Six Great Posts All About Blogging
by Kevin on March 21, 2011
Despite the fact that it is now easier to share posts with one another, it is still hard to quickly discover which ones really stand out. Here are six great posts I recently found interesting, and you may, too.
How Google Analytics Can Dramatically Help Your Blogging
In this post, you’ll learn how to make use of Google Tracking URLs, which are designed to help you more accurately track links shared through your site and elsewhere—Twitter, Facebook, etc. You’ll also be able to use this technique for marketing campaigns and other events.
22 Rapid Tips on Email Marketing for Bloggers
Learn how to better market yourself (and your blog) through an email and/or subscription list. Some of the tips include utilizing squeeze pages, make more valuable interactions, and other tips on email marketing.
How to Build a Coaching Practice with a Blog
Chris takes you through a few steps in the process of deciding whether you are fir to be a blog/marketing coach and what is required in the process of becoming one. Many bloggers don’t become coaches due to how much more planning it can take to run these types of services, compared to say, regular blog posting.
Lots of News Content Writers Need to be Aware Of
Even though you may be a SEO consultant, a content writer, or even an editor, you should be aware of the content that you are writing/editing and the site it is being hosted on. It is important to adhere to any copyright and other types of laws.
New Bloggers Beware: 3 Traps You Need to Avoid
Not all blogs are successful and success doesn’t always come easy. These are two of the three main traps you should avoid when launching a new blog or starting out for the first time. Check out the post for the other reasons and more in-depth analysis of the first two.
The Pros and Cons of Tumblr for Small Business
Although Tumblr has some negatives — not “owning” your content and seemingly frequent downtime issues — many small (and large) businesses have decided to start a presence on the booming micro-blogging service. You’ll read about some of the prominent businesses already utilizing the service for its great usability.
Conclusion
If you have read any other interesting articles/posts recently related to blogging, social networking, or marketing, please feel free to share them in the comments below or you can also comment on the posts above.
What Features Do You Want to See in a Future Version of WordPress?
by Kevin on March 21, 2011
As you may know, WordPress 3.1 was released about a month ago. This brought a new internal linking feature, a new admin bar (similar to the WordPress.com version), a streamlined writing interface, post formats, Custom Post Type improvements, and a wide array of other changes.
At this point, there is no date set for Version 3.2, although some of the main features have been laid out as a way to see what to expect in the next release. Dubbed “faster, lighter,” the next release will bring new improvements and will drop support for a number of older technologies, which are doing nothing but slowing down the development and speed of WordPress.
One of the most significant changes (at least in my mind) will be the distraction-free writing experience. While there is a “fullscreen mode” included in the current version, the next version will take that a step further, bringing a more streamlined and efficient version, akin to WriteRoom and OmmWriter. If you have ever explored writing in a distraction-free environment, you immediately know how valuable it can be to cut out other distractions.
Beyond this change, there are some fairly significant changes for plugin and theme developers, including List Table API improvements, requirements for PHP 5.2+, MySQL 5+, as well as upgrade improvements (which happens to benefit everyone).
So, I’d like to know what you think about some of the future changes and additions slated for WordPress 3.2. Do you think this is a good, natural evolution of the platform or would you like to see more done?
Designing a New Blog Around Constraints
by Kevin on November 17, 2010
I have found that while starting a blog for the first time can be difficult in itself, an even bigger challenge is starting a second (or a third, a fourth) blog. Each involves adding more time and devotion in your daily schedule, and doing this is time consuming, with relatively little reward until you have grown the sites. Obviously, this is what prevents many from even getting started with their second site (and beyond).
There are a number of constraints that people must work around. Having a background of starting up new sites/blogs, as well as working with others and building your network online can certainly help, but I’ll assume you have at least some background in designing new sites and operating online.
- First of all, if you have no capital or money to start up your new site, you’ll have to start simple, using free services until you are able to work up to more professional hosting and services. I generally don’t advise people to start this way, but it can help if you are starting your first site, at least to get a background on running a blog.
- Tied into how much cash you initially put into your site, you must think about how you want your new site to look. Professional, custom website design doesn’t usually come cheap. You can either use a free site design and customize it to get around this drawback, but you’ll need to spend time and effort learning about site design. On the other hand, there are premium themes that can dramatically reduce the cost of a “custom” design by giving you some easy control of your site.
- Reader criticism can also be one of the major roadblocks in your pursuit of building a great site. There are people, whether they own their own site or not, who will leave negative criticisms about your posts, whether or not they even read the content. In many cases, they can’t even back up their ideas with facts, instead resorting a few key attack words. You have to forget about this, only taking criticism with a grain of salt.
- As previously mentioned, time is one of the biggest drawbacks over creating a new site/blog. It may only take a few minutes to install and setup your site using automated tools, while it’ll take a few hours initially to get all the pages setup on your site, services added and connected to your site, and after that, some more time before you are finally able to get started posting. Not everyone will have all this free time available, especially those who work full-time apart from their Internet ventures. You can set goals for yourself, aiming to work an hour or so each day until you have each step accomplished.
In closing, you have to understand problems you’ll encounter as you grow a website, then develop a clear strategy for moving on. Sometimes the solution won’t be as clear as you want it to be, but there are still ways to move on without having to give up entirely. Alternatively, you don’t want to be left throwing resources at the dart board and hoping the problems work themselves out.
Twitter Debuts Official Analytics Product
by Kevin on November 17, 2010
An official analytics service designed for Twitter may be arriving soon, at least according to some sources. Some users have already been given access to the new service through an invitation, although a full version should be out by the end of the year (within the next month or so).
Twitter Analytics Screenshot, via Mashable
The service will likely help bloggers and anyone using Twitter to better gauge which of their tweets are the most successful and influential. You will also be able to determine which tweets caused users to follow (or unfollow).
While this service will likely provide additional insight into your Twitter account, it might be a little too late. There are several other services and options for viewing when you gain/lose followers, and methods of tracking tweets. However, this service will likely be more reliable – at least from the “analytics” standpoint.
What do you think about Twitter Analytics – will you use it when released?
Easily Embed Tweets in Your Blog Posts
by Kevin on November 5, 2010
A new feature has been added to both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (through a plugin), allowing you to integrate tweets into your site. Rather than having to create a screenshot and upload images to your site to display tweets, you can now simply paste a link in your site to the tweet.
Now, the plugin isn’t suitable for everything. For example, if someone deletes their tweet (either being controversial or for any other reason), you may be left with a display that isn’t formatted properly, as there is a slight delay before the tweet is properly displayed on your site.
Nonetheless, the plugin/integrated solution is a good solution for integrating tweets into your site. However, it would have been nice if something like this was available a long time ago, at least as clean as this version is.