With blogging turning into such an amazingly popular activity, it was only the next logical step that some people would position themselves as tutors for the blogging novices. Internet marketing blogs, SEO blogs, design, writing and blogging tips blogs emerged and some of them became leaders of opinion in the blogosphere.

The advantage they had over other blog was their information. The quality, the relevance and the applicability of their guidelines finally secured their path to world wide awareness, authority and eventually success.

But, while everything works well from their point of view, readers trying to implement their guides and tips might encounter a few problems, or might have a hard time deciding on the most viable solution for their blog.

We need to dig deeper

How many times have you encountered this advice?

Comment on other blogs in your niche.

I’d say that you’ve seen it on probably every single blog tips blog. But how many of them go deeper, telling readers how to select those blogs that will deliver the best results? How many will tell them what to stay away from and what kind of discussion to engage in?

How many blogs talk about branding yourself and your blog without explaining to the common user what branding means and a difference between a poor logo, for example, that will most definitely position you as a “wanna be”, instead of a professional?

I’m not trying to point fingers here! I’m just saying that we need to go deeper when approaching certain topics, and not expect our users to be internet savvy people. We have the advantage of years of experience behind, so the best thing to do is to put that experience to use for those that need it the most.

Now, let me share my point of view over a few commonly misunderstood blog tactics, and I’m not talking from a “tips” blogger’s perspective, but from the reader’s side. From that side where I’ve been and where I had to learn things by the “trial and error” method.
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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.
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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.

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.
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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.
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Yes, that’s right! Enough with it! Why do we have to make all these comparisons between these services, when sometimes it just isn’t the case?

For the past month my RSS reader has been literally filled with Twitter posts, FriendFeed posts and now it’s time for Plurk. Each blogger tries to find the next big microblogging platform, “the Twitter killer”. I always love a visionary post, but sometimes we need to take a step back and analyze the facts. Twitter is not going to disappear any time soon.

Yes, Twitter had, and still has problems, but I can bet it’s a temporary thing. We’re talking about a huge financial investment here, and no investor will sit and watch his money flowing out the window. Further more, many communities have been built on Twitter. People have spent lots of precious time growing their number of followers, no one is going to give that up so easily. Beyond that, Twitter has a value that only few realize: it’s a great instrument to help you develop your writing skills by focusing ideas in concise, 140 character long, messages.

Twitter has the advantage of time and awareness. That’s one advantage that FriendFeed and Plurk don’t have. And no, I’m not writing this post because I’m some sort of Twitter fanatic or evangelist. On the contrary, I know I’ve never used it at its full potential due to time limitations. Further more, I really enjoy participating in discussions over at FriendFeed, but I’m not a Plurk user, and probably won’t be any time soon. I find it awkward for my taste. And sincerely, I prefer a bird instead of a headless animal.
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BlogCatalog have updated their website’s design. The new look is fresh, it’s the BC blue, branded, with a much better homepage structure and an interesting feature that seams to attract more and more users – the social search. The social search allows you to look for certain things in the social activity of all BlogCatalog members.

On the inside pages, the redesign was mostly limited to the header, so that the users will not have a hard time accommodating, but don’t worry, it matches perfectly.

Here’s the new home page of BlogCatalog:

And while you’re on BC, you can drop by on my profile.

“Twitter is stressing out a bit now.” Does that sound familiar? I’m sure it does. With all the buzz around Twitter’s tech problems, people started looking around for a service to fill in during downtime. And this is where FriendFeed comes in to play.

Some have used it for a while, others – like me – have only recently joined. After a week of being a FriendFeed member, I thought about sharing my experience with it with goods and bads.

What’s FriendFeed about

Just in case that the service’s name doesn’t ring a bell, FriendFeed is all about sharing your social activity with the world in a minimalist – and recently mobile friendly – environment.

With the recent addition of rooms to the service, people can form groups around their interests, hobbies or website. From my point of view, this is the greatest thing until now with FriendFeed.

People are able to share stories in these rooms and to comment upon them. Also, the interesting thing is that you could run a debate starting with a question and most of the times, get enough answers. So, FriendFeed adds a lot to the conversation. Rooms are moderated by their creator (administrator) and can easily be setup as private if you wish to restrict the public access.
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Social bookmarking, social networking, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, everybody’s talking about them. Every known blogger is telling you how important it is to build a strong social media profile, how you can hit the jackpot of receiving thousands of visitors every day through submitting your articles, or having your articles submitted by your readers to the above mentioned websites, and many others.

Well, social networking is obviously useful and helpful; just don’t get your hopes up. You’re probably wondering why I’m writing this post, when only a few days ago, one of my posts has received a lot of love from social media websites. The answer is simple: While StumbleUpon sent a few thousand visitors to that article, another website (Reddit) did what it lately seams to be doing best.

Introducing link hate

No matter how important your article might be – you could be Jesus on your second coming, talking about the real Judgement Day – the first reaction you’ll see to your post is a few down-votes. This is the tricky part, you know you’ve written a good post, and when checking your Google Analytics you see no visits from that social media site. If so, why the negative response?
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