Posts Tagged ‘feed’
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 »
Are You a Master of Assumptions?
One of the biggest mistakes that all of us make from time to time is assuming things that are probably not true. We all like to assume that everyone’s going to get our jokes. Or people are going to be polite. Worse yet, you might just assume that people are going to stop when they see the stop sign. It’s OK to cautiously expect something to happen. But if you think of it as a foregone conclusion then you can be in deep trouble. The same issue exists in the blogging world. We all like to assume that people know how to use Google. We write our blogs and wonder why people don’t subscribe to our feeds, not realizing that people don’t know where to find the subscription button or what it even means. That’s exactly when assuming things can cost you!
During my blogging career, I have come to realize that one should never assume things. If you want to get the maximum results on your blog, you need to make things super easy for your visitors to understand. Whether you want them to sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your feed, you need to make it almost too easy for your audience. Here are 8 things that you should avoid assuming things about:
- Twitter: everyone’s heard of Twitter, right? They must know how to follow you and connect with you on it, correct? Not really. A lot of people have heard of Twitter but have no idea what it is or what it does. So you can’t just put a Twitter icon on your blog and expect people to follow you. Just tell folks what to do. Wouldn’t it be easier?
- RSS Feed: a lot of bloggers tend to get fancy with their RSS icons and design very creative ones to use on their blogs. Whatever you do, make sure you tell your audience what they need to do!
- Newsletter: don’t assume that people are going to sign up for your newsletter just because you have a form on your blog. Just let your visitors know why they should sign up, and how to confirm their e-mails.
- Social Media: people are not going to digg your blog post just because it’s great. You need to make it super easy for them. You can always grab one of those simple buttons from digg and other social media sites to keep things simple.
- Technorati: similar to the previous item, you want to make sure you ask your readers to favorite your posts on Technorati. Don’t just assume they will.
- Search: you should never assume that people are going to find what they are looking for on your blog without a search box. Make it easy for them to search for things and find what need fast. Who would put up a site without a search box these days anyway?
- Related posts: you should always give your visitors a way to find more relevant content on your blog. One way to do that is by providing them with related posts under each blog post. Don’t assume they will find related posts all by themselves.
- Linking: make sure your visitors have everything they need to link to you properly. Top bloggers provide their visitors with the HTML code that they can just copy and paste on other sites. Yes, there are still people out there who don’t know how to create a link.
Keep things simple is the best way to go if you want to get the most out of your blog. Your audience is not just one person. You’ll have many visitors from all walks of life. Don’t assume they know everything. Why should they?
Discover New RSS Feeds with Feedmil
Just a few days ago, I came across a new innovative service called Feedmil. At first I didn’t think too much of it. Another RSS search engine. Big deal! But once I tried, I realized there is a lot of potential for this service. In order to blog more effectively, you need to be knowledgeable about your topic and constantly stay on the top of the news. Sometimes, you find killer ideas on not so popular ideas. That’s why you shouldn’t only focus on the big boys to get your industry updates.
What I loved about this service was the search criteria customization feature that lets you refine your search results and find more specific RSS feeds related to your search term. And it does help that Feedmil provides you with site authority, popularity, and activity level to help you find the most reliable RSS feeds to follow.
If you need a feed search service on your website, you can always partner with Feedmil and grab their feed gadget. Feedmil partner program makes it easy for you to get people to sign up for your feed and increase your daily traffic.
I don’t know about you but I am currently following so many feeds that it’s gotten quite tough to keep up with all of them. At the same time, the more informed you are about your industry, the better chance you have of competing with the big boys. Feedmil is a feed search engine that helps you stay informed. That’s what I call a “valuable” service.
Bonus tip: don’t forget to add your own feed if it’s not listed already.
