Google Reader is one of my favorite tools. I use it in many ways. Now it could be another feed reader if you like it better. Feed readers are one of the best ways to keep updated on topics.

Here is how you can us a feed reader to keep current.

When you find a blog you want to keep up with (like hopefully this one) add the feed into your reader. That way you can check your reader and see the latest posts for this blog and any others that you follow.

Go to Google News and add in the topic you want to be current on. Grab the rss feed for that search and add it to your reader. Now every time the Big G finds new content on that topic it will show up in your feed reader.

This is a real easy way to follow a lot of topics quickly.

Here is how you can grab a Google News feed and add it to your reader.

Type in your topic and search news. Once you get the results scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the RSS icon.

This will send you through to the actual feed.

Copy the url and go to your reader.

Click the add subscription button.

Paste in the url and click add.

You can do this for any search or to add any blogs rss feed and now you will have one place where you can go and see all the new things in a few minutes.

Take advantage of the power of feed readers and keep current with what is new without wasting a lot of time going from place to place.

Your questions and comments are welcomed. Use the comment box below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: big g, blog, blogs, favorite tools, feed reader, feed readers, google, news feed, search news, subscription button, time saver

Some weeks I am all fired up to rant and other weeks it is really hard to find a topic. Most of us know that writing becomes easier once you find the elusive topic.

Yesterday when I was thinking about what this week’s rant would be about I was drawing a blank.

Thankfully my reader came through this morning and I found this post on Social Media Fail. It was a post about not knowing that the content he was pushing to Buzz and other social sites had stopped for 16 days and no one noticed.

Now they have serious followers and like was stated if the blog content and podcasting had failed they would have heard from their followers.

If the blog was late or skipped for a day the emails would come.

So are you just pushing content because you can or are you doing it to help you generate more followers for your tribe? And more important is it working for you?

Seems like a strange question and not easily answered by most.

After all part of what I teach in Twitter Time Saver is designed to allow you to build relationships with your followers by being a trusted resource. This is not always easy to track specifically.

I have though tracked results in getting people to click on the occasional affiliate link or blog post of mine I add in my Twitter stream and do see an increase in the click throughs on those.

I feel it is because I share so much other quality information that is not mine but is targeted to the people I have attracted to my Twitter stream that my message does not get lost.

If all you are pushing out is your content and not sharing with others then these types of media will fail for you.

Let your own tracking decide for you on your stuff and see if it increases the more you share others content.

Make sure you are following the topics that are hot in your area and take advantage of using a feed reader to make it easy to stay current.

Your questions and comments are always welcomed. Just use the comment box below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: affiliate link, Buzz, click throughs, followers, rant, tribe, twitter, twitter time saver

Yesterday I did the weekly Get Referrals Fast training and the topic was Blogging and Social Media. Unfortunately because of the upgrade with Hot Conference I could not record it. It was doing some goofy things.

Despite that we had a great session and we do these on a weekly basis going through all 4 of the sessions over again so in 4 weeks it will be done again.

After the presentation though is the really good stuff and that never gets recorded. When we get into questions and answers we go through a wide range of topics.

One of the best from that was the power of relationships. All too often people try to use the various social media to sell instead of building relationships.

So the question became do you use Facebook, Twitter, and others to build a relationship with people first?

If you are not then you are missing the power of these sites.

Just like your blog you really need to build a relationship with your followers and readers. That will be the real key to being able to use these sites for your marketing.

You can occasionally sell things this way but you really need to be building relationships and sharing quality information with your followers/readers or they will not trust you to purchase from you.

So are you building relationships with your blog and social networks?

Leave your comments below and any questions you may have on WordPress or blogging. After all interaction allows you to start building relationships.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, building relationships, marketing, relationship, social networks, twitter, wordpress

There are a variety of ways to promote your blog. Are you promoting yours?

All too often the answer is no.

You can have the greatest content but if you are not promoting and getting the word out you will not get the traffic and readership you are looking for.

Most of us bloggers love to write on the topic we love and all to often that is where it ends.

Nobody likes to take the time to promote especially as your blog grows.

You do need to make it part of your regular schedule and it does not need to take a lot of time.

If you are active in your niche it should be easy. Commenting on blogs in your niche, being active in forums (with a link to your blog if allowed) are easy to do while you are being part of the community.

Repurposing your content to create articles for submission, creating podcasts and video from your posts and setting up link networks with that content will take you a bit of time but can make a huge difference in your traffic.

The key is to just do things regularly and make them a habit. Do that and your time commitment will be minimal but the results can amaze you.

If you need more information on some of these topics Sunday Night Cash Plan can help you to repurpose your content and Backlink Flood will show you how to create powerful link wheels.

Finally my free report on Benefit Of Content Syndication.will show you how to automate things so you do one time effort and promote on autopilot.

The key is to always be promoting your blog and make it a daily habit.

Your questions and comments are always welcomed.Leave them below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, blog comments, blog promotion, podcast, videos

Got this question on an article I have about WordPress on IM Faceplate. Because it needs to get wider readership I will be answering it here although it will be shared there too. Answering your questions is one of the things that I enjoy and you can leave your question in the comments below.

how does one format comments so they come out right, my last post was nothing like the format I entered it in

WordPress themes have a style sheet and use css to control the display of information. This is one reason you need to find a theme that uses fonts and spacing that you like, The alternative and it is only for a few is to edit the style sheet to fit the look you want. Only do that if you are really comfortable with that. The other thing that can really mess up the look of a post is copying it in from something like Microsoft Word.

If you are copying in to the visual editor from Word you are getting a lot of tags added that may cause conflicts with the underlying style sheet that is running your blog theme.

The way that I avoid these problems is to use a desk top editor like Blog Desk or Windows Live Writer. Of late I have switched to the latest Windows Live Writer because I can actually see how it will look on the blog as I am writing the post..

If you are going to write your posts in Word it is best to copy it into a note pad doc and then copy it into your writer in the dashboard of your blog in visual mode and use the utilities there to format the look to be what you want.

Hope these tips help and as always your questions and comments are welcomed.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog post, css, css conflicts, format blog posts

I think that every reader here understands that that the more back links you develop to your pages the higher Google will tend to rank you. One more thing to say here in total transparency is that these will take some time and it has value which is the reason I have the * next to free.

If you are blogging regularly these will be quite easy for you to do and actually there are many more than 3 places that you can use for creating your back links.

The 3 ways are using the following sites.

1. Ezine Articles
2. Squidoo
3. Hub Pages

You are already creating content and re-purposing your content is a great way to get links and best of all you can control the anchor text of those links. All 3 of these sites are high PR site so are seen as authority sites by the search engines.

It is best to add your content to Ezine Articles first or make sure what you are submitting at Ezine Articles is unique. It is not hard to do a quick rewrite of your blog posts to create a unique article. Use the anchor text to point to your blog that is the keyword you are trying to rank for.

Squidoo is the least strict of the three places for having unique content but you will need more than one article to complete a lens. Both Squidoo and Hub Pages allow you to add a RSS feed to your pages. This can be an excellent way to get blog posts indexed as the search engines spider both of these sites frequently.

Use multiple posts to create your Squidoo lens and add a proper anchor text link to your blog and a couple of your posts. Do not overdo this as too many l;inks to the same domain will get your lens shut down.

For Hub Pages you will need to rewrite your content as they only want unique content. Use only one link per Hub Pages as anything overly promotional will be flagged as spam.

In all cases make sure that you are providing quality content and you can use these sites to generate high quality back links.

If you would like to see other ways that you can generate back links through content syndication grab this free report with no opt in needed – Benefit Of Content Syndication.

Your questions and comments are always welcomed. Leave your comment below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: backlinks, Ezine Articles, hub pages, squidoo

Good question today on Facebook like button. Facebook has more traffic than Google so the question is do you want a piece of it? Remember that your questions are always welcomed here and become the fodder for future posts so make sure to ask yours in the comments here.

Also as a question, I see a lot of sites lately using the like button on their sites. Do you think it is useful and a more pressing question, how do you put it on your site?

The like button is a good thing in my opinion. Anything you do on your blog that allows others to share YOUR information with others is definitely a plus.

Whether it is Twitter, Facebook, Buzz or any other network making it easy for people to share with their followers is a great way to increase the spread of your content.

Now adding a button is quite easy and there are numerous plugins that make it quite easy to do.

If you go into your dashboard and go to add plugins and type in Facebook you will find pages of Facebook plugins.

The one that I use is the WP Facebook Like Button but obviously with that many options there may be better ones but I have not bothered to test them because this one works for me.

Remember to leave your comments and questions below and come back to find the answers.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: faceblook like, Facebook, facebook like button

A rainy day here in the coal region as I sit here at the keyboard. It. has the ache factor a bit high this morning which is probably a good thing when trying to put together a rant.

One of the things that gets to me is when people tell me that they have nothing to write about. In various conferences the same thing always comes up I can never come up with a topic for my blog post.

Quite frankly this is a poor excuse and is to be blunt BULL!

If nothing else write about what you are doing right now.

Everyone thinks that every blog post they write has to be a piece of perfect literature. This is not true. The key is to sit and write regularly. Just do it.

Write your posts and let it sit until the next day. Come back and clean it up and you will have an adequate blog post. Do that every day and all of a sudden you will find that it becomes much easier to write regularly.

Will they all be perfect?

Absolutely not but the more you write on a topic the better they will become. Perfection and trying to achieve it before you push the publish button will kill your blog.

Here are three ways to find topics to blog on.

1. Check Google News for your topic
2. What is hot in the forums you frequent?
3. What topic is hot in the latest teleseminar/conference you attended?

So stop finding reasons not to blog and blog today, tomorrow and regularly after that.

Your questions and comments are always welcomed.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog posts, blog topics, blogging, regular posting

A good question today and a note on that as I have caught up on your questions. I can use some more questions so that we can address them here. Leave them in the comments below.

I have a question for you. When commenting on blogs, do you leave your main website address or do you link to individual blog posts?

The answer here is yes and no. I know not what you want to hear

Lets get into it.

Getting back links to your individual posts is a very good idea. The best way to do this is by commenting on blogs that have Comment Luv enabled. This is the best of both worlds because you can use your primary url in the site box and still get a link to the interior page.

It has good anchor text because it is linking through your post title.

The problem comes when you are commenting on blogs that do not have Comment Luv. Here it becomes a problem if you use the actual blog post link.

It is going to link through with your name as the anchor text.

Now if you use proper anchor text as your name to get a more powerful link you have definitely increased the possibility that your link will be marked as spam by the blog owner.

I know that if you do not use a real name on this or any of my other blogs that will definitely be marked as spam by me and quite a few others.

You are left with a choice of building anchor links to specific posts using your name or building links to your site using your name or not getting any links because your comment never gets approved.

That is my take on it and would love to see more people use Comment Luv so I can do both at the same time. It does help to get more comments because you are taking care of the people that add quality comments. Making it a win win is always good for getting more comments.

Remember that I love to answer your questions and have caught up with doing that so leave your questions and comments below.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: anchor-text, blog comments, comments

There is a great question that I have seen and dealt with personally. It is why the choice of your web host is important. There is a second part that you need to understand too.

The Auto Update Feature hardly ever works correctly for my plugins, and I know it’s common. My question is this. I do know how to update manually by ftp’ing the new files into the cpanel, but in doing so, will it overwrite all of my current plugin settings?  Example: My Fast & Secure Contact Form Plugin needs to be updated. If I install the latest version via FTP, will I have to redo my contact form I currently use?

Now my old server had this problem. Sometimes the auto update worked and often the update failed. It was frustrating because my own server at the time was creating the problem because I use more than one web host.

The blogs on my Host Gator account not only updated properly but they updated so much quicker it was hard to believe it was the same process. I wish I knew what the difference in the settings was but I outsource server management so it is not a topic I am familiar with.

I recently moved my server to Zoot Host because of support problems with the previous host and now the updates have become automatic again. If you are blogging the web host and their server settings makes a huge difference. Both of mine work great now.

Now for the plugin settings question. The settings that you create in the dashboard are actually stored in your data base and do not change the actual php code that runs the plugin so manually updating any plugins will not change the settings. In this example the contact form information will still be there with the latest update.

Your questions and comments are always appreciated and welcomed.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: auto update, update plugin, web host, wordpress update