Shaun Low

What a difference 24 hours make.

A few days ago I was honestly prepared to rip a product to shreds. It wasn’t that it was a bad product, but it wasn’t as well prepared as it should have been, and from what I can tell it was due to an honest communication error between a well respected online marketer and his programming team.

But before I talk about the product itself, I am going to give you a little history lesson.

Wordpress Elite

A few years ago I purchased a script called WordPress Elite. It was pretty useful, and allowed you to point the software at a server, and create WordPress blogs based on a default configuration plus you could select various parameters.

I even sold a couple of copies as an affiliate.

It didn’t do everything, you still had to log into the WordPress blog and activate the plugins, configure them etc, and at the time I was an SEO newbie… some would say I still am

The marketer however sold the business, and the new owner didn’t do anything with it. He got some new subscribers. He asked the list once for new features, then nothing was released, and the script never really supported 2.x very well.

Wordpress Super Installer

I managed to pick this up really cheap when it was first released, and I soon forgot that WordPress Elite was going through some teething problems.
Unfortunately development pretty much stopped at the beginning of 2007.

The last update I received from Randy Rhodes (not Randi from Air America) was at the end of July 2007.

WordPress 2.0.x is still maintained because it needs to be for Debian inclusion, thus if you don’t need all the fancy features of WordPress 2.1 or above, it is still a good choice, especially if you are fed up of things breaking all the time, or have tons of WordPress blogs to maintain.

Other Scripts

There are other scripts out there, plus various services that promise to install WordPress on your behalf. I must admit I am not that keen on forking out more money, changing business processes, and then for another script development to grind to a halt.

I would never trust an automated service to install WordPress packages for me. There are a few cropping up again, there have been a few in the past, but why reveal all your niche sites to a 3rd party hiding behind a website, even if you trusted them to do the installation, and have access to your server.

WordPress Packages

If you are not too reliant on 10s of plugins, you can get by just creating WordPress packages. Include a set of standard plugins and themes that you have tweaked, upload, switch on the plugins, and configure them to your liking.
Or you can create a process, and pay someone else to do it for you.

SEO Optimized WordPress Package

Jeff Johnson has just released a special package for WordPress SEO

The installation is painless

Setup your database as always
Edit your config as always
Upload
Enter your blog name and email address
Log in
Select a theme

So what is done for you?

Permalinks

Plugin Activation
Plugin settings (though I am not sure how much they differ from default)
Ping list

Shall we coin a new phrase… the “4 Ps”

The themes are also relatively well optimized, so you have H1s where they should be

Pretty useful?

WordPress SEO Plugins Installed

All In One SEO Pack
Google XML SiteMaps

Sociable (the new official version with nofollow)

also Akismet and Simple Captcha

Why Was I Going To Slam It?

This problem was exasperated by many of the themes Jeff Johnson decided to include in the package, some optimized themes from MyType.com who basically take fairly average WordPress themes, optimized them a little, and then stick 5 spammy links in the footer to various pages on their domain, many seem to be paid client blogs.

(disclaimer: MyType.com currently rank first for WordPress SEO and I have a post blocked by robots.txt ranking on the same page - it is not exactly a competitive search term, doesn’t bring much traffic, but it probably takes 100s of spammy theme links to rank for it now)

In addition Jeff had included a few links on the default blogroll, and a badge in the sidebar.

When you added up the total number of external links per page, and it came to 14 without the WordPress default links etc, it couldn’t really be looked at as a good recommendation for SEO, especially if people download it who are less experienced.

So I emailed Jeff, and within a few hours I had a reply that it was going to be fixed. I think I may have been the only one who was concerned.

It Is Not Perfect

I don’t like some of the sites on the pinglist they use - lots of .jp sites - my personal pinglist for “quality” blogs consists of just one site, Feedburner, and I let them handle the pings to other places.

sidenote: I keep seeing Pingoat listed on ping lists - last time I checked Pingoat hadn’t been accepting pings for 18 months, maybe that is now closer to 2 years. Web pings only. Maybe John Reese when he purchased the site switched that function back on and didn’t tell anyone (such as update the Pingoat blog) - looking at recently updated blogs on Pingoat, it seems like the Poles might be using a script to spam the hell out of it.

I would use a different plugin selection, though I am sure the version of WordPress Jeff provides to his clients has a more comprehensive feature set. That being said, you really want to minimise plugin use if you are hosting a lot of blogs on a single server.

The themes are better than the originals, though you might want to look for replacements.

As they stand, if lots of people use this WordPress version for blog farms and datafeed sites, they have a bit of a heavy footprint. They still have a lot of nofollow links in the footer, plus 2 blogroll links and a banner

It Is A Time Saver

Even as it stands, for an experienced WordPress users it represents a time saver, and for someone less experienced who has problems with the basic steps of setting up plugins, permalinks etc it is a good resource, especially if the package gets improved over time.

Jeff is providing lots of instructional videos on how to install the package, though effectively it is the same as any WP installation. He does recommend using this only for new blogs, though there is a procedure that can be used for existing sites.

It Is Free

Whilst I started off with some real concerns, what concerns remain can be cured with very simple hacking. I expect this to be well maintained.

Thanks Jeff, great value for money - download it here.

p.s. I am not sure how long Jeff will have this available. It is just one of many things he is providing free of charge as part of a product launch, and these bonuses tend to disappear from public display once a launch has completed.
My advise would be to download it and test it on a few spare domains, tweak it for your own use and feed the blogs you create with some content.

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About the author:
Andy Beard - Niche Marketing - Blog search engine perfomance, Wordpress and general niche and affiliate marketing tips

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I’m a regular reader of Fred Wilson’s blog. Fred posted an article today that he is planning to clean house on his blog. He will remove many (if not most) of the widgets that adorn his site.

There was much rejoicing!

I can understand why Fred installed all these widgets in the first place. He’s got a natural curiosity and he’s a venture capitalist by trade — and invests in this stuff. There’s no better way to get to understand a technology or trend than to actually use it.

But, I’d argue that very few of his blog readers appreciate the widgets (except, perhaps the people that developed them).

Benefits Of Widget Removal And A Cleaner Blog

1. It focuses readers on the core content, which is (hopefully) why they’re there.

2. It makes pages load faster. Think of the bandwidth saved across the web!

3. Search engines like Google appreciate fast-loading sites (and possibly reward them with higher rankings).

4. It makes things simpler and more likely to load across a variety of browsers. (Yes, yes, I know things are supposed to work — but they often don’t)

So, if you’re a blogger, follow Fred’s lead and clean things up a bit. Your readership will thank you.

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About the author:
Dharmesh Shah is a serial software entrepreneur. He is the author of the
widely read startup blog OnStartups.com which focuses on advice and ideas
for startup founders and management teams. Dharmesh is also the co-founder
of HubSpot.com, a software company building applications that help small
businesses transform their website into a marketing machine.

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I have a couple of blogs (using Blogger) that are monetized using Google. But, the ads that appear are often completely unrelated to the content - sometimes embarrassingly so. Is there any way of getting the ads to be more relevant? I do use tags, but that doesn’t seem to help. Sigh.

Dave’s Answer:

This is a great question, actually, because I see so many bloggers who don’t think about giving the AdSense engine clues about what’s on the page and have the same result of poorly targeted ads and, no surprise, very low revenue. Worse, and this is something to really think about, if the AdSense engine can’t figure out what you’re writing about, odds are very good that Google’s search engine spider can’t either, which means that you’re not going to get very good search engine results placement (aka “SERPs”) for your blogging efforts.

The most common reason for this is that you write about too broad and diverse a range of topics. Since many blog layouts have multiple entries on a page (especially the home page), if the topics are too diverse it’s impossible for any targeting to succeed.

This is why it’s hard to have a commercially successful blog when one entry is a review of your latest cellphone, the next is a complaint about seating in the local movie theater, and a third entry is an ode to your Mom for Mother’s Day.

Another common reason I see is that you just aren’t writing enough about the specific topic at hand for AdSense / Googlebot to figure out what’s important. Imagine this: if you just looked at the words on your Web page, ignoring all graphics, design and layout, how many words comprise your navigation and supplemental content versus how many words are you using for your actual blog entry? If your ratio is 80:20 with your widgets, sidebars, blogroll, navigation, copyright, etc., being the 80%, you have a serious problem, and every time you write a 2-3 line blog entry, you’re making it impossible for the system to figure out what’s really important on the page.

There’s a third thing that happens with blogging that can undermine your efforts too, and it’s a bit more subtle. Instead of using explicit nouns in your writing, most people succumb to more informal usage with “it” being quite common. Scan back through what I’ve written here about AdSense targeting and you’ll see I don’t do that: I explicitly use “AdSense” or “Google AdSense” or similar time and again. It’s a slight tweak to your writing style that helps search engines and automatic page analysis tools correctly identify the main theme and topic of the page.

Google also has a nifty little device you can use to help identify which portions of your page are intended to be fodder for the AdSense targeting engine: AdSense Section Targeting. You can learn more about it on my tutorial page: How to target your AdSense ads with AdSense Section Targeting.

Notice how many times I used the proper noun in the previous paragraph? It’s a tiny bit redundant, but if you can live with the slight change to your writing style, it really can pay significant dividends with both search engines and ad targeting engines.

I hope these suggestions help you make tweaks to your Blogger weblog so that your ads are better targeted to your content, and, dear reader, if you have additional ideas or suggestions, please add them below as a comment!

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About the author:
Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is
internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues.
Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four
startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms
seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave
is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast
programs.

AskDaveTaylor.com
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/

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If you’ve been following the developments on the WordPress blog, you’d know that the new official release of WordPress 2.5 is out.

Besides better image handling - the new version has a pretty comprehensive built-in gallery (WordPress head developer honcho Matt Mullenweg did a preview screencast of the new gallery), it also has features like an enhanced in-built tagging feature, integrated analytics (so you get a better idea of your traffic picture without having to go to Google Analytics), a redesign of the user interface that should allow for more intuitive posting.

What’s uncertain is if embedding videos and other code requires having to muck around with the blog settings, because WordPress hasn’t really “played nice” with PHP, javascript and flash files in it’s previous incarnations.

Also, there’s a big question mark about the compatibility with WordPress plugins (generally developed by third party and independent developers) designed for earlier versions of WordPress.

-

So the $64,000 question (or perhaps in today’s context, the $1million question…) is as an Internet Marketer - either you promote other products as an affiliate or you have your own products - should you upgrade to WordPress 2.5 now?

Here’s my personal take…

If you started out with the later versions of WordPress 2.2.x or WordPress 2.3.x and your blog works ok now, you should not have too much difficulty with the upgrade. Maybe 1 or 2 plugins might stop working, but you might be able to get along without it.

If on the other hand, you started out with WordPress 2.0.x or 2.1.x and you use more than 20 different plugins, you can expect some pain during the upgrade process.

I know specifically if you’re using SEO-optimization type plugins and affiliate marketing plugins, and one of them breaks in the process (especially since WordPress has gone from a category-based data management system to a taxonomy-based one), you might want to hang on for a moment, and wait a couple of weeks before the dust settles.

From what I’ve seen from the notes, it doesn’t look like the ability to post video on the blog is a huge priority at the moment, so podcasters, video bloggers and lifecasters might experience some difficulty during the migration.

Whatever you choose to do, be sure to backup your MySQL database, and copy and paste important settings and information into a text file for reference later in case something goes awry.

There’s nothing more “fun” than doing a one-click upgrade of your blog, only to spend the next 24-48 hours trying to undo it.

If you have the ability to, you might even want to duplicate your existing blog on another domain or a sub-directory and upgrading that instance of your blog. The major bugbears may take a couple of days to show themselves though.

Whatever you do, tread carefully, especially if your blog brings in daily income!

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About the author:
Andrew Wee is an Asia-based Internet Marketer focused on blogging, social traffic generation and affiliate marketing. Previously rated as one of Asia’s top technology journalists, Andrew covers breaking news and industry developments at WhoIsAndrewWee.com

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Making it easy for readers of your content to share that content with others is one of the ways that you can make your blog or RSS feed ever more useful to those readers.

Plus it benefits you, the content creator, as your content gets wider visibility.

For quite a while, I’ve been using FeedBurner’s FeedFlare service which adds a number of links to my blog posts and RSS feeds, like this:

That was ok, I thought, although it seemed kinda flaky at times on blog posts. Sometimes the links would disappear for no reason I could ever figure out.

There’s also the often-lengthy row of pretty icons approach quite a few sites take, like this:

I’ve always found that approach distracting. Too much bling, it seems to me. Plus I never knew what half the icons meant.

So I’ve resisted doing anything other than the feed flares which, as text links only and in the same typeface as the content, didn’t distract that much from that content.

Yet I’ve sometimes thought that maybe the links I have weren’t the links people would find useful. Or, rather, weren’t enough of those links.

But I didn’t want the bling approach.

I’ve found what I think is the most useful solution in the form of ShareThis, a WordPress plugin developed by Alex King that adds this unobtrusive little graphic and link at the foot of each blog post:

So if you want to let someone else know about something you’re reading, clicking on the link gives you this little popup:

Then you can choose which part of the social web (nice phrase) you want to share the content with.

If you click on the ‘Send’ tab, you get a form where you can enter email info to send via that means, or by SMS or instant message.

Very flexible.

If you use a platform other than WordPress, such as Blogger or TypePad, there are also plugins for those.

The first thing I noticed with Share This was that of all the social web elements available to include in the choices you offer, there’s a now-glaring omission - Twitter isn’t one of the choices.

I often use the Twit This! browser bookmarklet; with one click, it’s very useful to flag up to your Twitter community something you’re reading right at that moment. The easier it is to do that, the more likely you will.

There is a Twit This! plugin for WordPress that adds a ‘Twit This’ link at the foot of each post. I don’t like it, frankly: too much in-your-face. Plus it defeats the objective of why I’ve added Share This.

Maybe ShareThis can include that somehow, or something like it.

There’s more to ShareThis than purely a link with a pretty popup, though. Stats, for instance. Details on the website.

I like ShareThis and I hope you find it useful. Do tell me if you don’t. Or if you do.

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About the author:
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is a UK-based communicator, blogger and podcaster. He helps companies use effective communication to achieve their business goals. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

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One question that I encounter occasionally from neophyte bloggers is about one of the most powerful methods of building content and also (shhhh) one of the best ways to build up some very high quality inbound links for your weblog: interviews.

Now I’m not talking about bringing your camera crew and lining up some local production team to help the “location shoot” look great (though if you’re at that level you doubtless already know what I’m talking about) but more the humble interviews built around either email or phone-based question and answer sessions.

Standard approach is to identify a half-dozen or so celebrities or highly visible people in your market and ask them directly if you can interview them. Generally, this is a good place to slip in an ego stroke or two, like “I’ve been talking about your new book for a year now, it’s so great” or “really appreciate your insight on the current bond market” or “I’m really interested on how you gained your sharp perspective on politics”. Think of it as grease on the wheels, perhaps.

Why approach more than one? Because some folk will just ignore your request or reject it, sometimes because they want to be paid and other times because they’re either buffeted by these sort of queries or just uninterested in you and your project. No worries, lots of other people say ‘yes’ so you should have success!

As part of your invitation to be interviewed, I encourage you to highlight that you’ll do the production work (formatting the final document, editing the audio, whatever) and that you’re then happy to make that available for their own promotional purposes. This gives them a further incentive and since there’s no cost other than time, if you flub it up horribly, they can always skip referencing it on their own site / newsletter.

Making participation easy and efficient is a definite win and will increase the chance of you succeeding in your fledgling interview efforts.

I prefer email interviews, personally, because I’m a text guy so I’ll tell you that my secret here is to ask if I can interview them, then send them a list of 10-12 questions and highlight “if you don’t like these questions, edit them, skip ones that aren’t interesting and add new ones if you’d like”. This lets them help move the interview towards areas they want to highlight and I can always mail back “one more question” if they are skipping an area that I think is of particular importance. More importantly, since I’m not seeking a Pulitzer for investigative reporting, it lets them retain some control of the interview too.

For a phone-based audio interview you can use the same general approach by emailing questions in advance of the call. This also lets you ensure that your interview goes well because your subject has had a chance to prep and perhaps pull together some notes. You can do the same: have your homework in front of you so instead of saying “you have a big company” you can say “Your company sold $35.3 million worth of widgets last year…” or similar and sound smart. And that’s undoubtedly a good thing.

Finally, when you are done, spend the time and effort to clean things up, edit for coherence, spelling and grammar (as appropriate), clean up audio passages to chop out the ums and ahs, the interruption from the cellphone call at minute 13, etc. Then send a copy of it to the interview subject simultaneous to publishing it, with your gracious thanks for their participation.

For bonus points, you can also ask them if they have any colleagues who would enjoy being interviewed, and if so, whether they could perhaps send out a quick introduction for you. That can open doors that you might otherwise never even know are there.

Finally finally, a quick example: my interview with Spain Dad, which came out of us connecting and me being surprised at the level of personal information he published on his blog. I think it’s an interesting interview. Do you?

Comments

About the author:
Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is
internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues.
Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four
startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms
seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave
is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast
programs.

AskDaveTaylor.com
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/

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What do you do when it’s your scheduled day to blog and the writing won’t come? Do the tumbleweeds reign when you’re low on blogging ideas? How about when you have a busy week ahead of you, but you still want to post? You might do like I recently did and take a week or so off. You wouldn’t have to though, if you developed a blogging bank account.

The idea for this post came to me several months ago. I held back on writing it, because I hadn’t yet taken my own advice. Sunday night Skellie posted her #1 tip for creating better content, which is essentially the same idea and reminded me I needed to listen to my own advice. This post is just as much for me as it is for you.

A Story about Framing Pictures

About 10 years ago I worked in a custom picture framing shop. You know the place where you take a print you want framed and you ask for some help choosing mattes and frames. Then you have the shop cut the materials and put it all together for you. I was one of the people helping you with all those things. It was one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever had, but that’s not the point of this story.

A few months into the job several employees had moved on and the responsibility of making sure the day’s schedule of frames were built and ready for customers came to rest on my shoulders. At the time we scheduled 8 frames a day to build and on the Monday I took charge we were working on Tuesday’s frames. We had yet to hire more people and me with my 4+ months of experience had been at the job longer than the minimal staff left.

For awhile I knew I wasn’t going to get much help keeping up with the schedule and the first week or two I worked with a nervous energy. Nervous that I’d fall behind and energetic because I had no other choice. I did manage to keep up and after a few weeks started to get ahead.

We scheduled frames two weeks out. If you came in today with an order it would be two weeks before we’d call to have you pick up the finished product. The previous person in my position had maintained the frame building so we were always working on the next day’s frames. That system could fall apart easily with one busy day and I set out to change it.

Two Monday’s after I started I was building Wednesday’s frames. The following Monday I was working on Thursday’s frames. A couple months later and we were two weeks ahead. In fact if the materials were cut and ready for assembly they were likely built within the hour.

Being so far ahead accomplished a lot. For one I knew I could skip building frames for two weeks and we’d still have happy customers. Sometimes the frames wouldn’t fit together as well as you’d like. Warped wood was usually the culprit and the only solution was new material. Being so far ahead in the schedule meant we’d find out we needed to reorder the materials well in advance. Our work as a shop became better because we had the time to give more attention to that work.

I increased the schedule to 9 frames a day and got a raise. I increased it to 10 a day and got another raise. 11 and another raise. If someone came in with a rush job it was easy to get it done and the owner was certainly happy with the extra 50% price tag on the “rush” labor. We became a highly efficient shop putting out high quality work. The shop owner made more money, the shop’s employees made more money, and the customers were happy in large part because we had two weeks of flexibility in our schedule.

So what does this have to do with blogging? Read on.

What is a Blogging Account?

Substitute blog posts for picture frames and change the metaphor in the above story and you have an account at your blog bank. Instead of writing posts the same day you’re planning on publishing get ahead of schedule so you have some in store.

Imagine when you write a post you don’t publish it. You deposit it in your bank account for later use. When it’s your scheduled day to publish you don’t write a new post, but rather stop by the bank and withdraw a post for publishing. As long as you can maintain your account you’ll always have something to publish.

You build up your account by writing more than you need. Just as I managed to get ahead of the framing schedule by building nine and ten frames a day instead of the scheduled eight you’d write an extra post or two a week beyond what you expect to publish. If you’re publishing three posts a week write four and deposit the extra one in your blog account. In three weeks you’ll have a week’s worth of posts in your account.

There’s no reason why you can’t build up several months worth of posts if you keep at it.

The Benefits of a Blog Account?

There are a number of benefits to having a supply of posts written in advance and having a positive cash flow of blog posts.

* Time off - If you have posts written for the next two weeks you can take those weeks off and still keep your blog running. We all have weeks when we run out of ideas or have too many other things that need to get done. Having an account filled with posts means your blog continues as usual.

* Better posts - Since you’re not writing the post you’ll be publishing today you can work on it over a few days. You can then deposit it and withdraw it a few days later to work on it again. The extra time will give you more opportunities to edit and make your posts better.
* Increased posting schedule If you’re able to continuously write four posts a week you might decide to start publishing four posts a week. You’ll be in the habit of writing more and may find yourself able to write five posts a week while still growing your account.

* Less pressure to write - If you’re not writing the post you’re publishing today there’s less pressure on you to get it done and less pressure to get it right on the first draft. Regardless of what some like to believe, most of us do not do our best work under pressure. Knowing you’ll have time to change your words makes them easier to get out.

* Withdraw posts for guest blogging - You’ve no doubt seen guest blogging recommended as a way to attract new readers or promote your brand. You’ve no doubt immediately wondered where you’d find the time to write a guest post when you’re having trouble keeping up with your own blog. If you’re maintaining an account of posts you’ll always have one ready for any guest posting opportunity.

* Time posts better - Timing has a lot to do with how much attention a post will attract. A story that’s popular today becomes overdone and tiresome tomorrow. The good news is many stories come back around and gain popularity at a later date. Today’s tired story is under served six months from now. The next time the story breaks you might have a post ready to catch the wave of interest.

Diversify your Assets

Taking the financial analogy a little further you’ll want to diversify what’s in your account. The same way a variety of stocks in different industries makes your entire portfolio stronger a variety of post topics will make your blog account stronger.

Consider the last two benefits above.

There may be many different blogs that will allow you to guest post that are related to your topic, but each might call for a different post. Given the topics I usually write about I could possibly guest post for a blog about blogging, or one about search engines, or one about marketing, or one about social media. Some posts appropriate for one blog could easily be made appropriate for another or tweaked a little so they were. A post such as how to build your brand through social media might be equally at home on a blog about business and marketing as well as one on social media. Not all posts will work across blogs so well. If you have a diverse blogging account you’ll have a post available for any opportunity.

You generally can’t control the stories that are going to become popular in the future. At any given time one of hundreds of ideas can start to spread. If all the posts in your blog account are on the same topic you’ll have to wait for that topic to become popular again. If you have posts in your account on a variety of topics it’s much more likely you’ll have one ready when the next popular idea arrives.

I mentioned at the start I haven’t been listening to my own advice. If I had this blog wouldn’t have been as empty as it’s been the last couple of weeks. While I may not have taken my own advice on building a blog account, I’m 100% convinced the idea is a good one and if we both start building accounts today our blogs will significantly improve. This post is in the “do as I say” category and not the “do as I do” category. At least not yet.

Hopefully I can revisit this post in a couple months with a case study of blog banking success. I hope you’ll be able to do the same.

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About the author:
Steven Bradley is a web designer and search engine optimization
specialist. Known to many in the webmaster/seo community by the username
vangogh, he is the author of TheVanBlog, which focuses on how to build
and optimize websites and market them online.

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Dear Rich,

–Confounded in Camden

Dear Confounded,

I’m guessing that you use a word processor like Microsoft Word to craft your post, then copy and paste your post into the Typepad new post fields.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a good match. Word carries so much meta-information that dictates font, spacing, kerning, leading, color and more, and unfortunately, the TypePad fields are so “smart”, they hold onto that meta-information. (The same is true with WordPress and most other blogging platforms.)

If you want to copy and paste your Word documents into your blog, here’s the steps you’ll need to take:

1. Write your post in Word.

2. Select all and copy all.

3. Paste into Notepad (on Windows) or TextWrangler on the Mac (free TextWrangler download here.)

4. Select all AGAIN and copy all AGAIN.

5. Paste into blog.

6. Add back any formatting you may have lost, such as bold, italics, bulleted lists, etc.

This process will strip out all of the meta-information, laundering your post and giving it the consistency that you so dearly want.

This is also a good idea because if you ever change the design of your blog, you can easily update the look and feel of all your posts…UNLESS there’s meta-information in your post that is overriding the style sheets your designer is using.

Of course, there’s a simpler method to keep your posts clean that I use:

1. Type directly into TypePad or Wordpress.

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About the author:
Rich Brooks is president of flyte new media, a Web site design and Internet marketing company in Portland, Maine. Flyte works with small businesses to build professional Web sites that often include e-commerce, Flash and content management systems. They promote their clients’ sites through search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, business blogs and podcasts, and viral marketing.

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Do you know what gym regulars call the surge of people who show up in January as part of a New Year’s resolution?

Tourists.

The same could be true with the influx of businesses that join the blogosphere each and every day. The great majority of them start with good intentions, but then fall flat.

The problem with an abandoned blog is that it usually sticks around, available through a search engine query or a forgotten link. Later, a prospect finds it and wonders why your blog was neglected and may question whether your company finishes what it starts.

Atlas2In this month’s award-winning flyte log* I’ve put together a “workout regimen” for your blog that includes the time you should expect to put into your blog on a regular basis. This regimen will add muscle to your blog and keep it from getting sand kicked in its face.

So, if you’ve got a new blog, or have been neglecting your current blog, be sure to check out Jumpstart Your Blog: A Business Blogging Workout Regimen.

* (award pending)

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About the author:
Rich Brooks is president of flyte new media, a Web site design and Internet marketing company in Portland, Maine. Flyte works with small businesses to build professional Web sites that often include e-commerce, Flash and content management systems. They promote their clients’ sites through search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, business blogs and podcasts, and viral marketing.

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A couple of days ago, someone forwarded me a request from a journalist writing a piece for a national UK paper about social networking.

The journalist’s questions were a little unclear:

I need ‘ten top tips’ for social networking, what to do (as opposed to what not to do). i.e., things to encourage comments and feedback on your postings - sentence length etc…

Mainly because of the ‘ie,’ I read that request as more to do with blogs - social media applications rather than social network services. Might have been different had it been an ‘eg.‘

Still, many social networks include a blogging capability - places where you and others can write content.

As the original request was to a mailing list, no doubt the journalist was swamped with all sorts of suggestions, many perhaps helpful.

In any event, I added my £0.01 worth by email with the following ten tips for encouraging blog comments:

1. Write your post with your points well constructed and clearly presented so that the reader understands what you’re saying. May seem obvious but I see so many blog posts where none of that is clear at all.

2. If getting comments is one of the goals you have for your blog (which is not every blogger’s goal), write your posts in a way that encourages readers to want to leave comments. The simple approach is often enough - ask a question.

3. Make it easy for readers to actually make a comment. Ensure you have a blog design that is pleasing to the eye and each post has a clearly-identifiable area for writing comments and any instructions you have are easy to understand and follow. A good idea is to have a terms of use statement for your blog that includes a clear commenting policy, if you have one. My terms of use do.

4. Provide some basic formatting functionality to make it easy for a commenter to best express him or herself such as buttons you can click to add attributes to your comment, eg, bold, italic, etc.

5. Let commenters leave links to content elsewhere on the web. Although it’s often an issue with spammers who typically spray your blog with crap containing loads of links, you should be able to allow some linking especially if you have safeguards in place, eg, Akismet.

6. Related to numbers 4 and 5, strike a balance between ease of use for your readers and security of your site.Recognize that many people are put off by too many hurdles. The big one is having to log in or register on a site before you can comment. Another is a complicated captcha, either the captcha itself or the procedure you have to follow. Yet another is comment moderation where typically comments by first-time commenters go into a moderation queue (that happens on this blog) for approval by you. Be timely with this - approve comments so they appear on your blog quickly, certainly within 24 hours.

7. If you see people beginning to comment on a post you’ve written, join in the embryonic conversation as well. Add your own comments, not only to provide your additional viewpoint but also to show you want to actively engage with your readers. It’s the equivalent of a conversation. And it’s one way community starts building.

8. Recognize that commenting on a post in your blog can happen elsewhere, eg, on other people’s blogs. If you want to be able to connect all that commentary together, make sure your blogs accepts incoming trackbacks or pingbacks.

9. Many people who leave comments on blogs want to know when others leave comments. So offer an RSS feed for comments as well as the feed you’d offer for posts. That way, everyone can keep up with developing conversations. and thus encourages people to leave more comments.

10. Get known outside your own blog.Visit other blogs. Read other posts. Contribute to discussions by leaving comments on other blogs. People (and Google search) notice such things. This can be good as people get to know you a little and so may keep an eye on your blog more than they otherwise would and, thus, may be more inclined to comment on your points of view.

I could have gone on with at least another ten tips but the journalist asked only for ten.

What would you have written as ten tips?

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About the author:
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is a UK-based communicator, blogger and podcaster. He helps companies use effective communication to achieve their business goals. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

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