Well another Sunday is here and despite disappearing for the most part this week dealing with the tax man I have found some quality posts in my limited travels.
For those unfamiliar with this each Sunday I highlight three of the quality posts I have found in my travels through the blogosphere. Sharing is an important part of being an active member of the blogosphere.
Our next stop is a good post on using Twitter and raises some interesting points. It is a guest post on Reviewz N Tips by Cynthia Kahn titled “So, You’ve been Suspended on Twitter?”.
Our last stop this week is to Famous Bloggers for a guest post by Richard Adams titled “Making The Most Of Ezine Articles Since The Google Farmer Update”. Article marketing has long been a recommended adjunct for traffic generation and this has a few good ideas to keep using it.
That is what I found this week but would love to know of any good articles you found. Just leave them in the 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.
Blog commenting can be an effective way to generate back links and attract traffic to your site. Previously, I have discussed using a feed reader to find on topic blogs to do that and then taking part in the conversation. You can read about that in a previous post at “Finding blogs to comment on“.
Sometimes it can be hard to find quality blogs that are on topic to comment on.
Here is another way to find great blogs to interact with that doesn’t need to take all of your time. Before we continue first this warning.
When blog commenting actually take part in the conversation and add value to the post you are commenting on. Don’t stop by and leave crap.
If you don’t add value no one is going to follow your comment back to your blog. You may get a backlink but most bloggers that can actually help you get new readers will spam your comment.
I definitely will.
Smart bloggers are active on Twitter and tend to share other bloggers quality posts. You can use this to your advantage to find great new blogs to take part in the conversation.
Here is how you can add this to your arsenal of tools and not take all of your time. After all we all have limited time.
First you should be using a Twitter app that allows you to create filters like Tweet Deck does. (At least as long as Twitter keeps allowing it, but that is another topic.)
When you find a quality blog, follow that person on Twitter and put them in a special column so it is easy to see what they are mentioning.
Take a few minutes a couple of times a day to go visit the blogs they are mentioning if the title interests you.
Here is where your titles are important. After all you are only going to check out the titles that catch your attention. Make sure your titles are catching others attention too.
If you like the post and can add to, take the time to comment on it. Retweet it to your followers. Add that person to your Twitter followers and to your special column.
Now you can see what that person is retweeting and if they point you to quality posts you keep them in your special column. If not or if they are posting crap (it happens) just remove them.
Do this on a regular basis and you will gradually expand your reach and be surprised at some of the things you will find and how rapidly you can expand your reach.
As long as you are adding value with your comments, this can be a very effective way to attract more readers and find people to network with that are in your niche.
A few minutes a day can greatly expand your reach.
How do you find blogs to comment on? Leave a comment and let me know.
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.
Before I get started I am not taking sides on any political issues here. Just observing things that are happening. Not that I don’t have strong opinions this is not the format for it.
Not sure if you have noticed that WordPress.com has been fighting off a DDOS attack for the last couple days. Interesting that it seems to be coming from the Libyan government from some of the news stories I have been reading.
Seems those against the government have been using WordPress.com to communicate and coordinate their efforts. That is why the Libyan government is trying to shut them down.
Look at the social campaign run by Obama in 2008 to use a variety of blogs and social media to win the presidency and there is little doubt that if you can use blogs and social media you can have a huge advantage.
Egypt just had a change in government fueled by the usage of Facebook and Twitter.
There is no doubt that blogging and social media can be world changers. The question is are you using them to bring change about in your marketplace?
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.
One thing that starting the Sunday Goodies has done is to make me extend my reach. more. Sharing with others can be a great way to do that.
The majority of new blogs I find that end up being featured come from someone’s recommendation. Usually on Twitter but it does take some effort. (I know a big surprise.) But I work hard to keep it to a minimum.
So how do I keep expanding my reach?
When I find a good blog post on a new blog to me, I add the author to my Twitter account. Not just an add but they get moved to a category in Tweet deck for the people that I want to highlight so I am less likely to miss anything they tweet.
Monitor that person and see if they recommend other quality content. After a week or so you have a real good idea if they are active in retweeting others or not. If all they do is self promote they get removed.
The reason is that people that write content I like tend to interact with other quality writers on the same or similar topics. Some I know already, but often their recommendations lead me to another quality resource that I can follow too.
This again leads me to add that new person the same way and keep expanding my circle again and again.
I add their blogs into my feed reader the same way. Usually someone that has a post that gets my attention the same way continues to add quality content.
Occasionally though you find out that the post that attracted me was an aberration. About 10% of the time it fits the “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while” scenario and then it is easy to remove the feed from my reader.
After all the biggest thing I strive for is to save time yet find quality resources. Expanding the people I truly pay attention to on Twitter and add quality blogs to my reader makes it easier to extend my reach and build a quality list of people to interact with.
Spending a bit of time each day can really multiply over time and you will never lack for quality content to help your Twitter followers or to find blogs to take part in the conversation.
Beats the tools that just find blogs to comment on because you build a constantly expanding list of others that are on topic. I find it leads to more traffic from those blogs when you do comment because instead of searching for keywords you have found blogs that resonate with you.
Odds are your content will resonate with those readers too. This leads to more traffic and an ever expanding reach for your content to people that are already interested in it.
That’s my thoughts. What are yours? Leave your 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.
Got a good question yesterday when I talked about Paper.li again. So lets go for a third post. Hopefully the third time is the charm.
Haven’t tried paper.li yet, Mike – what kind of results are you seeing with it, vis-a-vis the time investment for it?
The amount of time it takes is minimal if you have an active Twitter following and use lists. It is a one time setup and then it generates a new paper on the topic you picked each day.
In my case I use a Twitter list of marketers that I follow. It took less than 5 minutes to set up if you have a list in your Twitter account already like I did.
The paper I created gets retweeted just about every day by someone that is on that list when they are listed as part of the contributors.
Can’t really put a value on that but as I have chosen quality people that have similar audiences or audiences that I would like to reach it probably (have no way to track exact stats) has added new followers to my Twitter account and at the least gotten my name in front of a lot more people.
It is more valuable when others add you to your paper.
In summary the time is minimal to set it up and it runs on autopilot. The results are hard to measure specifically but more exposure for one time effort seems to be a good trade for me.
What do you think?
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.
Change is inevitable. Even more so online then off line.
Just like the leaves change each fall so do things change online.
This week I decided to make a change here. Now it is in the testing stage and the results will need to be tracked but I have started with this step.
Added a new plugin yesterday that lets me add the little floater to the left and add in various social media items.
Did it to test it for a couple of reasons.
I like the look when I visit other blogs.
It changes one plugin to replace a few.
My first hope is that it will allow more people to interact with me on places like Twitter, Facebook, Buzz and others because it is there when you decide that you like what I am writing and want to share it.
Unlike what was there before some were at the top of the post and others at the bottom, If I made an impression (And I hope I do at least some of the time) you do not need to scroll up or down to Tweet it, like it on Facebook, etc.
Plus each plugin you use slows things down. It is one of the trade offs you make for more functionality. If I can use one plugin instead of 4 or 5 to accomplish the same thing the hope is that it will speed things up a bit.
Ultimately though it is whether it gets people to interact here that matters the most and that is what I will be watching.
I know I have not said what the plugin is yet. Needed to at least get you to read to the end didn’t I?
It is called Sharebar and it is a free plugin and you can add it through your dashboard by just searching for sharebar.
Now will it stay? It really depends on what you the reader like. If it gets used more absolutely but if the interaction goes down it will disappear.
Doesn’t that make you feel powerful? You decide through your actions what stays and goes here. Let me know.
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.
Amazing what you can find when you pay attention. Started seeing some tweets like “Best of.. post name url ” on Twitter. When I looked closer I saw at the bottom from Tweet Old Post.
So I went and checked in the plugin directory and saw a plugin by that name. Read about it and decided to try it.
Regular readers know that I love anything that recycles or repurposes content. This fit the bill perfectly. It automatically will randomly pick an old post and tweet it at a schedule I determine. Works like a charm.
Now to be clear there are two things you need to have to use this plugin and have it be of value.
Lots of quality evergreen content
An active Twitter following
It won’t work for you if a lot of your posts are time sensitive or if you are not active on Twitter.
If you are though this can be a great way to point traffic to some of your older posts automagically. And I love automagical things.
It is easy to set up and you can set the minimum and maximum date ranges and how often to tweet posts. It does it randomly for you.
As Twitter gets indexed this should not only be sending instant visitors that follow you from Twitter but doing some deep linking to your older posts too.
Definitely a tool to consider if you meet the qualifications above.
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.
Most bloggers are using Twitter and if you are a blogger and not using Twitter you should be.
Recently I started seeing mentions of me on Twitter and when I followed to the url I found this tool called Paper.li.
Paper.li allows you to create your own newspaper with the Twitter posts sent from the source you select.
This can be your Twitter followers, a specific hash tag, or a Twitter list you have created.
Then you can set the page to promote itself through your Twitter feed.
For the paper I created I added a few people to a Twitter list I called marketers and then used that list to pull the content.
It will update and tweet each day. Here is an example.
Now I have just started playing with this but I can see a few ways to use this.
A lot of it is dependent on how you use Twitter. It will work best if you have created lists and use hash tags regularly.
Much like the techniques used in Twitter Time Saver to use your feed reader to add value to your Twitter followers this can be used to create and compile content that your followers will find helpful.
Setting up a paper to pull in the latest use of certain hash tags will allow you to provide the latest every day to your followers on that topic.
If you are tweeting using that hash tag your content will be added along with others so it can be a great way to help your followers and promote your content at the same time.
Like wise if you have lists of people that consistently interact with you and provide good content you can set up a paper to promote those.
I know that I pay attention when I see my content promoted by others and tend to help those that do this by retweeting and interacting with them on Twitter.
All in all this looks like another tool that can be added to the arsenal to build relationships with others and anything that can do that is worth checking out and testing.
It is easy to create your own paper and if there is an interest I will post step by step instructions. Just leave your comments below if you would like to see a post on that.
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.
Right now all she has is a maintenance page but she is working hard on getting some publicity for it.
She has created a fan page where you can guess what the new theme will be and have a chance to win one of her products.
Hint if you decide to participate and have not previously followed Barbara…
Her posts make frequent references to coffee, her coffee pot, Xena Warrior Princess and mooses. Now whether they will be prominent in her theme I don’t know but a good clue for new readers.
You can be sure they will continue to be prominent in her posts and that the posts will entertain and educate you.
So she is running people through her Facebook Fan Page to get the noise started about her new theme. This should be worth following to see what else she will add to her contest as she unveils the new look of her blog and looks to increase her visitor flow.
If you are looking to generate extra traffic to your blog think about what type of contest you can have to generate extra buzz.
Remember to add in things like Twitter, Facebook and blog posts to allow people to win extra chances to win and have a reason to promote you.
And for those that missed yesterdays post I am still looking for ideas on themes that you like for my upcoming make over on a few of my blogs. Just leave a comment about what you like here and why. I appreciate your input.
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.
Okay it seems I lied a few minutes ago. I just uploaded a new type of post instead of a Sunday Rant and had decided that this would be the new norm and there would be no rant this week.
It talks about a plugin that is really nasty called BlogPress SEO. It can do some nasty things to your blog as it is definitely malware. It will allow the author total access to your blog.
It is one of the reasons to not use free plugins that are not available through the WordPress directory unless you know the author. WordPress does vet the plugins that are added to their directory which does help you to avoid potential disasters like this can be.
If you have added the plugin to your blog uninstall it and change your email address and password in your dashboard. Go to user – your profile
Then change your email address and password.
It is important that you change both of those items even though you have uninstalled the plugin as they have already been passed on.
So another malicious scoundrel is out there looking to take advantage of you. Nothing new there but you can be smarter about it.
The old saying if it sounds too good to be true it is has a lot of validity. Pay attention to it.
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.
