Social Media Consultant and Tech Geek at Heart

From the category archives:

Blogging

3 Golden Business Rules for Social Media Engagement

August 25, 2010

If you’re doing social media for your business, there’s nothing better than to do it right. Many companies partake in this “shiny toy syndrome” and do it all without a plan or strategy in place. Worse, many don’t really understand what to do once they start. They hear about tools, put forth a miserable effort, and are either too busy or just lazy.

With social media, an abundance of resources are at your fingertips. However, without a successful plan and any adequate preparation, your social media efforts will fail. Here are three dos and don’ts you should think about before you move forward.

Don’t self promote.

Okay, so this should be obvious, but there are so many businesses that don’t get it. On a particular forum I am active on (yes, I still use them!), I noticed someone asking for advice. A response came from a business owner who had the perfect answer on her website and directed the original poster to the website for a detailed reply. Sadly, this person’s post was pulled by the strict moderators on that forum; the post was purely self-promotional and nothing but. When I reviewed the poster’s account, I understood why. I noticed that she had done the same thing on other discussions on the same forum over a period of several months and all of them were pulled!

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7 Deadly Blog Writing Sins

July 15, 2010

This is a guest post by Frank Lee.

These days, many people have started a blog for hobby or business. The trouble is, with so much competition out there, your blog really has to stand out from the crowd. In fact, not only does your blog need to stand out from the average ones that are popping up every day, but you also need to compete with established blogs, with their loyal fan bases, that have been around for years. In short, in order to have any impact whatsoever, good is just not good enough. Your blog has to be excellent.

Your Blog Is Not Getting Traffic?

Maybe you’ve set up a blog to advertise your business. Maybe you’ve set up a blog to run AdSense and earn money from the search engines. Maybe you just have a message you want to share. Whatever your motivation, your blog needs traffic to achieve those goals, and to do that, you need great content.

Today I will share with you some blog writing tips from my own experience that are pure gold, and will have you building traffic, and repeat visitors, in no time!

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Analysis of Five Top Blogs and What You Can Learn from Them

July 1, 2010

Inspired by my recent post on How Young is Too Young?, I was contacted by 16-year-old blogger Onibalusi Bamidele who has guest-written this post.

There is a trend among many new (and even old) bloggers. I discovered many of them tend to quit, lose hope, or even become less dedicated to their blogs when it seems they are not seeing any result for a period of time.

In blogging, however, we all know that there is nothing like overnight success and you will only get what you put into it. If you invest your time and hard work into your blog, then you surely will get something great in return.

This post will analyze five of the most popular blogs on the Internet and will detail a lot of factors about them that contribute to their success; hopefully, you can examine some of the factors and improve on yours.
The following blogs will be analyzed:

  1. ProBlogger
  2. Copyblogger
  3. Daily Blog Tips
  4. Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog
  5. Entrepreneur’s Journey

The following factors will be analyzed:

  1. Their blog age.
  2. Their domain name
  3. Their post type – length, frequency and value.
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How Young is Too Young?

June 10, 2010

I started blogging at age 20. Glen, too, got an early start. Today, there are young bloggers who have their own websites and blogs. Some even boast high rankings and good sized communities. As someone who is nearing 30, I look at these younger folks and am really impressed with their accomplishments, and I especially admire these youngsters as they chase their passions and dreams and still have time to do their homework.

I contacted a handful of young bloggers, all under the age of 17, to get an idea of whether they see their age as a hurdle and what advice they would give to new bloggers.

Let’s learn more about the kids and teens behind the blogs:


Ben Lang will be 17 in September and based in White Plains, NY. Ben’s blog, which covers entrepreneurship and social media, is wonderful despite him blogging for less than a year (he started shortly after his 16th birthday!). In March, he came out with a list of social media blogs you should be reading, and no, I didn’t play favorites here; Techipedia is not included. :)

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Social Media Strategy from A to Z

May 28, 2010

Social media might be old. It might even be a dead buzzword. That’s why you need to paint a picture that’s more meaningful and encompasses what “social media” as a label really is.

Some of us have been thrust into social media simply because the online landscape showed potential for online conversations. Others have been there for over a decade. Regardless of the many years of experience you have in the online space, the ideas behind social media and social media marketing are applicable to everyone. Let’s take a look at some lessons, takeaways, and tips.

Always be Listening. Social media rocks because it’s one of the most amazing tools for “free” market research. Your investment is merely that of time. Take the time to hear what people are saying about your business. If you’re the frugal type, take advantage of the free alerts from Google, YackTrack, Social Mention, BackType (which gives you alerts from blog/article comments, which other services do not include), and Trackur.

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