As promised a while back, I’ve finished editing the Corporate Blogging Guide in PDF eBook format. So, today I give you the chapters you’ve had the chance to read online plus a whole new chapter (8. Technical aspects) and some bonus tips to guide you in your corporate blogging adventures!

How to download the eBook?

In order to download the ebook, all you have to do is to subscribe for free to Blogsessive’s RSS feed (if you haven’t done so until now) and you’ll find the download link at the end of each article in the feed.

eBook preview and contents

Here are two screenshots of the book’s cover and the contents page:

Don’t forget to subscribe…

… to Blogsessive’s RSS feed to download the eBook and to stay updated. There are plenty more freebies in the works, including a new WordPress theme and my second eBook: “From Zero to Blogging Hero: 100 Blogging Tips”

Enjoy the eBook friends!

PS: Please do not link to the download link in the feed. Instead, if you wish to promote this ebook, link to this post. Otherwise, I will consider it spam and wrongful usage!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A blog’s success is measured through both its number of active readers or of RSS subscribers and its performance in traffic: number of page views, of unique visitors, popularity, page rank and many others.

There are a few methods to obtain the needed statistics to track and measure such indicators.

1. Access and traffic statistics

Google, the most powerful and popular search engine in the world, provides bloggers with traffic statistics though its free Google Analytics service.

By choosing a free Google Analytics account, you can view stats regarding your blog’s page views, number of unique or returning visitors, keywords used to reach your blog, the most visited pages you have posted, geographical tracking of your visitors and much more.

Google Analytics is currently considered to be a very accurate and relevant tool. Other services you might consider are StatCounter or Woopra with its live tracking and analytics features.

2. Indexing statistics

The number of pages indexed by a search engine and their position in search tops reflect the indexing rank of a site.

Do you want to find what your indexing results are for two of the most important search engines are? Google and Yahoo offer you two critical tools for any website administrator:

1. Google Webmaster Tools (XML Sitemaps)
2. Yahoo! Site Explorer

You can check the number pages from your website indexed by Google by typing the following in the search box:

site:www.domainname.com

You can also check the number of outside links your website’s pages receive by typing the following:

link:www.domainname.com

3. Popularity statistics

Traffic, accessibility, search engine exposure levels as well as content relevancy and its focus on certain niches all contribute to your blog’s popularity.

The popularity is statistically tracked by a range of online services, of which the most relevant are:

1. Alexa
2. Compete
3. Quantcast
4. Technorati (Blog dedicated service)

4. Statistics’ relevance

A thorough analysis of your blog’s stats will help you identify its strong spots and the type of content best suited for its audience. It will also help you determine its weak spots or to improve your content and focus more on covering certain areas of interest.

Yet make sure you never forget that blogs are maintained through relevant, interesting and fresh content, not statistics!

This concludes the “Corporate Blogging Guide”! I hope you all found it useful and share it with those who you think might need the information provided here. A PDF version of the guide is also in the works and will include an additional chapter.

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools (current)

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Regardless of the blog type you choose, be it personal or corporate, the following pieces of advice are meant to guide your steps in your future blogging activity. These are the most important blog tips you’ll need to follow when starting a new blogging adventure!

1. Look for ideas at any time and in any place

A conversation in the subway, a debate or piece of news heard on the car radio, anything can turn into a new topic for your blog. Keep your mind open and tune your hearing, combine them with good analysis skills and you will have some killer weapons in your arsenal.

2. Raise and maintain interest

An attractive first paragraph is not enough to maintain the reader’s interest throughout your blog post. “Start big, finish bigger”. Provide new hooks in small doses to keep your readers interest throughout the article.

3. Generate the conversation and take part in it

Often times, bloggers are compared to journalists, and their blogs to newspapers (usually tabloids, not broadsheets). Yet blogs and online newspapers differ exactly where they are also alike – the comments section. Newspapers use the comments section to allow users to express their frustrations and almost never moderate them. The classic journalistic style rarely requires an answer or any feedback, usually being limited to presenting the facts or expressing an opinion.

The main ace bloggers play is their power to start conversations and to keep them going by being part of them.

4. Make sure you provide quality information

If your new blog post is based on personal opinions, make sure they have the required features to become points of reference. If you’ve used other sources for it, make sure you check their credibility and quality first.

5. Never promise more than you can give

Failing to deliver everything you have promised will lead to a significant decrease in a blog’s credibility and popularity. Teasers do work, but only if what you were teasing readers with becomes reality.

6. Offer help

Nothing pleases blog followers more than getting help from a field expert. Whenever you have a spare moment, help those in need of your professional help. Make sure to reply their comments and their emails.

7. Links are sacred

Are you quoting a source? Then link to it! Are you publishing survey results or statistics? Link to those who have created them. Are you expressing your opinion regarding something that has been published on another blog or online outlet? Link to the initial article. Why?

1. Because it helps prove the quality of the provided information and places them in a broader context;
2. Because it is a nice way to thank those who have inspired you to find a new topic for your blog.

If you have already discussed a certain topic in previous posts, link to them at the end of the current article. This helps those interested in the topic to get more details on it.

Additionally, a solid inbound and outbound linking policy will help your blog rank better in search engines.

8. Never, ever…

Do any of the following:

1. Attack someone else’s stand on an issue if you are not 100% sure of your own. Make sure to provide arguments to sustain it;
2. Publish someone else’s content without having their permission to do so.
3. Start open conflicts with your blog commentators. Keep your cool!
4. Allow the needs vs. solutions balance incline towards the former in your posts. Provide more solutions than debates over what’s needed.
5. Shy away from commenting on similar or competing blogs. As long as you don’t do it to shamelessly plug your blog or attach the author, your contributions will be valued and will direct more readers towards your own posts.
6. Take all blogging advice as laws. They are only pieces of advice. Experiment with them and see which work better in your case.
7. Fill your blog up with plugins, widgets and other useless elements. We are ultimately talking about a corporate blog. You really do not want to compete in MTV’s “Pimp my blog” competition!
8. Postpone for too long your blogging platform and plugins update. Don’t be the first to do it either, to make sure bugs are found and solved, but don’t be the last one either!

9. And the most important piece of advice…

….I’m going to ever give you is to never be afraid of EXPERIMENTING. Experiment with different tones, new post types, new topic approaches.

Stay fresh!

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started (current)
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Depending on the type of corporate blog you’re targeting, you can then put together an editorial team. To make sure you correctly appoint those in charge of content generation and blog management, you need to consider the following criteria:

1. Criteria to help build the editorial team

The future bloggers needs to be/have:

1. Experts in the filed they are going to cover;
2. A good communicator, able to manage potential communication crises arising from dialogues and feedback generated by the blog;
3. Concise, clear and explicit when they express themselves, as they will not target only those who are in their turn experts and are acquainted to the field’s jargon;
4. Believable and genuine in what the provided information is concerned;
5. A human touch and a pleasant manner of writing;
6. Ready to face a reduced level of privacy in their lives, at least in what the online world is concerned.

2. PR department involvement

Most communications through the corporate blog usually abide by the general public relations policies within the company, thus it is strongly recommended that your blogger(s) work together with your PR department. Their collaboration helps:

1. abide by the general communication tone imposed by company standards;
2. prevent or, if needed, manage possible communication crises;
3. develop the bloggers’ communication skills and ability to generate valuable content.

3. The blog’s tone

Depending on the type of blog and target audience, the tone and style of the blogger may vary.

Usually, a relaxed, human voice and an openness to communicate and interact with all those providing feedback or reactions within the comments section or on other blogs guarantees your blog’s success.

Staying clear from “corporate speeches”, what is communicated through the blog should have an equivalent in day to day life, such as:

1. A relaxed conversation with one or more friends;
2. A conversation with in a larger group comprising both good friends and recent acquaintances;
3. A first meeting with one or more persons that you have never interacted with.

To find the right tone or voice, the term “conversational” should always be your reference. Using words such as “I”, “you”, “us” adds more personality and openness and, thus being highly recommended.

Further reading recommendation: Finding Your Reader-friendly Blogging Tone

4. Content generation

Generating content for a blog is an activity that uses up a lot of resources, from time to information. The most common sources used to generate new debate topics in your articles are:

• your own area of expertise;
• news and events related to your company;
• the evolution of your products and services;
• industry events;
• industry press releases;
• debating your own opinions with other industry representatives;
• the analysis of industry statistics and forecasts;
• analyzing pieces of news published by the media;
• attending fairs;
• guides to success – tips & tricks;
• lists of preferences and recommendations, etc.

Mashable.com has published a comprehensive article providing over 40 sources you can use to generate content: http://mashable.com/2008/08/11/topics-for-corporate-bloggers/

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy (current)
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

And anyone’s else for that matter. It’s not hard, you just have to ignore the most basic common sense rules of web-sharing and communication.

Be an ‘Internet Marketing Guru’

Yes, a guru, a ninja or a rockstar. You choose your title. After that, add me on Twitter. I’m a trusty fellow and allow Twitter to announce me when I’m added so that I can check everyone out and see their beautiful tweets. But not you Mister I.M. Rockstar. Let’s see how your profile looks:

• Following: 65.000 (roughly)
• Followers: 64.000 (roughly)
• Tweets: 5000 (roughly)

Out of all these people you’re following or follow you, you TALKED to how many? You retweeted how many links from them, or from other accounts/websites? Why are your last 5-6 pages filled with links to your amazing schemes to make money online fast and online sales pages to obscure ebooks for which people have to pay to learn that they can use AdSense to monetize their blogs? Come on! Add me! See if I care!

Twitter is about communication. About states. About the moment. Twitter is about friends and great content. Twitter is not about “I’m a guru in my own backyard!”. Twitter is about “I’m an Internet Marketing ENTHUSIAST, and I want to SHARE some amazing content with you!”

Make me click… and click… and click…

This happens so often lately. Way more often than it should (aka NEVER). These days folks share link on Twitter that send to Digg or some other obscure Digg clone. And as if that is not enough, the link posted on Digg leads to another “news” aggregation website that rarely has an excerpt listen, and in its turn links to the original post. So, to access that content that YOU PROMISED me within your tweet, I have to go through 2 websites that I don’t give a c**p about. I’m definitely not going to vote anything before I read it. And surely, if I vote, I’ll vote for the original website, not the news aggregation website!

But it’s cool. People need to pull their page ranks up, their traffic levels. Domains can be sold later for a better price. We know. We were not born last week.

So, the next time you do that, think of it as if you were actually spamming the Twitter flow, cause that’s what you are doing. Don’t expect Twtter love back, RTs, and followfridays.

Yes, I’m venting

Why do I care about it? Because I enjoy the tweets I get from my followers. Because I trust them with my “follow” and expect the same respect back. If you wrote a GOOD article and need votes (if that’s the case), just state it. Link to the original article and give me a voting link so that I can vote if I feel like it after I read it. That’s SOCIAL. That’s MEDIA. Not what so-called ‘gurus’ understand. Time to clean up my Twitter account.

Happy and smart tweeting folks!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

So, you think you are ready to launch a corporate blog for your company? Based on previously set goals for your blog and the available resources, the most common types of corporate blogs from which you can choose are:

CEO blog

The CEO blog is the blog authored by someone from the company’s top management. The general trend for such blogs is to publish analyses of the main events in a certain filed, forecasts and statistics, this content pattern thus positioning the author as a thought leader.

Often times this type of blog will be strongly related to the company brand, its products and services.

A few famous examples of CEO blogs:

1. Jonathan Schwartz (President & CEO, Sun Microsystems)
2. Craig Newmark (CEO, Craig’s List)
3. Jason Calacanis (CEO, Weblogs)

Entrepreneur blog

Similar to the CEO blog in what the editorial style is concerned, the entrepreneur blog is set apart by a significantly larger volume of information relevant to the author’s field of expertise and by diary-type entries describing the ongoing projects the entrepreneur is focusing on at the time.

A couple of examples of entrepreneur blogs:

1. Guy Kawasaki
2. Jeff Pulver
3. Kevin Rose

Multi-author company blog

Several authors – company employees from different departments – publish content on this type of blog, each of them writing articles that cover their area of expertise. Often times these types of blogs turn into blog communities aggregating content published by individual, single-author blogs.

Example: Google Blog

Department blog

This type of blog is almost exclusively authored by leaders in certain company department and it is focused on the activity and expertise of said department.

Example: Kevin Lynch – Chief Software Architect at Adobe Systems

Employee’s blog

This is the semi-professional blog of one of the company’s employees and it will use the company’s brand and image to promote the author as a guru of his field. The content of such a blog focuses almost entirely on job related topics.

Example: Lori DeFurio – Adobe Systems

Product/Service blog

This type of blog is dedicated to a certain product or service provided by a company, and it’s meant to help promote it, create a community around it and obtain feedback from the customers.

Example: WordPress Blog – Automattic’s corporate blog dedicated entirely to the Wordpress blogging platform

Human Resources blogs

Although not a very common type in the corporate blogging world, the HR blog is characterized by its efforts to present a company’s team and the events they attend as casually as possible, thus opening the company up to potential employees who might be attracted by what they are being offered and the light atmosphere in the office.

Example: Astraware Team Blog

Choose wisely and make sure that the blog type you choose matches your goals and the resources you have.

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs (current)
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

So, did you ask yourself if a blog is the right thing for your company? Is it a solution that will boost your business instead of being a resource consumer? If so, it’s time to find out what options are there in terms of positioning a corporate blog.

Each company has its specific communication needs. Based on said needs and other established targets, a newly launched company blog can help achieve specific goals, such as:

• Becoming an alternative, and dynamic method to publish content;
• Positioning employees as thought leaders and experts in their respective fields;
• Building a community around a company, product or service;
• Boosting sales;
• Encouraging customers to send their feedback;
• Speeding up customer service;
• Gaining you exposure through both new and traditional (print press, radio, TV) media;
• Positioning you as a trendy company that keeps up with new technologies;
• Becoming and effective channel for crisis communication;
• Supporting your HR efforts by offering an “alternative” look at your team and thus attracting new job applications;
• Helping your company rank higher for specific search phrases and attracting new backlinks.

It’s highly recommended to establish a set of complementary goals. If a company manages to focus on and reach its main goals, the adjacent targets will also be achieved at the same time.

Here are a couple of examples of complementary goal sets:

• Building a community + boosting sales + attracting feedback
• Positioning yourself as a thought leader + building a community + gaining media exposure

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning (current)
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Not all promoting and marketing techniques yield results in any given situation and likewise blogs aren’t always the best solution. In certain cases, a blog can become a useless investment, or worse, a way to boost the already negative view the audience has on a company.

Before launching a blog, each company needs to ask the following questions:

2.1. Is the blog a necessity or just a whim?

A company’s decision to launch a blog may be based on obvious advantages generated by the freedom of communication and by its being given a human touch. Considering these advantages or failing to do so, we still run into situations where a company chooses to launch a blog because of reasons such as:

• Our competitor X has launched a blog;
• It’s trendy, any teen has one. Why can’t we have one?
• We want to look high-tech / tech savvy.

In theory, none of the reasons above is a real obstacle, given it’s associated with and supported by other factors such as having the necessary resources to create and maintain a blog or a positive or neutral image in the market.

2.2 Do you have the needed resources to launch and maintain a blog?

Unlike classic company website, blogs keep consuming resources.

Blogs imply costs. Be it the technical side – design, development, hosting, be it hiring an experienced blogger to maintain it and publish fresh content, a blog needs financial resources.

Blogs take time. It takes time to create and publish content; it takes time to research, write posts, update them and maintain the blog. And for any company with a sense of business, time always means money.

Blogs need dedicated personnel. While there are quite a few tools to render content publishing automatic, the best results in corporate blogging are harvested by those publishing customized content, created by their own people. Are there people in your team who can maintain the blog? If not, do you have enough resources to bring in someone new?

Blog require information. And information is either created or needs to be searched for, analyzed and filtered. These steps also take time and need to be carried out by people who need to be effective and thorough in research, data filtering and content creation.

2.3 How does the online audience feel about your company?

We are talking about the online world, where the fastest and most relevant reactions are being published. How do we track them?

2.3.1 Reactions in the blogosphere: Technorati

Technorati.com is at the same time a blog search engine and a blog content aggregation service. According to the latest data, Technorati indexes and analyzes the activity of about 110 blogs from around the world.

Through a system reviewing both post tags and inter-blog links, Technorati returns relevant search result in a reverse-chronological order, the most recent ones being displayed first.

2.3.2 Reactions in the blogosphere: Google Blog Search

The world famous Google has a search engine entirely dedicated to blogs. Using the traditional search algorithms it’s already known for, Google Blog Search allows you to filter results based on multiple search parameters as well as on the date when the blog articles and reactions have been published.

Running a search for your company’s name will most likely return relevant results which are usually very personal, as they are reactions from within the blogosphere. If your brand mainly targets domestic customers, the wisest choice is to use the local version of the blog search engine.

And of course, running the search directly on the main Google search engine can return similarly relevant results.

2.3.3 Reactions in the online press from your field

Although it is not always the most relevant source, as it is often affiliated to certain trade groups or biased by advertising constraints, the online press covering your field can be an effective indicator for your company’s image by taking into account what their experts and analysts have to say about you.

2.3.4. Quantifying the risk factor

Based on the results obtained after analyzing all these online reactions, one can quite accurately quantify the risk factor their company is exposed to by publishing a blog, especially if it is a blog that allows comments to be posted.

A negative online image can lead to a virtually unlimited series of negative comments which rarely have to do with the actual content published on the blog. Visitors would have thus found a way to express all their frustration caused by real or imaginary flaws they see in the company’s products and services.

2.4 Interpreting the answers

It hardly takes a genius to determine if the blog is just a whim with a short life span and inexistent success in communicating with customers.

Also, it is obvious that without the necessary resources, a blog cannot be launched or it will be launched while lacking any real possibility of it being maintained in the future.

And who would ever want to help spread an already bad image through exposing themselves to ever present negative comments, especially in their own “online home”?

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog (current)
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools

Photo credits to Johanna Ljungblom

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A few months back I was invited to attend, as a speaker, an event on corporate blogging where the people in the audience were mostly PR Managers for different companies in my country. Along with the PowerPoint presentation, I have decided to also give those who attended the event more information on corporate blogging through an eBook I wrote at that time.

The following post is the first chapter of that eBook, translated into English. The rest of the chapters will be also published, over the next few days, except for the weekend. Now, let’s see what corporate blogging is about and if it is the right tool for you and your business.

1.1 Blog, Blogging, Blogosphere

The term blog, contracted form of weblog, defines a certain type of website where texts, photos, audio or video content are published in chronological order, much like an online diary.

The first blogs date back to 1993 when the term was first introduced, but they only started to be used more frequently in 1998 when the first blog community, Open Diary, appeared.

The true hit of the online mainstream happened around 2002-2003, when the first blog reactions regarding the Iraq war were published and when Google acquired the Blogger.com platform, which allows any person with Internet access to create and maintain their own blog.

The Blogosphere comprises all public blogs and is defined as a community based on the theory that all existing blogs are somehow interconnected, often through blogrolls or links inserted in their content.

A blogroll is a list of links, commonly displayed in a blog’s sidebar. The links usually point to blogs the author deems relevant to the content of their own blog or simply wants to recommend to their readers.

Therefore, through blogrolls, it is believed that any two blogs can be connected through one or more intermediary links.

Blogs allow publishing content in a wide range of types and formats, and these types of content lead to a first classification of blogs:

1. a. Classic blog – text content
2. b. Photoblog – publishes photo content
3. c. Videoblog – publishes video content
4. Audioblog (podcast) – publishes audio content

Microblogs and tumbleblogs, both defined as blogs with extremely short entries, are two other blog formats gaining more and more popularity in the past few years.

Regardless of information format, the online publishing of content through blog platforms is called blogging, and the author of a blog is called blogger.

1.2 Corporate blogging

Once they have hit the spotlights, the blogs’ potential to communicate effectively was immediately noticed by companies.

Initially seen as a mere tool to promote products and services, blogs gradually became part of a company’s brand. Aside from placing a name and a logo on them, blogs granted companies a persona they could be associated with. In short, they made them human. The corporate blog managed to break the barrier between the “inaccessible company” and its customers.

The true value of a company is undoubtedly fueled by its employees’ individual values. But how exactly can these values be expressed? How can they be best presented to the world?

Blogs allow companies to position their employees as industry leaders through the opinions they publish, through the breakthroughs shared on the blog, all in a human, personal form that eases communication with customers.

A few companies that have successfully adopted the concept of blogs are:

Adobe – http://blogs.adobe.com/
Microsoft – http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/
Google – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

The benefits of a well crafted and maintained blog are plenty, but is it the right tool for companies? Find out in the next chapters.

Other chapters of the Corporate Blogging Guide

Chapter 1: Introduction to Blogging (current)
Chapter 2: Critical Questions Before Launching a Corporate Blog
Chapter 3: Setting up Goals and Blog Positioning
Chapter 4: Types of Corporate Blogs
Chapter 5: Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Chapter 6: Blogging Tips to Get You Started
Chapter 7: Blog Performance Tracking Tools

Photo credits to Peter Nielsen

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Tweetmeme buttons, plugins to show latest tweets on blogs, Twitter accounts linking to the owner’s blog, new posts being tweeted, and blog addresses and twitter links in signatures. If that’s not enough, I don’t know what else would show that blogging and tweeting go hand in hand for tons of people. If you think of names, blogging and microblogging, you kind of see the connection. If you think microblogging appeared later, you’d think much of the blogging knowledge is applicable. But how can you be on both platforms and make them work individually and as a team?

1. Spot the similarities

Blogs and Twitter are of the same species. They come from the world of the social web where the same rules apply. You know, give before you ask, be nice, share relevant information, never, ever, ever limit yourself to broadcasting, be conversational, help out. It’s not rocket science and it’s definitely not new. To make it more clear, here’s the example section: comment on other blogs before you expect comments – or – retweet before you expect your followers to retweet your 140 characters of content.

Catchy and interesting content is crucial for both. If your blog post is a big hit, make your tweets the same. “New blog post + link” won’t make a lot of people click. “Star Trek is real! We can all now teleport! + link + Fresh from the blog” might work a lot better.

They both need frequent updates. If you’re planning to create a blog and never post after the first time, you’ve failed. If you’re planning to get a Twitter account to say hi and have a cool button on your blog without ever doing anything more, you have failed. People expect updates from both bloggers and microbloggers.

Both need monitoring. You need to check responses, reactions and trends to be on top of your game. And if you’re blogging and tweeting right, that will take a whole lot of time.

Your blog and your Twitter account need to be welcoming and make it easy for visitors / followers to take action. Login required, captchas and about three other levels of security make it difficult to comment. Protected tweets make it difficult for new followers to 1. decide if they want to follow you and 2. actually do the following. It all has to be easy and accessible.

2. Acknowledge the differences

Blogs and tweets need different frequencies in updates. While it’s OK to post a couple of times each week on your blog, that might not work that great for Twitter. It’s more like a few posts per day. Yes, it takes time. It does take less time than to write a blog post. Plus content is readily available: your posts, industry news, tweets from those you follow. Add a few replies and you’ve got a quite active Twitter stream!

140 characters vs. virtually no limits. You need to adjust what you want to say to the platform you’re posting it to. Keep ideas short and sweet for Twitter and develop on the blog. Yes, we’ve all seen the huge ideas split into 4 consecutive tweets… But if you follow a few hundred people, you’ll see how fast the meaning gets lost in between tweets.

Different pace, different tempo! It all happens faster on Twitter. Yes, you can reply to a comment after two days. But if you reply to a tweet after the same amount of time, you have 90% chances that the person getting the response will have no clue what you’re talking about.

3. Fuel the team spirit

If it’s a team, it has to look like one! You are in the end promoting the same brand, so make sure to have common visual elements on your blog and Twitter page.

If it’s a team, it should feel like one! The style on the blog and that of your tweets need to be somewhat similar. People have to sense the same spirit behind it all; otherwise the connection between the two will be feeble. They’ll stick to one or the other, and your plan to make them work together would have failed.

If it’s a team, it should have the same purpose! Be it to promote your business, stay in touch with friends, position yourself as an expert, you need to have a common goal for both platforms. You can’t try to drive leads your way with the blog and talk about raising kids on Twitter if you have any plans to promote one through the other!

Over to you!

As it happens to just blogging, just tweeting, blogging and twitting, or any field for that matter, the pool of relevant information is always bigger than one person. What tips and tricks have you come across while trying to make your blog and twitter work like a dream team? Do share your advice in the comment box!

About the Author

This is a guest post by Alina Popescu, PR Consultant & Founder of Mirror Communications. If you’re looking for a fresh voice, balancing unique views on life with original PR and marketing tips, head over to her blog at WordsOfABrokenMirror.com, or better yet, subscribe to her RSS feed.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

A new wave of phishing attempts makes its way through the direct messages (DM) system on Twitter.

You might receive a DM from one of the people you follow that could look like this:

Username: haha, that u on here? http://videos.ds*****w.com/

Clicking the link will take you to a page that for the untrained eye looks exactly like the Twitter login page. DO NOT enter your username & password. It’s not a Twitter API or anything. You’d just be giving away your authentication data.

Also, don’t be quick to judge the one sending you the DM as a spammer and report him/her. He might only be the victim of one such attack.

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Let me start of by asking you one thing: have you ever doubted the power of social media? The U.S. president, Barack Obama stands proof of its power and now the Revolution in Moldova too.

After the recent election which are said to be manipulated by the communist party, Moldavian teen and teenagers started today that will probably go down in history as the first European revolution covered by live blogging and twittering.

Police, army, students, students that speak my language, as Moldova was once part of my country, Romania. Smoke, fire, fights, gun shots. These are the images that are spread via YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and personal blogs.

In an attempt to stop these images to go live, Moldavian authorities have restricted internet access, have taken down websites and have shut down private TV stations and news sites. But even so, the revolution is still transmitted live.

It’s enough to check out these hashtags on Twitter and you’ll see how fast the information is pouring in: #pman, #moldova, #chisinau.

Photo copyright by UniMedia. More on Flickr.

So, my question to you: Do you still doubt the power of social media? Do you still believe that Twitter is only a tool to exchange links with your friends? Think again! These kids didn’t!

Used in the right context, and for the right reasons, social media is the most powerful tool a common person can get.

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There are billions of blogs in the blogosphere. People always say that creating another blog might not be the better thing since almost everything online is saturated. Of course, that’s a complete baloney! Fortunately 60-70% of blogs don’t get traction and just couldn’t seem to make progress. And it’s because of several reasons which I wouldn’t want to talk about here.

Most people fall into this big misconception about blogging. This misconception is about “post and publish”. People think that the key to getting traffic is by creating a killer post, then publishing it. We all know it’s not the case. If no one reads your blog, then no one is even going to notice you created a good post! Obviously the one thing you have to do is to let people know “you” exists in the blogosphere. How? By spreading your content. Today I would like to talk about how you can possibly triple your traffic by spreading your content. Without further “fluff” here they are:

• Social Networking – I don’t understand why a lot of people are so much into the saturated social bookmarking when they have the whole social networking sites to work from! Look, how many of you have accounts in Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Bebo, etc? I have, and I have an average of 500 contacts on each of them. If you can let your article reach them without sounding spammy then it can bring you a lot. I have done it with my blog and so far I don’t see any saturation in what I am doing.
• Your Article into Podcast – Seriously I am flabbergasted with podcasts nowadays. I always thought before that it’s lame and doesn’t really make much sense to me. But look how a lot of people are using (and consuming) it now. Now you can use a little service known as Odiogo. What Odiogo does is turn your posts into podcasts and have them downloadable. It also has a nice Wordpress plugin that you can easily integrate in your blog.
• Your Article into PDF’s – A lot of people hasn’t used this method and frankly I haven’t yet but I think it worths a mention here. Post2PDF is a little WordPress plugin that turns your posts into PDF formats. And it doesn’t end there. You can then go to some famous forums related to your niche and spread it in the freebies section. Now make no mistake about it, people absolutely LOVE free eBooks and stuffs (just look at the forums). If you’re content is a hit, then prepare for truckloads of traffic and subscribers.
• Your Article into Video Posts – Unfortunately there is no software that can possibly convert an article into a video, but you can always take some time to do it yourself. Do a video on one of your killer posts, then submit it to TubeMogul. TubeMogul basically submits your video to famous video directories like YouTube, Vimeo and a lot more. Signing up for an account is free and it’s a very nice tool to get viral very easy.
• Tweet It! – Since Twitter has been one of the most talked about web application nowadays, I can’t help but talk about it too. Twitterfeed is a very cool plugin that basically posts (automatically) the latest article on your blog. Twitthis is another cool tool which enables your readers to tweet the post for you. Whether you have just 100 followers or 20K+ followers, these tools can really get the job done for you.

You can see that the key to getting traffic is getting viral and spreading yourself in as many places as you possibly can without being annoying. The truth about blogging (in my opinion) is that what you can get is based on how much “smart” effort you exerted on it. By doing the steps above, maybe you can get your blog known for a wider audience and have your traffic increased. What say you?

About the Author

Melvin Dichoso is an 18-year old internet marketer who’s been working in the internet for over a year. He’s currently taking up BS Computer Science and is planning to work in internet full-time sometime in the future. He blogs at Melvin Blog dot com where he shares his personal tack on internet geeky stuffs. If you find the article interesting, do take the time to subscribe to his feed.

Blogsessive is always open to guest posters. If you feel like your articles do match Blogsessive’s line of content and quality, contact me.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

All blogs are written so that others could read them. This statement is true for both personal and business blogs. Otherwise bloggers wouldn’t take their diary online. So from the moment you publish your first post, you’ll be waiting for your soon-to-be readers and their take on what you have to say.

While waiting for readers to discover you might be a choice for some, the more impatient ones of use will approach readers proactively. And by far the most effective way to get them to read your writings is to bond with them, so them you’re worth exploring.

While most of us would like to think we’re great at it, there are quite a few tricks we can and should learn and there’s always room to improve. So what does building relationships (a phrase I actually prefer to “networking”) take?

Who do we bond with?

Both what you write and who you want to network with depend on your intended audience. Besides their interests and background, you need to think of what they like to read. You’d then of course start with blog readers. And where else would you find them if not on other blogs in your niche or on related niches?

Sure, there’s social media, from bookmarking and news sites to forums and everything else out there. There also magazine and portal readers, but all of these are not directly interested in blogs. This is how we bloggers discovered networking with bloggers has the best impact on our own readership.

Consequently, the better known the bloggers we network with are, the more exposure we get. Having your comments seen by a few dozens is not the same as having a few hundred see it. That is why we’re all drawn to those more famous than us, with more readers and more comments. Sure, the competition is tougher, but here’s where the art begins!

Where and how to approach bloggers?

First of all, their blogs. Most bloggers allow comments and that’s the first place to reach out. The idea is to find an angle when commenting that allows you to add something personal and valuable to the conversation. Showing your appreciation for a blogger and his post works once, maybe a couple of times, but if you don’t actively contribute to the conversation, both the author and his/her readers will ignore you.

There are bloggers such as Liz Strauss who place great value on replying to all comments. That will help you get the conversation started and possibly keep it going, as there’s that little option allowing you to get replies to your comment via email.

If you love a blog and keep reading it, you’re bound to sooner or later find out where else the blogger spends his/her online time. Is it Twitter? Then get an account and see what microblogging holds for you. Is it LinkedIn? Start building your business profile and connect. Is it Mixx, StumbleUpon or some other, more specialized news or bookmarking site?

Join the conversation over there. But make sure wherever you follow those you want to build a relationship with, make sure you take the time to learn what works and what doesn’t. This applies to both the social media site in general and to the specific behavior of those you want to get to know better.

For example, if you’re planning to become friends with Tad Chef, don’t join his SEO 2.0 group on Mixx and then submit your own stuff.

Some bloggers, from A to lower lists, also make their email address public. When your comment is one among a few hundreds, taking your effort further by writing an email might just do the trick. If you write and send that email, make sure you don’t sound like a stalker and don’t forget to use your comment posting name and add a link to your blog. Just because you remember the bloggers name and know his blog address by heart, doesn’t mean he or she remembers all the people who ever commented on his/her posts in the past year.

Linking to your favorite blogger’s posts is also a good idea. You can either add them to your blogroll, write an entire post about something they’ve published and your take on it or add a post you found extraordinary to a regularly link love list, like my very own Monday Reading Roundup.

And remember, linking and sending emails are life savers when the blogger you’re interested in networking with does not allow comments.

Writing guest posts is also an excellent idea. If the bloggers you want to befriend accept guest posts, that’s a great way to get noticed. Write something that fits the general focus of the blog, spice it up with your own style and experiences and submit it, along with a short intro of yourself and your blog. If what you send is quality content, it will most surely get published and the blog owner will surely analyze your blogging activity more carefully.

You might even follow up with a request for them to author a guest entry on your site. There might be some delays as the famous the blogger is, the less time they have to also handle other writing assignments. But if they thought you were worthy of being features as a guest writer, they might also thing your own blog is a great place for them to expand their audience.

It doesn’t work like magic!

Networking takes time and effort. Ongoing effort! You can’t just take a day to spread comments around, add some people to your social media profile, send out a dozen of emails and then that’s it, those folks will be your friends for life. Contacting someone is easy, turning a onetime deal into a lasting relationship takes a lot more work on both sides.

The trick is not to get impatient. There are dozens of comments to be read and replied to, there are flooded inboxes and incoming links are not scarce for some. It takes time to be recognize as a valuable contributor to one’s blog and a little more to discover what you’re posting on your own blog is worth the same attention as your comments or your other social activities.

It doesn’t take decades either! If what you publish is interesting, has a unique approach and is supported by effective networking, you might get the results you wished for and much more in a couple of months.

There’s no fixed recipe! Some approaches might work for you, others might not. Your unique blend of networking skills will be shaped by trial and error and a lot of passion and determination to achieve your goals.

About the Author

This is a guest post by Alina Popescu, PR Consultant. If you’re looking for a fresh voice, balancing unique views on life with original PR and marketing tips, head over to her blog at WordsOfABrokenMirror.com, or better yet, subscribe to her RSS feed.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Does this sound familiar?

Your StumbleUpon account has been frozen.

If not, don’t worry, you might get that email soon, because StumbleUpon is on a witch hunt.

I’ve received a lot of emails from friends and messages on Twitter from people that have been recently banned by StumbleUpon.

I too got my account frozen 3 weeks ago, and initially I did not want to make a big deal out of it. But, since it already involves too many people, and 3 weeks have passed since I’ve sent my email to Walter, StumbleUpon’s community manager and got no response yet, I decided to write this post and share my views.

Dear StumbleUpon

What you’re doing is not wrong. It’s more than wrong. It’s a stab in the backs of those that made you who you are today. Yes, I’m sure you’re going to quote the ToS again, and say that “common users” made SU what it has become, but I’ll disagree.

It was the bloggers, the internet marketers, those spreading the word about StumbleUpon and it’s benefits. And yet, you still think of them as spammers.

Even now, I did not understand why my own account was frozen, but I managed to come up with 2 theories.

1. Either the fact that my profile page contained links to Blogsessive and my other site, CreativEurope, and you considered it “promotion”.

2. Or perhaps the fact that I’ve sent and received votes to and from my network.

Either way, your way of dealing with this is wrong. If you don’t want links in profiles, turn of the HTML tags. If you don’t like people voting on friends’ stories, make that clear and then, step out of the “social websites” pack.

And to be true, even if it would have been against the ToS, I still would have voted on my friends’ submissions. That’s why they are MY FRIENDS. Because I enjoy their content. That’s why it’s called social networking. Because we make friends through it.

Spammers still rule the realm of StumbleUpon, while people using it with moderation are being hunt down, and banned. What’s even more annoying is that you don’t care enough to at least give them a personal answer.

If you’re interested in learning about advertising

on StumbleUpon, please visit this page for more

information: [link removed]

Is that why you ban people? Is StumbleUpon in such a financial mess that you start banning only to “encourage” people to pay for your “traffic”?

Ever since this witch hunt has begun, somewhere around April this year, StumbleUpon’s traffic has lowered continuously, according to both Alexa and Compete. I wonder why?

Keep that up and you’ll lose all those who promoted your website, or still do it out of their own belief. I’m not saying that you might need to put an end to it, but you might have to watch yourselves downgraded to a B-list website.

For the sake of the good times I had as a StumbleUpon user, please reconsider your attitude, or at least take time to investigate deeper. Make sure the people you’re banning are real spammers.

PS: Walter, you’ve got a 3 week old email.

The story of Ian Lurie is very similar.

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Every blogger concerned about his blog’s exposure and traffic levels has a StumbleUpon account, right? Oh, you don’t? Then you should. But never mind that, let me tell you about some less happier experiences on StumbleUpon.

I’m one of those StumbleUpon users that usually discovers and votes on pages when he has time, when he finds something really interesting, or to help out his SU friends. But sometimes, being friendly and willing to help is not enough, sometimes, somebody has to take it over the top. Here are 5 guaranteed ways to piss me off on StumbleUpon.

Method One

You visit my profile, do a bit of research and message me, telling me how much you love my stumbles and my blog, and how much you’d love to be SU buddies. Flattering right? After reading the message I’m checking if that person has added me as a friend and I find that he didn’t.

So why would you expect me to add you first when you’re the one approaching me? Add me, and If I’m convinced I might add you back. That’s how it goes.

Method Two

Starts exactly like method one, messages and flattering included. Only that this time, the user added you as a friend. That’s pretty nice, let’s add him/her back, which you do. Two days later – surprise! – you’ve been removed by that user from the friends list. This basically means you’re his fan now, while he/her is some kind of a SU god. Dirty move right? You know what to do next.

Method Three

We’re friends, and as friends do, I like to help out. You ask me once to discover a story, ask me if I can review a page, all good. But with time, you see that I’ve voted on most of your stories, so you start sending 6-7 review requests per day, 2 or 3 out of the same website, and probably you’ll throw in a discovery too. OK, when was the last time I’ve asked you to help me out? 2 weeks ago! Let’s keep things fair play.

Method Four

We’re friends and you send me stories to stumble and review. I’m OK with that, and sincerely, most times I take the time to check the page out and post a SU review too. I know it helps a lot.

When my time comes to ask for you help, you hurry to hit that thumb up button. Good, I can understand that once, twice, but every time? A review for a thumb sometimes does not seam like a good deal.

Method Five

We’re friends and the friendly SU activity goes just great, but there’s something that you do that I really hate. I understand that we’re best friends and all that, but do you really have to send me “hug” and “thank you” pictures and messages every 30 minutes? Once is nice. Twice is flattering. More is spam.

And to understand why this attitude is so frustrating check this: StumbleUpon sends email notifications when you receive private messages, which is great. The problem is that the only link contained in that email is a link to their sponsorship page (smart isn’t it?). From there to my inbox I have to click 2 more times only to find a message saying the same thing as the one before and the one before that. And that’s frustrating.

Respect Your Friends

So, dear friends and StumbleUpon users, be careful how you treat your friends because that “Remove from friends” button is pretty accessible. Give without asking anything in return and you’re guaranteed to receive more than you would have expected.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Yes, I’ve finally decided to join Plurk, now that I have a bit more free time. So, why don’t you leave me a comment with your Plurk account so that we can be Plurk-buddies?

Also, for those of you wanting to add me on Plurk, here is Blogsessive’s Plurk account.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

In the past I’ve tested quite a few social networking and social bookmarking services, but I must admit that only a few caught my attention and made be become a long-term user. FriendFeed is one of them. The simplicity and ease of use really made my day when a friend of mine recommended me their services.

Even though some of you might already know, I wanted to tell you a bit about the new Beta FriendFeed and how FriendFeed just got a lot friendlier.

Let there be “Social”

And so it was. The new beta comes packed with some really nice and useful feature, long awaited by the community. Among them, the option of creating lists (groups) of friends from your subscriptions or FriendFeed’s recommendations.

Another nice feature, very useful to those active in many rooms is the posibility of creating and personalizing a list favorite rooms, quickly accessible from a sidebar menu.

And that’s not all. Now you can also upload pictures for your posts with a multiple uploads option.

Still not enough? How about seeing everyone’s profile just as if it was your one homepage (here is mine), with a full list of items shared by their friends, their own subscriptions and much more? Now it’s possible.

And just to ansure a propper medium for all these cool new features, the Beta FriendFeed also received a design face-lift.

Congratulations to the people at FriendFeed. Good things come to those who listen to the needs of their community!

Check out the FriendFeed Beta now!

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Almost six months have past since I published the first post on Blogsessive and during these six months this blog has passed through a series of events and changes that made me rethink my strategies.

As you’ve probably seen by now, whenever I’m sharing blogging tips with you, I always try to explain how they work through my own perspective. There are two reasons behind this approach:

• First of all, it stands as proof that those blogging tips work;
• Second, it provides information on how the tips where applied and also effect of their usage.

So, after six months of “competing” in a pretty crowded niche I’ve come to realize that Blogsessive has grown in a natural way, with about 160 subscribers, loyal readers and commentators, friends, social media profiles, on the point of entering Alexa’s top 100.000 and many more encouraging statistics.

Blogging tips that worked for me

What have I learned from these six months of Blogsessive experience? Read on as I’m going to share it with you.

Make use of your previous experiences.

At first, I had only my experience in working in the online industry for a long period of time. This experience served me well by knowing a lot about how websites and blogs should be structured and how they should look like. This has brought many visitors on Blogsessive, partially because of the design.
My personal interests in writing and my musical background helped me present every piece of information in a reader friendly way. The effects? Growing a base of loyal readers and encouraging personal interaction.

Don’t take tips for granted. Pass them through your own filter.

As most of you, I’ve read maybe thousands of post on blogging and blogging tips. Some where new, others brought nothing new to the table. Some where helpful, others where not. The hardest part is to choose the right ones, and that can only be achieved by applying them to your blog and experimenting with twist and changes until they show the best results.

For example, one of the tips I’ve encountered most was the famous “comment on blogs in your niche”. Some people spend hours every day commenting on blog posts and in the end, it still doesn’t prove efficient. Why? Because every blog you comment on has a different community, built around the blogger’s personality. Some readers will interact with you and follow the links you post and your profile link, others won’t. Pick the one that provide the best reaction to your comment and stick with them. You’ll win a lot of time and still get good results for your commenting actions.

Experiment with new approaches or old ones with a personal twist.

In any given niche, most things have been said and done already, but bloggers still find ways to become unique and successful. How? They simple add new, personal twists to their articles. Let’s take those “link round-up” posts as an example.

You’ve seen them on every blog, organized in weekly or monthly series. Some bloggers simple publish a simple list of linked titles; others go beyond, by adding their own views on the topics those posts approach. Some examples of adding a personal twist to these posts are my “Best Blogging Tips from the World’s Top Bloggers” posts that you can read here and here, or Alina’s Monday Reading Roundup posts on WordsOfABrokenMirror.com.

Build strong relationships with other bloggers and your community.

Although this does not need an actual explanation, I’ll give you at least two reasons why you should do so.

As I’ve already told you, the past two weeks have been totally crazy, keeping me away from my regular publishing flow and to be true, they caught my quote off-guard. This is where people like Hendry Lee and Eric Brantner, both readers of Blogsessive, came and helped with their wonderful guest posts.

With Alina’s help (and not only) those posts even got some great promotion and managed to attract over 5000 visits in a period of time when I couldn’t possibly be publishing anything.

So, judge for yourself how priceless blogging relationships are!

Do not ignore the social media.

Yes, everyone says so and I’ll say it again. Make use of social media. Make contacts, share opinions, share links, help others promote content and you’ll get the same in return, but be careful. Social media can eat up a lot of your time, so much that you can neglect your blogging responsibilities. Find the right services for your, the ones that provide the best results.

For me, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Digg and FriendFeed work best. So, they are the ones getting more of my attention. I use other services only occasionally or simply to help out friends. Experiment with different services, according to your goals and find out which one works best. If you’re looking for better conversion, try exclusive, niche social websites like Sphinn, for example. Try them out.

Learn from your blog’s statistics.

Even if some will jump and call you a stats-wh*re, do what you need to do. Some people write on blogs simply as a way to share their daily experiences and expect nothing in return. The ones that try to make a living out of blogging or want to make their blog a promotional tool for additional services are pretty interested in their stats.

I know that some will not agree with my statement but I still believe it’s true. Bikers have a saying about motorcycle crashes: “There are two types of riders: those who crashed and those who won’t admit it.” Same goes for statistics. Keeping a close eye on stats, but not letting it take over too much time out of your blogging activity, will help you better understand the effects of you actions, of your writing and SEO efforts. Analyze your analytics. You’ll be learning a lot about your blog from those stats.

Conclusions

Everything you do or try must be first passed through your personal filter. There are not 100% guaranteed truths, only realistic tips that you can build on.
From your own experience, what tips worked best for you and you blog(s) and what personal twist did you gave them?

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

The social bookmarking frenzy goes on. For quite a while I’ve been waiting for a redesign of del.icio.us, something that would really make me want to use it at its full potential. But that did not happen and I’ve continued to gather bookmarks the classic way, in my browser and through StumbleUpon or FriendFeed. Still it requires a lot of time to sort everything out while searching for something you’ve discovered 3 months ago. That until the day I got my SecondBrain!

I know, it sounds crazy, but that’s what SecondBrain is for. A place where you can collect your links, organize them through tags and collections and share them with other users. The good part is that you can import all your bookmarks from most of your favorite social bookmarking and social networking services available at this moment and track them all from one place.

If we take a look at how the folks at SecondBrain describe their services we won’t see anything revolutionary

• Import content from all your favorite services in one place
• Browse and search all your content
• Organize content into collections
• Keep track of your content in a single library
• Share your lifestream
• Find people through content, and content through people

but the difference is made when you start using the site.

This is how the website’s home page looks:

Signing up takes only a few seconds and after that you’ll step in a good looking, friendly environment, one that somehow reminds me of MySpace’s layout, from a structural point of view.

There are a few things that I don’t quite like, especially the fact that on the dashboard I see additions from friends of friends, and I have no visible option to turn that off. Perhaps I need ta take a closer look at the preferences, but still, that kind of option should be pretty much obvious. At least you have the option to display only your own updates.

Considering the website’s design, I find that a few icons are too big for this kind of service. I need to focus more on the content than having a page filled by only four or five icons.

Where there’s potential, there are also premises for evolution

SecondBrain is getting ready for a BETA 2 stage, and that’s why I’m sure that most problems will be solved and I’m also guessing that if you sign up with them, your feedback will be greatly appreciated. Further more, there’s also a contest for those who sign up in this period and a chance to win a MacBook Air.

One policy that SecondBrain has is that the added content will be manually reviewed by their team (in the background of course, as you don’t need to panic about not getting approved) and the most valuable additions will also be rewarded.

So, there you go, more reasons to try it out. I did, and I’m happy with it, at least for the fact that it’s still a BETA, and where there’s potential, there are also premises for evolution.

The day I got my SecondBrain was the day my browsing history became more accessible.

This is how my profile looks:

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