Blogging and Marketing Resources for the Average Blogger and Business
Posts tagged Platforms
Quality Web Hosting as the Foundation
Jun 28th
BlueHost Hosting is my Choice!
One of the basics I covered early in my blogging journey was whether to use a free blogging platform like Blogger, or to invest in your own hosted space. There are of course pros and cons to each.
In Free Blogging, or Pay to Play?, I touched on some of the decisions individual bloggers need to make about why they are blogging and what they hope to get out of it. I have been clear from the beginning that a hosted domain for the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit (and future projects) was my strategic decision. Now that I have had some time under my belt with a hosting provider, I feel comfortable sharing my views about BlueHost.
Speaking of transparency, regular readers of the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit know that I try to play it straight with you. When promoting something, I’ve tried to be clear as to when I have skin in the game and when I don’t. This time, I do. If you click through any of my ads shown on my blog – and you sign up – I get a commission. But I’ve held off making any assessments until I have had some time to evaluate. After six months, I now feel confident endorsing their services.
In any support role, if it looks easy, it means a lot of work goes into it. That is truly the case with BlueHost. I have been very pleased with the quiet, behind the scenes support the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit has received. There was only one brief outage and when I used their live chat, the agent already knew about the problem and it was corrected in minutes. No song and dance, no excuses, just fixed.
Part of the reason for chosing BlueHost was of course not because they were the least expensive. There seem to me thousands of providers and many are less expensive. I’m taking the long view. My intention is to grow my blogging to a number of projects, and hope they grow quite large. I like the idea that I now have just one provider that can and will provide the support I need – for any number of projects – with any amount of traffic – for one reasonable monthly fee. Paid annually, this is the easiest, safest, most professional, and eventually, the most cost effective solution I could have.
About the endorsement and commission issue. The only area where BlueHost’s process could be smoother is in the affiliate signup process. After signing up for payouts on other advertising, BlueHost seems to be a bit heavy on the forms to fill out. In fact, my PayPal email address wasn’t accepted initially and had to choose “pay with check” to get the affiliate account established. I’ll work on that and the IRS W-9 form they require later.
Don’t let this small inconvenience sway you. Consider BlueHost. They’ve done a great job for me and I expect to be a long time customer.
Dave
Dofollow (No Nofollow) for Improved Search Engine Rank
May 8th
DoFollow Used Here!
A comment offered in a previous post, Entrecard Boosting Traffic, caused me to learn something new, and quite important: the DoFollow / NoFollow dilemma. A new concept for me, but one worth exploring.
First, some background. Blogs and web sites are of course ranked by search engines in a number of ways. One is the number of links from other places on the Internet back to that site. Basically, a show of popularity. The problem with this is the incentive for spammers to comment with nothing but links back to their sites, mostly in automated ways, to simply fill up the comment with opportunities for the Googles of the world to more highly rank their sites. All at the intellectual expense of honorable blogs.
In 2005, Google postulated that if they did not provide any ranking merit when they found the attribute, “rel=nofollow” on blogs, and not follow the link back for merit ranking purposes, bloggers and blog platforms would adopt the setting. The rationale was that it would be a disincentive for spammers and spamming would, well, stop. Right.
WordPress, as one blogging platform, adopted the setting. The challenge for us “average” bloggers on the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is the lack of awareness of (at least for many of us) this obscure parameter.
I am pleased to announce that the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is now set up to use DoFollow! The good people at Semiologic provided the DoFollow plugin now used here. Anyone familiar with WordPress plugins will appreciate the simple ZIP file download and install. Now, the dreaded NoFollow setting has been disabled!
As an alternate view of this link juice topic, the folks at eVisibility provide an excellent visual example of how the flow of link juice occurs. Their point is different, in that they are discussing the value of using or not using NoFollow strategically – I just like the graphics.
As a topic for a future post, the other shoe to drop on this topic is the management of spam. A great tool in Akismet, coming soon!
Dave
Step By Step Guide to Blogging
Apr 13th
Step by Step Guide to Blogging
In a conversation with a colleague recently, it was suggested that while the information in the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit was valuable to him, he would enjoy seeing more of a step by step approach. He is even newer to blogging than I am and that approach made sense to him. And guess what? It makes sense to me, too. At the risk of sounding too philosophical, blogging (and the success achieved) is more of a journey rather than a destination. Each step builds on the previous, allowing the blogger to learn from the journey, but I hope, also teach along the way. Let’s get started – we have a lot of steps to take.
In this soon-to-be-new Step by Step section, I will begin to post the (sorry for the pun) steps I’ve taken to get here. Again, journey – not destination. My intent will be to continue to document the significant steps that allow me to climb one more stair as depicted in the photo. Hopefully, it will at least make sense chronologically, if not intuitively.
What I envision are examples of selecting a platform, hosting, buiding relationships, traffic, monetization and more. These will continue to be regular post topics as something in the blogsphere catches my attention. However, the Step by Step Guide will allow me to package those streams of consciousness into a more sequential form of thinking.
How would you want this structured? My friend’s opinion is sound, but it is only one. I welcome ideas on how to position the guide, what to include, etc.
The first order of business is to stretch my WordPress skills to develop a new page and sub-page structure that will make sense. One learning opportunity after another.
Dave
Social Networking to Promote Your Blog? But Which Platform to Use?
Mar 13th
Selective Socializing
It is ironic that after a long absence, (read that: not being social) I’m here talking about Social Networking. Blame travel. Blame schedules. Blame a bad cold. That’s life.
Let’s get to it. Social Networking tools are the new darling of the cyber cloud. Users continue to flock to them in droves. Advertisers see serious opportunities. Bloggers use them to promote their blogs. You may be asking the question: which one is the best one for me to use? As the growth of the MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn environment has occurred, a certain attitude toward each has developed as well. Depending on what your goals are and what expectation you have for an “outcome” of promoting your blog, there are certain decisions about to which pony you hitch your wagon. A professional may not want to look like a drunk frat bro. Well, maybe they are, but don’t want to look like it. Or maybe a 20-something doesn’t want to come across as someone out of touch. Let’s take a look.
Traditional Social Media Tools
On a professional scale, a simple view looking at Good/Better/Best could be represented by MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn. Good may not be the best professional rating for MySpace, but I’m trying to be nice. This is not the place to explore the merits of each one, but it is a great opportunity to help craft a strategy for which one to use in promoting your Blog. And it is that selection that can provide for either very positive or negative results.
Hendry Lee of Blog Building U makes a great point of carefully selecting your platform based on your individual goals. The progress toward those goals can be measured by the relationships that are built. Regardless whether the forum is in person, telephone, or a social media site, relationships – at least good ones – take time. Taking the time to nurture the right relationships for the right reasons is time well spent. But where does one start to select a social media tool?
Let’s take a look at my trilogy of tools mentioned above.
Again, let’s use our friends at Wikipedia to lay the ground work for LinkedIn. This won’t take long. Their definition states that LinkedIn is “a business-oriented social networking site.” Not much more to say – they sit squarely on the professional end of the spectrum.
Facebook and MySpace
Here, the comparisons are more involved. In fact, they cry out for two perspectives. First, from the inside, out. TechCrunch defines themselves as “a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.” Who better to use in my example?
They contrast the attitudes of each platform surrounding how open they are to outside application developers and the integration of those apps into the environment. In their blog posting, “It’s Not a Decision, It’s an IQ Test,” they make the point that Facebook seems to welcome third-party developers to help enrich the user experience and MySpace, well, doesn’t. If you are of my generation, Facebook is the VHS and MySpace is the Beta. If you get that comparison, you know you match my demographic. Thank you.
Next, let’s look from the outside, in. In a bit of a departure from the usual Ultimate Blogging Toolkit citings, this paper by Danah Boyd (and a related blog posting) makes a point about the characteristics of the people who gravitate to each one. Specifically, the author’s observations about SES (socio-economic status.) This quote really sums it up: ”That ‘clean’ or ‘modern’ look of Facebook is akin to West Elm or Pottery Barn or any poshy Scandinavian design house (that I admit I’m drawn to) while the more flashy look of MySpace might resemble the Las Vegas imagery that attracts millions every year.”
This is just a very shallow glimpse into the Facebook and MySpace comparisons, but if the purpose was to place them on the trilogy continuum, refer back to the original professional scale of Good/Better/Best, this could support the notion that MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn is the measure.
Moral
Be social, but be selective. Decide on the sandbox in which you should play, take your time to develop the right relationships for the right reason, and enjoy the benefits.
Dave
Go With What Got You There
Apr 26th
Posted by Dave in Uncategorized
No comments
Somewhat of an off-topic post this time, but one that provides some balancing perspectives about yours truly. The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is my way of sharing what I’m learning, as an average blogger, with other average bloggers. Usually, the topics are somewhat serious and an honest attempt is made at exploring them. Often, there’s a bit of humor that is enjoyed along the way.
Call it an alter ego, but more precisely, The New Blogged Word is a place on Google’s Blogger where this all began. Technically, there was a slightly different starting point, but I recently exported and imported that information into The NEW Blogged Word to align Google accounts.
Why am I sharing this? It’s important to remember that all our experiences adds to the body of blogging work that we develop. Blogger was a fine starting point for me and in fact, is a very lucrative and successful environment for many people. The seemless integration with Adsense (which has been enhanced recently) makes that a very nice one-two punch. My move to the WordPress platform was not a slight toward Blogger, but simply my way of experiencing a greater body of work – and learn more along the way.
Another reason for mentioning it is that it allows a reminder about staying true to your blog. Interjecting occasional humor in The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is an extension of how I operate in business: serious about what I do, but have fun doing it. It would not be respectful to my readers if I strayed too far from that posture.
However, The New Blogged Word is just the opposite. That was the beginning. It has pictures of our Bathroom Remodel. It has my thoughts on my Countdown to Retirement. It even has my local area’s Memorable Merchants who have gone above and beyond in their operations. Just I would no sooner show a picture of my bathroom remodel on The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit, I will do everything I can to not get too serious on The New Blogged Word. To butcher an old saying, “There’s a topic for each blog, and each blog should stay on topic.”
Although I’ve added a tag for The New Blogged Word, this may be one of very few times where I pitch it’s merits. However, you never know when something there relates here and here there.
Dave