Credit: sxc.hu

Nothing can be more heartbreaking than getting laid off at a company that you have given your heart and soul to for years. Many folks assume that if they stay loyal to their company, they won’t get laid off. Unfortunately, many have found that not to be the case the hard way. Nobody likes to lose their jobs. But there are things you can do to make sure you find another one quickly. One way to do that is by starting your own blog. It can not only put some money on your table, it could show potential employers that you have been doing something valuable with your time.

Your blog can help you find a new job as long as you play your cards right. Here are 6 tips for job hunters interested in starting a blog to get a job:

• approach blogging seriously: if you want your blog to be taken seriously, you need to approach the whole process in a serious manner. By putting your best foot forward on your blog, you will make a better impression on employers.
• focus on a serious topic: when you have a blog just as your hobby, you can afford to tackle silly topics. But if you plan to show your blog to employers, you’d better make sure you have professional content on it (unless you are going for a creative position).
• do thorough research: going back to the first step, you shouldn’t just wing it on your blog. In order to develop high quality content, you need to do thorough research. The better quality your work, the better your chances of impressing employers.
• treat each blog post as a serious report: those of you who have worked in the corporate world in the past know what it takes to prepare a serious report. You can’t afford to have typos and grammatical errors in your official reports. You should treat your blog posts that way as well.
• network with others: your blog can open new doors for you. That does not mean you should sit around and wait for things to happen for you. By networking with other bloggers, you will have an easier time finding new opportunities.
• don’t sound desperate: I have seen some job hunters who get too desperate when they can’t find a job and air their thoughts on their blogs. I suppose it is OK to do so on your personal blog. But if you intend to impress employers with your content, you should avoid sounding desperate. Stay away from depression talk on your website at all costs. That type of content won’t impress too many people.

If you have been unemployed for a while and don’t know what else to do, you may want to give blogging a try. The publishing business is not for everyone. But it may open new doors of opportunities for you. You will never know unless you try.

Credit: dcandea

New blogs do not often get that many link requests. But once your site starts getting ranked high in the search engines, people will e-mail you, asking you to link back to them. The majority of these requests are not even worth checking out. Nobody wants to link to a spammy site anyway. But once in a while, you receive link requests from high quality (on paper) websites. You don’t want to just ignore every link request nor do you want to be too polite and accept them all. Here are 5 ways you can handle link requests professionally:

1. paid link requests are no no: I get a ton of these requests everyday. People will use all kinds of tactics to get their paid links on your website. Some publishers do accept paid links. But that could get their sites slapped by Google. Organic linking is what search engines such as Google are encouraging. If you value your blog and the brand that you have built, you should discard all these paid link requests right away.
2. analyze the target URLs: so you feel you have received requests from high quality and legitimate websites? Just because a site has a good looking template or all kinds of bells and whistles all over it does not mean you should link to it. You should thoroughly analyze the target URLs to make sure you are not linking to a banned website.
3. verify the site owner: a few months ago, I received an email from an individual who claimed to be the developer of a product I had covered on my blog. Naturally, he wanted me to link to his new site. The individual had done his best to cover his tracks. But a little bit of research did prove he was not the developer after all. If someone is lying to you in their e-mails, they are not worth linking to.
4. link to relevant pages:  search engines do pay attention to the sites that you link to. Linking to a couple of irrelevant sites may not kill your site’s rankings. If you do it often, that could become a problem for your business. Make sure you link to sites that are somewhat relevant to your blog. To stay on the safe side, use the most appropriate anchor texts for your links.
5. monitor your results: link swapping is a big issue these days. Some people may ask you to link to their site only to redirect their URL to a whole new site once they have gathered enough links. You should check the URLs you have linked to from your site to make sure you are not a victim of link swapping.

There is nothing wrong with accepting link requests from high quality websites. Just make sure you do your research to avoid sending your visitors a site that may not be worth their time.

BackWPup is a superb WordPress plugin that lets bloggers automate their S3 backups. All you have to do is define what you want to save to S3, and the plugin does the rest for you. This plugin can create backups of your database and files. It can also optimize and check your tables.

BackWPup plugin lets you schedule your backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. You don’t want to back up too often as that could increase your Amazon S3 costs. At the same time, doing it on a weekly or bi-weekly basis is not such a bad idea.

BackWPup supports Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, DropBox, RackspaceCloud, and FTP. Backup files can be sent via e-mail. In order to store your files on Amazon S3, you will need to create a S3 account and add a bucket to store your files. Once you provide your security credentials to this plugin, it will automatically provides you with a list of buckets you have available for your account.

Overall, BackWPup is a solid plugin for bloggers who want to automatically backup their blogs in the cloud. It is free and does what it promises.

There is a difference between blogging for the sake of doing it and having a plan to get your blog some major traffic from the top search engines. Many SEO professionals understand what it takes to optimize sites, their content, links, and structure for the search engines. As a blogger, you may not have the time to become a SEO master. But spending some time to study the work of these people can give you some ideas on how to take your blog posts to the next level.

Optimizing your content for the search engines takes a lot of work but does not require you to be a SEO genius. Here are 6 ways to do just that:

1. blog often and keep it unique: a lot of people claim that you do not have to blog everyday or so to be in the good graces of Google. That may be true, but you stand a better chance of improving your rankings if you have fresh content every day or two. That does not mean you have to sit behind your computer blogging everyday. If you don’t have the time for it, just schedule blog posts ahead of the time.
2. pay attention to your keywords: I know. Keywords are boring. But they still matter big time if you want to have any chance of achieving success with your blog. Thankfully, there are plenty of decent keyword research tools you can use to get this process done more conveniently.
3. watch the trends: blogging about the latest trends can increase your traffic and get more eyeballs on your website. You can use Twitter trends and Google Insights to find out topics to blog about everyday. In order to go viral, you want to look at the latest trends from different angles though.
4. add some variety to your content: writing opinion or tips articles are one way to add value to your blog. Adding video round-ups, cheat-sheets, top lists, infographics, and other dynamic content can take your blog a step further. Don’t forget to tag your content and add them to your site map.
5. focus on social media: by taking a look at the stories that are trending on sites such as Topsy and Tweetmeme, you can get a better handle on what types of stories may get your site some major love on social networking sites. This is where less talking and more watching pays off.
6. add sharing tools and incentives: so you have created your best work yet? You are going to need the help of your readers to get your content the attention it deserves. Adding social sharing buttons strategically to your website is one way to go. Providing your visitors with some incentive to share your articles is not a bad idea either.

Who says you have be a SEO genius to write content search engines will love…

Why would you want your website to look like a Wiki? These types of themes are great for “tutorial” type websites. So if you are looking to start a blog about tips on a certain subject, Wikibase is your best friend. This theme’s homepage is highly customizable and can be easily modified with widgets. You not only have the option to categorize your articles in an orderly fashion, you can use this theme’s featured articles section to promote your very top work.

Wikibase does have multiple page templates (for contact, site map, and …). Its back-end is top notch too. Users can customize this theme’s behavior, its SEO settings, categories, and skin from its options page. The search functionality embedded into this theme is quite powerful and makes it easy for your visitors to go through your articles.

Wikibase is more than just a blogging theme. It is the perfect solution for how-to, DIY, and similar types of blogs. It looks clean and does what it promises.

Here are just 5 ways you can go about promoting your own e-book:

Chapters: Chapters is a wonderful WordPress theme that lets you promote certain chapters of your e-book online to generate interest for your book. It is quite professional looking and a great way to give your visitors a taste of what your book is all about.

Anthologize: a wonderful open source platform that can turn your blog into an e-book. If you have lots of high quality articles on your website, you are going to love this service.

Ebook theme: eBook Theme is a landing page solution for your e-book. If you plan to sell your e-book directly, this theme can help.

Google Books: does not need any introduction. Google eBookstore is a great way to list your book online and find new buyers for it. Submitting your book to this service could not be any easier.

Kindle Publishing: I have personally had a lot of success with this service. Kindle is a very popular device and platform. Considering that this platform is available on most handheld devices, selling your e-books through Amazon is a smart idea.

How would you go about promoting an e-book? Any suggestions?

No matter what you think of Wikileaks and people behind it, there is no question that what these folks have done has opened the eyes of the world to a whole new way of reporting the news. We have already seen many similar leak sites launched in the past few weeks. The governments around the world may not be too happy about these leaks, but they are here to stay for now.

Many have argued that freedom of speech will protect anyone who leaks secrets to the media. Unfortunately, there are limits to the first amendment, especially when dealing with highly sensitive information. Take Wikileaks for instance. Even though their team took the time to remove names and sensitive information from the leaked documents, it is being blamed for being too reckless. Those of you who are interested in getting in this business or just want to cover these topics need to be extra cautious with the actions you take. I am not suggesting you should not do your job but you want to know the risks, your role and responsibilities as a journalist. Here are 6 things you want to keep in mind:

• know the rules: don’t just assume to know the rules. Reporting leaks is much different from reporting the news. Study the rules to make sure you are prepared for what could be next as soon as you report on a leak (or leak something for the first time).
• report the news: don’t report rumors. You may be dealing with leaks but that does not mean you can include anything and everything in your reporting. The folks at Wikileaks have a set of criteria that they go by when they leak material. They do not just leak any gossip they hear.
• be careful about who you link to: going back to the previous point, you do not want to leak to illegal material. At the very least, you should consult with a lawyer before pulling the trigger. Just as you can get in trouble for linking to torrent sites, you can and may get in trouble for linking to classified documents.
• make sure you are protected: make sure you have a lawyer before taking risky actions. Having a lawyer by your side can help you stay out of trouble and protect your business. Don’t forget to disclose things you need to disclose to provide enough cover for your business.
• don’t rush to judgment: do not make judgments without knowing all the facts. It is so easy to do so when you do not have all the facts and only tidbits to work with. Unless you are an opinion blogger, you want to just focus on reporting the “facts.”
• live with no regrets: if you have made the decision to take on such a risky task, you should be prepared to face the consequences. Dealing with leaks (whether it is reporting it or releasing the info for the first time) can be very risky. As long as you know the risks, you should not have anything to regret about.

Reporting secrets can be a messy business. There will be a lot of risks involved if you decide to go in this route. As long as you know the risks and take precautions to protect yourself, you should not have anything to regret about.

You don’t have to spend a whole lot of money to get started with your own job board. JobRoller is a powerful WordPress theme that turns your WordPress install into a job board, without you having to do any coding.

JobRoller is designed to work for free and paid job boards. It is pretty flexible and can handle all types of job listings too. Your job listings stay separate from your blog (this theme uses custom types), so things don’t get mixed up and out of hands too easily. It does have 5 color schemes to make the customization process a tad bit easier.

This theme’s settings page is pretty powerful. It enables you to customize your logo, update your feedburner URL, modify your pricing options, and even keep track of your transactions. Adding jobs and editing existing ones is not too difficult either.

Here is a summary of what’s included in JobRoller:

• Multiple color schemes
• Auto-resizing images
• Transaction logging
• AJAX and JQuery
• Social media support
• Built-in payment gateway
• Search engine optimization

JobRoller is a very sophisticated job theme for WordPress. It may not be the right option for smaller blogs as it packs a big punch. At the same time, if you are looking for a scalable solution, JobRoller is the one.

All you have to do is create a new folder (/answers) on your blog domain and install WordPress and Instant Q&A theme on it. That’s really all there is to it. Once done, your visitors can take advantage of this theme to ask and answer questions on your website. Why install it separately? Q&A sites do get attacked a lot. If you are not accepting user registrations on your blog for security reasons, you don’t have to make any compromise by taking this approach.

This theme has a very dynamic look and feel to it. Your visitors can use your front-page to find the latest and most popular questions in your community. The theme has its own custom log in and sign up page. It has 3 different color schemes and can be easily customized from its back-end.

This is more than just a WordPress theme. It’s a system that rewards your visitors for participating and answering questions. So you’ll always have a chance to know who your most active members are. The theme can be used to create custom questions. It’s ad ready too.

Instant Q&A won’t ask or answer your questions for you, but it does give you an easy way to enhance your blog and add yet another feature to it. It’s pretty affordable too. If you like having your own Q&A website, this theme is worth a try.

LikeBot is a fun tool that adds vote-up / vote-down buttons to your blog posts. That way your visitors can tell you exactly how they feel about your work.

The script is very to install. You can either download LikeBot WordPress plugin to get the job done or use the Javascript code to install these buttons on your website (regardless of the platform). There are multiple designs for you to choose from. You can make the appropriate changes from your WordPress back-end or by playing with the code.

LikeBot renders pretty fast and has a quite attractive layout. Not everyone’s going to like your blog posts. If you are getting too many thumb-downs, you may need to do some investigation to find out the reason. Maybe your quality of work needs to be improved. Whatever the case, LikeBot can help you get better feedback from your visitors. So don’t get discouraged by all the thumb-downs.