I don’t know about you, but I have been on Twitter for a couple of years now. In these years, I have managed to meet a lot of great people online and learn from them. No matter how successful you are in a channel, you want to take the steps necessary to get more out of your efforts. In the case of Twitter, it’s always nice to have a tool that shows you what you need to do to improve your Twitter strategy. Klout is such a tool. It helps you figure out what areas you need to focus on to take your Twitter game to the next level.

Even before using Klout, I knew what areas I needed to work on to get more out of Twitter. I spend a lot of my time reading articles and going through other people’s works on a daily basis. I have been more of a listener on Twitter, learning from what others have been sharing and looking for ideas for my new projects. Klout can easily figure that out. It not only tells you what topics you have been focusing on, it even identifies flaws in your strategy.

Klout shows you your true reach, your amplification score, and your engagement level with other influences on Twitter. The service analyzes your number of friends, retweet percentage, in/out message ratio, list inclusions, and all kinds of other metrics to help you gather some actionable information about your Twitter account. The service is not perfect, but it has done a great job helping me change my ways on Twitter. A must try for everyone on Twitter.

When you are young, it’s easy to go overboard with your blogging efforts and get less sleep than your body needs without paying for it the day after. I have not met a serious blogger who didn’t wish he/she had a few more hours each day to get things done more properly. Some bloggers find those extra hours by cutting their sleep time. If your body can take it, more power to you. But research has shown time and time again that those who do not get enough sleep each night fail to reach the optimal performance level  the day after. You don’t want to sleep-walk your way through your research or writing time, now do you?

Tons of sleep aid devices are available on the market. You can spend hundreds of dollars on these devices. But the first step is to figure out whether you have a problem. Yawnlog is just the tool for that. It helps you keep track of your sleep hours and the quality of your sleep. After using it for a while, you can clearly see whether you need to take drastic measures.

This tool is pretty easy to use. All you have to do is tell the app when you went to sleep and the time you woke up. It takes care of the rest. It even calculates your “Sleep Debt.” Even though research has shown that you can’t make up for lost sleep, it’s still good to know whether you are staying on track with your sleep each and every week.

YawnLog is a free, simple-to-use tool that can help you figure out whether you are getting enough sleep (tracks your sleep quality too). You can share your results with your friends and get some advice from them. Remember, lack of proper sleep is not going to help you over the long run.

Building your blog into a killer authority website in your niche does take a lot of time. For starters, you are going to have master the art of content creation. Content was king 10 years ago, and it’s still king. But there is more to top blogs than just content. When you get close to the very top, every little detail can make a difference. At the end of the day, your visitors have a limited amount of time and so many blogs to go through. They usually tend to go to the website that provides them with the best value for their time.

One of the best ways to provide value to your readers is by “pimping” your blog’s resource section. If you are going to have a resource section on your blog, you may as well take the time to provide real value to your readers through it. Many new bloggers slap a “resources box” in their sidebar and add all kinds of links to it without thinking about the merits of those links. Your resource section should either guide your visitors to places to can find more information about your niche or introduce them to products and services that they may find useful. So it does take a bit of time to put on a decent resource center on your blog.

If you have no clue what to put in your blog’s resources, here are 7 things you may want to consider adding to your blog:

• Products That You Would Recommend: these can be affiliate products. But you want to make sure these products are of high quality and can come in handy for your readers. For instance, if you are blogging about the art of making money online, you can direct people to products that can help them achieve that goal. Just make sure you know exactly what you are referring people to.
• Tools: everybody loves free tools. If you have taken the time and effort to create a free tool section for your readers, your resource section is a great place to add a link to your free tools. You can also refer people to paid tools if you find those tools to be worth the money.
• Training Material: it’s not tough to assume that some of your readers will look for more ways to learn things about your niche and know everything they need to know to master it. Providing them with links to decent training materials can help them save money and effort. It can help you gain their trust as well.
• Books: if you have written a book or know a book that is a must read for those involved in your niche, it never hurts to link to it from your resources section.
• Best Posts: this is a must do. There is no reason you should not post to your top blog posts from your resource section. Your visitors will appreciate having access to posts you cherish the most.
• Wiki/Forum: you can link to your Wiki or blog’s companion forum from your resources section to get more people to visit your other online properties. Great way to grow your forum community or get more people to interact with your Wiki.
• Affiliate Product/ Partnerships: this is a bit iffy. I don’t mind pointing people to an affiliate product as long as the product works and I have tried it myself. The problem here is transparency. You should let your visitors know that you are getting paid from the links on your blog. Also, don’t go overboard with these products. Recommending things that just don’t fit your niche does not make any sense. Don’t give people the impression that you are just trying to make some quick bucks from your blog. There is nothing wrong in linking to your partners either (just make sure you have chosen the right ones).

There you have it. 7 simple ways to pimp your blog’s resource section and provide more value to your readers.

Twitter is a goldmine. Every expert has been saying that for months. The people on Twitter can’t stop generating and sharing content. That’s only good news for us bloggers. From time to time, you may find yourself struggling to come up with new things to write about on your blog. That’s where Twitter comes in. By looking at what people are talking about on Twitter and what their needs may be, you can easily develop hundreds of new ideas for your future blog posts.

You can always use Twitter Search to search through what people are discussing on Twitter. But that shouldn’t be the only tool you use. In fact, these 4 tools are much more powerful and can give you more ideas:

Topsy: it’s quickly replacing Google for me. It makes it so easy to find new stories and hot topics people are talking about. You can always use the trends to figure out what’s hot. Pretty straight forward to use.

Tweetmeme: another powerful tool that can help you figure out what stories are currently hot on Twitter. You can think of it as Digg for tweets.

DailyRT: a nice alternative to Tweetmeme and Topsy, if you are looking for the very top retweets on Twitter. Stories that get a lot of retweets on Twitter are very interesting to follow. Not all of them are going to give you ideas but some of them will.

Twendtz: one of my favorite Twitter tools that I use on a daily basis. It makes tracking stories and trends much easier. You can always use the pro version to measure brand impact on Twitter.

What’s your favorite Twitter tool for tracking topics?

In the past few weeks, I have talked about how you can optimize your blog for the search engines and making it future proof. One of the best ways to do that is by optimizing your blog for the social media by giving your readers the option to share your content on top social networking website. Whether you are writing a technical blog or one about your own life, people may find your posts interesting enough to want to share them on Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Boostpost is a cool handy service that lets you give you users the option to do just that.

As long as you are targeting one of the more popular social media sites on the web, Boostpost should have you covered. It comes with a set of attractive button widgets that you can install on your blog to let your users share your stories and get you more exposure in the long run.

The service is actually more straightforward than it looks. All you have to do is define the services you want to use your blog and copy/paste the code into your blog. You can also use the footer widget that will make all these buttons in the footer of your blog. That could come in handy if you have a busy-looking design. If you prefer to keeps things easy, you can just get the all-in-one button for your blog.

Boostpost doesn’t make your content worthy of getting mentions on social networking sites, but it does give your users the tools to spread the word about your content. The next part is providing your users with the content they want to share with others.

These days it’s very tough to find a blog domain that is easy to remember and brandable. Most straight forward domains seem to have been taken. After all, there are a lot of domainers out there that take pleasure in registering all kinds of domains only to sell them for huge profits in a short period of time. But there are tools out there that can help you find those hidden gems of domains that are still available. Nomaine is one of those tools. It’s a theme-based domain finder engine that can find you a decent domain (depending on your niche).

Nomaine is very easy to use. All you have to do is choose from the selection of themes available, define min and max limits for your domain and add your prefix and suffix words to optimize your results. The engine will go to work for you and searches for domains that are still available for pick up. The advantage of using this tool is that it can find you a general domain that applies to your niche. Keyword-based engines can be frustrating to work with and are often not that effective. With this tool, you can save time and find domain names that usually wouldn’t find with other tools.

The bad news is that the themes available on this websites are limited. So if your niche is not included in the above list, you are probably out of luck. But if your theme is included, there is no reason you can’t find a brandable domain that you could use to build a killer website. All in all, Nomaine is a cool domain name finder tool that could come handy for new bloggers.

I am personally not a big fan of automating Twitter tasks. Not the ones that don’t need to be automated (e.g. adding friends, tweeting, …). But sometimes, you’ll need to wait before you can tweet something. Sometimes, you are going to be away for a few weeks, but you don’t want your Twitter account to become stagnant. Whatever the case, having a tool that would allow you to schedule your tweets ahead of time could come in handy. There are plenty of paid tools that allow you to schedule your tweets for the future and even fully automate your Twitter accounts. While you don’t want to rely on these tools heavily, it’s nice to have them when you need them.

If you are looking for free tools to schedule tweets ahead of time, here are 5 free Twitter tools that could come in handy:

Hootsuite: the best Twitter management tool on the market hands down. I may be a bit biased here, considering that I have been using it for months. But I can tell you that as long as you don’t want to spam Twitter, Hootsuite has everything you need to manage your Twitter accounts more effectively.

Socialoomph: also known as Twitter Later. This service allows you to automate your welcome messages, schedule tweets in the future, and vet your followers at the same time. The premium version has even more flexibility to offer but you are not obligated to pay up to use this service.

Twitter Feed: another service that I have been using for months. It’s designed to help you connect your blog to Twitter. If you schedule future blog posts, this is a great tool to take advantage of to let your followers know about it.

Twuffer: a great tool to bring some organization to your Twitter life. Not only lets you schedule tweets ahead of time, it also make it easier to stay in touch with your followers 24/7.

Twaitter: a tool that I have just started using, and I have to say it’s pretty impressive. The interface is very easy to get a handle on. You can set up recurring messages (to happen in the future). You can also manage your followers. The downside is there is no feed management, but that seems to be in the works.

For more Twitter tools, log on to Twitter Hacks. In the meantime, do tell me what tool you are using to schedule your tweets.

You may have noticed in the past few weeks that I have been talking more about video-blogging and the tools that can help you get vlogging done more effectively. The most essential vlogging tool is your camcorder. If you intend to make a professional quality video for your web show, you are going to need a decent cam. The mini camcorders that you see in retail stores do a good job taking videos on the go, but if you intend to conduct interviews with the experts at conferences or professional gatherings, it’s always good to have a pro camcorder.

I have always wanted to own a pro camcorder to not only check it off of my wish-list but also capture better quality videos to share with others. I do have a Zi8, so I am all set for my road trips. But I have never really cared for paying $5000 or more for a pro camcorder. I have never wanted to be a director or professional producer, so spending that much money on a pro camcorder has never made sense for me. Besides, there are a lot of other things you can do with $5000-$10000.

Thanks to Panasonic, I didn’t have to spend that much money to get my hands on a super cool camcorder. Panasonic Professional AG-HMC40 is a brand new pro camcorder that is decent enough to capture HD videos, and it doesn’t break the bank either. It may not be as powerful as some of those high-end pro camcorders, but for what I want to do, it’s the perfect gadget.

This camcorder is a dream come true for newbie video producers. It’s affordable enough for most to invest in it, and it’s of high quality, so you do get a lot of bang for your buck. I won’t bore you with technical specifications for this device, but the fact that it can take 10.6 MP still photos is a big plus.

Panasonic Professional AG-HMC40 may not be as portable as a Flip, but it does work great for those interviews and serious videos. It’s certainly not for everybody, but if you are hoping to take your vlog to the next level and try your hands in the field of video production, this is a good camcorder to get started with.

Your take: how’s been your experience with AG-HMC40 pro?

So you are ready to get started with your own video blog? Have no idea where to start? Video blogging is a bit different from regular blogging. You are going to need to capture videos and even edit them before getting them on your vlog. You also have to pay attention to the quality of your camera, microphone, mixers, and so on. This all may sound too daunting to handle, but in reality it’s just different. As long as you have the right tools and the dedication to succeed, you are going to have a lot of fun vlogging. With that in mind, here are a few tools and resources to get you started with your own video blog:

Camcorders & Video Cameras

Sony Webbie HD: Sony Webbie MHS-PM1 HD Camcorder is a decent mini camcorder to get started with vloggers.

Flip UltraHD: the Flip needs no introduction. It has been around for years and is great for vlogging.

Kodak Zx1 HD: An affordable mini HD Camcorder for those constantly on the go.

Microphones:

Audio Technica AT2020USB Condenser USB Microphone: it’s the microphone I use for my projects. It’s not super expensive but the quality is very high.

Shure 55SH Series II Microphone:  Shure 55SH Series II is a bargain and one killer microphone.

Samson CO1U USB Condenser Mic: another decent choice if you are looking for a fairly high quality Microphone. For most podcast projects, this is enough.

Software:

Adobe Audition: the best pod-casting software on the planet. Great for manipulating multi-media files.

Camtasia Studio: a great software for capturing videos and conducting video demonstrations for your visitors.

Video Blogging Books:

Producing Video Podcasts: a great book to get you started with your own professional video blog.

YouTube – An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts: if you want to vlog on YouTube, you need to read this book to learn the latest tips and tricks.

Video-Blog Web Hosting

• DreamHost: my current web host. They are pretty decent and the support is wonderful.
• Wpwebhost: tailored towards the needs of Wordpress site owners. Supports Wordpress MU as well.
• Blue Host: used by a whole lot of small businesses for blogging, pod-casting, and …

Wordpress Themes and Templates

• TV Elements: is one of the best video blogging themes available on the Web. It allows you to create your own show and manage your episodes effectively.
• WooTube: is another great theme for YouTube vloggers.
• evid: evid is a cool little video-blogging theme that allows your users to rate your videos. Makes it easy to add your own videos too.
• Tubular: it is a cool dark video blogging theme that allows you to embed videos from YouTube, Viemo, and other top video sites to your blog.

There you have it. There are a few other things that you may need depending on the sophistication of your video blog. If you are having guests and so on, you are going to need audio mixers, camcorder lights, better microphones, and …, which is why there is a second part to this post. Stay tuned.

Twitter and Facebook may be a bit ahead of FriendFeed, but they are not that far ahead. In fact, there are a whole lot of bloggers that focus solely on Friendfeed as they find it more engaging. Whether you love or hate Friendfeed, it’s another avenue that can not only help you drive more traffic to your blog but also build new relationships and find other professionals in your niche to interact with. Friendfeed may not be Twitter, but it’s as engaging and before you know it, you are spending hours on it everyday. Now thanks to BuddyFeed 2.0, you can manage your FriendFeed account on your iPhone or iPod Touch easily when you are on the go. That means you are going to have more time to network and share and review content while you are on the go.

BuddyFeed is one powerful iPhone application. The interface is not only easy to use, but you get to post messages, images, subscribe to others’ feeds right on your phone. Setting up the application is not difficult either. You are going to need your FriendFeed API to get this to work. You can easily get that online or on your iPhone.

Posting messages and exploring rooms can’t be easier with this app. And the inline browser to view links in messages makes this app much more fun. FriendFeed can be a very addictive social networking community, and that’s where BuddyFeed comes in. Not only it makes it easy to participate in the FriendFeed community’s activities, but it also doesn’t require you to jump through hoops to post images and explore new areas.

Becoming a success story on Friendfeed is not that easy. It takes time, and you’ve got to work at it. You can’t afford to ignore your Friendfeed account for days or weeks and expect getting value out of it. If you are on FriendFeed (which you should be), you can’t afford not to use BuddyFeed. BuddyFeed not only saves you time, but it makes it easier to grow your presence on FriendFeed. It’s just a no brainer!