In the last couple of years, guest posting on other people’s blogs has become a solid marketing technique. At first, the idea of letting some stranger post their content on your blog seemed ludicrous. However, many bloggers realized the benefits of more fresh unique content, and the wheel has been rolling ever since. I have personally guest posted on many different blogs, and I have noticed that guest posting is sometimes clumped together with article marketing as if they are “basically the same thing.” They are NOT the same thing. There are many differences, and that is what I want to explore. Let’s start with the similarities of the two: read more
As we all know, every blog has a beginning. The beauty of the web is that websites can be stored in a permanent cache; effectively taking a virtual snapshot of the way the blog exists at that moment in time and storing it for later retrieval. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could go back in time and see what certain blogs looked like then? Well, it turns out you can. Archive.org has a public cache that stores snapshots of websites at regular intervals. It is called the Wayback Machine, and works just like a regular search engine; I tapped into it to bring you some blog history. You punch in the URL of the blog/site you want to look up, and they show you what dates they have stored in their database. The tool is not flawless, and many searches turn up corrupted pages or missing images, but it is really cool nonetheless. I did quite a bit of poking around on the database, and here are some of the snapshots I found:
The Blogs I Looked Up
From left to right, down the list in order, the blogs covered were Blog Herald, Boing Boing, Copyblogger, Engadget, John Chow, and Problogger. The thumbnails are in sequential order, so that you see the earliest snapshot of the blog to the most recent. To view each snapshot, just click on the thumbnail to load the full-size version of it. If you roll the mouse over each thumbnail, it will tell you what blog the snapshot is from and which date as well. This project was a lot of fun, and I could have gone on forever with it.
One thing that we can all take away from this example is the amazing amount of hard work and dedication the owners of these blogs have committed to their sites. We sometimes forget that everyone has a starting point, and everyone at one time was a nobody. Even Google. Now, I am gonna bet that after you read this post, you are going to head over to the Wayback Machine and start looking up all kinds of sites! Go for it.
When you blog as much as I do, you feel like you’ve heard it all. I have never been offended by something an editor said, but I have certainly had those “did they really just say that?” moments. I think that one of the greatest parts about being a blogger is getting to meet a variety of different editors. You never know what to expect, and that’s what keeps the job interesting.
I would like to preface this list by saying a few things: First, I do not write for most of the editors that I have quoted below, so no use looking up my articles and trying to figure out which editors said what (I know you have a lot of time to do that). Second, the majority of these quotes were not taken out of context; in most cases, this was the only thing written in the email. Third, this is all completely true and was in no way exaggerated or made up (I couldn’t make this up if I tried).
Even with the advent of social media, digital newspapers, smart phones, and tablets, targeted email marketing is still the most effective form of marketing online. We shouldn’t expect that to change anytime soon, so in the meantime, it would be a shame to pass-up email marketing as a revenue source. To help you capitalize on it as a blogger, I put together this resource kit that lists everything you need to get up and running with your own targeted email list and campaign except……..
Opt-In Incentive
Let’s face it; people aren’t going to join your mailing list because they think you’re a swell person. You see, people have been programmed to be automatically suspicious and reluctant to give out any personal information; including their email address. So, for them to give a total stranger their email address, it would be going against what they think is the safe choice, and if you want them to do that then you have to motivate them. The best way to do that is to give them something for free. EBooks work great; templates too, short reports as well, and even software. Creating a free product to giveaway is out of the scope of this email marketing kit, but it is something you will need to do before you will see any decent amount of opt-ins.
Email Marketing List Management Services
The first thing you need is a way to manage your list and automated bulk mailings. There are third-party services that can do this for you. Some people call them autoresponder services, but today’s services handle a lot more than just managing your autoresponder. Most of them handle list management, web forms, multiple lists, social media sharing, free scripts, and more. Nearly all of them have a free option that is limited to a certain number of subscribers, which can range from 200 to 2000 depending on the service and fluctuating terms. If you are just starting out, then build up your list until you max out your limit, and then upgrade to a paid plan as you go.
I honestly don’t fully know the best way to combat online piracy; but I do know that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) isn’t it. The bill would create a plethora of problems if it were passed. Let’s be real here, copyright infringement and piracy are real problems that need real solutions, but when you spot a weed growing in your front yard, do you dig up the entire lawn to get rid of it? No, you pull that weed, and ONLY that weed, out of the ground and you do your best to monitor the lawn for any future weeds.
User-Generated Content Sites and SOPA
One of the complaints that you’ll consistently hear about the SOPA bill is that it is way too generalized and all-encompassing. For instance, under SOPA, a site will be considered dedicated to the theft of U.S. intellectual property if it is “primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates copyright infringement”. Well, take YouTube for example; the online video site serves an average of 100 million videos every single day. The majority of it is uploaded by users, who can remain anonymous with minimal effort if they so choose. Under SOPA, YouTube can be considered a site that is primarily designed in a way that enables copyright infringement because of those reasons. Totally nuts. Blog owners might find themselves harboring illegal content through RSS, and pay the price for it; who knows anymore? read more
While we’re opening up about blogging—I have an odd obsession with my blog contacts. People hear that I am a blogger and many instantly ask me where I guest post and how they can get involved. I am a huge blog enthusiast, so I love to hear that more people are becoming interested. I think blogging is a great way for people to connect with other like-minded people, and I love getting to know other bloggers. However, I find that I am very territorial over my editor contacts, and this is why:
As someone who is somewhat new to the world of blogging, I found myself questioning many of the great blog posts. I assume that the blog community deems an article “great” when it gets more than 50 tweets or a lot of LinkedIn shares. The articles had great information, but there was one thing I couldn’t get past—the cheese. The majority of these articles had a long introduction that was cheesy and then a conclusion that summed up the cheesy metaphor. While some articles were clever and creative, I found the majority to be cheesy.
I continued to write my own blog posts and as time went on, I found that I was beginning to sound cheesy. I wanted something original, so I would force some extended metaphor onto the article. It started to seem as though this type of language was the mark of a good blog, so I began to adopt this tone. This led me to wonder: Have all the other bloggers done the same? Does anyone really like a cheesy sounding blog post, or is that just expected?
I decided to weigh the pros and the cons of the issue to see if the annoyance is actually beneficial:
Through the vast advancement of technology, people nowadays depend highly in the juices of technology. We are able to accomplish things fast and efficient through the high tech gadgets and machineries invented. We are also able to connect with different people in diverse culture and race through different social media marketing.
Businesses are one of the great benefactors of social media marketing. Because as we trace history, before we are having a hard time promoting our products and service because of the limited resources we all have. The most popular way of advertising is through the Trimedia (TV, RADIO and Print). Fortunately, many methods are available to help us generate more traffic and eventually translate the lead generation to our target audience. read more
When browsing most well put together blogs they all share some very common characteristics, for example at the top of each page or along the sidebar there are categories which allow users to understand the various focuses of the website. Well built blogs also tend to make sure that the content found on the site is the focus, for example a cluttered blog with too many bright colors might distract from the blogs content driven message.
When creating a photography blog it’s important that a sound structural design is also implemented, a design that allows users to easily find the type of photographs they want while providing easy to view work by the artist will benefit readers and help create a loyal following
In this post we will examine some very simple elements that you can apply when building your first photography blog. read more
For a business owner, Social Media presents a unique proposition. It is unique in the sense that the opportunities offered by Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook are like a bait to bigger brand awareness. However, at the same time the viral nature of the Social Media platforms implies that a business would need a solid strategy to tap these media for business and brand promotion because an ill-conceived campaign, backed by a flawed Social Media strategy could become a major bottleneck to the areas of brand promotion, brand awareness and brand positioning.
There can be no denying of the fact that Social Media is one of the fastest media that can be employed to spread a word around. This is so true when you look at how successfully political situations from across the world have been advertised with a special mention going out to the Egyptian crisis of the Tahrir Square. On a similar basis, the natural catastrophic incidents like the Japanese Tsunami have been covered by the people who were on the ground and this has eventually resulted in a better understanding of the ground reality from the perspective of extending timely help and aid to the affected people. read more
In the last couple of years, guest posting on other people’s blogs has become a solid marketing technique. At first, the idea of letting some stranger post their content on your blog seemed ludicrous. However, many bloggers realized the benefits of more fresh unique content, and the wheel has been rolling ever since. I have personally guest posted on many different blogs, and I have noticed that guest posting is sometimes clumped together with article marketing as if they are “basically the same thing.” They are NOT the same thing. There are many differences, and that is what I want to explore. Let’s start with the similarities of the two: read more
