This links directly to my marketing blog. It changes the titles as I post new items to my blog.
It took me less than 5 minutes to create it and gives you the code in regular html and billboard code (what most forums use).
The steps were quite easy.
Sign up
Confirm your email
Put in your blog’s feed
Copy and paste the code where you want your banner to show.
That’s all you need to do and the banner will change automatically each time you update your blog. Now one caveat it only updates a few times a day so there will be a delay before your latest post shows on the banner.
Be interesting to see how well this does in forums where I am active to draw additional readers.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
The noise online makes it very easy for your message to get lost easily. Someone visits your blog, likes your content and bookmarks your site. They really do intent to come back but do they?
The answer is a great big maybe. If they grabbed your feed and added it to a reader like Google Reader they just may depending on how many people they follow. (My average new posts in my reader is huge). If they bookmarked your site the odds are much, much lower.
Think about it. Go check your bookmarks and see how many of them you actually use or even better remember why you bookmarked them. I have and if you were to force me at gun point I would be lucky to remember half of them and outside of a dozen or so have never used the majority of them even once.
That is one of the reasons that I like to have a subscribe form on my blogs. This lets me remind people to come back again and again.
Now there are multiple ways to do this and you can use a service like Feedblitz but I prefer using my own autoresponder (Aweber because they automate delivery off of my feed). The reason is that I can easily send other messages too with an autoresponder.
This allows me to offer an ethical bribe for signing up to receive updates. For this blog I use a piece of software that most bloggers would find useful. As my topic here is WordPress and blogging that is something of value for my readers.
Previously I gave away some tips on generating blog traffic. Both of these target the reader that will want to come back again and again.
As people return and get value they are more likely to comment and take part in the discussion. You build trust and loyalty by continuing to provide valuable content. The comments create even more valuable content for my blog and build a community here.
I can also use the list to get questions as that is the primary focus of my content here. On another note it is almost time to resend as the questions have slowed down but because I am using Aweber I can send out a gentle nudge to get the questions coming in again (hint, hint use the survey form above or comment).
In conclusion if you are looking to increase your blog traffic (and who isn’t?) then you really need to be asking people to subscribe and giving them a reason to do so.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Ken McArthur is holding his Impact Boot Camp this weekend in Philadelphia had Twitter has been a buzz. I am actually sad that I can’t go but went to DC last week and two weeks in a row would cost me my happy home.
Now one of the things that Ken McArthur is good at doing is creating a family feel so quite a few of the people that are attending are people that I do follow on Twitter.
It started really early this am with various people heading to the various airports to catch their flights into Philadelphia. Quite a few are in the Florida area and have been watching Fay while trying to get there.
Some had flights cancelled and been an interesting day seeing what is going on across the country with our air transit system. Others have been checking in as they arrive. People like me have been sending regrets to old friends that we won’t get to see but the family is gathering.
Twitter has allowed all of us to keep in touch and I am sure that I will know what is going on all week end (though not as well as if I was there) through Twitter.
What does this have to do with blogging you are probably asking?
Twitter is like a mini blog and you build relationships and keep in touch with conversations there. Your blog should be doing the same thing with your tribe.
If you really want your blog to be effective the more of a community feel you can create the better you will do with it. Take the time to create your blog where you are asking Sterling Valentine’s Ice Breaker “How can I help you?” and then deliver the answers.
Your readers will appreciate it and become your biggest evangelists.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
P.S. Michael Savoie glad to see you finally made it. You can check out Michael’s story at his blog and help out if you can.
After the discussion about generating ideas for your blog the following question came up.
How is Google insights different from Google trends?
To show some of the differences I went through and did a search for turtles just for a sample and the fact that I have some. Trends gives you some data but no where near as much as you get with the Insight tool.
Trends are listed above and only shows the trends and the areas where people are searching.
Insight now shows you not only the same information but the keywords and most importantly the rising searches from within that topic. This can show you what is now getting an increase and is a hot topic within that topic.
So this shows me that there are a lot of increasing interest in ninja turtles and the hottest topic is the yellow belly turtles.
Hope that explains the difference between the two.
Unlike some previous releases this one is not security related. To quote from the WordPress blog on the 2.6.1 release
August 15, 2008
WordPress 2.6.1
By Ryan. Filed under Releases.
With 2.6.1, we’re continuing our trend of releasing a maintenance release shortly after a major release in order to get fixes for the inevitable “dot zero” bugs into your hands without a long wait. If you’re happy with 2.6, however, keep on using it. You need not upgrade to 2.6.1 if 2.6 is getting the job done.
2.6.1 offers several improvements for international users. Styling of the admin for right-to-left languages is much improved thanks to the efforts of the Farsi and Hebrew translation teams, and a mysterious gettext bug caused by certain PHP configurations is now fixed. For IIS users, 2.6.1 fixes several permalink problems. Image insertion problems in the Press This feature experienced by IE users are also fixed. Of note to everyone is a fix for a performance bug in the admin where those with a lot of plugins would experience slowness on some pages.
I have upgraded my blogs but if you are not having trouble there is nort a need.
Here are a few tools to help you come up with topics for your blogging efforts. From input I get from conference rooms, surveys and comments this can often be a big problem for new and even established bloggers.
First following blogs in your niche and commenting regularly not only helps you get traffic from your commenting but you also get to see what others are discussing. The easiest ways I have to do this easily is to use Google Reader and follow the rss feeds.
You can find blogs in a few ways. First is Technorati. Punch in your keyword in the search box and you will find blogs to subscribe to.
You can also use Google to search for more blogs.
Add your topic as a Google Alert and get the latest news and information that Google finds directly into your email box each day. Here again you also see what is new in your niche.
Finally Google has just added a new service Google Insights For Search. this is a really nice tool for finding what is hot and that can also help you to get better traffic by picking the topics that are currently hot in your niche.
It also will show you the hot topics for that niche.
As you can see it shows you what specific topics are rising in search volume.
To summarize – gather the best blogs in your niche and add them to your Google Reader so you stay current and can take part in the conversation in your niche.
Take advantage of the tools like Google Insight For Search to see what is changing and follow the news through Google Alert and you should always have plenty of fodder for blog topics.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
There are three main advantages to hosting your own blog.
You own it
Can be optimized better
Can add other items to improve your process
There are also a couple disadvantages.
It does have a monetary cost
Need a bit of technical ability
Now lets get into the details.
You own it
This is probably the biggest advantage. As long as you pay for your hosting and domain no one can take your blog away. This is a very real problem using sites like WordPress.com and Blogger.
There are numerous examples of people having their blogs deleted because of excessive promotion and other reasons.
Can be optimized better
If you are using WordPress there are numerous themes that can be used that allow you to improve the look and feel of your site. The better and more reader friendly your site is the more likely people will stick around to read your content.
There are many plugins that will allow you to make your blog more search engine friendly. There are also many other items that these plugins add that allow for more flexibility.
If you are hosting your own blog there is also a lot more customization you can easily do to improve it.
Can add other items to improve your process
If you have your own hosting you can add additional pages for your sign up process. You can add and host some of the resell rights products that are probably collecting dust on your hard drive.
You can add special download pages and host a gift for signing up to your update list. All of these can help increase the number of visitors to your blog.
The disadvantages
Cost
You do need to spend a few dollars to host your own blog. You will need to buy a domain (less than $10) and a hosting account. You can get a hosting account that will host multiple blogs for less than $100 a year at Zoot Host.
Need some technical ability
The other disadvantage is that you do need to have a small bit of technical ability. You will need to understand how to use an FTP client and occasionally you will need to do a small bit of editing.
Summary
If you weigh the advantages versus the disadvantages in this Old Bald Guy’s opinion you really do need to be hosting your own WordPress blog. The cost is easily offset by the advantages.
Now if you are just doing a personal blog like the one I do for my granddaughter then you won’t need to host it yourself (although I do) but any site that is for profit I want to host my self.
This does not mean that I won’t continue to use free sites as part of my traffic and SEO efforts. Sites like Squidoo, Hub Pages, Wet Paint and WordPress.com are vital to my overall strategy but the major sites need to be on properties I own.
That’s my opinion and I would love to hear yours. Leave your comments and questions below.
Hey, ever since I upgraded to the latest WordPress version, I get this message every time I try to up grade one of my plug-ins or to download an article…”Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class snoopy in /home/wowolf/public_html/wordpress/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 47? What would be your recommendations.
There have been some problems with the automatic upgrade plugin. In looking through the WordPress forums there has been a problem with the automatic upgrade plugin.
It is supposed to be fixed if you download the latest update for the plugin.
The other thing is to pull a new download of 2.6 and re upload the class-snoopy.php file.
Hope that helps give you an idea to resolve it and as always your questions and comments are welcomed.
RSS is probably one of the most confused areas for people starting to blog. Everyone has heard the term either RSS, feed or the two combined RSS feed. Quite a few though don’t understand them or the power that having a feed gives you when using a blog.
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed,” “web feed,”[3] or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.[3]
The benefit of RSS is the aggregation of content from multiple web sources in one place. RSS content can be read using software called an “RSS reader,” “feed reader,” or an “aggregator,” which can be web-based or desktop-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.
I am not going to cover the technical aspects of the various modes. For most it is only important to understand how they work and what they can do for you. It is a transmission that is sent automatically when you update that others can subscribe to through a feed reader. This allows people to see in one place all of the new items from various sources that they wish to use.
Here are just a few of the more popular feed readers and is far from being an inclusive list.
Google reader
My Yahoo
My MSN
My AOL
All of these will allow you to get the latest information on any RSS feed you may want to keep track of easily.
Most blogs will either have little icons that list various readers like My Yahoo, My MSN, etc (like you will find in the sidebar of this blog) or you will see the image that is shown to the left. If you click on them they will give you the necessary information to add the feed to your reader.
A feed can also be used to trigger an email alert to those that have subscribed. There are a few different services that will do this. We will cover two of the more popular here.
The first is feed burner. Go to Feedburner and create your feed with them. Then click publicize and select email subscriptions. Then you can create the feed and they will give you the HTML to add the form to your site.
This is good if you are using Feedburner for your stats. This is important if you are selling advertising based on the subscriber stats. Because I don’t sell advertising on my blogs this is not important for me.
The other option is to use an autoresponder and I recommend AWeber. They will allow you to automate and send an update each time you add a new post to your blog.
This is easy to do by just creating a new list and then click on the messages – blog broadcast button. You will then add in your feed and edit the template to send each time that you post your blog.
The big advantage to using a service like AWeber is that you can send other messages to this list besides just your blog updates. You can also use the automation to deliver an e-course or other series as your gift for subscribing which you can’t do with the Feedburner option.
This should give you a better concept of the power of RSS, what a feed is and how it can benefit you but…
If you have questions or comments they are always welcomed here.
Most blogs will either have little icons that list various readers like My Yahoo, My MSN, etc (like you will find in the sidebar of this blog) or you will see the image that is shown to the left. If you click on them they will give you the necessary information to add the feed to your reader.
