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

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

As bloggers, we do tend to live in a bubble. We assume that since we blog, we are the only ones who do ‘blog-related’ things as well. But the truth is that the tools we love help non-bloggers too.

For example, ego feeds. Most of us have them. Follow our name, our blog URL, etc. We want to know what other people think of us or our writings.

But ‘other people’ have egos too. Example, one of my b5 bloggers, Nikki, got an interview with an actor on Prison Break after he left a comment on her blog. And I have interviewed an actor for Bones, who openly admits to reading all show forums and blogs. So, actors are out there watching and listening to what’s being said about them. And RSS makes it so easy for them to do that.

Do you have an ego feed?

And if you are someone out there lurking and listening, the next step is interactivity. Leave a comment some time ;)

Tags: ego, ego feed, actors

Contests and polls are great ways to add that crucial "stickiness" to your blog - to get your readers to return, stay, and interact.

Polls are simple. Find a creative or controversial question, with good answers, and put it up. Democracy is a good Wordpress plugin for that, with the downside that it is not ‘within’ posts, only on the sidebar.

Contests can be tricky. Too complicated and people will defer to being lazy. I have found that the prize is only part of the factor in the success of contests. The entry has to be easy, requiring something interesting of the user, or somthing simple such as sending in an email address. You need to be aware of your target: age, time constraints, knowledge, resources.

I think audience is a larger factor in the number of entries than the prize itself. For example:

When I worked in advertising, we ran a campaign for retailers to win large screen televisions. But to enter they had to encourage their customers to enter with their specific code (predefined by tickets given) and thus needed to put up the sales materials. Too much work. There were entries, but fewer than we’d like. I’ve seen a similar result in the blogosphere.

I recently ran a contest on my Hilary Duff blog. The prize was intangible: ‘fan of the month’, but the entry was appropriate to the audience. They had to dress up a doll using a special website - very little skill required for the younger audience, but also fun. It had a very large number of entries.

So I have found that the match between contest and audience is absolutely crucial. If your contest is fun and easy, you should have a good time.

Combining polls with contests: If you can combine polling with contests, you have a bonus. I decided to take the best entries on my Hilary contest and post them to be ‘voted on’ using a poll - each entry was anonymous and Democracy prevents voting more than once per IP. In under a week, I had a couple of hundred votes. Overall, it was really fun for me and for my readers. They were very excited by it, and for me it created a new way to interact with them: announcing the contest, announcing the voting, announcing the winner, placing the winner as fan of the month. Lots of content.

If you have an audience that is very sticky on your blog already, they will take to the above approach. I think the more your audience enjoys being on your blog, the more they will enjoy contests. Start with lots of polls to gain the stickiness, then increase over time.

Tags: contests, polling, blogging, blogs, stickiness

Do you have a fear of public speaking? Or do you just feel odd getting up on the podium?

I personally used to hate speaking up, in any form. I was super shy. And still am in some situations, but I have learned to love public speaking. I think of it as a great privilege - to share knowledge, to learn from others, and to connect with an audience.

Whether you love it or hate it, here are some great Lifehacker tips for public speaking:

• Know what is expected of you and if you’re flying solo or not
• Do the organizers want you to be more interactive? Or to do a speech only?
• Who are you presenting to? What is their level of knowledge about your topic? Are they C-levels who just "want to know", or the actual "do-ers"?
• What is the overarching message of your talk? Write an outline around this, but make sure to summarize it too.
• Put the most polish and practice into your introduction. Establish rapport early on and things will go easier.
• Tell people about who you are
• Finish early - be concise at all times
• Adapt - you often find that interests vary, or questions sway your outline. Know your stuff and be prepared to leave out stuff that may not suit your audience, and to expand in other areas.
• Be confident. Have fun.
• Engage
• Run your outline by someone to see if you convey
• Don’t memorize, and don’t read. Have an outline, not an essay.
• Give people your contact info

My tips:

• If you choose to use a PowerPoint, do not read from it. People can read - what you say should add to that summary or enhance it in some way. A PowerPoint is like a structure for your presentation, but should never be used as your entire presentation. Otherwise, why do they need you? Use bullets & pictures instead.
• Make eye contact
• embrace pauses
• Never, ever, say "um"
• Smile
• Watch for confused faces - they are a sign to take note, pause, and ask for questions
• Slow down. Most people talk too fast.
• If you need to write something, write it clearly
• If you are a woman, wear comfortable shoes
• Present yourself well - clean up, press your clothes, and look put together
• If you are doing a demo, test all your links and materials
• Have a dry run with any technology you will be using

Hope that helps!

Tags: public speaking

I was reading this post about the over-reliance on traffic by many bloggers - and how, in many cases, this traffic-is-the-only-goal mentality has meant community falls through the cracks.

When it comes to what blogging means to both readers and writers, the numbers ultimately matter very little. I don’t go up to someone and say "hey, I found you because your traffic is increasing this month" - I’d be more likely to say "hey, that was a great article" or something. The difference is apparent - it’s not just the focus, but also the dialogue.

When bloggers get focused on increasing their traffic, they will be meme trackers - following whatever is hot enough to bring in spikes in traffic and subsequent links. But their all-over-the-place-ness can leave the readers who arrive and decide to subscribe a little confused. "Traffic whores" don’t really care about the subscribers - about inviting comments or dialogue - but more about climbing in Google.

When you shift your attention to an abstract thing called PageRank and away from actual people, you lose something. Your point becomes only money and not community. And, to me, that misses the great opportunities in blogging.

Now, you might bash me for following these lines with blogs like this or this, but I have trouble straying too far away from the importance I place on community. I’ve added new content areas when readers ask, shared emails with readers, and started up an active set of polls to keep readers having fun. So, while I may blog anything hot on the gossip pages for the money of it, the community of it is just as enriching.

In other cases, traffic is completely unimportant to me. This blog, for example, is highly skewed towards subscribers rather than search traffic. And that’s great by me. The goal of Blogging Help is really not money - nor has it ever been.

So - do you place too much reliance on traffic for your goal setting? How do you think that could bias what you write about or how?

Tags: traffic whore

Typically a tag will be inserted into your blog using a handy tool like Qumana in a standard format as follows:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[TAGNAME]" rel="tag">[TAGNAME]</a>

However, new Technorati guru Janice offers a great tip to convert that tag to a self-searching tag.

What does this do?

Well, instead of tagging your post with a link that will take your readers to Technorati to browse other like-tagged posts, your readers can search like-tagged posts from your archives. Neat, hey?

To convert your tag, simply convert this:

"http://technorati.com/tag/[TAGNAME]"

to this:

"http://technorati.com/tags/[YOURTAG]?from=http://[YOURBLOGURL]"

Your readers will still get pointed to Technorati, but it’s a neat extension.

Let’s try it! (Note, I’m using Blogaholics since my tag archives are larger)

Regular: Tags: tags, tag, tagging ; My posts: Tags: tags, tag, tagging

Today Technorati launched something called Technorati Favorites which lets you create a list of your favorite blogs. There are several ways of adding a blog to your favorites list:

• On any Technorati page, click on the star icon () next to a blog name.
• Use a bookmarklet to add a blog you are reading.
• Import OPML or XOXO files.
• A blog can include "Add you your favorites" buttons that readers can click on.

So, you’ve added a bunch of sites to your list. What now? You can restrict your searches to only your favorite blogs. You can display recent posts from your favorites on your own blog using the Favorites Widget. And, finally, you can share your favorites list with your friends.

I don’t think I’m going to use this feature much. I already keep a list of the sites I like on my feed reader and I don’t need another list to maintain. But what I would really like to see is a reverse listing. That is, I want to see who has added my blog as a favorite. This would help me better understand my readers, by looking at what other blogs they read I could get a better idea of the type of content they are interested in.

Tags: technorati, favorites

CoComment is now in open beta. I’m so excited, because I’ve wanted to try it! It’s perfect timing to track the conversations around the new Qumana!

From their blog :

As we’ve communicated before, the past couple of weeks were intended to be a very “soft” launch to test the service stability and scalability, and to get some initial feedback from the closed user group.

(side note, they need to fix up their permalink structure)

What is CoComment?

1. Comment on a blog

2. Click on a bookmarklet (or let Greasemonkey do the work) to…

3. Track the conversation: track replies to your comments as well as all your comments, share these comments on your blog, get an RSS feed of the replies to track the "conversation"

Easy. Useful. Long needed!

Tags: cocomment

Ok, I don’t know how but I came across this site called "God or Not" and its experiment got me to thinking…

if blogs/bloggers can be temporarily swapped to help each blogger understand the others’ side…

then blogs/bloggers could swap blogs for other benefits too

Primarily, I was thinking of blog swapping as a means to reduce bloggers block?

Bored of your topic? Lacking inspiration? Need a change of pace? Want to expand your reading but don’t know how? I’m sure there are thousands of bloggers in the same boat - why not swap blogs. It sounds exciting to me. Good way to get back in the vibe of writing, to keep your blog alive, and to build community.

What do you think? Do you think this would be a good way to inspire you?

Tags: blog swapping, bloggers block

This is a great visual representation of the world of Web 2.0, done up by Stabilo Boss. Well, most of it, anyway ;)

It’s an impressive array of the changes taking place to communication, to business and to our means of social dialogue. Web 2.0, to me, is a movement. Social change. And the movement is growing, as evident in this visual map.

It’s impressive to me the wide arrange of services I know - and don’t know.

How many of these are new to you? How many do you use or take part in right now?

Tags: web 2.0, web2.0

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

It’s hard to grow as a blogger without falling under some criticism. Luckily in the year I’ve been blogging, most of it professionally, the criticism and angry commentary has been rare. But it’s been there.

Bloggers get some flack. And sometimes it’s some major stuff. Sometimes it’s for what you stand for. Somtimes for who you cite or your research bias. Sometimes it’s for your opinion. And sometimes, unfortunately, it’s personal. People just hate you, and they are ok saying so.

An example. I’ve been openly criticized for my opinion on a cafe on my Vancouver Coffee blog. It was a hard one for me. The criticism was major - public - and rude. We thankfully migrated the ‘fight’ offline, so to speak, and moderated even, but it got me down. Once I moved past it I realized that the online fight looked far worse for the instigator than for me, and left it there as a reminder - and as a bit of a permanent payback as well, perhaps. ;)

Nonetheless, as a blogger you’re likely to hit these down moments when you just want to stop sharing and turn off your comments. Darren over at ProBlogger talks about some ways to deal with criticism:

1. Thicken your skin
2. Establish boundaries
3. Remember the Humanness of the Other (vital)
4. Step away from the computer
5. Listen
6. Accept responsibility
7. Don’t get personal
8. Take it private
9. Keep perspective
10. Look for Opportunities (this is something we do a lot when we meet negative Qumana reviews. And it works)
11. Anger = Threat
12. Dialogue
13. Consider a Mediator
14. Control the Rhythm and Tone of your Blog
15. Move on

Read the details of each point from Darren. [italics are my own comments]. Some very valuable insight on how to deal with the flack - and how to avoid it in the future.

Tags: blogging, criticism, fights

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The Boston Globe says that bloggers will ‘eventually’ be able to make money. Funny, I thought I was already making money from blogging?

The site, Gather.com, positions itself as a kind of eBay for online writers and their readers — a gathering spot for musings and discussions on everything from wine and computers to fitness and spirituality. And, with a business model that could shake up the writing profession, executives from Gather Inc. are recruiting bloggers by offering them a share of the company’s advertising revenue.

Eventually, popular writers will be able to earn a living by posting their work and attracting eyeballs to advertisements, said Gather’s founder, 35-year-old technology entrepreneur Tom Gerace. That won’t happen right away, though. - Boston Globe

Gather.com sounds very much like a blog network, except it focuses on the writing and not the writers. So, it’s kind of like Digg meets an old fashioned chat room, more than an actual blog network. Why I find this problematic - in many ways, blogging is about creating relationships with audience. And this doesn’t feel at all like blogging. Social networking, yes, but the ‘blogging’ component is post-writing, not the entire process. Key here - to me, blogging is a process of dialogue.

What are your impressions?

Via Jason Calacanis ; Tags: blogging, boston globe, money, ads

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Here’s a funny story about how we took a piece of garbage and made something nice, and profitable, from it.

1. We took a used lightbulb, and I made it into a Christmas ornament.
2. I decided to share it on Blogaholics
3. On a whim, I submitted it to Make since they were doing some Christmas stuff
4. I got a link back from Make, Lifehacker and Treehugger - including all the accompanying traffic

That’s one easy way to turn trash into something profitable!

Christmas time is very enjoyable for me. I love my crafts, and wanted to share that. And, people were generous in return.

Tags: christmas, ornaments, linking, make, diy, links, blogging

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