I’ve been prowling around Squidoo for a few days and one lens I popped across is a perfect Blog Primer. It’s a Blogging Starter Checklist.

The list contains things to put on your blog (like search, contact, etc), non-blog things that need to happen, registries and directories (very thorough), a whole series of posts that might be relevant to newbie bloggers, checking all your rankings, blog awards, and books that might be relevant.

The steps are well organized and have valuable links.

Tags: blog checklist, blogging, blog, blogger, new blog, how to blog

Tony Hung, while guest blogging on ProBlogger, wrote a great and thorough piece titled ‘How to Market your blog in 2007′

There are dozens of tips on Getting your House in Order, Getting the Word Out, Connecting, and using Social Media

Go check it out! Great work Tony!

Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, blog marketing, social networking

Clearly identifying your RSS feed with Feed Icons is important. The standard for a web feed icon is this:

The color is irrelevant, although orange is mostly used. I like the blue version, personally. Regardless, using this feed icon helps create a web standard that anyone can recognize.

To further make subscribing easy, you can use this generator for RSS buttons such as this one:

Tags: feed icons, rss icons, rss feed icons, blog, blogging, blogs, rss, marketing

This is my first ReviewMe post on Blogging Help, and is one I would have written paid or not. Actually, I’m really thankful the link was brought to my attention. It’s a blog post on a site called Aviva Directory.

The post is called 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch, and it already has over 800 Diggs. The tips are to help bloggers with the first 2 weeks of a blog’s life, it’s all important blog launch period. A period that not only sets up the blog for success, but gets you going as a blogger as well.

I will go through the suggested 21 tips, and add my own recommendations in bullets.

Blog Launch Tips:

1. Make a connection with your readers - have an about page and welcome message/blog description
   • I would also suggest having your email and/or picture as encouraging this identification with you
2. Launch with no less than 5 posts. I would suggest at least 10.
   • Let’s define "launch" as submitting posts, emailing or contacting other bloggers, or claiming your blog in directories.
   • Ensure your 10 posts are close in date not just once a week. People often look at this for consistency in a new blog.
3. Put your subscription information at the top
4. Put easy RSS buttons above the fold (Bloglines, Google Reader, etc)
5. Offer posts via email with an easy tool like Feedblitz
6. Include chicklets in your template, not in your post
7. Seed your posts to social bookmarking sites (digg, delicious, netscape, stumbleupon, yahoo myweb, reddit, furl, newsvine, lookmarks, blinklist) with good tags - broad and narrow
   • Avoid spamming with all your posts, and to all the sites. Learn which are best for your type of content and focus on those.
8. Leave useful commentary on like-blogs to grow your community awareness
9. Leverage links you get by adding very good content to keep readers and attract subscribers and further links
10. Outbound links in your posts will attract bloggers to come to you and also give them an SEO boost
11. Give things away - code, PDF, anything
12. Reach out to bloggers - send emails and offer advice, ask questions, be involved
13. Submit your blog to blog directories
14. Submit your blog to web directories (DMOZ, etc)
    • I have had great success with Yahoo, especially right after the URL has been added
15. Participate in forums with your URL in your signature
    • Keep your involvement relevant
    • Not all forums are created equal. Some appreciate links, others not. Some are larger. Know your niche.
    • This can be more successful in some ares than social bookmarking
16. Add your URL to your email signature
17. Add your URL to your online profiles - Myspace, Facebook, etc
18. Offer to guest post on other blogs
19. Ask your friends for feedback on design and content
    • I would even do this after 10 posts as a more well-rounded introduction to your blog
20. Go to blog events in your area
21. Stop your comment spam and encourage your friends to comment early to show your site is active.
    • Use a plugin or Akismet.

I would definitely say these are all really great tips. I would lay extra emphasis on design as well, and on your hosting options. I encourage people to buy their own URLs, with discretion to the name, and to use a nice template on a good system - depending on topic, you may find that people recognize the attention you have paid to organizing and laying out a professional site.

Tags: blog launch, blog launch tips, blogging, blog, blogs

Just a quick ‘how to’ for subscribing to YouTube video tag feeds.

1. Choose a tag to subscribe to, e.g. "Gilmore Girls"
2. Use this format to create your custom tag feed: http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/your+tag.rss
   • use a + to combine words into a tag phrase
3. Add the feed (http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/gilmore+girls.rss) to your RSS reader

*Note that YouTube tags seem to also encapsulate user profile names, so you could end up getting lots of irrelevant material, especially if it’s a single word not a phrase

e.g. I cannot subscribe to the word "Bones" for a blog I cover because there is a user with "bones" in his/her profile name and they post a lot of videos cluttering up the tag feed.

Tags: youtube, subscribe, feed, tag, tags, tagging, rss

I guess the 6th time is a charm! My Technorati profile now contains the image I have selected:

I am quite satisfied.

Now, I would like to pass on something I considered when updating my profile. I chose to use our Blogaholics logo for the profile instead of a personal picture.

Why choose a logo over a picture in your Technorati profile?

• A logo is timeless. It does not depend on hairstyles or fashions or even being photogenic.
• A logo scales well. The details are easily recognizable.
• A logo is professional.
• A logo can contain text, like a URL or company name.
• A logo is memorable.
• A logo is not obscured by backgrounds. It’s clean.

Those are my reasons for using my Blogaholics logo - an image, with changing name, that appears across most of our blogs. And a unique name that we are known for. Have you thought about what’s in your Technorati profile?

Of course, the image chosen need not be a "logo" necessarily, but perhaps your blog name or a part of your graphic standards.

Tags: technorati, logo, profile, business, reputation

Ok, as you know we did a more thorough switch to the new column layout I wanted to test: content-sidebar-sidebar.

Well, first off it’s clear that design and layout are very much correlated. Our old design did not support the clear use of the new column design. So, with a stripped design, what are our results?

Well, preliminary results show a 5% increase in CTR for Blogaholics. This happened almost overnight. And has remained relatively stable.

That’s enough of a push for us to begin redesigning the rest of our blogs. With all designs in place, I will fiddle here and there with ad placement and colour, since the new design is amenable to my tinkering skills.

I think the main areas we are seeing improvement from are:

- the removal of images or lines between sidebar content items

- the use of a solid white background

- the upper sidebar column cap ad block

- matching font sizes better from category names, etc to ads

- replacing lines between posts with extra whitespace

Overall, the improvement is in the flow of the eye. With no extra graphics to stop the eye, the content and the ads read as one, and that is an improvement for us.

I will continue to let you know how things go with this test, and with our other blogs. But it is clear that this column layout is working, and that our design is much better for our advertising returns.

Ok, so we’ve redesigned Blogaholics again. If you recall, we swapped the columns around not too long ago from sidebar-content-sidebar to content-sidebar-sidebar. We thought it would look nicer, be easier on navigation, and be better for our advertising.

Well… we liked the shift in the column, but it just did not work with our design. First, making changes to our template was more than difficult given the graphic heaviness. There were browser issues and sizing issues. It was very difficult. The lines on the “page” that was pinned to the cork background also made reading difficult. It was so complex that I couldn’t make many changes - I had to leave it to Ianiv - which was not the best for maintenance.

So, we dropped the design. We kept the header - the post-it, the picture and the pins. They are our brand, after all. But the rest was scrapped.

So, we added more sidebar items and rearranged things. It’s not 100% done, and we’ll likely shift things around some more to get optimal placement on stuff, but if you notice any bugs, let us know!

What do you think?

Once this is done, we’ll flush out Vancouver Coffee and Baking Low Fat since we can do a lot of cut/paste due to the similarity of the designs. We’re also going to do a facelift on Blogging Help - I have the redesign done already - but that will need to wait until after we return from Disneyland.

We’ll see if the new design turns into more clicks soon enough!

If you find yourself in a traffic spike - work it. Keep those readers intrigued, and keep them coming back for more.

First, you need to be aware that it’s happened. If you sit at your computer all day, then your notifications will keep you in the loop. But it doesn’t hurt to do a mid-day stats check.

If you see a big spike in your traffic, you want to make your blog sticky. Make it interesting enough to attract subscribers - and clicks.

So, as Darren suggested after I had the My Yahoo spike on Cooking Gadgets, I put up a welcome post for all my new readers. We put up a similar post here on Blogging Help after we were featured in a local paper. This welcome post did a few things:

- caught their attention

- gave me an opportunity to introduce the purpose of the blog

- let me link back to my best articles

- gave me a chance to introduce myself

Now, that was a large traffic spike. Something like 10,000. I wouldn’t expect anyone to do this every time a few hundred new visitors came in. However, you can do some things.

1. The most basic - WRITE MORE! Such an easy thing to do! Increase your output for a couple of days, then make sure not to slack for a week or two.

2. Get involved in your comments

3. Know your strengths - link back to your best pieces in a subtle way by perhaps taking a new angle on one so the link is a natural extension

4. Promote your other blogs, where appropriate (if you, like me, write on more than one)

5. Visit the blogs of people who have commented on your blog and get involved

6. Update any about pages that could better promote you

7. Ask for comments in new posts. Get people interacting.

Overall, be a generous linker, be a great comment attractor and have fun. :)

I’ve just come to the realization that affiliate programs are not just about making money, they are actually about improving my workflow.

Let me explain. I have a few product-based sites and have been recently using affiliate programs - Amazon and LinkShare - to look for products, review them, and insert information.

Rather than me going to Amazon, I’ll use a blog plugin to search the affiliate links directly. The pictures are enough to get me interested in a product or not. I can search quickly. Then, with minimal clicks, my blog post is ready with image and link, and in one step I have the product information to modify and review.

What does this save me? Well, it saves me time searching blogs for information. Saves me going directly to Amazon in another tab of my browser. Gives me that “new” information that is so valuable to traffic generation. And saves me worrying about looking for pictures - they’re given right to me!

What are the intangible benefits of affiliate programs:

- copy & paste product links
- copy & paste images
- no legal disputes on pictures
- quick search features for new products or promotions
- save me from uploading images to my server or to Flickr
- images are a very blog-friendly size

So, if your blog is about anything product related, I suggest seeking out the affiliate programs easiest to use to help you with your own workflow.

And, as an image tip, you can often find images for blogs on any topic through these affiliate programs - they may not be what the affiliate program was intended for, but they serve a good purpose.

Technorati Tags: traffic, pictures, licensing, money, affiliate, amazon

Jakob Nielsen has listed the top 10 design mistakes for blogs:

1. No Author Biographies - it’s all about trust & credentials

2. No Author Photo - good for press, credibility, recall factor

3. Nondescript Posting Titles - you likely have less than a second in scan time to grab attention

4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go - tell people where they are going, what to expect, and don’t use nicknames.

5. Classic Hits are Buried - make best articles direct navigation links, and link in other articles (good one!)

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation - categories are key!

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency

8. Mixing Topics

“The more focused your content, the more focused your readers. That, again, makes you more influential within your niche. Specialized sites rule the Web, so aim tightly.”

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

Having a weblog address ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. will soon be the equivalent of having an @aol.com email address or a Geocities website: the mark of a naïve beginner who shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Letting somebody else own your name means that they own your destiny on the Internet. They can degrade the service quality as much as they want. They can increase the price as much as they want. They can add atop your content as many pop-ups, blinking banners, or other user-repelling advertising techniques as they want. They can promote your competitor’s offers on your pages. Yes, you can walk, but at the cost of your loyal readers, links you’ve attracted from other sites, and your search engine ranking.

A very well rounded tip base. I think #5 is far too often overlooked - and makes me want to add more navigation tips to my own blogs. #8 hits home - simply start more blogs! and

#10 - ah, a pet peeve of mine. Just imaging what you would put on your business card and how much better it would look if you could match your email to your domain - oh, but if you don’t own that domain, you’re outta luck. There’s just too many restrictions associated with that route - and, for a simple $15 a year for a URL, free services like WordPress, and easy hosting solutions, why would you even consider a site whose domain you don’t own?

BTW - for those of you pro writers out there who follow this domain route, let it be know that people like myself often think twice before subscribing after wondering why you don’t own your URL, why you would bother with some annoying platform, and how seriously you take your future blogging efforts. :)

Via Boing Boing

Not too long ago, I had a spike in traffic on b5. And the other b5 bloggers wanted to know how to get the same spikes, and also to maintain a steady growth incline. So, I shared some tips, and I thought I should share them here too:

-Write 25-40% original content. For some blogs this will mean reading news feeds, as well as other blogs, to catch news first. You can also consider non-RSS content research to find items or to connect the dots between topics.

-Use pictures. They draw the eye. Look on Flickr or Google Images. Take what is Creative Commons, but be liberal with your link of thanks. Ask when unsure.

-Know your area bloggers and link to them. Make sure to comment too.

-Send emails to big blogs in your area. Pitch a story, write something interesting about your blog, and make that link prominent.

-Break up paragraphs and use text effects - bolding, underline, etc.

-Use comments to start new threads.

Have fun!

Hill & Knowlton have a new blog policy set to embrace employee blogging in the right way.

The new employee blogs will be embraced under the name of “Collective Conversation: Hill & Knowlton’s professional blogging community,” with this preface.

Like many other companies, we believe that blogs have the potential to become powerful communications tools. We have created this community to give our consultants the opportunity to participate in the blogosphere, to listen to and learn from our audiences, and to contribute their own vast insight and experience on topics related to our industry.

Whilst the blogs within this community are written “professionally”, the views expressed by the authors remain their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the company.

All of the blogs are linked to centrally with a description. If you follow the links, you’ll see interesting tabular representations of the blogs, the number of posts, number of comments, team vs. individual, and the overall pride the company is taking in highlighting and supporting their bloggers.

Here is the aforementioned policy:

* I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly
* I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes
* I will never delete a post
* I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic
* I will disclose conflicts of interest (including client relationships) where I am able to do so
* I will not publish anything that breaches my existing employment contract
* I will distinguish between factual information/commentary and advertising
* I will never publish information I know to be inaccurate
* I will disagree with other opinions respectfully
* I will link to online references and original source materials directly
* I will strive for high quality with every post - including basic spellchecking
* I will write deliberately and with accuracy
* I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly
* I will restrict my posting to professional topics
* I will write on a regular basis, at least once each week

Why is this good? It’s open. It’s brief. It’s clear. And it’s easy to follow.

Take this. Modify it. Make it your own.

Via Buzz Marketing with Blogs

Technorati Tags: hill & knowlton, blogging, business, professional blogging, blog policy, revolution

Chris Pirillo has a funny post on how not to get fired for blogging. Pretty sure some would be good strategies. No pub sub is going to pull up the misspelled company name, after all. Granted, that provides someone else in the company has to know about blogs and care about the company’s place in the blogosphere.

Here are my favourite tips:

10. Cats. Write about cats. A lot.

9. Always mispell your company’s name, just in case someone else is savvy enough to use (a) a search engine or (b) a keyboard.

8. When you talk about your co-workers, pretend you’re writing about a magical far away land of gnomes. Give them names such as “Whitey the Clumsy” or “Snitchbug.”

4. Learn to love garlic, as it will repel pesky co-workers (as well as the ocassional vampire).

Technorati Tags: pirillo, blogging, business, fired, cats

BlogHer Session: Blogging for Business

Speakers: Lisa Meyers Brown, Susan Getgood, Christine Halvorson, Mary Smaragdis

Flickr pictures

How to be successful:

1. Define your topic

2. Hit an emotional chord, not just intellectual ones

3. Use banners to your advantage to grow your traffic

4. PR works

5. Maybe ignore the ROI and focus instead on changing attitudes not sales

6. Corporate culture must foster trust and internal dialogue

7. Have a policy

8. If you don’t want it to be in a press release, don’t put it on a blog

9. Be risk tolerant - goes with trust

10. High level executive support

11. Be open to the value of community

12. Be willing to let go of some editorial control

13. Show you are committed to it

14. Keep the motivation high, and this can include helping with topics

15. Write about what you know (topic and opinion)

16. If you allow employees to blog, allow them to do it whenever with the caveat that the rest of what they do needs to be done

17. Speak to your niche community of readers, if you know who they are. Otherwise be more broad.

18. What is your mission? Stay true to it

19. Is it a product blog? An ‘on the scene’ blog?

20. Find the great writers in your company, no matter what they do

21. Do not be afraid of having opinions.

22. Express honest opinions on competitors, but don’t push it

Who should do it? You, your employees or (ack) your customers? Strategy comes into play here, of course. You can also do all three.

If you have evangelist customers, ask them to be a part of a customer blog. They must be customers present online, of course, and this is especially true if fan sites build up. You also must make it fun and easy for your bloggers to write. After teaching them how to do it, perhaps, you can also provide inside scoops and help interaction build through comments. You can also engage with fan sites, rather than starting up all new customer blogs. It need not be controlled within to filter your news.

Stonyfield Farms blogging came about after the CEO worked on the Howard Dean campaign and saw the benefits of blogging.

BlogHer Live tracking page

Technorati Tags: blogher, bloghercon