Archive for the ‘Stuff’ Category:
How I Organize My Feeds
Whether you are a part-time blogger or a pro-blogger who makes a full-time living online from your blog, you want to take time on a daily basis to keep up with the latest developments in your niche and other industries. You certainly don’t want to talk about things without being on the top of things in your market. Not knowing what you are talking about is the best way to lose your credibility and damage your blog’s reputation. Finding blogs to read in your niche is not that difficult. There are plenty of lists out there that show you what the top blogs are in each niche. There are plenty of bloggers that create posts about top blogs in different niches. So there is no excuse in finding a handful of blogs to read on a daily basis. Things get a bit more dicey when you are greedy like me. There was a time that I had over 1000 feeds in my “must read” folder. I was never able to catch up with everything in that folder, but it was a nice way to challenge myself.
I realized after a while that one just can’t keep up with that many feeds. Not without sacrificing some other things. As a business owner, I owed it to myself to organize my feeds in a way that would help me get the information I need on a daily basis without forgetting about my core business processes. If you suffer from information and feed overload, you may want to consider switching your feed reader and use one that lets you organize your feeds and get more out of them. Bloglines and Google Reader are both very powerful and worth using if you are a feed junkie. I personally stopped using Bloglines a while ago as Google Reader provided me with more social features, but either solutions works great. How you organize your feeds is going to be the most important part of the process. Read more »
10 Ways To Beef Up Your Blog
When it comes to taking your blog to the next level, there is so much content you can write. There are plenty of other ways to beef up your blog that go beyond writing new stories. The key is providing value to your readers. Something they can’t get anywhere else. Whether it is giving your readers new ways to consume your content or provide them with tools to get things done easier, there are ways that you can go viral and solidify your blog community at the same time.
You do want to think about what your audience is into before developing an action plan. For that, you need to figure out whom you are targeting on your blog and what are their needs and wants that you can address. That way, when you do create a service or product for your readers, it’s going to be something that they appreciate.
With that in mind, here are 10 ways to improve your blog and solidify your community:
- iPhone Apps: developing an iPhone app around your blog is the best way to get your community together and keep it growing. You do want your iPhone app to be more than just your blog posts. You obviously want to get some branding time. But don’t hesitate to go beyond your blog posts and develop an app that provides a unique value to your readers.
- Blog Themes: there are many new bloggers who have no idea how to design a theme for their blogs and don’t want to spend money on custom blog designs. The best way to help those people out is by offering them a free theme or two. You can always ask them to link back to your blog from theirs.
- Wordpress Plugins: lots of people use Wordpress as their blogging platform. Developing a useful Wordpress plugin can also help you get the word out about your blog and drive lots of traffic to your community. You don’t have to develop the plugin yourself. Use a service such as Rent a Coder to hire someone to do it for you. The temptation is always there to charge for your plugin. But offering it for free will have a more viral effect. Think of it as a form of promotion for your blog. If your plugin is any good, you are going to get a persistent stream of traffic for a long period of time.
- Facebook Apps: you can always create Facebook apps and pages for you blog. But don’t limit yourself to that. Develop something useful for your audience and reap the rewards as they keep coming back to you and your blog for more. Read more »
Blogging SEO 101: Get Started With SEO – Part I
Search engine optimization seems to get more popular by the hour. As the state of economy stays dire, as it has been in the past few months, many bloggers are cutting their monthly budgets and spending more time researching on free ways to drive traffic to their blogs. Search engine optimization is one of those ways. Many bloggers just assume that you have to be some technical genius to optimize your website for the search engines. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is as a blogger there are simple steps you can take to increase your traffic from the search engines and take your blog to the next level.
How to Get Started with Blogging SEO
In order to optimize your blog for search engines, you need to focus both on on-page and off-page factors. The on-page factors are those that involve you making changes on your site, to your code. Off-page pages involve incoming links and your social media efforts. With that in mind, here are a few simple steps you can take to optimize your blog for SEO:
1. Content: since you are not trying to be one of those folks who optimize splogs for SEO, you want to make sure you provide real value to your readers in your blog posts. That’s not just good practice. It’s really the only way you can sustain a high level of traffic over a long period of time.
2. Title Tag: using your core keyword phrase in your title goes a long way towards helping you getting ranked for that term. It’s one of the most important on page factors.
3. URL: having your keyword phrase in your URL also helps you get a push on the search engine results pages. It’s very simple to do if you are using a content management system such as Wordpress.
4. Special tags: using special tags such as h1 and B tags can help you even more with your rankings. These tags give engines a better indication on what’s important to you on each and every page.
5. Keywords: the most important part of your SEO strategy. There are plenty of tools that you can use to do your keyword research and find those that people are searching for. Services such as WordTracker and Wordze come in very handy. You can also use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to do some basic keyword research done.
6. Links: linking to your own content should be a big part of your strategy. Your internal links do matter and can help search engines find and index more of your pages. Don’t forget about the text you use in your links! Use the keyword you want that page to get ranked for, and you’ll be off in the long run. You should also take time to link to authority sites from your site. Being associated with top authority sites never hurts, and while you may not get a link back from them, your readers will appreciate those links.
7. Long-tail: a guerrilla marketing tactic that I have been using for a few years now. You may ask, why would I want to get ranked for a term that only 100 people are searching for per month. Those terms are less competitive, easier to rank for, and your traffic adds up as long as you optimize for enough of them.
8. Inbound Links: don’t forget to submit your blog to directories such as E-zine Articles, Isnare, and more. You should also consider blog directories such as AllTop. All these links count one way or another (though you want to focus on the Yes Follow ones).
9. Social Media: using the social media to get links back to your site is a great way to push your content and get more traffic. Make sure to take advantage of Twitter, Facebook, and other sites to increase your traffic for free. Don’t forget to ask your readers to help you out.
10. Plugins: not a SEO tip, but you are always better off using blog enhancements to get the above steps down. There are plenty of plugins for Wordpress and other systems that help you optimize your titles, create a sitemap, and modify your URLs easily. It just doesn’t make sense to spend time doing all these steps by hand.
There you have it. 10 steps to help you get started with SEO on your blog. There are plenty of other tactics you can employ to climb the search engine rankings, which is why you should come back for the second part of this post.
Lost Your Job? Why Won’t You Blog?
The job market is tough. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that. It’s not that jobs are not out there. It’s just that you have more people going for less positions. To put it in economic terms, you have a lot of demand but not that much supply. A lot of job searchers have been discouraged by the conditions in the job market, and some even stop searching. I know a lot of these people, and it’s heart breaking to see people struggle to make a living these days. But the question that I usually ask this folk is whether they blog. It’s really simple. If you don’t have a job and searching for a job, you are still going to have some time to blog on a daily basis. It’s never too late to start blogging, and who knows where it’s going to take you.
Many people are afraid of starting a blog. They feel blogging is done only by geeks and nerds. That attitude has started to change in the recent month as more people are realizing how easy it is to start a blog and start building business. Becoming a blogging superstar is not that easy. It does take a while, and a lot of work. But that doesn’t mean you should start. If you don’t get into the game, you are never going to succeed. Blogging can open a lot of doors for you. You may get consulting offers from your visitors. You can even write a book (a lot of bloggers have). Here are just a few things you can achieve with blogging:
- Find a job.
- Build up your resume (blogging looks good on your resume).
- Gain more on the job experience.
- Find consulting/short-term projects.
- Create an in-demand product.
- Make money from your blog.
- Sell your blog for profit.
- Set yourself up as a guru in your industry..
- Increase your marketability.
- Network with other bloggers and expand your network.
- Find new passions and enter new industries.
- …
Whether you are looking for a job or you already have one, there is still no reason not to start a blog. The sooner you start blogging, the better off you will be in the long run. Your blog will gain value over time and open doors for you in the future. It’s not just about money, but rather about building assets. One day you are going to be thankful you started your blog when you did.
Your take: what has stopped you from starting your own blog?
Learn and Master Twitter with Twitter Hacks
Recently, I had a chance to write about how I drive traffic to my websites with Squidoo. Squidoo is powerful service that lets you create all kinds of websites fast. And it does help that it ranks fairly well on Google and other major search engines. In order to demonstrate how you can put up a useful Squidoo page that can provide value to your visitors, I decided to create Twitter Hacks. Twitter Hacks is a Squidoo lens that is put together to help those new to the world of Twitter master everything there is to Twitter and get their social media game to the next level.
Twitter Hacks not only provides you with Twitter training, but it also contains a comprehensive list of Twitter tools that you can use to get more done on Twitter with less. If you are an advanced Twitter user, you can also learn how to start and write your own Twitter application using Twitter API.
Twitter Hacks is just a simple example of how you can put up a Squidoo page together fast. It did take me a while to do the research and test all the different applications, but putting together the page didn’t take that long. Your Squidoo pages don’t have to be as comprehensive as Twitter Hacks, but you want to make sure you give your visitors something that’s worth their time.
P.S. don’t forget to rate Twitter Hacks if you like it.
35 Ways To Write a Controversial Blog Post
Controversy sells. If you have writing your blog for a while, you have probably used controversial posts to engage your users and gain more traction in the blogging world. Just take a look at Fox News. Those guys have some of the worst reporting I have seen in the media. They are so biased and crude. At the same time, they are dominating the world of cable television. Guys such as Bill Oreilly and Sean Hannity call President Obama all the names in the book, and people keep watching them (and I am not talking about the conservatives). It’s really the oldest trick in the book. Create controversy and reap the rewards for a long time. If you don’t believe me, ask Rush Limbaugh.
There are many ways to create controversy, some of which even I am not comfortable with. Not everyone can pull off a Rush Limbaugh. It’s an art, and that’s why Rush is so good at what he does. But if you are looking to create a little bit of controversy to gain some exposure on the Web, here are a few ideas to consider:
- Take on other top bloggers.
- Make bold predictions.
- Make off the wall predictions.
- Talk about the difference between men and women.
- Pick one gender over the other (know your audience first).
- Talk about why Web 2.0 is overrated.
- Bash Twitter!
- Talk about the death of blogging.
- defend Scientology and Tom Cruise on your blog.
- Pull a Hannity on President Obama
- Talk about who shouldn’t have touched the Queen
- Pick Microsoft over Apple.
- Bash the iPhone!
- Talk about UFOs.
- Tackle Illegal Immigration.
- Defend or oppose abortion.
- Post a controversial video.
- Create response videos to top bloggers.
- Talk about how our economy is doing great.
- Defend Jim Cramer and the Wall Street.
- Defend Facebook’s latest redesign.
- Better yet pick Facebook over Twitter.
- Or Twitter over Facebook.
- Discuss how Zune was great.
- Repeat Glenn Beck’s claims on your blog.
- Talk about how Kindle will never make it.
- Discuss Cash 4 Gold on your blog.
- Leave Twitter and talk about the reasons.
- Bash Digg and its new toolbar.
- Attack Net Neutrality.
- Argue why Wikipedia is overrated.
- Talk about why Twitter and Facebook should be paid services.
- Talk about dubious ways to gain followers on Twitter.
- Discuss the pros of behavioral tracking.
- Talk about who you wouldn’t date.
There are many more ways to create controversy on your blog. I strongly recommend everyone to look at FoxNews. These guys have turned this concept into an art. I am personally no fan of controversies. But there is no question this tactic works. Just make sure you know where that line is and don’t cross it. Remember, you want to expand your blog not kill it!
Your take: did I miss anything? What would you add here?
Why You Should Back Up Your Blog
You have probably heard this before: you should backup your blog at all cost. Have you ever wondered why people keep saying that? There is a good reason for it. A lot of folks don’t backup their blogs! I don’t know whether it’s out of laziness or just negligence, but a whole lot of bloggers leave a lot to chance.
It Could Happen To You
I remember having a discussion with a friend a while ago. We were talking about our blogging businesses, and to my surprise he acknowledged that he was not backing up his blogs. When I told them how important it is to do that, he told me “my server’s secure. I have anti-hacker systems installed on it!” Now, that’s not a logical argument. Any security expert would tell you that even the best systems can be hacked. And what if your server just died on you. You don’t think the WWW will do your back up for you, do you? The truth is, it doesn’t matter how good a person you are or how many anti-hacking solutions you have on your server. You are setting yourself up for a catastrophe if you don’t back up your data.
Back up and Do It Often!
You should always back up your databases on a regular basis to be on the safe side. Let’s say you write 3 posts a day on your blog. If you back up only once a month and your DB dies at the end of a month, you are going to lose about 90 posts. If you do it on a weekly basis, we are talking about 20 posts. So as you see, the more regularly you back up, the better off you are.
You Don’t Have To Do It Yourself
A lot of folks don’t back up their DBs due to being lazy. But you don’t even have to do much to back up your systems. You can always use online backup solutions to back your information up on a redundant server. You can also automate the back up process with scripts and software solutions on the market. Some of these packages may cost you a bit, but it’s well worth it if you value your time.
I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here, but you should strongly consider changing your ways if you are still not backing up your systems. It’s just not worth the risk.
How Far Should You Push the Envelope on your Blog?
Filed under: Start a Blog, Stuff | View Comments
One classic way to build links and create a successful blog is by constantly pushing the envelop. I remember during the election season a few folks started political blogs just to stir controversy and engage blog wars. There were a few folks who started comparing Obama with Osama, calling the guy a certain terrorist, and questioned his country of birth. A few folks are still doing that, but we are not going to talk about the mentally challenged in this post.
The truth is, pushing the envelop is one of the best ways to engage users and get them to start discussions on your blog. If folks read your blog posts and feel nothing, then you are really in trouble. You are going to be very successful if you manage to invoke one of these feelings:
- Joy
- Fear
- Curiosity
- Anger
- Sadness
Now, you can break down each of those feelings and try to reverse engineer your way to a specific blog tone. But if you can’t evoke any of the above emotions, you are really in trouble. You can say that anger is probably the strongest emotion out there. Folks make irrational decisions when they are angry. They also go out of their comfort zone when they are angry, which means they are more likely to take time to put a comment on your blog or respond to other comments.
So how far should you go on your blog? It really depends how comfortable you are with pushing the envelope. You also want to consider your future. Anything that you put on your blog could be found by your future employer, so I’d be watching myself if I were looking for a job. Pushing the envelope doesn’t mean you should insult people. You can raise controversial points without insulting anyone (that’s what I recommend). Sometimes folks push the envelope and then go way overboard without realizing it. Certainly, being controversial pays in the blogging world, but make sure you don’t sink the entire ship in the process.
5 Things I want to accomplish in 2009
The year 2008 was a very productive year for me. I started a bunch of businesses and finally started a real company to manage my online business. The year started with a bang but ended on a sour note. A lot of my web properties suffered from the state of economy. I was not prepared for the sudden breakdown of our economy, and a lot of people who were spending money on my sites just went away. But as bad as 2008 got in the end, I am confident that 2009 will be a great year. Here are the things that I intend to address in the upcoming year:
1. Blogging on a more frequent basis: I may have slacked off this year. In reality, managing 35 blogs is not really easy. Will probably hire a few folks to ease the burden.
2 Invest in more custom themes: I do run a tight budget when it comes to my business, but I need to invest even more in custom made themes for my blogs. That’s just a necessity at this point.
3. Make more videos: I have preached about the importance of vlogging these days. But my blogs are more text based. Some niches are really difficult to make videos for (at least for me), but 2009 will be the year that I will jump on new developments as they appear.
4. Getting more sponsorships: I have limited advertisement and sponsorships on most of my blogs. But I am going to have to build more relationships and take on more sponsors.
5. Take breaks: I am a workaholic. I am always been that way. I barely sleep over 4 hours a night. But I am getting old. Probably a trip here or there will help.
Your take: what are the top blogging items that you want to accomplish in 2009.
Are you a Niche Marketer?
A lot of super bloggers talk about how you need to find your spot in your to have a successful blogging career. Many claim that you need to find a niche that is narrow enough to write a blog about but not too broad that will make it tough to have the right focus for your blog. But what these folks won’t tell you is that being a blogger and a niche marketer are two different things.
A blogger actually cares about providing valuable, cutting edge content to her visitors. If you are writing about electric cars, as a blogger your goal should be to bring the latest information about electric cars to your visitors. In addition, you should find ways to add value. For instance, you should think about interviewing experts in your niche as well as getting your hands on how-to guide and tips on how to get the best out of an electric car. It’s true that you want to get paid for your efforts, but you are not cutting corners to make more money.
Niche marketers are a bit different. You can expect niche marketers to be involved in multiple niches. They do set up blogs but use those as a vehicle to gain more money. Some of these folks do provide value to their visitors, but their goal is to make a sale or getting more clicks on Adsense. I think the main difference between a blogger and a niche marketer is the level of dedication. A niche marketer is more susceptible to exiting a niche as soon as her earnings drops whereas a blogger is more dedicated and loyal to her fans. The ways these guys approach their businesses are different as well. A niche marketers spends more time with nichebot or affiliate elite to find profitable niches to make sales in. A blogger on the other hand spends more time reading blogs and forums to gather ideas for future posts.
Now, some niche marketers become bloggers overtime, but to think that these two distinct groups are somehow the same is a mistake. The approach is different. The mentality is different. And the ultimate goals are somewhat different. With that in mind, which group do you belong to?
