All Entries in the "Blog Tools" Category

Should You Use Automated Software To Build Your Following?

Every day now I see the next automated software for Twitterers being harked as the next great thing. Get 16,000 new followers automatically in 90 days. Gain thousands of followers automatically with no effort while you sleep. You know the deal.

The problem with these automated packages is that they work too well. It’s not that they don’t work at all. They work too well.

Yes, you’ll get thousands of followers, but they won’t be targeted followers, and chances are those people following you won’t have the slightest bit of interest in what you have to offer. I’d rather have a list of 1,000 highly targeted followers than 20,000 non-targeted followers.

A few years ago you’d see the say hype about blogs. Get instant trackbacks! Increase your RSS subscribers by the hundreds! Same deal, different program. You still those too, but not as often as you used to. I think the charlatans and snake oil salesmen finally realized they were going to sell as many as they sold and they moved on to the next great thing. Now it’s Twitter followers. Same game, same story, different day.

Don’t fall for it.

Does Your Blog Have A Natural Language Flow?

Blog writing isn’t hard. Too many bloggers try to make it difficult. You don’t have to spend hours upon hours searching for the right keyword for every blog post. Do most of your keyword research right up front. If you know what your niche topic is and the most important 15-20 keywords for that topic with 100 or so related keywords (yes, keep a spreadsheet unless you have a photographic memory) then you have enough information for a year’s worth of blog posts.

You don’t have to go down the list of keywords making sure that each blog post is stuffed with X number of a specific keyword in order to be optimized. The best optimization is simply natural language writing that incorporates a good mix of the right keywords over time. I’ve proven this over and over again on countless blogs of my own and client blogs. Keyword optimization for blogs is about two things: Single post high octane content and blog brandable content that moves beyond a single post. Do the first one right and after a year of posting the second one should fall into place. Natural language writing is the key.

Neuro-Blogging: Is It The Next Big Wave?

A brain scientist at the University of Wisconsin is using Twitter to experiment and test an application that will allow people with biomedical difficulties to use the social media application without typing with their hands. They will instead be allowed to think what they want to tweet and communicate with the entire world through their brains alone. On April 1 he succeeded.

The experiment opens up all kinds of other possibilities as well.

With a tool like Twitter Tools a person can use their blog to send a tweet. If you can think your tweet through Twitter then by using Twitter’s API you should also be able to think a blog post using Twitter Tools and similar WordPress plugins. That brings up all kinds of possibilities:

How long will it be before:

• Terminally ill patients can blog from their hospital beds without the use of their hands?
• Drivers on a freeway are able to send a blog post while navigating rush hour traffic?
• Bathers can send a blog post from their tub without using a keyboard?
• Birthing mothers can keep loved ones informed during labor?
• Workers trapped in a land mine can help their rescuers find them?
• A man on the moon can instantly send a love note to his wife back at earth while in the midst of performing maintenance on the space station’s mechanical parts?

This is truly amazing technology. How long will it be before we are all wired to communicate across great distances using nothing but our brains and a computer?

Is TwitWall Another Blog Platform?

TwitWall is a standalone social application for Twitter. If you have a Twitter account you are automatically set up with a TwitWall even though you may never use it. I wonder how many Twitterers do not even know they have a TwitWall. I just discovered mine a couple of weeks ago.

The point behind TwitWall is that you can say more than the 140 character limit that Twitter enforces. Good idea, but why not just write it on your blog? Then you use can use Twitter Tools to post the link to Twitter from your blog?

There is a practical reason for using TwitWall. It does appear to be just another blogging platform, but I don’t write to mine every day. Just when I have something unique to say that I really only care that my Twitter audience reads. TwitWall does have some advantages though. No. 1, when you write to TwitWall, your blog post automatically Twitters instantly. Just like Twitter Tools. But it’s also social and accessible to every other Twitterer with a TwitWall. Therein is your advantage.

If you have a strong Twitter following, you can use TwitWall to go into greater depth about some of your tweets. But don’t do it too often. Another reason to use TwitWall is you can target specific types of Twitterers who can find you through TwitWall and follow you based on your TwitWall postings. It’s just another way to reach the right people for your niche. Just don’t overdo it.

Visit my TwitWall.
Follow me on Twitter.

How To Value A Blog For Sale

Business have traditionally used various methods for determining resell value. Online businesses are no different. There is no one way to determine value. But there are some ways that are better than others.

If you want to sell your blog, do you know how to determine its value? First, you must ask yourself if anyone else would want your domain name. If the domain name is a branded name that carries your companies brand then it might not be of value to anyone else even if you gave it away. But what if you have a domain name that isn’t branded specifically for your company? Can you sell it?

Valuation is a tricky art. You can value a domain solely on traffic if you get enough traffic to the blog. Daily traffic in the single or double digits won’t be worth much, of course, but what if your daily traffic count is in the thousands or tens of thousands? Then that traffic may be of value to someone.

Another method of determining value is the amount of money that your blog has made in the past few months. Some people go back as far as two years. Others stick with the past three months and multiply the average by six, twelve, or twenty-four. Whatever you settle on for a value, you have to be able to justify it for any potential buyer.

I rarely recommend blog valuation tools because most of them really are not very accurate or fair. But I did recently stumble upon one that I thought was fairly accurate and decently fair in the way it calculate blog value. You can find it at websitebroker.com.

When you’re ready to sell your blog, be sure to check around. Don’t just list your blog with the first website broker you find. Sometimes you can sell a blog property through word of mouth long before a broker finds you a buyer. Start with who you know.

Google Friend Connect Or Facebook Connect? Which Is Right For You?

Everyone seems to be comparing two new social networking applications – Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect. I haven’t tried the latter, but I have tried the former. But this post isn’t about which is better. It’s about which is better for you.

How do you decide whether you should use Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect for your blog? Or neither? First, ask yourself this question, “Would having your very own social network aid your target audience?”

If the answer to that question is yes then you’ve taken the first step.

Now you just have to decide whether Facebook Connect or Google Friend Connect is a better choice. Either way, it’s a big step and you should know what you are getting into. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Are you a member of Facebook and are you active there?
• Do you see a need for Facebook and would it improve your networking any?
• How are your technical skills?
• Do you have it in your budget to hire a developer to help you set up a social network?
• Is your target audience using Facebook?

If your answer to any of these questions is negative then you shouldn’t bother with Facebook Connect. You should use Google Friend Connect instead. Here’s why:

• Google Friend Connect is easier to install for the average user.
• Facebook Connect is proprietary and if neither you nor your target audience can benefit from networking through Facebook it just doesn’t make sense to use their service because you can’t use it with any service other than Facebook; Google Friend Connect, by contrast, is open source and therefore provides the ability to network across multiple websites.
• Even if your technical skills are not that great, if your audience is on Facebook and you have the budget to pay a developer to install Facebook Connect for you then it could pay off in the long run (you need to be where your audience is).

Social networking is here to stay. Thanks to both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, niche websites can get in on the niche social networking action now. To find sites that use Google Friend Connect, visit Friend Connectified.

Are Blog Carnivals Effective?

As a provider of commercial blog content we’ve never had an interest in blog carnivals. We didn’t need to. Our focus was on SEO and lead generation. But we’ve noticed that Caroline Melberg at Small Business Mavericks is hosting a blog carnival on her blog.

We hope Caroline’s effort goes well. While we’ve never taken an interest in blog carnivals ourselves, perhaps this will open up doors for some of our clients who want to participate in a business blog. The title of Caroline’s blog carnival is Gonzo Business Carnival. You can read the rules on Caroline’s blog, but in a nutshell, if you written any blog posts about business then you quality to enter.

Our thoughts on this is you can’t lose. Even if nothing comes of the blog carnival and you enter, you still get a link back to your website and the possibility of increased traffic. While this is what we’d call untargeted marketing, that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective marketing. We’re open to it until we see the results. Meanwhile, we encourage you to think about participating.

How To Promote Your Blog Posts Through Twitter

There are ever increasing ways to promote your blog posts today. Twitter is another tool that you can use to promote your blog. Here are a few ways to use Twitter to promote your blog posts:

• Open your Twitter account in your blog’s name
• Link to your blog from your Twitter profile
• Install Twitter Tools and set your settings to post a tweet for your blog posts
• Send your tweets from your blog using Twitter Tools
• Set your Twitter Tools settings to post a blog post every time you tweet
• Use the daily tweet rollup feature in Twitter Tools
• Send a tweet with a link to your latest blog post
• DM your Twitter friends and ask them to retweet your blog promotion tweet
• Ask your social networking friends to tweet your newest blog entry
• When you comment on other blogs, include a link to your Twitter profile

Twitter is becoming a powerful force in online marketing. I highly recommend it for every blogger.

Don’t have a blog? Learn how to get a blog for your business today.

Twitter Tools: The Automatic Way To Microblog

Microblogging has become all the craze and Twitter is the leader in this realm. What is microblogging? If you do it the Twitter way, you write a little post of 140 characters or less. Twitter Tools is a WordPress plugin that automatically tweets your blog post when you post it. The message appears like thus:

namecritic New blog post: Disaster Aid: What Are You Entitled To? http://tinyurl.com/5urc56

It’s starts with your Twitter name, followed by “New blog post” and a short description with the URL to the post linked as a Tinyurl. Beautiful!

With Twitter Tools you can have one Twitter post automatically done every day with no effort. All of your followers will see it and the more followers you have the better off you will be to market your blog. But you have to have a Twitter account.

Add A Twitter Badge To Your Blog The Hard Way

I decided I’d put a Twitter badge on a client’s blog so I went looking for Twitter badges. Man are they hard to find. Well, if you have a Twitter account and you are active in your account then you should add a Twitter badge to your blog. What better way to attract new followers than right there on your blog?

Here’s what you need to do to find that Twitter badge:

1. From your Twitter page, click on “Help”
2. In the left sidebar you’ll see “Twitter FAQ” – CLICK ON IT
3. Click on 1.1.FAQ
4. Scroll down
5. Keep scrolling down
6. Scroll, like, all the way down until you see “Can I put Twitter on my blog?“
7. Click the link using “put a Twitter badge” as anchor text in the “Can I put Twitter on my blog?” paragraph

Yikes! That’s seven steps just to find the page on which the badges can be found. Five if you count the three step scroll function as one. Facetiousness aside, you’d think that Twitter would make it easier for bloggers to find badges for their blog. And, I’m a bit disappointed in the limited choices available. Oh, well.

Instead of the above seven-step process, just click here and you’ll go to the Twitter badge page. Or you can go to http://twitter.com/badges. Now, from here:

• Click the type of widget you want to use (again, I’m disappointed they don’t have one for WordPress – the most popular blogging platform); if you use WordPress, click “Other”
• Choose the type of badge you want
• Customize your badge
• Copy the code
• Inside WordPress, click on Design then Theme Editor
• Click on the Sidebar php file you want to edit
• Insert the widget code where you want it to appear in the sidebar
• Update file
• Visit Site and make sure the badge appears the way you want it to appear

Don’t have the time to install your own badge? We’ll do it for you. Call Chris at 786-317-8774 or visit the website and fill in our contact form.