Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Technorati, the second most popular blog search engine next to Google Blog Search and 5th largest social media space, recently underwent a “web 2.0″ face-lift. Some changes were for the better, some for better business and some are a work in progress. A few cool new additions are Twittorati – a Twitter API, the Technorati Blog, and a few more Technorati properties.  However, it seems that for the time being, Technorati is a bit anti-social.

The Technorati profile, once a way for bloggers to connect with fellow bloggers and subscribe to blogs, has been crippled for a couple months. Currently, members cannot subscribe to blogs and blog reactions have been reserved for “authoritative” sources. Meanwhile, Blog Catalog offers a few features Technorati does not – it is not only a blog directory and blog search engine, but a social network, community, blog activity stream and blog subscription service.  ... Read This »

Twitter and Facebook are about to go head to head in a grueling evaluation of their effectiveness as blog syndication channels. At the end of three standard paragraphs there will be only one declared winner, one declared loser and ultimately two options that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but for comparison sake: the following is brought to you by Smobot – “the social media optimization guide.”

First, we have to assume a level playing field. Let’s examine a situation where you’ve got an equal number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, and both options will each only receive one status update per blog post, the content of which shall be, again, assumed equal. Facebook enables users to comment, “like this” or something, share content, and invite friends to “fan” that Facebook page (fan: v. – the act of becoming a fan of a person, place or thing’s Facebook page). Twitter enables users to @reply and retweet content. Overall, retweeting occurs more frequently than Facebook sharing (refer to Mashable’s home page), but Facebook enables users to easily suggest the Facebook Page to their entire network of friends. Round one is a draw.  ... Read This »

What are your visitors thinking? Ideally, they are thinking what you tell them to, and if you’re in the online game to make money, it is in your best interest to encourage them to buy something. Regardless of the type of site you run, converting visitors to do the thing that you want them to do – the thing that you’ve been working so hard to get them to do – is what makes your website successful.

Many websites are designed for the user first, and profitability second, which is perfectly acceptable if you aren’t in it for profit. Twitter remains unmonetized, Bing still isn’t turning a profit, and Digg just recently took serious action to levy their regular losses. Facebook… poor Facebook… isn’t monetized very well, in my opinion, despite their millions of users. I, a small time blogger, certainly have no place telling these well-funded, well-managed organizations how to model their businesses, but if it were me, I’d pay more attention to my typical user’s mindset.  ... Read This »

Networked Blogs, the almost official blog directory & syndication application on Facebook, offers users the ability to subscribe to, rate, comment and share blogs with their friends. I would advise any blogger to add their blog to the directory, but I would not suggest that you funnel all of your Facebook friends to it. While Networked Blogs offers some nice features and indexation in a fairly high-traffic blog search engine (2 million visitors / month with close to 1 million users), the application is too many degrees removed from both your blog and Facebook.  ... Read This »

Nothing is more frustrating that having your story go viral from someone else’s muse. So unless you’re blogging with the sole intent of spreading an anonymous message, you may want to incorporate a few of these techniques to prevent other bloggers from stealing your brilliance without so much as trackback.

Use images: If you’re making a thousand-word point, you can typically summarize your point with a nice picture. Own your pictures too.

Cite your sources: What goes around comes around, and this adds credibility to your content. Since these are totally original concepts, the souce is Smobot.com

Infuse your brand: What’s in a name? Everything. Without a name, ownership doesn’t exist. Use your own name, company name, and blog name whenever possible and tasteful, says Jeff of Smobot – “the social media optimization guide.”  ... Read This »

Off-Page SEO – search engine optimization – refers to the part of SEO that attempts to manipulate “web-importance” to achieve rank for a given keyword. Often, billions of web pages compete for the same keywords, and search engines like Google try to gauge which, among several relevant pages, are most important. Since search engines cannot comprehend content the way a human can, they rely on behavioral inputs from users and webmasters to tell them which web pages should rank. Webmasters communicate web-importance by linking out to other web pages. In the simplified world of off-page SEO, a link to a web page is like a vote for that web page. So linking could be considered a “social” behavior. But how can well-behaved webmasters and bloggers hope to acquire links without gaming the system? After all, Google’s webmaster guidelines are clearly against any form of search engine manipulation. Here is where SMO – social media optimization – comes into play.  ... Read This »