinkedIn, or simply pick up on postings from friends and colleagues from your network: no-one has time to keep track of every new development, especially where new technology is concerned.

My thoughts on the potential of blogging for small businesses were formed long before I found time to write them up in my series of posts on Destination Marketing (see my three previous posts). I began examining the mechanics of the blog as a result of following the prolific Pembrokeshire blogger Brian John. Now, once again, I am indebted to Brian for bringing my attention to a new adaptation on Blogger that enables publishers and users to vary the way material is viewed.

The 'View Magazine' option seems to me the most useful and translates conventional templates into a more "webby" format. Posts on the dynamic Home Page appear alongside thumbnails (where pics have been used) and a few lines of introductory text. ALL past posts can be viewed by scrolling down the page and clicking on the headlines. The format is much easier for readers than the traditional side bar archive and is a useful guide to the content of each post. Static tabbed pages appear in the header navigation bar in the usual way. I'm not sure how some of the normal Blogger functions operate from the Magazine view - perhaps they don't. For the time being my solution has been to create a "View in Magazine Format" link with a "use back button" instruction to return to the normal view (see above right). This simplifies things - external links to my blog can carry on as usual.

There's nothing complicated in setting up this option - just add "/view/magazine" to your blogspot URL as follows: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/view/magazine. This new URL is the link to use if you follow my own solution.

The Magazine option is more attractive and user friendly than the conventional format and adds to the professional feel where small businesses or community groups elect to use Blogger to establish an Internet presence. (See my Destination Marketing posts for more on this.) But retaining the normal template as a landing page, especially for mobile platforms, might be a good idea. (We've already had a report of failure to load to iPad - there's no substitute for a proper PC! Or Mac.)

For an example of how the new format works on a blog with an enormous amount of content, go to Brian John's 'Stonehenge Thoughts'.