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How to make your blog and tweets work together like a charm

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.
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How a Great Backlink Can Make You An Instant Success

A few weeks ago I was driving down the highway. It was late at night and I was tired. The radio was starting to put me to sleep. Suddenly a song come on that woke me up – I could not believe what I was hearing. The song was that bad.

I am no expert when it comes to music. The last time I played an instrument was in grade 6 music class. It was the xylophone – I simply had to hit a a couple keys with a wooden mallet whenever the teacher pointed at me. I do not know anything about timing, rhythm or beat. But I do know how to listen to music. I know what music should sound like.

What I heard on the radio was not music – it was painful noise. No rhythm, no beat and the singing was nothing more then a girl squealing forced rhymes. I listened to the whole song just to find out if it was some kind of joke. Would the DJ admit that it was something his 5 year daughter composed and asked daddy to play on the radio? But at the end of the song the DJ only said, “… and that was The Shaggs”


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Guest Posting in the Upscale Level of the Blogosphere

Guest Posting in the Upscale Level of the BlogosphereBecoming friends with popular bloggers is an important goal for all those just starting or wanting to get their blogs into the spotlight. After starting to comment on the blogs you love, you’ve realized guest posting on those very same blogs would help tighten the relationship and also bring you increased exposure and new waves of visitors. So you’ve added a new task on your blogging calendar.

Now that you’ve made up your mind about guest-posting, you’ve come up with a list of popular blogs in your niche and in related fields where it would be great for you to be featured as contributor. And an important question arises: how to convince the blog owner you’d add value to his or her blog through your guest entry?

First, get acquainted with the topics and general style of the blog. Yes, you read the blog almost daily. But have you really asked yourself why exactly you like what you read, how the topics are chosen and how they are related with past entries? Have you thoroughly analyzed the views and style, or have you just enjoyed the reading without realizing what exactly was causing your state of mind? Being thorough will do wonders and lead you to pitching a great post idea.
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5 Ways To Take Your Blog To The Next Level

About a gazillion people have blogs today. Devoted to anything from garden gnomes, celeb’s plastic surgery to the life of living in Papa New Guinea, blogs have become an easy way for average Joe to share his daily contemplations with the world. But with so many blogs, at least a couple of hundred per niche, you might need some help in sticking out.

As you can see we have taken the liberty to list five things that will help your blog reach great heights. All tricks below are equally useful and are hence not listed by worth.

1. Update with weekly content

A common expectation on a blog website is frequently updated content. Popular blogs normally have a high percentage of returning visitors through personal bookmarks or RSS feeds. If that is your ambition, you have to make sure to give your visitors reason enough to come back. New spaced out blog posts normally do the trick.

2. Create unique interesting content

Mentioning the importance of quantity and frequency above it is only fair to list quality as yet another important blog preference. And much like this article you should focus on bringing unique, practical and useful information to the reader. Internet users also normally tend to go mental over “How To”-guides and “Top 10″ listings. Quality blog posts will generate more RSS feeds and loyal visitors.
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Educated Clients Are Good Clients

I believe that educated clients, who understand your job as a SEO specialist, are good clients. That way you avoid misunderstandings, many frustrating situations for you and your client and you may work more efficiently.

A client that nods their head just to get rid of you. on the other hand, needs more time to work on, more time to explain anything and thus, you lose time that you could spend on implementing the SEO strategy. And even then, you are never sure if the client actually agrees with you or still wants to get to their own business. You simply waste time and money with that kind of attitude.

Teaching your clients about SEO

That’s why, before starting a SEO campaign, you should educate your client in SEO/SEM. I’m not talking about deep training, basic things should suffice. If you don’t work directly with your employer, but with a certain team (marketing or web design agency) you should focus on giving them a glimpse on what SEO is (and what is not).
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The Issue With Depending on WordPress Plugins

Everyone gets all excited about WordPress when they find that nearly any feature they could want can be added through a plugin system, but there are issues with depending on plugins that people should consider before loading up on additional features.

Delays in Releases

One of the biggest issues that occurs in the WordPress plugin world is that the plugin developers can’t keep up with the developments in the WordPress core. A great example of this is PodPress, a very popular podcasting plugin for WordPress that still, after two months, does not have a new release to work with WordPress 2.6.

Dropping support

One day the plugin that you enjoy using might just disappear. The developer giving up on supporting it, and if it isn’t very popular in the wider circles, then there will most likely not be anyone there to pick up where they left off. This looked like it was going to happen to the very popular All in One SEO plugin, but at the last minute, someone else committed themselves to furthering the plugin.
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My Guest Post on WordsOfABrokenMirror.com

Alina Popescu, owner of WordsOfABrokenMirror.com has been a long time reader (once guest poster) of Blogsessive, and also a very good friend. It’s been a pleasure for me to contribute to her blog and I encourage you to go read my latest post there, Who Cares What “Simon Says”? and subscribe to her feed as you’ll find a lot of interesting PR and Marketing stuff there.

Here a small excerpt from the post:

The list of blogs and online magazines offering tips and advice has been growing exponentially every year. [...]
With all the hype created around this type of blogs and the (in)famous “make money online” blogs, people seem to overlook one significant thing: these blogs offer tips and advice, but encourage you to experiment.
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Should I Start Guest Blogging?

Since Alex has been kind enough to allow me to contribute a guest post on his blog, I thought it would be appropriate to write about, well, guest blogging. I believe guest blogging should be a top priority for anyone who is serious about building their online presence. After all, what better opportunity is there to expose your name to a new audience that to post on someone else’s blog?

Finding the Right Blog

I know people like to say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but you want to make sure your guest blog contributes to your overall goal of brand building. For this reason, you should conduct careful research to find a blog suited for your needs. If you’re an offshore welder, you probably wouldn’t get much benefit from posting on a blog about flowers. But that’s common sense, right? So, the first step is to find a blog you can contribute your expertise to.

After discovering a few blogs in your niche, you want to find one that has a following. If you’re going to take the time to create a well crafted guest post, you want to make sure at least a few people are reading it. And with so many fly by night blogs out there, it’s hard to find one with a loyal audience. The best way to determine if a blog has a good following is by checking out the comments. If all of the posts consistently generate a few comments, you’ve probably found a good blog to post on.
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Comments or No Comments – The Big Blogging Question

Why is it that when we hear of blogging we tend to link it almost instantly to post comments? Because the conversation blogs harbor, the ingredient that makes them part of a community, what turns them into a critical part of social media, the instant feedback and interaction, all that makes blogging so wonderful is mostly powered by comments.

Yet, there are blogs that choose to have no commenting options. Is that something we define as wrong? Does that make the whole 2.0 aspect of blogs simply disappear? Well, it depends. Just as enabling comments does not guarantee a meaningful conversation with your readers (if there are any readers), not having them does not imply there’s no way to build great relationships with blog visitors.

Given these many shades of gray, I thought analyzing both options might be quite helpful for both new bloggers and those who have been an active part of the blogosphere for quite a while.

What to Do when Comments Come Your Way?

Having or not having comments is not the only decision you’ll have to make. There are other questions heading your way, such as:

  • Should you moderate comments?
  • Should you ask readers to login to comment?
  • Is a comment policy necessary?
  • Should comment links be “no follow”?

I think moderating comments and having an anti-spam solution such as Akismet is a great idea. Alternatively, you’ll have to closely monitor your blog and delete spam. Leaving spam messages hanging around your blog has a pretty bad impact on you and your posts, it makes you look careless and some might even think you leave spammers be to brag with more comments on each post.
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