Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

Here are a few noteworthy blog posts from the past few weeks:

• Muhammad Saleem wrote a good review of the new Facebooks Platform
• Utah Paul Allen Predicts that FaceBook will become the largest social network in the world
• Stuntdubl SEO shares his Competitive Webmaster’s Guide to Understanding the Dynamics of Top Rankings
• Andy Beard lists 32 Forms of Linking Payola and Linking Mistakes Frequently Encountered On Blogs
• Michael Gray responds to Google’s addition of paid link reporting here and here
• Seth Godin analyzes people’s inconsistencies and shares a shoestring opportunity
• SEOmoz launched the Rank Checker
• Yaro Starak shares a video he created of reviewing a blog, where he gives a lot of great advice for improving your blog
• John Jonas recommends working instead of blogging
• Courtney Tuttle shares his Beginner’s Guide to Top Google Rankings
• Neil Patel lists Five Branding Errors That Make You Look Dumb

Enjoy!

Yaro Starak released his free Blog Profits Blueprint just last week. I was able to set aside some time to read it over the weekend so I thought I’d give you my thoughts.

When I first started reading the report I didn’t really think I would get very much out of it. He starts off by telling you how he got involved in blogging and some of the success he has had doing it. Interesting story, but how does that help me? Then when I actually started to get into the real content of the report it just seemed too basic. He explains what blogging is how people make money with blogs, and how to get traffic to a blog. This is all stuff you already know if you have even a little experience with blogging and internet marketing.

However, by the time I got near the end of the report I had actually learned a few new things and I realized that even though a lot a what he was writing about was stuff I already knew, Yaro organized and presented it in such a way as to emphasize the most important aspects of pro blogging. It helps you think about what you really should be doing, prioritizing you efforts on tasks that are going to best help you reach you overall objective for blogging. There were also several little nuggets of value (things I either hadn’t realized or had forgotten) sprinkled throughout the report. A lot of times in life, and especially in business, you need to be reminded of things you have already learned. By the time I had finished the report I was very impressed with what Yaro had put together.

I don’t mean to boast, but I actually have a lot of experience with blogging and internet marketing, and I thought reading the report was well worth my time. So for someone with a little less or no experience this report can offer a tremendous amount of value. It is a must read for internet marketers and bloggers of all experience levels.

Get your free copy of Blog Profits Blueprint here

I love Google Reader’s trends feature, which allows you to see statistics about your reading habits. Here is a list of the top 20 blogs I have been reading over the past 30 days. The numbers are the total amount of posts I read and the percentage of all posts I read.

John Chow dot Com 35 33%

Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim - Internet Marketing Blog & Consultant 26 13%

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog 19 41%

SEO Book.com 19 32%

Pronet Advertising 18 32%

ProBlogger Blog Tips 17 23%

Chris Knudsen on life, business, and entrepreneurship 9 47%

The Jason Calacanis Weblog 9 20%

Shoemoney - Skills to pay the bills 9 14%

Russell Page 8 40%

Copyblogger 8 38%

Seth’s Blog 8 17%

Smooth Harold | The Blog of Blake Snow 7 37%

NewspaperGrl 7 35%

Graywolf’s SEO Blog 7 25%

Online Marketing Blog 7 18%

Macalua.com 6 43%

Tropical SEO 6 40%

SEO BlackHat: Black Hat SEO Blog 5 83%

Connor’s Conundrums 5 26%

I am writing this post as part of Darren Rowse’s Group Writing Project. The following are my five favorite blogs related to doing business online. I would recommend them to all.

1. ProBlogger: Darren gives great advice on everything related to Pro blogging.
2. Pronet Advertising: I would say this is the best blog out there about social media from a marketers perspective. Neil and his gang have done a great job.
3. SEOmoz: Rand Fishkin and the folks at SEOmoz provide a steady flow of good advice and information related to Search Engine Optimization.
4. CopyBlogger: Brian gives great advice related to copywriting. I am constantly amazed at the quality of every post he publishes.

5. John Chow dot Com: Although his blog tends to go off topic quite frequently John offers great information on everything related to making money online.

While trying to come up with this list several other blogs came to mind which are also worth reading, so I’ve decided to list them below if you want to check them out.

SEO Book

Paul Allen (the lesser)

Newspapergrl

Macalua.com

Shoemoney

Seth Godin’s blog

Search Trends

The Carolynn Blog

and so many more…

I had the privilege of spending last weekend on the island paradise of Bohol with a really cool group of people who call themselves “The Band of Bloggers”. I even participated in their podcast or “BoBcast” they recorded on the way back to Manila. Here are a few accounts given by the band of bloggers themselves…

BoB flies to Cebu

Is technology slowly enslaving us?

BoB bids goodbye to Bohol

What are Boholians?

Travel: Bohol and Cebu

10 Things I’ve learned in Bohol

and here are a few of the pictures I took…

My blog community on MyBlogLog just reached 400 members today, thanks to to Scott Bradley. Although I am assuming that most of those members never actually read my blog I think it is still a milestone to be proud of, and it is in my opinion a good form of social proof. The 50th largest MyBlogCommunity currently has 527 members, so I am not too far off from getting into the top 50 communities. If you haven’t joined my community yet could you please do me a favor and join here.

One popular reasons given for using partial feeds as opposed to full feeds is that it increases the amount of visitors to your actual site. If you let people have your full feed they will just consume your content through a feed reader and never visit your site, so you have to offer just a partial feed so they will have to click through to your website and read your full post, right? … Wrong! Several recent posts say otherwise, and so do I. Whenever I subscribe to a feed and find out it only offers a partial feed I unsubscribe immediately in almost all cases. On the rare occasion that I do stay subscribed I end up reading less of the content than I would have had they offered a full feed, simply because clicking through to a website is just an extra step that I am reluctant to take, because it takes me away from all the other good content in my feed reader provided by all the other blogs who let me subscribe to a full feed. There is a lot of good content out there and I am always looking for ways to sift through it all. By offering only a partial feed you are pretty much guaranteeing that I will place your content in the never return category. One exception to this is Aaron Wall’s SEOBook. He offers great content that I wouldn’t want to miss it, but his blog is the only exception.

If bloggers want readers to click through to their website I recommend that they entice them rather that force them. Offer great content that encourages discussion and people will want to click through after they have read your full post in their feed reader simply to see the comments and post one of their own. I do this very often myself. As I read posts in my feed reader I open the ones I would like to comment on in a new tab and go back to them after I have gone through all the content in my feed reader. So for everyone out there who offers only partial feeds, if you want this reader please switch to full feeds.

Since I use my cell phone for both personal and business calls I am always torn as to what type of voice mail greeting I should leave for my callers. I don’t want to sound boring when my friends call, but at the same time I don’t want to sound too unprofessional when people call for business purposes. I just found a solution to this problem with YouMail. YouMail is a voicmail system that allow users to record unique voice greetings for anyone who calls, based on their caller ID.With YouMail, not only can I now serve different voice mail greetings for personal and business callers, but I can actually serve a unique message for each individual caller. I love the reaction I got from a good friend who was the first to hear a voice greeting recorded specifically for her, “Am I like the only person who calls you?”With step by step instructions, switching from your existing voicemail system to YouMail is fairly easy. Some cool features that I like are the ability to be notified by e-mail of new messages, the ability to hear and save messages online, and the ability to upload digital audio files as greetings. And, its completely free.

I went to a Jazz game a couple nights ago with a good friend. We had some great seats on the fifth row (I was within spitting distance of Kevin Garnett.), and the Jazz won 106-91! One thing that caught my attention that had nothing to do with the game was the way Albertsons used social proof as a marketing tool. During one of the time outs the announcer told the audience that some prize was to be given to one individual who had their Albertsons card with them (By the way, Albertsons could do a lot better with their search marketing. I couldn’t find a single page describing their card on Google, let alone the actual official name of the card.) The audience was told to hold out their card so that someone could be chosen. Of course they delayed actually choosing someone for almost a minute as hundreds of fans frantically waved around thier Albertsons card hoping they would be chosen, while non-card holders couldn’t help but noticed how many people already had a card and wondered how they missed the boat. It was kind of like Albertsons was saying “Look all these people that use our card and shop at our stores. You should get a card and shop at Albertsons too so you can be cool like everyone else.”

Social proof can be a powerful marketing tool. If you can get your customers to vouch for your product (or at least make it look like they are) and find a way to advertise it to your potential customers your job as a marketer becomes a lot easier. People don’t want to feel left out and often look to others when making decisions they are unsure of. By being aware of social proof and taking actions to leverage it you can be there when people are looking around to others when trying make a purchase decision.

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