Aside from dedicating time to read posts about blogging from trustworthy sites, you can also read up on interviews of the best and top bloggers within your niche.

If you have been doing exactly this to improve your craft, then you need to read the ones featured below to give you a better idea on what blogging is and how more it can be for you.

TalkingLocal – Interview with Neil Patel

at BrightLocal Blog

Neil Patel needs no introductory. As one of the most well-renown online marketer who founded CrazyEgg, QuickSprout, and KISSmetrics, Patel has made a living applying his expertise to help online businesses meet their goals. If you’re not familiar with Patel, this interview is a great start to help you find out what makes him great.

About planning out a piece of content for publishing:

Quite a bit, everything from figuring out what I’m going to write about, the main points I’m going to talk about, who my audience is. Once I figure all of that out, I then start writing it. After I write it, I schedule it to be published. Once that’s scheduled, I figure out who I’m going to email that can potentially clean it out, maybe ask them for a link to anyone that’s relevant within the article. I’ll write emails to let them know that I linked to them, so that way, they can share it or link to it from their website, whatever it may be. Right? We put in a lot of time into every single blog post.

How to Grow Your Business Like One of Australia’s Best Wedding Photographers

at Blog Tyrant

Ramsay Taplin created a section in this blog called Tyrades where he interviews people outside the blogosphere. This allows readers to defamiliarize themselves with blogging from how they see it and apply a different profession to see how blogging can be approached from a non-standard point of view.

In this interview, Ramsey chatted with Australian photographer James Field about his tips and tricks on how he grows his client base and schedules his bookings ahead of time. The topics may not be directly related to blogging, but Ramsey provides takeaway points to make the connection.

For more interviews with professionals from different industries and how their tips can be applied to blogging, click here.

Darren Rowse Problogger Interview

at Small Biz Intelligence

Darren Rowse Problogger Interview from Small Biz Intelligence on Vimeo.

If you want to learn blogging’s best practices, then take advice from one of the most successful ones. ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse has made a living blogging and exudes authority in this subject matter. The video above is an excellent primer about Darren not only as a blogger but also as a person.

A Taste of Koko Blog by Jane Ko

by firstsiteguide

Food blogging is a growing niche in the blogosphere. However, as with most popular blog niches, this type of blogs are one too many online, especially when each blog isn’t offering anything new and distinct to reader. Jane Ko’s A Taste of Koko brings a refreshing approach on how food in viewed through her words. Her success warranted an interview at firstsiteguide, which reveals some of her blogging practices that readers and beginning food bloggers may find useful.

About encouraging people on making their blogs:

Depends on what you’re hoping to get out of a blog. If you’re looking to make money, no. It can take months or even years before you can generate any revenue or have any brands that are interested in working with you. If you’re looking for a creative outlet or looking to build a portfolio, then yes! My blog has helped me open many doors to job opportunities that I may not have been considered for if I only had my resume.

For more interviews at firstsiteguide, click here.

BCIS 30: Learn Blogging Strategies From Adam Connell

at Blogging Cage

Adam Connell launched Blogging Wizard in 2012 to share and educate beginning bloggers from his experiences as a professional blogger and marketer. This interview conducted by Blogging Cage owner Kulwant Nagi gives readers a glimpse of Connell’s career, as well as his indispensable blogging tips and advice that has governed him to his success. At the end of the interview, Connell is just like every blogger out there trying to make an earnest living online.

About the best ways of using social media:

Figure out your target audience and go to where they are and don’t forget that communities and groups exist for a lot of social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook.

Share what’s valuable to your audience, but don’t overwhelm them. Be authentic and remember that promoting your content through social media doesn’t just mean press the tweet button once and that’s it.

More on online interviews:

How to Use Interviews & Collaboration to Boost Traffic & Sales Online

Interview with Patrick O’Keefe, Author of Managing Online Forums

The post 5 Best Online Interviews About Blogging You Haven’t Read Yet appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Chris Ducker is an entrepreneur, and Founder/CEO of Virtual Staff Finder and Live2Sell. In 2010, Chris ventured into blogging, and quickly became the outsourcing authority. In this interview, we talk about how he amassed a large following, the biggest blogging mistakes and more.

You’ve been very successful in business, most notably with Live2Sell, and it wasn’t until 2010 that you got serious about blogging. Were there tips/best practices that you applied from the business world?

Being original is number one in business. If you want to do anything in business now, you’ve got to be as original as possible because it’s becoming more and more complex. The second thing is just be consistent in what you’re doing whether it’s a podcast, building out a YouTube channel, or creating a blog.

I decided to make a quality design of the blog (Virtual Business Lifestyle) apparent from the outset. I didn’t want it to look just like any other blog out there. I wanted to try and stand out, and be as original as I possibly could. When I first started Virtual Business Lifestyle, I was blogging three times a week pretty religiously for almost a year, and it certainly helped to drive more traffic to the site, increase opt-ins, and overall get the blog in front of as many people as possible.

I remember discovering Virtual Business Lifestyle (now ChrisDucker.com) mid-2010, and you had already amassed a pretty large following. What do you attribute to your early success?

Other than just the originality and consistency of the content I was producing, I think the other thing that attributed to that early success was the fact I was out there. I was making an effort to connect with other bloggers, to travel from the Philippines to America to conferences like BlogWorld (now New Media Expo) even though I’d only been blogging for eight or nine months or so. I also made an effort to reply to every comment, and converse with people properly on social media.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see bloggers make?

One of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers make all the time is not listening to their audience. They start a blog on ABC niche, and think that’s what they’re going to write about forever. That’s not always the case, and 9 times out of 10, your readers will tell you EXACTLY what they want to hear from you. They’ll tell you in the comments section of your blog, by email, by social media or anywhere else for that matter.

Your audience will ask questions, and when people ask questions, it’s the perfect opportunity for you to be able to create content, and answer that question. Another mistake is trying to be everywhere online too soon. A lot of people think it’s important to be on every single social media platform every single day, but that’s not the case. I have a presence on every platform, but only really use two, Twitter and Facebook, which work best for me.

While some bloggers may frown on outsourcing content creation, what are other areas a virtual assistant can help with?

I’ve never said that you should outsource content creation. I believe that your content is the one thing you cannot, and should not virtually outsource. However, that doesn’t mean that once you’ve created that original piece of content you can’t utilize virtual assistants to help you repurpose it. For example, writing a 1000 word blog post which you can also record as a podcast episode. You could also have a virtual assistant create a SlideShare from certain parts of that blog post, or have them incorporate the post into an ebook which you giveaway on your website.

There’s just so many different areas a virtual assistant can help you on the marketing side of your content. You’re absolutely mad if you think that you can do all the marketing of your content yourself. A virtual assistant can help you produce a marketing plan, and then help you execute it.

Do you have any favorite tools or plugins?

The first one is Dropbox. All my files there are instantly updated, and backed up. It’s a real life saver. I also love Skype for communicating, not only with my virtual assistants, but people I interview for my podcast. As far as plugins, I really love Pretty Link. It’s great particular for sharing stuff on social media. Another plugin I like a lot is the Scrolling Social Sharebar. It scrolls along with the reader as they read content on your site, and it gives them the opportunity to share that content instantly.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your stuff?

You can go to ChrisDucker.com, and my podcast is The New Business Podcast.

The post Blogging Like a Rockstar with Chris Ducker appeared first on The Blog Herald.

John Pettitt is the founder and CEO of Repost, a content syndication platform that allows you to easily republish content without it losing attribution, advertising and more. A veteran of the tech space, John has successfully lead two companies into an IPO, including CyberSource which was acquired by Visa for $2 billion.

What makes Repost a great tool for content creators?

Repost means you don’t have to create all the content yourself, and your original content can serve you beyond your own site generating audience and revenue. There is a very clear relationship between posting more and getting more traffic. In fact, traffic scales pretty linearly with the number of posts you make. Repost gives you a way of adding more content easily and quickly. Some examples – a hyperlocal site could add movie reviews from Fandango or a news site could add analysis from the Christian Science Monitor or The Economist. Sports sites can add national coverage from Fox Sports, SB Nation, FanIQ, and Bloomberg Sports.

On the outbound side, the best ad for your content is your content. Every time somebody embeds one of your articles it generates ad revenue, traffic, and brand exposure. Readers of embedded articles are 95%+ new to that publisher’s content. Where else can you get that exposure and great CTR’s with an asset you’ve already paid for?

One issue that people may have with reposting content is the issue of duplicate content, and its potential effect on SEO. How does Repost combat this, and what have your findings been so far across thousands of publishers?

We’ve not had any reports from publishers of negative SEO related to Repost, and we don’t expect to. When we designed Repost, we intentionally constructed the embed code so that it contains the title of the article linked back to the original as an inbound, “do follow” link.

However, the embed doesn’t contain the full article text; that’s loaded by our script in an iframe. Right now the search engines are not running our script so they don’t even see full content. If and when they do run our script, they will find the iframe has both a meta “no-index” and a canonical header to ensure that the content is not seen a duplicative.

Today, most online publishers make their money through advertising. Do you see that model staying the same, or will it evolve? If so, how do you see it evolving?

That’s a hard one to answer. Display advertising is still king, and we’re seeing publishers with strong RP/M’s from display where they have a good audience demographic. We’re watching closely the “native” ad space, our technology is ideally suited to delivering native ads and content marketing. Because our embeds reformat automatically, update in real time, and allow publishers/marketers to attach their own analytics tags, it opens up some opportunities for real creativity.

We’re also seeing a lot of publishers embracing or at least flirting with paywalls and subscriptions. The thing about paywalls is that the best ad for your content is your content, but when you wall it off, you lose that benefit. We have a few paywalled publications in the Repost system who are selectively syndicating content to drive audience acquisition. We regularly see 5% CTR from embedded articles back to the originating site, and one publisher averaged 11% over a three month period.

You’ve been involved in a lot of major technology companies, including BitTorrent and CyberSource which was acquired by Visa for $2 billion. What technologies are you keeping an eye on? What’s “the next big thing” in your opinion?

The next big thing? Well that’s the 64-billion-dollar question: look to science fiction for ideas. Seriously, pretty much every blockbuster product has appeared in science fiction way before the technology allowed its actual creation: computers you can talk to, tablets, and ubiquitous mobile communication using smart, location aware, devices. Wearable looks interesting although I’m skeptical about Google Glass. I suspect (showing my age) it’s the Lisa or Alto of wearable computing.

Great startups do one of two things: they solve a problem you didn’t know you had, or they solve an old problem in a radically new way. Closer to home, and not so much about technology per se as the social issues surrounding technology, I’m a pretty active supporter of EFF (the Electronic Frontier Foundation). I’m on their fundraising advisory board, and my foundation is a regular donor. They do amazing work protecting all our online rights and deserve way more recognition and funding than they get.

Where can people learn more about you?

You can find more about Repost at http://www.repost.us/, and I blog about technology and security on my personal site at http://p.tt/. My professional bio is on Linkedin at http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpettitt/.

The post The Power of Repost with Founder and CEO John Pettitt appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Creating great videos may not be easy, but Amy Schmittauer makes it look easy. President of Vlog Boss Studios, an agency specializing in video content marketing, Amy has also created a following on YouTube where she talks about social media, marketing and more.

What advice would you to give to someone starting video, and getting over the fear of being on camera?

It’s so much easier to talk to people directly right? Stop thinking about the lens, and start thinking about your audience. Picture one person that you would be sharing this information with, and speak to them. It’s a completely different feeling when you have the mindset that you’re helping someone with your content versus just being another recording on the Internet.

Your videos on Savvy Sexy Social are very entertaining. How do you keep people’s attention in an age when attention spans are spread so thin?

I inject a lot of personality in my videos. That’s the best way to start. If you think you can grow in this medium by being just another talking head, you have another thing coming. So people know exactly what I’m like in the real world because I’m not putting up a rouse for my videos. I also pay a lot of attention to my analytics, and my audience retention. Anything I can do to keep my video flowing quickly with non-stop information, and entertainment so they are only watching as long as they need to, increases my ability to build a relationship with them. You’ll rarely hear a pause or an “umm” because I do a lot of cutting, so we’re constantly going from point to point. There is no downtime in my videos.

What planning, and structure goes into your videos? Are there some best practices to follow?

The best thing I did to get to a place where regular videos were not difficult for me to justify, and execute, was to come up with a theme for each new video. Savvy Tuesday, Sexy Wednesday and Social Thursday. This helped me incorporate the blog name, define my schedule that my audience can depend on and give me some direction for the kind of video I should do on each of those days. We always want to say we don’t know what to blog about but by having my own outline of what “savvy”, “sexy” and “social” means it helps me narrow down the topic that I can approach for those particular videos each week. The more you can structure your approach, the less likely you’ll get writers block to get the content created.

While I don’t believe anyone HAS to do video, I think it can be particularly useful for bloggers to break up the monotony. What do you feel is so appealing about video? After all, YouTube has over one billion monthly unique visitors.

That’s exactly it. The audience on YouTube is enormous, and more loyal than anyone I’ve ever encountered in the digital content creation world. People want to see HOW to do something. They want to witness it with their own eyes. So if something isn’t being “Googled,” it’s being “YouTubed”. Actually, the YouTube results show up in Google, and that’s an amazing way to optimize the content.

You don’t have to create video, but you don’t have to do anything else you’re not going to do well, either. You have to have the patience, and the formula to make it work for you.

Out of all the mistakes people make when creating videos, can you maybe name the top five?

1. Mistaking authenticity for an unedited video. You may think rambling on for as long as you want and posting as is is the best way to show your true personality, but you’re losing people from the very distracting Internet.
2. Really long intros/theme songs. The longer you take to get to the content, the more likely no one is watching long enough to get to it.
3. Waiting too long to post from being too critical of your first videos. If you’re new to vlogging, you may not love the first ones you post, but it’s the only way to get better. Do some practice runs, and then commit to it. The best way to not be embarrassed by old videos is to post new, and better ones to push them into your archives.
4. Loud music throughout the video. It’s not background music if I can’t hear what you’re saying. This takes some practice. I had to work on this as well.
5. Not taking advantage of all the tools that YouTube has to offer that will optimize your presence. Change isn’t always bad. If not for the new features like In Video Programming, Associated Website Annotations and Playlists, I wouldn’t have the regular growth of my channel that I do today, and I definitely wouldn’t have as many conversions to the most important call-to-action: getting YouTube viewers to go to my website. As of this year, YouTube is the #1 referral source to SavvySexySocial.com because of these features, beating both Facebook and Twitter.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your stuff?

Visit SavvySexySocial.com for all of my content. I make videos regularly as stated above, but I also do the occasional written post and podcast. I also love to tweet: @Schmittastic is my personal account, and @SavvySexySocial is where you can follow along with the blog updates.

The post Creating Killer Videos with Amy Schmittauer appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Called the Chuck Norris of branding, John Morgan has worked with Fortune 500 companies, celebrities, and entrepreneurs. Also an author, John’s book Brand Against The Machine currently has 4.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon.

A lot of people see a brand as a logo or design, but it’s actually more than that. What is, and what makes up a brand?

A brand is certainly not a logo or color scheme or marketing campaign. It is people’s perception of you. It represents the level of trust people have with your company. What makes up a brand is quite simply, everything. Everything you do is branding. Your attitude, clothes, service, systems, and so on, all make up your brand. That’s why so many businesses fail to build a lasting brand. They believe that their brand is based on the product, or the logo. They forget the little things. Every great brand is made of tiny little things they do well.

I’m sure there are some people reading this who never seriously considered what their brand exactly was. How do you come up with a brand? Where do you even begin?

Everyone already has a brand because everyone you’ve met has a perception of you. You might not have considered how you’re positioned in the marketplace, but it’s not too late. I recommend beginning by focusing on what you do that your competition doesn’t. It’s an instant way to stand out. In addition to that, give your brand room to breathe and grow over time. Apple was once defined as a computer company, yet today their brand is perceived differently than that.

When you visit someone’s website or social media profiles, what are some of the most common branding mistakes?

The biggest mistakes I see is that it’s confusing. They don’t let the visitor know that they found what they’re looking for. I think great marketing pulls the right people in and pushes the wrong people away. Most websites, social media profiles, etc do a poor job of explaining what to expect. If you can’t clearly articulate your brand’s message, don’t expect anyone else to be able to.

In your book Brand Against The Machine, you mention that content alone is not enough, and you must make yourself visible online. With social media, and millions of others competing for attention, how do you break through the noise?

First decide why you want to break through the noise. There’s a lot of money to be made by focusing on the smaller pockets of people who are in need of your product/service. Like you mentioned, content alone isn’t enough. You must think like a marketer. If you don’t promote your content then there’s no point to it. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they’re coming. This isn’t the Field Of Dreams.

Why do you think Miley Cyrus is such a better musician than Jack White?

Stop it. I hope you had tears in your eyes as you typed that.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your stuff?

People can find me at http://www.JohnMichaelMorgan.com, and also shout at me @JohnMorgan.

The post Branding Like a Boss with John Morgan appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Chris Reimer is a longtime Twitter evangelist, and when not posting far more than 140 characters, he’s got his game face on as VP of Social Media at Falk Harrison.

Why is Twitter a great platform, and how is it different from other social networks?

Twitter is brilliant. It allows for direct, one-on-one engagement and outreach to anyone on Earth (who uses Twitter). Humans love to communicate, and want to be heard. There are countless case studies of people using Twitter to move mountains – to launch products, to gain exposure via someone famous, to sell products, to reconnect with old friends, to build something out of nothing with no ad budget whatsoever!

This is a dumb example, but I was watching Piers Morgan interview Kyra Sedgwick. I can’t remember what they talked about, but it was a great discussion. I was able to tweet “Hey @kyrasedgwick, I really enjoyed your interview on @piersmorgan.” In this case neither responded, and yet I still was very pleased to be able to say this to them. I don’t know why – it’s just how we as humans roll. I hope to be a guest on Piers’ show some day (seriously, why not). Could it help even a little bit that I tweeted him about his Kyra Sedgwick interview? I don’t know, and herein lies the problem for people.

They want PROOF that something’s going to work. Sorry, social media just doesn’t work that way. I am perfectly comfortable tweeting with Piers Morgan, Jon Stewart, anchors from Al Jazeera America, and countless others because one of these days something will shake loose. See how that works? I have no proof. I just keep on talking with people. Seriously, I am going to appear on Al Jazeera America soon (I hope). What is the ROI of that? How would I even calculate this? Who cares, you know?

ESPN is currently publishing their annual ranking of the top 500 basketball players in the NBA. Here’s their first reveal: 401 through 500. Look at how many of the players have Twitter accounts! Perhaps more importantly, note the decision by ESPN to include the Twitter names of these players. They’re not linking to their Facebook fan pages or a Google Plus page. They’re sending ESPN.com readers off to these players’ Twitter accounts. Watch a sporting event – as the announcers introduce the game, their Twitter usernames are often down below their names. Live TV events put a static footer on the screen with a hashtag. All Twitter, all the time.

Ask yourself: if Facebook has so many more users, why would all of these outlets focus on Twitter instead? If it’s the stupid social media platform that no one understands (you’ve heard, “I just don’t get Twitter.”) or cares about, why are really smart people including Twitter as part of their strategy? The answer is because Twitter has built a brilliantly easy service to use, and as far as electronic communication goes, it’s a superior tool. Finally, the people that use it are passionate about other people, and passionate about what they believe. I think they more often tend to be glass-is-half-full kind of people. Frankly, that’s another great reason to be on Twitter. If you’re passionate about something, Twitter is full of similarly passionate people.

For the most part, we’ve gotten past the stereotypical days of people tweeting about what they ate, but there still is some skepticism. Was there a turning point for you when you realized that Twitter wasn’t “just another social network?”

Please, do continue tweeting what you ate. That was and is the most dumb complaint about Twitter, and in my opinion, the complainers are afraid of something. Of what, I don’t know – we’d have to ask them. Maybe they’re afraid of real relationships online. Maybe they’re afraid everyone will discover they’re a fraud (Seth Godin reminds us of this deep-seated fear we all have) – exposed as the uninteresting people that they are? “Too busy” to bother with communicating with strangers online? It’s hard to say.

“Why would I wanna know what someone’s eating for lunch? Twitter’s so stupid.” Meanwhile, you get to work and go waste 30 minutes by the proverbial watercooler, talking about last night’s Breaking Bad episode and the great sushi place you just tried. Equally inane banter! However, in this case, Twitter is judged by a different standard. That’s so silly. You most definitely want to know what I’m eating – plus, I provide pictures!

I joined Twitter on November 5, 2008. My t-shirt website, Rizzo Tees, had debuted five days prior, and I was kind of freaking out. How was I going to get the word out about my fledgling business? Seems silly to ask today – social media, Kickstarter, videos made with inexpensive DSLRs, etc etc. Back then, it was a bit of a mystery to me. I thought I was going to drop a bomb on the t-shirt world with my designs, and all of my strategically-placed banner ads. Yeah, not so much. I had heard of Twitter, and decided to give it a try.

Somehow, some way, my first tweets were NOT “buy my product, buy my product, did you hear about my t-shirts?” I’m actually proud of that. I suppose the turning point you asked about was when I received a t-shirt order from someone I had made friends with on Twitter. I was like, “WHOA,” and then thought, “Oh, yeah, that’s supposed to happen!” When those orders started coming in via Twitter, I thought, “This is changing the world.”

Anyone can tweet out their latest blog post, but what do you think separates the crème de la crème from your average person?

People that care about you and not just their share of your wallet. Everyone is not a “mark,” waiting to be profited from.

Out of all the mistakes you see, what are maybe the top five?

#1: Tweeting from the wrong account. This is such an easy mistake to make. I’m talking about social media community managers sending tweets from the corporate account they’re managing instead of their personal one. Like Kitchen-Aid talking about Obama’s dead grandmother, or Chrysler lamenting the lack of driving skills of Detroit citizens [WARNING: graphic language].

I preach the Five Second Rule. Yes, that’s all the time we have! But it’s better than nothing. Construct a tweet, and then just look at it for five seconds. Check spelling – make sure iPhone didn’t autocorrect some word into something horribly embarrassing. Make sure you’re in the right Twitter account. Be really careful.

#2: Pretty obvious one, but being too salesy. Readers of the great Mike Stenger, ask yourself: Who boots up their social media accounts in the morning in order to be marketed to? Anyone? Does anyone do that? Short of maybe drooling over a Groupon … No! No one does that. So why do marketers act like they do? They talk about their products constantly. Sometimes, that’s all they talk about. I call it “brute force marketing.” Just bring the avalanche and turn that same old predictable conversion rate. No, we can do better than that. Broken record alert: consumers buy from those they like, know and trust. Use social media to tell stories, to take people into your manufacturing and R&D process, to connect with those that have problems to solve, to explain “why” you do what you do. That’s how you get people to like you, to know who you are, and eventually to trust you as THE problem solver in the industry. That’s who I buy from, anyway.

#3: Quitting. Once you start using Twitter, don’t quit! You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it. “I just don’t get Twitter.” Well, here’s the thing. It’s just a big group of awesome people – talking, sharing, learning, laughing, lamenting, inspiring, and yes, marketing. All of those things make sense to me. So people don’t get Twitter, and they quit. Two things: one, it is quite possible that you’re just sitting at the wrong table. It’s like being at a party. People over here are talking about their sailboats and boarding schools, and you’re like, “Whoa, wrong party.” Nope, turns out your good friends are just over on the other side of the room. Walk over there instead. Change your scenery and change your enjoyment of the party.

Same with Twitter. Your experience will largely be a product of who you’re following. If you aren’t following an appropriate group of people, what can you expect to get out of the experience? Two, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I think “not getting” Twitter often says something more about the person than the service. I have talked to potential clients about social media, and they’ve said, “I just don’t care what other people think.” Well, EXACTLY.

#4: Treating so-called “social media influencers” as your “jumper cables” – blunt instruments ready to be wielded at a moment’s notice. Without a pretty strong relationship, I think it is ill-advised to start trying to tap other people’s networks. It’s just spammy and icky. Related to this, it is grossly inaccurate to think that a few tweets from even the most famous online influencers are really going to rock your product’s boat. Mark Schaefer talks about this in his book “Return on Influence.” Mentions from even famous people often have zero effect on a product or societal movement.

#5: Tweeting stuff like, “Hey, have you subscribed to our email newsletter yet?” I most certainly did not, and I’m thinking about starting an email newsletter whose sole purpose is to get people to unsubscribe from your email newsletter. You might as well stand naked on a street corner wearing a sandwich board. People can smell desperation – don’t smell like that. And do not clog the arteries of Twitter with such exhortations! Give me value, not a guilt trip because I don’t want to receive your email newsletter.

I think Twitter lists are highly underrated, and there’s a lot of creative ways you can use them. Is there an aspect or feature of Twitter that you feel the same way about?

YES to Lists! Twitter lists are massively underrated. I use my lists everyday, including the lists “The Brotherhood” for good friends, and “fait attention” (“pay attention” in French) for people I learn from. This is how I distill the noise down into a list of tweets I can read and respond to. I follow 17,000 people, and don’t really have time to work on culling it down. People don’t realize that you can put people on a list, and therefore follow along with their comings and goings, without following them. You don’t have to follow people to have them in a list. You can also make lists private. So, you can set up a list of your ten most hated competitors and follow along WITHOUT following them, and WITHOUT them knowing that you put them in a list. And no one can look at your list except you. Pretty cool corporate intelligence tool, if you ask me.

Ultimately, Twitter is about making connections you probably would not have otherwise made. THAT is what enhances life. I would never have had the chance to get to know Julio Varela without Twitter. We’ve been Twitter friends since the beginning. He’s from Boston and loves the Red Sox (nobody’s perfect). I’m in St. Louis. We’ve chatted on the phone and Skype a few times, but most of our communication is via Twitter – both tweets and DMs. I had always wanted to travel to Boston and meet this guy in person.

Back in 2010, my family was at Disneyworld in Orlando, and I was (of course) tweeting about it. He saw my tweets and said, “I’m in Orlando right now, too!” So after the family got to bed that night, I jumped in a cab and went drinking with him and his dad. What an unbelievable experience. Three and a half years later, I’m cheering on Julio’s opera singing brother Fernando – he’s part of the trio “Forte” on America’s Got Talent. Twitter just makes life more interesting, and that is because people are interesting.

What are your absolute favorite Twitter tools or apps?

• Twitter for iPhone
• JustUnfollow.com
• Hootsuite
• Twitter.com – yeah, just the website
• Making lists on Twitter
• I used to use Twilert, but it stopped working due to the API change and I just haven’t gone in to fix it

I’m not big into analytics or whiz-bangy tools. I just like talking to people, helping people, inspiring them to do cool stuff and be nice to others, and educating myself on our changing world.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your stuff?

I am probably best known for Twitter, and you can find me @RizzoTees. I work with a great crew of creatives at Falk Harrison where we help companies with branding, design and social media. My website is ChrisReimer.com, and in the about section about halfway down, I have a big list of resources your readers might find useful. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

The post Why Twitter is Awesome Like Bacon with Chris Reimer appeared first on The Blog Herald.

People like to say content is king, but how important is design in the overall process?

If they can’t read your content, then it doesn’t matter how great your content is. Many blogs a few years ago, in trying to make a full-time living, got cluttered with ads, and images that made the reading experience horrible. I think the internet has grown to where there’s a great balance of content, and other items that help pay the bills. Ultimately, we’re seeing a trend in going back to simpler designs because a simple design gets to the point, and that point is good quality content.

Through years of owning a blog, a lot of bloggers have taught themselves how to do basic design, and many how to code. Do you think everyone should learn or do you think it requires a certain kind of person?

Everyone CAN learn how to code, and it’d probably save some bloggers some money in the long run to read up on some basic HTML and CSS skills. I say go for it, but always keep in mind the tasks that you are passionate about. If editing your website layout isn’t your thing, then leave that up to someone that is driven by creating, and editing design elements for the web.

There is something to be said though of a person that does have a special eye for design. For bloggers who want to focus on their writing, they may learn the skills to make edits to their blog layout, but major redesigns and creating a great user experience takes someone that has the knowledge to create something fantastic.

What are some of the most common design mistakes you see?

Here recently, not thinking about mobile. Mobile devices usage has skyrocketed in the last few years. There are some sites I manage that the majority of visitors are on their phone. That’s a huge difference than what we saw just 4 years ago. So having a website now, you need it to look nice on a mobile device. There’s no way around that anymore.

But commonly, what I keep seeing over the years is clutter. There’s so much information out there, and so many websites want to display it all “above the fold” that it gets cluttered at the sacrifice of design, and usability. A big part of web design is displaying content in the best way possible for the visitor, and for one reason or another, things get lost and visitors have nowhere to rest their eyes on something. That’s a problem that should be fixed immediately.

On the flipside, what do you feel makes an awesome design, well, awesome?

Simple, simple, simple. The best designs are ones that have just the right amount of color, and structure to stay out of the way. Nothing is more important than to create a structure that reaches a common goal. Subtle colors, a nice grid of lines placed in order to direct people’s glances, and tastefully positioned imagery/photos are the things that make me happy.

With WordPress, a lot of people go with a ready made theme. Are there advantages to having a custom design?

There are plenty of great themes out there. I recommend people to look around, and see if some catch their eye. The reason I say that is most people will find what they need, and what they want in their theme after they’ve used a few different ones. Once someone understands what they’d like to have, then they can go on a hunting spree for a theme with those elements. In my experience, people will find something that they kind of like, but not really what they envisioned, and that’s where a custom design comes in.

Theme designers make templates for the masses, and they’re trying to please a general audience, so when you start needing specific things and functions, then you can call me :)

I’m a fan of Clients From Hell which is a Tumblr full of horror stories from designers. It’s pretty hilarious. Do you have any horror stories to share? Also, when working with a designer, how can people make the process go much smoother?

Really, my stories are nothing out of the ordinary that you won’t see on that site. A common joke among designers is that it always seems that clients want their logo to be bigger and “pop” more. As soon as I figure out how to make things “pop,” I’ll retire.

I think those working with a designer need to understand that it’s a relationship of sorts. When a designer starts cranking out some designs, and it’s not quite to your liking, communicate that, and work together. The more your designer knows your plans and goals, the more they’ll knock your socks off with something you didn’t even know you would love until you saw it.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your stuff?

My main website is the best place for sure. It contains some of my recent work. Also, you can follow me on Twitter and Google+. I’m always down for a good conversation, so tweet at me and I’ll be sure to respond.

The post Awesome Blog Design with Dano Hart appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, and breaking through the noise is harder than ever. How do you get past the images with quotes, and reshares of funny photos?

I think it all depends on your goals for Facebook. Often times we fall into a pattern of just copying what everyone else is doing because that “worked”. But just because posting idiotic memes works for George Takei doesn’t mean it will work for me!

You have to be yourself and be consistent with that message. The challenge however is avoid the temptation to always post links to your product or company, especially when you’re in the online marketing world. Be human and interact with your followers/friends, and then every once in a while mix in a link or two. And yeah, sometimes posting a silly cat video is needed!

Personal profiles, like pages, have went through several changes over the years, the biggest of which is the ability for people to “follow” you. With the follow functionality being similar to “liking” a Facebook page, is a personal profile sufficient? What are the advantages of having a page?

That’s a tough question. It all depends on your brand I think. As an online “entrepreneur”, you usually are the brand so having a page may be necessary. But for bloggers, artists, speakers, athletes and etc just having a personal profile should be enough. The main advantages with using a page is to run ads to posts, your apps on the page and etc. You can’t do any of that with a profile.

But if you don’t care about collecting emails and etc. then a profile may be all you need. That’s what I’ve personally chosen to do. I deleted the 2-3 pages I had that were really just about the stuff I was doing or promoting and just deal with my profile now. It allows me to be human and still at times “sell” stuff. The best at running a personal profile and page at the same time with the same name is Mari Smith. She has it figured out. I covered how well she does this in a recent blog post you can check out here.

Quite often I come across a blog who’s Facebook page is automatically feeding in new posts through a tool like NetworkedBlogs. Is that a good move or are people leaving a lot of engagement on the table?

I personally don’t like to automatically feed blog posts to pages on Facebook. It’s okay to do to Twitter, but not Facebook. Facebook is all about timing and having space between posts. If you push your blog out 3 minutes after you just posted something else on Facebook, your post likely won’t be seen. Or worse yet, because you’re overwhelming the news feed of your fans, they get pissed off, hide the post or unlike you.

You lose too much control when posting this way IMHO. Now, planning your post is smart and everyone running a page should do it, I’ve been doing that for years. But when you plan your posts, you know when it’s going to hit your page, and are ensured that the posts are spaced out appropriately.

Speaking of engagement, Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm impacts all posts, and with pages, on average only 16% of their fans actually see their posts. How do you get this number up, and is it worth investing into things such as Sponsored posts?

Well, Edgerank is technically dead now, but there is still an algorithm in play on the news feed. The latest news from Facebook seems to point to the fact that a different algorithm is being used for posts from people and from pages, which makes things rather difficult to understand. You get this number up by strategically posting updates that get engagement. Regardless of your brand, people typically don’t only want to hear about your brand or product. They may love you to death, but won’t comment on every update if it’s just about yourself or your industry.

I personally would suggest posting Questions, Fill-in the blanks, and funny images to get engagement up. Then, mix in link posts between them to your site or updates about your industry. I’m not saying flood Facebook with junk posts though. Figure out your audience and find out what they are more likely to engage in. Also, keep in mind that when you post a link post, engagement will be almost zero as you’re driving traffic to your site, and that’s good news. But don’t expect Likes, Comments and Shares to be high when posting links.

If simply posting isn’t working for your page, you’ll need to try running Sponsored Stories from time to time. Again, it all depends on your page and your audience. If you run a Sponsored story on a crappy post that didn’t get any engagement to begin with, you’re wasting your money, but if a post starts to get some traction, it’s a good idea to run an ad with it to get more engagement.

You also should be running ads to get targeted fans to your page. I think too many times page owners beg, borrow and steal fans to increase the Like count, but end up with a bunch of people that could care less about their product or page. I’d rather have 100 engaged fans than 1000 that will never comment. So make sure you target ads towards people that will be interested in your product. Your mom probably doesn’t need to like your page!

Aside from Post Planner of course, what are some of your favorite Facebook related tools or apps?

I love ShortStack, not just because they have great apps for pages, but because they are great people. Very laid back, not pretentious and provide great content. Jon Loomer is my go-to guy when I want to learn more about Facebook ads. By far, he’s the leading expert on this currently in our space. I also love the new updates to the Page Manager app for Android. You can now create a shortcut on your phone that is specifically just for your page, which makes it super quick to access and manage comments, messages and posts.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your stuff?

They can follow me on Facebook of course, check out my podcasts or The Social Media Buzz.

The post Facebook for Bloggers with Scott Ayres appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Before you founded WP Site Care, a premium WordPress support company, you offered consulting to small businesses, and were even the VP of Marketing for a home care company. What intrigued you so much about WordPress, and diving into it full-time?

I learned about WordPress when I was exploring options for our company’s website almost 5 years ago. It was still really immature but I loved how it put control in our hands when we wanted to launch new stuff. We didn’t have to wait on web developers, or edit 1,000 lines of code, etc., for the majority of the stuff we wanted to do and I loved that. We could come up with an idea and move ahead, which is how marketing on the web should be.

The more I used it, the more addicted I got to making things work the way I wanted them to work. My background before marketing was in systems administration and architectures for health care records, so I was comfortable with coding, etc., and the more I hacked away, the more I started to understand how flexible it was.

I realized what an amazing tool it could be for other small businesses and after working with WordPress for about 2 years, I jumped into consulting. After a few years in the consulting business, I noticed a huge need for follow up support and maintenance and that’s what inspired me to start WP Site Care.

What are the advantages of the WordPress platform over similar platforms?

Amazingly flexible while maintaining consistency. Anyone who has worked in software training can tell you that the smallest changes can cause huge changes in business and productivity. We needed a platform that allowed every day folk to update and make changes to our website without having to learn a coding language. We could still make WordPress do whatever we needed it to do from a functionality and design standpoint, but we needed to keep the user experience pretty much the same. WordPress blends those two components better than any other platform.

Out of all the mistakes people make with their WordPress blogs, what would you say are the top five?

There are quite a few :) But I would say these are the top 5:

• Don’t keep backups – I know this is drilled into our skulls like crazy, but as someone who runs a support company, it’s still shocking to me how many people don’t keep backups of their site. Keeping backups not only protects your files and data, but it also makes resolving issues much quicker.
• Don’t run current software – Keeping your WordPress and plugin versions current is important for security, performance, and ongoing compatibility. A lot of people have a mindset of “what if this update breaks my blog or website?” If that does happen, it’s much better to know that updating one plugin broke things, instead of letting everything get outdated and then not knowing what broke things after applying a mass update, or worse, getting hacked.
• Not setting permalinks – a lot of new bloggers forget to set clean permalinks for their posts. For SEO reasons and just because it’s easier for people to remember URLs, go to Settings –> Permalinks and set your permalink structure to “Postname.” Note: If you’ve been blogging for a while with another link structure, look into the SEO implications of changing your links. It might be smart to leave it alone or hire someone who can help you redirect things properly.
• Disable comments and sharing buttons on pages – Chances are people aren’t going to be leaving comments or sharing stuff from static pages, so it’s best to leave those things to blog posts.
• Get rid of twitter widgets – This one is probably a personal pet peeve, but I don’t know what good twitter widgets that display your latest tweets are. They’re really just taking up valuable sidebar real estate for no good reason in my opinion. An image link to your twitter page is a much better alternative.

Security is always a hot topic. How can people ensure their sites are locked down, and safe from outside forces?

This may sound strange, but my first recommendation to keeping your website secure, is to keep backups. That way, even if a vulnerability in your site is found and you’re hacked (it will probably happen at some point), you’ll be able to quickly restore your latest backup.

There are also great security services like Sucuri that provide 24/7 malware scanning, among other things, for a very reasonable price.

As far as DIY things that bloggers can do today, ensure that your WordPress version and plugins stay up to date, never use “admin” as your username (here’s a video that will show you how to change it to something else), and use strong passwords. You can also install plugins like limit login attempts that will block people after a certain number of failed logins, and if you’re crazy about security like I am, you can setup two factor authentication for your WordPress blog with this plugin, and even force SSL (secure socket layer) on your WordPress admin.

We’ve seen speed become more of an important factor when it comes to search engine rankings. Plus, nobody likes dealing with a slow website. Are there some ways that people can speed up their WordPress blogs without having to get super technical?

Definitely. Here are the things I’d start with first:

• Be sure to always optimize your images. Here’s a ridiculously good post about optimizing your images for WordPress.
• Sign up for a content delivery service like Cloudflare. Their base tier is free and allows for some pretty significant performance improvements.
• Optimize your database. ALWAYS make a backup before doing anything with your database, but once you’ve agreed to take an oath and backup your database, a plugin like WP-Optimize will clear out your spam comments, post revisions, and optimize your database tables.
• Only install plugins with good ratings and reviews. The number of plugins you run on your site doesn’t matter, as long as you’re running high quality plugins. High quality plugins will generally aid in better performance.
• Install a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache. If you don’t see performance improvements right away, you may need to get help with configuration from a professional as it’s a pretty complex plugin, but it’s a really solid option for getting the most out of your server.
• As you tweak settings and configurations, you can use Pingdom Tools to see if the changes you’re making are helping with page load times or not.

If you’ve implemented all of these changes and are still having issues with page load times, it’s probably a good idea to look at better hosting alternatives. Your server itself could be the culprit. Hopefully I didn’t get overly technical :)

What are your absolute favorite plugins or tools?

My favorite plugin is one I pay for, but it’s worth every penny: Gravity Forms. Other plugins that I like are WordPress SEO by Yoast, Simple Image Widget, Jetpack, BackupBuddy (also a paid plugin), and Akismet to help with spam. For anyone looking to sell digital products online, I’ve really been digging Easy Digital Downloads.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your stuff?

I mostly talk on twitter @ryandonsullivan. For anyone wanting WordPress Support Services, you can find us at wpsitecare.com, and read our company blog where we publish WordPress-related stuff pretty much every week.

The post Rockin’ WordPress with Ryan Sullivan, Founder of WP Site Care appeared first on The Blog Herald.

How did your writing career first get started?

I got started when I left a job I was terribly unhappy at. I was working myself to death, and had no respect or recognition for my efforts. I had no real goal in mind when leaving, other than I wanted to be happy again. I just wanted to live life and not feel beaten down by “the man” all the time! I started writing for a small Android gaming site for fun, and people liked my work. I was doing it for free (which anyone who is serious about blogging or writing should do), and really learning how things worked. From there, I saw that Android Authority was looking for writers. I sent my “elevator pitch” to those who are now my bosses, and the rest is really history at this point.

I didn’t go to school for journalism, and I don’t care to learn a whole lot of structure and rhetoric. I try to articulate ideas and information properly, plain and simple. If I can do that, I’m alright. Obviously, there is much more to it than simply laying it out there for readers, but that’s the main goal.

Credibility is everything in this industry. What tips would you give to someone trying to rise up through the ranks?

Good question! I guess my advice would be is ‘your word is your bond’. I know about 10-times more than I ever say, because someone says “hey, this is off the record”. If anyone tells me something is sealed info, even for a short period of time, it’s in the vault. The second you violate trust, that’s the moment you burn a bridge. I think of myself as an island, and I need bridges to get things done. I would also tell people to be positive. Don’t be an apologist, but don’t immediately look for the negative in everything.

What are some of the most common writing mistakes you see people make that could easily be avoided?

Oh, man, that’s easy. Commas. Commas do more good than people give them credit for. Between commas and general syntax errors, reading some stories can be maddening. I feel like some articles out there are written from the hip, and never read for errors or context. We all make mistakes, but if you’re making mistakes that make your article unreadable, that’s hard to get around.

Networking is easier than ever in this social media age we live in, and you probably deal with solicitations all the time. Where do you see people fail, and how could they do better?

First, I’d argue that networking is “easier”. It’s easier to get in touch with people, sure, but it’s also easier for them to blindly ignore you. If you want me to look at your app, or case, or whatever you’re asking me to do for you… please, make sure it applies to my site, or what I do. I get solicitations in my email all the time for iPhone stuff. Sorry, but that’s not what Android Authority is about. You may have sent out a blast email, but now I’ve marked you as spam. What happens when you have a great Android product to pitch? Take the time to pitch to the right sources, and you’ll find more support. Great things come from groundswells of support, not a massive takeover of media.

Writing great content is important, but so is building an active community around that content. What has allowed you, and others you work with, to build a vibrant community?

Honesty. I say what I mean, and mean what I say. I have no problem saying something is garbage, if it is. When you temper things properly, it resonates with the right people. I don’t like sensationalism, and being sensational damages your integrity. People may disagree with things I say, and that’s fine… welcome, even. The point is opening a dialogue, and engaging when we can. Even if we don’t get the chance to interact in the comments section or on social media, we’re usually aware of what’s being said.

Where can people learn more about you, and check out your work?

My author’s page on Android Authority, and my social media profile on Google+. Those are where I’m most active. I don’t have a Facebook page, and I use twitter as a news aggregate more than anything else. I try to be as available as I can for interaction, and those both give me the best opportunity to do so.

Photo credit: Oregon Golf Association

The post Writing for Top Blogs with Nate Swanner, Editor at Android Authority appeared first on The Blog Herald.

David Risley got a very early start in the blogging world at a time when Google was a promising startup, and AOL CDs were still sent by the truckload. He’s managed to build a six-figure business, and currently shares the tools of the trade over at Blog Marketing Academy.

When did you first start blogging?

I started about 15 years ago, before blogging was even a word. It was a very manual process back then. Raw HTML files and the whole thing… but it was still the essence of what blogging is – writing and publishing articles. I got started as a technology blogger, and was motivated by a magazine article on how to build a website in 20 minutes or less. I thought that’d be cool, so I set up a basic site on my ISP’s free 5MB of web space they gave me. The rest is history.

What moment did you realize you could make money from blogging, and possibly generate a full-time income?

Back in the day, the idea of web advertising was kinda new. But, I began to see people with tech sites do it. For example, I had a chat with Anand Lal Shimp, from Anandtech.com, way back before he was a big deal in the tech space. He was beginning to host some advertising on his site. At the time, I was on Geocities (remember them?), but I made the decision to move my site over to Pair Networks so that I could get rid of the Geocities “no advertising” rule. From there, I decided to pursue some advertising revenue with the site.

Every successful business has a strong foundation. What are the building blocks to monetizing a blog?

The foundation would be to provide solutions to things people need/want solutions for. The easiest monetization options will come when you’re solving a problem for people, because then you can build a real business around it rather than just “monetization”. Aside from that basic foundation, the building blocks would be the blog (obviously) and your email list. The email list is incredibly important because without it you’re building no leverage. As you grow, you’ll begin to treat that email list more like a database, and manage it inside a CRM. From there, it is about fostering relationships, taking care of your people, and of course – making offers. This is a people business… and never forget that.

One common question is, “when should I start monetizing?” In my interview with Chris Brogan, he said to monetize right out of the gate. What do you suggest?

Yep. I agree with Chris. If you have business ambitions for your blogging, then get on with it. The last thing you want to do is create an entire atmosphere of “free” around your blog. You’ll only attract freebie seekers and it will be a LOT harder to make money down the road. No real business out there opens up an office and invites people to come in freely and take the products for nothing in order to “get famous”. So, we shouldn’t be doing it online either.

On the flip side of this, you must be patient and think long-term. I’ve seen some bloggers try to monetize early (nothing wrong with that), but they make the mistake of squeezing so hard that they just alienate everybody. They’ll pack the site with ads, for instance. And, that’s not the way to go. Don’t try to squeeze juice from a turnip. In the early days, you’ll put a few money-makers out there, but it is more of a foundation. Don’t get discouraged when you don’t make a ton of money right away, and don’t get more aggressive when you don’t. This is something you have to work over time. Anybody who says generating revenue online is an “overnight” thing or super easy is lying to you.

Some put ads on their site, recommend things as an affiliate, or sell their own products/services. Which route should people go? Are there benefits of maybe one over the other?

I’m a big proponent of direct solutions to problems, and I believe that’s what forms the foundation of a business. Ideally, those products would be yours, so product creation and direct marketing is my personal favorite. I love membership sites. :-) Second to that would be affiliate marketing, so you still only want to promote the ones that are real solutions to the problems your audience has. Never just promote with the mindset of “spray and pray”, where you just litter your site with affiliate links and hope to catch a fish. If you’re going to promote an affiliate product, do it as if it were YOUR product.

My last choice would be advertising. It works. But, it requires a lot of traffic. And, in my view, if you’ve gone through the work to build up that much traffic, you’d be much better off directing it to a more direct revenue generator than to turn around and send your hard-earned readers somewhere else. Readers don’t care for banner ads. And, let’s face it, the goal of those ads is to get YOUR reader to LEAVE your site. And…that sucks.

How do you go about monetizing without alienating your readers?

Honestly, I know a lot of bloggers fret over this, but I think the entire premise of the question is bogus. Here’s why…

First off, a blogger should never have the mindset that it is evil or annoying to make a buck. If you approach this with that kind of attitude, and the whole time you’re afraid of your own readers hating on you for making money, then you’re doing this all wrong.

Secondly, “monetization” is just a bad word for bloggers. I’d ban it if I could. :-) Because, once you go offline, we all seem to understand the basic idea that a business makes money by selling products/solutions to people’s problem or desires. One doesn’t “monetize” a business. It is either a business… or it isn’t. So, if you’re doing this right, you ARE offering real solutions that people want. If you’re doing that, why would they be alienated by it?

Also, keep in mind…if one of your readers is alienated by you offering a solution to a problem, then in all likelihood they weren’t a good reader for you. They don’t have the problem you’re addressing, so they’re not a targeted person.

Last thing I’ll say about this is….you definitely CAN alienate your readers by being overly aggressive in your sales. So, just don’t do that. Even if they are targeted readers, you can still piss them off with over-aggressive marketing. So, that’s always a bad idea. It doesn’t mean you want to avoid marketing, but it does mean you have to not go all used car salesman on ’em. Nobody likes that.

Are there any tools, apps or services that you recommend?

A bunch of them, but rather than repeat myself, people could check out my “Toolbox” page.

Where can people learn more about you?

Everything can be found at Blog Marketing Academy.

The post Turning Your Blog Into a Business with David Risley appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Content marketing is all the rage these days – but what exactly is it and how can it be scaled to be profitable? We had the opportunity to interview Noelle Schuck, the Editor-in-Chief at iAcquire, a NYC and Phoenix-based digital and content marketing agency. As the Editor-in-Chief, she manages content journalists, SEO strategists, and editors who create custom content on behalf of clients, publishers, and their audiences.

What’s it like leading a team? How do you manage your time, and stay on track? Any particular tools you recommend?

I manage 21 people on iAcquire’s Editorial team: four content strategists, three assignment editors, seven writers, six editors and one infographics specialist. We also use a network of freelance writers. Our editorial team is one branch of our agency’s holistic digital marketing offerings. Our role is to create relevant, informative, and timely content to clients across multiple industries.

We are a high-volume business, so every one of us has to be an expert at time management. For years, I was a big Dayrunner devotee and never left home without my big, bulky planner. Now I’m in heaven with the project management, time management, and task-oriented apps that fit on my iPhone and iPad. As an organization we have all migrated to Google apps (Gmail/Google calendar) and Trello.

I’ve also used the time tracker HarvestApp, which is an incredibly powerful tool for time management. Use it for a week, and see how much time you spend answering emails, doing “misc tasks” and attending meetings. It’s quite an eye-opener. I’m a big believer in time trackers.

We’ve just started using Google Docs, which I love because multiple people can be in a document at the same time, and there is no need to email attachments back and forth and worry about which version is the most updated. Our content management system provides metrics that allow me to analyze my team’s productivity and quality. I’ve got a background in finance, so I’m a big spreadsheet nut. If I could live in Excel, I would.

“Content marketing” is a term that’s been picking up steam the last several years. What exactly is content marketing, and why should businesses become more educated about it?

I come from a print background and worked in newspapers for 10 years, including custom publishing. Our goal then is the same as it is today: We connect businesses with the audiences they want to reach. I am excited to be part of something that is in its infancy. Digital content marketing is just getting started. It is constantly changing, but a successful content campaign is simple. Create good content. The journalist in me loves that.

If a business wants to grow, it cannot ignore content marketing. We’ve known for decades that word-of-mouth advertising is has the biggest ROI because it costs next to nothing (compared to paid forms of advertising) and it carries the most clout. Every business should be on the big three (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and have a website, and consumer services and goods providers should be on Yelp and Pinterest. The blend of high organic search results (through quality content marketing) and a strong social presence is the perfect recipe for audience saturation.

How does one go about creating consistent, high-quality content? Also, what are some good tips for optimizing your content without going overboard?

The key to optimizing content without going overboard is to create authentic content and seamlessly integrate the keywords. I liken it to laying floor tile in a house. If you start from the outside and work inward, you end up with this awkward group of tiles in the middle of the room that stick out, and everyone notices. Always start from the middle and work toward the walls. Same thing with optimized content. Start with the keyword phrase in mind, and build your content out, toward your conclusion. Write your lead paragraph last.

I hold coaching sessions with my teams using examples from their content. We cover things like ‘writing killer leads,’ avoiding empty advice, recognizing wordiness (my personal pet peeve) and writing clickable and searchable headlines. We do this every week. We have a reference guide where all of these lessons are stored, and when we hire new writers and editors, we train them with those tools.

In your opinion, what makes a great website? How can people ensure they effectively guide their audience?

We recently relaunched our agency’s website, so I leaned on our resident Creative Director Robb Door for his insight. With our website relaunch we considered the following points and we feel that these points can be applicable to all websites:

• Design – Creating a cohesive brand through iconography, typography, coloring schemes
• Audience segmentation – Tailoring content (both words and images) towards specific personas
• Content – Creating content that speaks to your defined audience; serving as a knowledge hub through both top-of-the-funnel content and brand-specific content; continually creating content that makes users want to come back and see what’s fresh
• Usability – Making navigation easy through your site

With the explosion of social media, is SEO still as important today? How has it evolved?

SEO and social have to go together. Search engines are the first places we go when we want to buy something, when we want to learn about something, when we want user reviews and when we want to be entertained. With Google searching Facebook’s hashtags, the two become more and more intertwined.

SEO alone is esoteric. Content marketers can spend a lot of time guessing what the latest search algorithm will do, and then create technology to manipulate the search bots. In its worst forms, our industry saw keyword stuffing and spun content. I was dismayed when I saw articles being written by non-English speaking writers who churned out content whose sole purpose was to boost rankings. I’d ask myself: “What was happening to my profession?” Since then, we’ve learned that well-written, relevant content always wins.

In continuing that topic, since the introduction of Google+, Google has put more of an emphasis on social. For businesses or bloggers that aren’t using Google+, will this impact their rankings as time goes on?

We encourage our team to build Google+ profiles, build their author rankings and create strong followings because we recognize that Google is pushing for authentic content created by real authors, and we love that. Relevance, relevance, relevance is key.

In addition, iAcquire is in the process of building a journalist network called Clearvoice that connects journalists with publishers — at scale. Our technology team built the system to feed journalists’ profiles through Google+ and authorship data. Google’s search algorithm is leaning heavier and heavier on authorship data, so we found it important to have this data be the backbone of the new system.

The post Content Marketing with Noelle Schuck, Editor-in-Chief at iAcquire appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Allison Boyer is a freelance writer who is most known for her work with New Media Expo. New Media Expo or NMX for short, is the world’s largest conference and tradeshow for online content creators. Make sure you stay tuned for the end of this post as Allison has a special surprise for Blog Herald readers :-)

How did you first get involved with freelance writing/blogging?

When I was a senior in college, I kind of freaked out because I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to write for a newspaper or teach. What else do you do with an English degree? I had no idea. What I did know is that I enjoyed the part-time freelance work I did from time to time. So I decided to give it a go as a full time freelancer. From there, blogging kind of fell into my lap when I just happened to get a job working for a blog network. The pay was horrible, but I really loved the conversational style. So, I slowly phased out other types of writing jobs and started working exclusively as a blogger, both for clients and for my own blogs.

One thing I noticed early on is just how difficult it can be to break through all the noise, and establish consistent work for yourself. What’s some advice you have to those wanting to make a career out of writing or blogging for a living?

What worked for me is to start on the very lowest rung and climb up. No one wants to work for $10 an hour, but hard work pays off in the end. If you’re a new writer, it doesn’t matter what you think you are worth. People who hire bloggers need to see a return on their investment, so you have to prove yourself first. If you do an amazing job every single time without fail, you’ll soon find that you don’t have to look for work anymore. Opportunities will come your way because people recommend you. And remember, it’s about more than just being able to write. Without a strong work ethic, it doesn’t matter how well you write.

I was offered my dream job with New Media Expo (BlogWorld at the time) because someone remembered how hard I worked and recommended me to them – and that was over two years after I worked with her. All those hours working for peanuts really paid off because I did my best job every single time, no matter how much money I was making.

We all like to hear about the positives of establishing a certain line of work, but what are some examples of the “dark side” of writing online? Are there some mistakes that are easily avoidable?

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. I’m not just talking about scams, either (though that is part of it). When it comes to easy money, the bubble always bursts eventually, so look at any job you take with a critical eye. Is it sustainable (and does it make sense) for your client/employer to continue paying you? If you’re charging $100 per post, but they’re only making $50 back in sales, your job is not safe even if you’re good at it. Always have a backup plan.

I enjoy your work at the New Media Expo blog where you post all the time. How do you publish consistent high quality work? What does your writing process look like?

Thanks! It helps that I absolutely love writing, especially about new media. It’s hard to do anything well consistently if you hate it. That’s why I have a food blog (The PinterTest Kitchen) too – I love being in the kitchen. In the past, I’ve been involved with some niche sites where there was a high earning potential, but I would totally dread writing posts. The lack of passion comes through and your work suffers when that is the case.

For me, the writing process starts with a basic outline, which is generally 5-10 bullet points about the topic I want to cover. I’m very new to SEO, but I’ve learned how important it is, so I do a little basic keyword research next. I also research what others are saying about the topic so when I’m writing, I can link to others in the community as well. It’s amazing how much traffic an outbound link can bring you. I generally email or send a tweet to someone when I’ve linked to them, and often they’ll not only stop by to read the post, but they’ll also share it with their followers.

Before I finish my posts, I always try to cut it down by at least 30%. Most of my posts are pretty lengthy (1000+ words), so I find that by challenging myself to cut so much out, I really tighten my writing.

Keeping content fresh and interesting can be difficult. What are some ways you come up with new ideas and/or get inspiration?

My mind is always coming up with topics, even when I’m doing things unrelated to blogging. For example, last year I visited a Holocaust Museum that ended up being a post about the power of storytelling online. A conversation with a friend, a television show, something I see during a walk…these things can all end up sparking blog post ideas. I carry a notebook with me everywhere for jotting down any kernels of ideas that develop when I’m not at my computer.

Google Reader is now shut down, and many saw it going away as a bad sign for the future of blogs. Do you see it as a big deal?

It’s a big deal, but not because I think it is a bad sign for the future of blogs. To me, it represents a shift in the way people think about blogging. It’s now so mainstream that Google sees feed readers as outdated (and competition) to social. Your average Joe on the street probably has no idea what RSS means. But he probably reads a blog and he almost certainly has at least one social profile. RSS readers will always be around for us geeks who like following blogs that way, but most people (especially those who aren’t bloggers themselves) follow via social (or email). I think it was a smart move if Google wants Google+ to grow, though I think they also did Facebook and Twitter a favor.

I hope this will also give some bloggers the kick in the pants they need to start taking email more seriously. When someone subscribes via their favorite RSS reader, you have no way of contacting them other than through published blog posts and few options for tracking stats. Anyone who didn’t switch from Google Reader to another service is now lost to you completely. By collecting subscribers via your own list through services like Aweber, Mailchimp, etc., you don’t have to worry about that and you can contact them whenever you want.

In your opinion, what does it take to build a successful blog? How do you especially build a community, one that comes back for more and more?

It takes hard work, above all. Blogging for others is one thing, but blogging for yourself is a whole other level. You won’t make $10 an hour. At first, you’ll be lucky to make $10 per month! The key is to not give up and to educate yourself on how to make money with your blog (if that is your goal).

For me, that’s what community building is about as well: education. Not every strategy is going to work in every niche. However, at the end of the day, it’s hard to build a community if you aren’t an active member of it. Build relationships one-by-one with other bloggers in your niche. Get active on social and in forums. Comment on other blogs. Participate.

And always remember that whatever post you are writing will be the first impression someone gets of you. What if Oprah reads your blog tomorrow? Are you proud of your most recent content? If not, you shouldn’t publish it. Sometimes, you only have one chance to make someone a life-long fan.

Do you have any favorite apps or tools in regards to writing/blogging?

I love PicMonkey for quickly editing images for my posts (one of my least favorite tasks). That’s probably the tool I use most often. I’m also a huge fan of Zapier, which is a tool that allows you automate tasks between services. For example, you can set it up to automatically schedule posts via Buffer whenever you update via WordPress or automatically post to Facebook any new YouTube videos you upload. Zapier works with tons of tools and just makes life simpler.

Oh, and I don’t know what I would do without the Editorial Calendar plugin for WordPress. There is, in my opinion, no better way to create and organize your content schedule. Other apps/tools I love in no particular order: SproutSocial, CommentLuv, Evernote, TweetDeck, Google Keyword Tool, and Bloglovin.

If there was one thing you could change about the current state of blogs, what would it be and why?

Facebook drives me nuts. If it wasn’t so helpful in promoting my blogs, I would gladly never use it.

Where can everyone learn more about you and check out your work?

You can catch me on Twitter at @allison_boyer, on the NMX blog, or on my food blog, The PinterTest Kitchen. I also occasionally rant and rave about the blogging industry at Blog Zombies. I definitely hope that all of your readers will come hang out with me and the rest of the NMX team in person at our next conference.

And hang out you should. NMX 2014 takes place January 4-6 in Las Vegas, and when you use the promo code ALLI20, you’ll get 20% off the purchase of any pass! Click here to visit NMX, and learn more.

The post Getting Paid to Write with Allison Boyer appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Is there a difference between building a community versus building an audience? If so, what are they?

They can be the same thing. A community is an audience. Some would grasp tightly to the idea that an audience watches and doesn’t contribute or interact, but that isn’t really true. Performers interact with audiences all the time. With my hosting of Soda Tasting, I’m building an audience, but I’m also building a community. It really can mean the same thing.

That said, if you wanted to draw a firm line, you could say that when you are the primary “performer,” you are building an audience. But if you are cultivating interactions between others, more so than interactions with you specifically, you are closer to building a more traditional community.

All communities, big or small, have that feeling of connection, and being part of something bigger. How do you foster that connection?

It helps to have a focus, to understand why you exist and who you exist to serve. What’s your goal? Who do you want to be? When I started KarateForums.com, we had a simple goal, which was to be a martial arts community that was work friendly (generally family friendly) where respect was very important. That goal has informed everything that we’ve done and 12 years later, the result is a community I am very proud of, where people speak to each other in a way that is incredible to watch and easy to appreciate.

Create something that has focus, which gives it meaning and allow yourself to be guided by principles that speak to your focus. If you try to appeal to everyone, you may find yourself left with no one.

We all make mistakes, and with the advent of the Internet, mistakes are more publicized than ever before. How should a community manager handle mistakes? What are the appropriate actions to take?

If we make a mistake, I correct it. If it is something minor, like a post being removed that shouldn’t have been removed, I’ll restore the post and apologize to the person who made it.

If it is a bigger mistake, if it affects more people, that changes things. In July of 2008, I ran a major contest on phpBBHacks.com called “phpBBHacks.com Idol”. It was a tournament style face-off between phpBB hacks and styles with people voting for the winners, which would then proceed down the bracket. The prizes were serious: over $1,200 each for two winners, including the choice of an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or other prizes. Suffice to say, people are competing and there is something at stake. Mishandling it can lead to a lot of anger.

Everything was going smoothly as far as preparation, initial announcements and filling the brackets with nominees. And then we opened for voting. 25 hours into voting, I received a message from a member asking if it was normal to be able to vote several times. And my heart sank. I investigated the matter and found that people were allowed to vote multiple times. Due to the way the database for our software was set up, it was not possible for me to see who voted where, so I could just delete the duplicate votes.

Here’s what I could have done: I could have said that it was normal, but the duplicate votes didn’t count and proceeded like it never happened. I could have fixed it from that point forward and no one would have been the wiser. In other words, this is one of those things that you either do right or wrong when no one is watching you. But if I said that, it would have been unethical and dishonest and, even if no one else ever knew, I couldn’t live with it.

I knew what I had to do. First, I had to delete all votes we had received thus far. It was the only way to ensure accurate voting. When you run contests like this, many (most?) votes come in within that initial window. I just got rid of all of those votes. Of course, then I had to fix the problem, which I did. I also made it so that I could always tell who voted for what, if I needed to, so that this could never happen again. Then I announced it and was honest about it. People responded positively and there were no issues.

I’d like to think that being honest and fixing the issue helped encourage that response.

In your opinion, what is one or maybe many things that a community manager should be doing consistently, but is often not?

I don’t know if I would say “is often not,” but community management is largely about small things that fall under the radar. Welcoming people, encouraging people (publicly and privately), reviewing moderation decisions to ensure that the right decision was made, etc. It’s not about case studies, it’s about the stuff that never reaches a case study.

I think it’s good for community managers to actually participate in their community by participating in discussions and starting them. Regular discussions. This is common with non-brand owned communities, but should be common with all. For brand communities, that means discussions not related to the brand. Should the community manager be paid during the time it takes him or her to talk about movies or their favorite color? Yes, they should.

If you are careful selecting moderators, as you should be, you’ll build a great team. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t monitor them. You should do so regularly and correct any decisions that are not 100% correct. Fix them and use them as a learning opportunity.

Finally, I find it useful to read random topics started by other people. You can’t read them all once you reach a certain size, but I feel like there is this switch when you reach “critical mass” where some stop reading much, if anything, believing the rest will take care of itself. Staying grounded in the community gives you a strong sense of the current state of it.

In your book “Managing Online Forums”, you talk about keeping your site interesting, and driving discussion. Please share a few tips with Blog Herald readers.

When you talk about driving discussion, you are usually looking for ideas for discussions you can start. Ideas are everywhere. News in your industry, posts on related blogs, the calendar (holidays, events, etc.), funny videos, whatever. It shouldn’t be that hard to come up with topics.

Replying to other discussions started by others is a good way to continue discussions moving along. Add your own thoughts that add onto and complements the thoughts of others, where appropriate. Keep the ball rolling. If you see a discussion and you know a member who should really be involved in it, but isn’t yet, send them an invite privately, encouraging them to reply and add their knowledge.

Random things keep your community interesting. That is, things that you don’t do every day. A video stream with members to celebrate milestones, a special guest in the forums answering questions, a yearly awards program that recognizes members who have made great contributions to the community in the past year. These are all less than common occurrences that give people a nice change of pace and stimulate interest.

Managing a couple websites/communities can be a full-time job in of itself, but you have an entire network (iFroggy). How do you manage your time and attention?

It’s mainly about managing priorities. There is always a lot that one can do, but what do you need to get done, what can wait and what is really important? I tend to spend most of my time in one of three areas: work, family and health (sleeping, exercising, etc.) I have fun doing all of those, so it works for me.

Bonus question: What are the top three sodas you’ve had on SodaTasting.com?

I have rated both Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Vanilla a rating of 5 out of 5. I have given several sodas a 4.5 out of 5, most recently Dublin Ginger Ale.

Where can people learn more about you and check out your stuff?

I write about online communities at ManagingCommunities.com and you can find links to all of my sites at ifroggy.com. On Twitter, I’m @iFroggy. Thank you for having me.

Photo credit: Cameron Gawley

The post Interview with Patrick O’Keefe, Author of Managing Online Forums appeared first on The Blog Herald.

On June 28, 2011, a new social network by the name of Google+ emerged. One feature called Hangouts made it stand out from the rest. For free and without any additional software, you can start or join a group video chat with up to 10 people. Later, the ability to stream live and record Hangouts was added. One person early to use them was Sarah Hill, a 12-time Emmy award winning anchor for KOMU-TV based out of Missouri.

Hangouts enabled her to offer a different perspective of the news room, allowing Google+ users from around the world to see what goes on behind the scenes. Eventually, Sarah moved on to work with the Veterans United Network where she tells stories about veterans, and military families. Recently, Sarah got her hands on Google Glass which is leading the charge in the next generation of wearable computing. In this interview, we talk about how Glass can benefit content creators, the future of content creation, and more.

How did you get involved with being one of the first recipients of Google Glass?

I volunteer for a project called “Veterans Virtual Tours”. We provide online tours to aging and terminally veterans who would like to see their memorial but are too sick to travel. I saw the Google+ post about Glass and decided to share my #ifIhadglass wish.

Wearable technology is in a very infant stage, but seems to have a lot of of potential. How do you see a product like Glass aiding content creators?

Glass has opened up a whole new field for content creators with the new genre of “hands-free reporting”. Combine Glass with Google+ Hangouts and you’re essentially able to broadcast from your face. Reporters seek to be the eyes and ears of the public. With Glass, viewers are able to see and hear exactly what you’re seeing and hearing in real time. Because it’s faster and easier to share photos and videos from Glass than it is on your smartphone, you’re also increasing the likelihood that you won’t miss moments. It takes me about 14 clicks to awaken my smart phone, take a picture and upload it to one of my social sites. With Glass, I can do the same in just a few clicks.

I’ve met you in many Google+ Hangouts, and have personally used Hangouts On Air to put together discussions that served as great blog content. What is the best way for people to get started with Hangouts? Can you maybe share some advice on best tips, practices, etc?

The best way to get started with Hangouts is to join some. A lot of people think they need to host a Hangout first, which is a mistake. Join first, get to know some people, then start hosting some yourself. Do a search within G+ on “how to host hangouts on air” and you’ll find some great advice from people on the platform. I’d also encourage you to join Billy Wilson’s “Hangouts” Community on Google+. I also discuss “Human Media” in my Hangouts community on G+.

However, you can’t just read up on how to do Hangouts, the best way to learn is to dive in and join some yourself. Don’t let the technology intimidate you. Hangouts are simply a new kind of video phone. Once you learn how to dial the video phone, it’s easy peasy.

There are some concerns with wearable technology, but there’s definitely an interest, especially at a good price point. What do you see as the future of content creation if a product like Glass is able to capture the minds and attention of millions worldwide?

The future of Glass is giving people the ability to broadcast hands free from their face. Instead of asynchronous live tweeting from a parade, riot or other breaking news event, you will see people giving live Glass tours via Hangouts. Hangouts On Air are currently not supported for Glass but you’ve got to think that’s coming in the future. Even with a private Glass Hangout, a TV station can still route that Hangout through its control room and put it on the air. Glass will enable us to walk through scenes more to capture events and free up our hands during video recording to pick up objects, open doors, etc. Essentially, Glass liberates content creators to be more mobile and allows them to capture images without having to hold something in their hands.

Thanks to Google+, you’ve built a very loyal and dedicated following. What are your tips for building an active community?

Share and be shared. Fill your stream with interesting photos, videos and infographics that OTHER people besides yourself shared. Participate in Hangouts. Hangouts are the lifeblood of what I call the “Human Media” experience. Human Media is the new layer of social whereby we are interacting face to face via cameras as opposed to text based social media chats with avatars. A Human Media experience is a deeper level of connection than tweeting with someone because you can see the person’s face react in real time. In a sense, hangouts transport you into that person’s home or office.

People are more likely to follow people whom they know. If you Hangout with someone, you know them, therefore you want to follow them. The Veterans United Network is one group that realizes it doesn’t just need a social media presence, it needs a Human Media presence. Via Hangouts, we are in the homes and offices of veterans and military families all the time. We don’t just want military members to follow us, we want them to know us. Building your following starts with doing some virtual door knocking via Hangouts and introducing yourself. The days where companies rely solely on people interacting with their avatars are numbered.

Where can people follow you?

Google+ | Twitter | YouTube

The post How Google Glass Can Benefit Content Creators with Sarah Hill appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Chris Brogan is CEO and President of Human Business Works, an education publishing and media company helping professionals become the best they can be. His book “Trust Agents” co-authored alongside Julien Smith, is a New York Times Best Seller, and the duo also went on to write “The Impact Equation”. When Chris isn’t busy speaking or working on his next project, you can find him blogging about social media, business, and more. In fact, Advertising Age ranks his blog number three in the world for social media/marketing.

When did you first get started blogging? In what ways has the landscape changed since then?

I started back in 1998 when we called it journaling. There weren’t comments. There wasn’t RSS. And more people wrote about a passion instead of tried to write to get attention only.

The design of your site is pretty fantastic. I’m a little jealous actually. Is great design important, or does the saying “Content is king” ring true?

Great design IS important. It’s the equivalent of an Armani suit and a Rolex vs a backwards ball cap and a tee shirt. Design actually triggers trust opinions.

What are some of the biggest mistakes bloggers make?

Bloggers write far too often from the opinion that others want THEIR opinion and not useful information, and MOST bloggers end posts horribly, without any good resolution or next action. Endings are most bloggers’ problems.

How did you, and do you go about building your community? Do you think you’d still be where you’re at today if social media didn’t exist?

My community came about from my hard work commenting and promoting others. The more you shine the light on those who are giving you attention, the more they feel like they’re part of your story, and thus, they share. I’m doing this now with a test Twitter account to recreate the experience, and I can tell you that we all still want the same currency: head pats.

Are there any must have tools, apps, or resources you’d recommend bloggers get hooked up with?

I was going to say no. The answer is: mobile responsive design. If your site isn’t flawlessly beautiful on a smartphone and a tablet, stop blogging. No one will care in a week or two. Mobile responsive design is a MUST, not a nice to have.

With the explosion of video, and growing popularity of podcasts, a lot of people say it’s important to diversify with the type of content you’re putting out there. Do you agree or disagree?

I disagree. I think, instead, that you should choose the medium you’re best suited to using, and that you should work it to your best advantage. I happen to LOVE podcasting and am a writer by trade, so I use two media more than the others, but work with what you love and what helps you best tell the story. People who pick up the new tools just so they can establish a beachhead there have really boring versions of what others are doing.

Monetization is a often a slippery slope. When should I monetize? How should I monetize? Those are just a couple of the questions. What would you say to people wanting to make money from their many hours of effort? Is there a right and wrong way to monetize?

Monetize right out of the gate. It’s crazy how many people build passion projects, share them with passionate communities, and don’t feel okay with pointing out products or services that might improve the experiences of people in those communities. The RIGHT way to monetize is that. Love your community so much that you offer them certain products or services that you feel will improve their experience. Take money just to make money and you’ll fail.

You blog on a very regular basis, and I think I remember reading somewhere that you try and write 2,000 words per day. With so much going on in day-to-day life, how are you able to stay on track? Also, what is your advice to those suffering from writer’s block?

I write 2000-4000 words a day. As far as staying on track, it’s a habit like anything else. If your habit is to write prolifically, then you’ll do it because that’s what you do. If you’re rewarded for your habits, then you’ll do it even more. Right now I have two mainstream book deals, plus am writing a new version of a previously successful course I sell. Between all that, blogging, plus my newsletter, plus answering interview questions, that’s a lot of typing. But that’s how I make my money and that’s why I can answer this question from the beach.

One thing you and I have connected over is our battles with depression. You don’t seem to have a problem opening up about your personal life, least to an extent. How can people step out of their comfort zone in sharing more relatable stories, stories that, at the end of the day, allow us to develop a deeper connection with our community?

This is a really challenging thing, but I have a reasonably good answer for you. I don’t just talk about depression. I talk about the fact that depression isn’t an excuse. Depression is a “yes, and” experience. I’m depressed AND I have a responsibility to do the work I am supposed to do. That’s the trick of it. It’s important that people don’t see depression as an excuse. It’s something you have to deal with. Not suck up. Just deal with. But showing my vulnerabilities and then showing my ability to stay mentally tough and accomplish all that I do is a great way to power up my community to succeed. But only if people pay attention to both A *and* B, and not just “it’s okay to be depressed.”

Where can people follow you and check out your stuff?

Easiest is to go to chrisbrogan.com, but what I most want you to do is go there and sign up for my newsletter. It’s the best work I do every week.

Photo credit: KGS

The post Interview with New York Times Best-Selling Author Chris Brogan appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Q: For our readers that are unfamiliar with HubPages, why don’t you give them a brief description.

HubPages is a social content community where authors write about what they know and love, with over 900,000 topical articles (what we call “Hubs”) published by over 170,000 authors. The breadth of topics, vibrancy of our content base, and constant weeding out of substandard content ensures that great-quality content enjoys quick provisional ranking by the search engines, and a steady stream of revenue-generating traffic for years after publication. Our authors earn via Google AdSense and other advertising-/commission-based vehicles, with many earning hundreds of dollars a month on what they’ve already published, and more than a handful that are earning thousands every month. We’re the 57th largest site in terms of US traffic (according to Quantcast) and get more than 28 million visitors monthly.

Q: As the need for Web content has grown exponentially, so has demand for bloggers. So have empty ‘get-rich promises.’ Sell our readers on why your publishing methods are legit.

Well, we’re certainly not a “get-rich” scheme and never promise that. In fact, it takes diligence and patience to earn on HubPages, but both are rewarded. We are is a site that helps authors realize the lifetime value and retain ownership of their content, instead of surrendering both at the outset. What this means is that writers can publish and unpublish/delete their content at will, and can see a steady stream of income through their Hubs that attract traffic for years.

I’ll use my personal account as an example. I’ve published 140 Hubs on the site over the course of the past 4 years, and have earned a bit more than $7,000 from them (and I continue to earn). I figure that based on the time I spent researching and writing my Hubs, I’ve earned about $75 per hour writing on HubPages (although that doesn’t count moderating and responding to comments, although I find that fun and it’s optional; factoring that in, it’d probably be more like $65 per hour). So, while I haven’t gotten rich from publishing on HubPages, I have certainly earned more here than anywhere else I’ve written online and it’s been enjoyable because I write about the things that actually interest me.

Q: How do bloggers earn money with HubPages?

They earn via the ads served up on their Hubs. Google AdSense is the most popular earning option, and ads appear automatically. Authors can also optionally earn via Amazon Affiliates, Kontera, and the eBay Partner Network. We split impressions with our authors on a 60% (to the authors), 40% (to us) basis.

Q: Since I know many bloggers are skeptical that they can earn real
money from their content, would you mind sharing one or two success stories?

I’ve shared my personal success, but we also profile a handful of the authors who have come out to share their success in our blog’s Payout Chronicles. One story I’d like to share also is of AskSusanPeters, a pet groomer from Oklahoma, who had written hundreds of Hubs on pet food reviews shortly after she started over 3 years ago. Then the pet food recall broke in April 2007, and people were scrambling to find out if their particular brand of pet food was safe. AskSusanPeters’s Hubs were there to share information on many specific pet food products, and she earned about $2,000 that month alone in ad revenue. Her earnings continued to stream in even when she took a year-long hiatus from publishing on the site.

Q: What are three qualities that you believe a strong blogger must possess? What makes a great “hub?”

The ability to write niche “evergreen” content – the kind of informative article that people will be searching for years after they’re published, is one key factor, as is the ability to learn from our extensive lessons in our Learning Center. We are invested in our authors’ success, so we (and other successful members of the community) share best practices that we’ve seen work. Finally, I would say patience is critical, since the earnings don’t happen immediately. Most Hubbers report having to wait 6-9 months before they earn their first $100 payout from AdSense (I had to wait 8 months) but then the traffic and earnings climb.

As for a great Hub, it should be informative, ideally tackling a niche topic that people are searching on, written well, with judicious use of other rich media elements that we enable, including maps, pictures, embedded videos, polls, quizzes, etc. An often overlooked but critically important thing is titling Hubs correctly.

Q: You are nearing 1,000,000 published hubs. Planning and celebrations?

We just passed our 4th year anniversary and our billionth Hub view, but our millionth Hub is a milestone that we’re certainly looking forward to. We’ll have to keep our celebration plans a surprise for now…

Q: What is your goal/dream for HubPages?

We want HubPages to be a household word among those who love writing online, among bloggers who want to write off-blog articles that will enjoy an audience and earn for them for years, and even people who are writing more casual content who would like to experience the joy of having a readership and ongoing ad royalties. I’d love for our authors’ content to be as well-known and accessed as Wikipedia’s.

Interested in writing a hub of your own? Sign up here.

The post All About HubPages – An Interview With Jason Menayan appeared first on The Blog Herald.

SeededBuzz is a site that promises to help bloggers promote themselves.

Blog posts are promoted using what are called Seeds, which are summaries of a blog post that has been written on a topic that you think other bloggers may want to also write about. The idea is other bloggers read these Seeds, get inspired and write about the same topic, and link to the Seed owners post in doing so.

The blogger that has then written about the Seed can then submit their post on the same page as the Seed that inspired them, under what is called Buzz. The idea is both Seeds and Buzz attract visitors and link.

As a way of discovering new topics to write about this looks like a great idea. Seeds that have attracted Buzz and valuable backlinks should also find that their search engine rankings get a welcome boost. Quality links are never easy to come by.

Other community features I like include the ability to receive and offer Guest Posts, and the tagging of Seeds that inspired you for a later date.

Reading other bloggers posts, telling bloggers about your posts, linking to them, messaging them, and offering and receiving guest posts can are all activities that help blogs grow their readership and revenues. They can also all be done manually without this community, but there is no doubt it looks easier and more fun with SeededBuzz’s help.

It’s an idea that Matt Roberts, SeededBuzz’s co-founder had designed and planned for almost 18 months, with the final launch coming at the turn of this year. What’s great is within a few short months over 3,000 blogs have applied to become members and the community is gathering a loyal following.

Members blogs are reviewed before they are accepted. “Matt Roberts, SeededBuzz’s founder says that this screening process has become an essential step and community differentiator. Only good, active and more importantly, real blogs can take part. This ensures the content being promoted is of a really high quality and you don’t have to look too hard to find something to inspire you.”

Membership is also subscription based, although the cost is low at $4.95 a month. Trail 30 day memberships are available to everyone, and all features are enabled to give you a feel for the potential benefits.

Exclusive interview with Matt Roberts, founder of SeededBuzz

The Blog Herald recently caught up with SeededBuzz.com founder Matt Roberts and he was kind enough to answer a few questions for us via email. The conversation is below.

BH: What’s your background online and how did that lead up to you starting SeededBuzz.com?

Matt: I’ve been involved in online marketing for 10 years and have worked in large digital agencies advising major brands and even political parties. I have also been involved in blogging personally and as an affiliate. This gives me both a creative and commercial edge.

My motivation and inspiration for SeededBuzz was simply the realization that starting and growing a blog is not easy and most fail. SeededBuzz was created in response to this and is designed to make it much easier for bloggers to promote themselves by helping them to replicate the strategies and thought processes of really successful blogs. The idea that is central to the whole concept is we want member to write great editorial content that other bloggers may want to write about and link to. This content we call Seeds.

The types of Seeds that do really well on SeededBuzz are the ones that inspire others and make continuing or evolving the debate easy. A good example is this recent post called ‘what has blogging taught you‘. Other members quickly started writing about it and in a few day 3 other bloggers have written posts on the same topic and linked to the original author that inspired them. The blog which in this case is called Better in Bulk also will have received direct traffic, a tweet and a stumble.

As well as learning to write posts that other bloggers want to feature, SeededBuzz also has an SEO angle. When a blogger builds links from other bloggers, Google takes note and the blog gains more authority, posts rank higher and traffic increases. Another feature that continues the theme of making strategies that are proven to make blogs more successful, more accessible is our Guest Posting feature. If you see a blog topic you like and would like another blogger to write about it for you, all you need to do is publish an invite. Other members can then get in touch via Private Message to discuss writing the Guest Post for you.

BH: Over the years, blogging seems to have lost some of it’s core values, like how bloggers used to heavily link out to other blogs and sites as a way to let their readers know about interesting things. In my opinion, much of the external linking mindset has been lost due to bloggers concentrating too heavily on SEO and leaking SEO juice via the external linking. What are your thoughts on this and was it used as a factor in setting up SeededBuzz.com?

Matt: Absolutely. I have noticed this trend to and think it’s a real shame. In fact we use it as one of the selection criteria for membership. If we can’t see evidence of a blogger taking an interest in other blogs and linking to them, we are unlikely to accept them. Blogging is meant to be sociable and I see thousands of very unsociable blogs and think bloggers that are like this have missed the point a little. It is true that link juice is leaves your site via external links, but it also true that you attract more links by being sociable, so I think there is usually a net gain.

BH: Do you think ‘blogging as a business’ has had a positive or negative effect on the way blogging has evolved?

Matt: For me commercial blogging has had both a positive and negative effect on blogging. For bloggers that have used the motivation of making money to push them to create a great product with a constant stream of interesting and popular editorial I think the carrot of cash is in everyones interest. The flip slide this is the growing number of blogs where every post is a product feature or voucher code, or the content is not original and taken from syndication sources without any editorial integrity applied. For me, these are not really blogs and don’t have any real value.

BH: Some people out there may look at SeededBuzz in a negative light since the way it’s promoted leans toward links and search engine juice. What will you say to those people?

Matt: Making it easy to promote and sharing great content ideas is central to the SeededBuzz concept not link building. However, links are important and are a sign that this process is working effectively. Whether we like it or not, links are a significant part of search engine algorithms and this is a fact that can not be ignored by any website that hopes to increase traffic from natural search engine results. I think SeededBuzz get’s the balance right and for that reason it’s a good community to get involved in.

BH: There have been similar services and communities to SeededBuzz in the past and they’ve fallen by the wayside. How do you see your community flourishing after so many fell before you?

Matt: For me SeededBuzz is unique in it’s approach and positioning however that doesn’t mean we have got the product right. This is why we have spend a lot of time listening to our members suggestions for how to make the community better. Whether it’s been simple things like the addition of new categories, or the addition of more significant features like tagging posts that you want to write about at a later date, we’re determined to make the site an enjoyable and effective way to grow blog traffic and meet other bloggers.

BH: Stats. Numbers. Projected growth. Blog Herald readers want them :-)

Matt: Since January we have reviewed over 3,000 blogs and accepted just over 1,000. It’s not easy or nice to reject blogs but we want the blogs that take part to both benefit and make a contribution. We are now in a position where we are happy that the site does what it is meant to in terms of increasing traffic, links etc. and we are going to be more aggressively attracting new members. Our target is to have 10,000 active members by the end of the year.

Disclosure: SeededBuzz.com is a sponsor of the Blog Herald as well as several other SplashPress Media sites.

The post SeededBuzz.com helps bloggers grow their traffic and popularity appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Read the interview with Karen and give RevResponse a try if you are looking for a different way to earn money with your blog, this could be the dark horse you were looking for.

Hello Karen, thanks for your time. First of all, could you in short introduce RevResponse to our readers?

RevResponse.com is a performance based B2B specific affiliate network which gives related website publishers an exciting new way to generate revenue while providing their users with free content of real and tangible value. Simply put, web publishers and/or bloggers join RevResponse, we give them access to a library of hundreds of free business and technology related magazines, ebooks, downloads, webinars, etc. Then, RevResponse partners promote the offers in that library to their audience via blog post, newsletter inclusion, ad space, text link, etc. Lastly, we pay the partners when their users request the free resources.

What makes us different from typical ad networks that display links of questionable interest to readers, or affiliate networks that pay only when users part with their hard-earned money, RevResponse pays website publishers to present free content that’s of genuine value to site visitors.

One of the first things visitors to the RevResponse site notice is the $1.50-$2.50/lead. These numbers seem rather high, how is the conversion generally and also, it seems that some of these leads seem higher than leads from eg. Amazon. Where’s the catch?

Actually, the payouts range from $1.50 per lead to up to $20 per lead. To be honest, a $20 is difficult to generate simply due to their targets. I think it would be safe to say that the majority of our partners average a payout of $2-$10 per lead.

The catch, as you call it, is that not every form a user completes will convert into a paying lead. Our clients set qualifying criteria which must be met in order for a lead to generate earnings for our partners. Because we do not pay for every lead submitted, we pay higher for the leads that do convert.

When visiting the learn more page one thing that immediately caught my attention were the screenshots of contextual ads and widgets. Even one with the Google logo. Often when signing up for a new ad network the directory for especially contextual links seems rather limited and very repetitive. How is RR better here and also do you offer the user the option to also include eg. Google Adsense ads for when the inventory empty is or reverts to standard, low converting contextual ads, as offered by several other networks?

We offer our partners a variety of promotional methods. As you noticed, we have different versions of ads and widgets which dynamically display offers based on relevance, likelihood of conversion, geo location of the user, and more. The widgets “know” which offers perform best for each specific partner and display ads with that logic in mind.

You mention that many other networks have limited and repetitive ads and links. When creating our network we set out to avoid that pitfall. I firmly believe that the beauty of the RevResponse program is that they are very few limitations for promotions and creativity among our partners.

We encourage our partners to think outside of the ad box and promote the free B2B resources in any way they can. We’ve even rewarded them for doing so. Look at our ‘Most Creative Promotion Contest’ and December’s winner here.

What are the main advantages for a blogger to apply and opt for RR compared to other networks?

What sets us apart from other networks is that we are paying bloggers and web publishers to give something away for free. The business resources which we make available to our partners are valuable industry resources like subscriptions to Business Week Magazine, eBooks about social media, PDF guides for web design, and more. Our partners then get to give those items away to their audience for free. It’s a win-win. We pay our partners and they please their users by giving them free stuff that enriches their profession and career.

An interesting detail seems to be the ‘no popups or redirections’ feature offered by RR. Can you explain how this functions? Does it mean the blogger does not have to embed the much loathed java hover popups or do ads get completely loaded in a hover popup?

Correct. We’re not a looking to bombard users with intrusive ads that destroy the user experience. To the contrary, our entire model is based on keeping your audience on YOUR site. We call this a Co-Branded Content Resource Center. When a partner joins RevResponse and is approved into our network, they are provided with a partner URL. For example, if you were to join RevResponse, we’d provide you with the URL: http://blogherald.tradepub.com. Then you could customize this page to match your site UI seamlessly. In doing this, your audience members will access the free offers we make available without ever leaving your branding. The idea is to keep your audience happy and to keep a 3rd party completely out of the picture. Partners can also integrate our XML feed to dramatically expand the amount of content available on your site for organic search optimization. Better yet, we allow you to install your own ad tags on the Co-Branded Content Resource Center to further monetize those pages with your existing CPC/CPM network providers.

Here is an example of a partner’s Co-Branded Content Resource Center:
http://smallbiztrends.tradepub.com/

6. The Top 10 Ways to… mention both following options:

1. Monetize Your Site Communications
2. Leverage Your Social Networking Sites

What does the promoter have to imagine with this? Are these affiliate links to drop on Twitter or on facebook pages? Or do you offer complete widgets for these networks?

For these promotional methods as well as many other creative promotion options, the partners can get as inventive as possible or be as simplistic as using a text link. For monetizing site communications, partners often just add a link to their Co-Branded URL in their email signature or add simple messaging to their site registration page like: “Thank you for registering with us. We are happy to offer you the option to subscribe to a variety of FREE business publications. Browse the selection here.” This messaging simply links again to their Co-Branded URL.

For leveraging social networks, partners can integrate our RSS feeds (they too are publisher specific!) to auto-tweet. They can pick and choose specific offers to ping out to their Linked In contacts, etc. We do not have widgets specific for these networks.

7. Last but not least, based on feedback of your users, what would you say is the main reason to opt for RR?

The main reason a partner will join RevResponse is for access to our free business resources. We hear time and time again that the value of our network lies in monetizing offers that are both free and valuable to our partners’ users. For any web publisher with a B2B focus, joining RevResponse is a no-brainer. You make money by providing added value to your users. It’s a win-win.

(1) Yes, that means that this is a promotional, sponsored post.

Be sure to check out RevResponse and give it a try. I will update soon with my experiences and even a RevResponse walkthrough.

The post RevResponse: A Great Way To Earn With Your Blog appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Let’s start with you. Who are you and what do you do at Text Link Ads?

I am the Senior SEO Strategist. In that role, I offer resources to Text Link Ads clients that are looking to add a layer of strategy and/or on-page site optimization to their link building campaigns. TLA is by design a self serve network: clients can enter our system and find a huge array of links to choose from. However, often clients are looking for guidance around things like:

• Which keywords should I be targeting?
• How many links should I be buying?
• How fast should I be purchasing links, and how much should I vary my anchor text?

And of course, many clients feel like the links they have acquired with us are not working effectively for them. Often my most important role is to help clients identify technical problems on their site which are impeding the benefit of their link building. Such examples could be incorrect use of redirects, duplicate content issues in all its many vast and wonderful forms, lack of page targeting and keyword dilution, etc. They always come into the conversation blaming the links, but invariably the client and I are able to analyze the problem and identify the source of the problem is something on-page.

So how are things in the link selling business these days?

I was at a small seminar on natural link building at SMX East last month. I sat there in room full of marketers asking the two panelists about solving their challenges to acquire sufficient quality, thematically relevant links. The audience members seemed to earnestly be conveying that they were trying to build links while absolutely avoiding purchased links. One of the audience members asking the most questions in the seminar was trying to compete in one of the most competitive financial segments possible. He seemed a bit exasperated in trying to compete with all these other sites that were buying links, while he was choosing to not partake in link buying.

I approached him later that day to see if he might consider looking at our network. “Oh yeah, I know you guys, I’ve been one of your biggest clients for the last five years”. He then managed to rattle off the names of about seven different TLA team members.

I’ll go out on a bit of limb here: maybe buying links is a lot like pornography viewing: there’s a lot more people doing it and a lot less people acknowledging such behavior. These conference sessions can sometimes turn into church: wear your Sunday best and definitely do not admit to what you were doing in the late hours of Saturday night.

A lot of sites running Text Link Ads have been hit with lowered PageRank from Google. What’s your take on that?

Hah! That’s a loaded question….and a common one. First, let’s make sure to make a key distinction between Toolbar PR and Google internal PR. A lot of sites have had their Toolbar PR lowered on Google for a lot of reasons. Yes certainly publishers in our network have had their PR lowered. We have also seen publishers have their PR go up. Simply put, there’s a lot of variables in play that affect PR.

But this actually addresses a couple issues:

One, that TOOLBAR page rank is somewhat arbitrary, and often acts as a red herring put out there by Google. I’ve seen enough examples of a toolbar PR drop where all the rankings held up just fine.

This phenomena actually is a huge opportunity for people who are smart about their link buying: there are links from a lot of good sites which have low toolbar PR, but rank for competitive terms. Since the link buying/selling market is systematically flawed on its dependency of toolbar PR, the lower toolbar PR sites are often available at exceptional value.

Is there a business model for selling links when Google retires PageRank?

Yes, absolutely. The training wheels will come off, and serious SEO programs will need experts to conduct their link buying efforts. It’s really just like any other more time tested media: anyone can buy advertising, but the value of a true media buying expert can create tremendous value. In this case, it’s a such a niche and valuable skill, I think the loss of toolbar PR would be a serious benefit to SEO practitioners.

Who is the ideal link buyer today?

First and foremost, someone who understands the timeline of the process, and the rules of engagement to be effective. From there, having a specific set of target keywords, targeting pages that are crafted around each of these target keywords, and hosted on an SEO compliant site, round out the package for an ‘ideal’ buyer.

So many times we speak to people who want to rush into SEO and want results as fast and aggressively as possible. You have to trust the process, and be in it for the long haul. If you want the quick fix, go ahead and keep yourself hooked on PPC.

And who should be selling links really?

It’s a great way for sites with unique content and some domain age and trust to monetize the below the fold, non-monetizable part of the page. What’s great for the publishers is that the revenue is consistent and predictable, it is not predicated on click through rate, traffic to the page, nor outbounding visitors as a necessary tradeoff to make money.

Smaller more niche sites and blogs will find that they can earn a lot more money potentially as a TLA publisher than with adsense or similar programs, and they can publish both types of ads on their pages. Larger more established sites may qualify for our Premium Publisher program: we work to accommodate the needs of larger organizations looking to enter our publishing network.

What’s next for Text Link Ads?

We work with over 120 Search Marketing agencies to power their link building programs, as well as 3,000 independent advertisers. We recognize the need for many of our clients to have a better understanding of targeting choices, appropriate budget and allocation choices, and identifying and solving on-page site issues which mitigate the effectiveness of link building programs. With that said, we are moving towards a more consultative process with our clients, and encourage them to call in and speak with us.

Beyond more strategic servicing, we are putting forward many new initiatives, including premium publisher offerings available to clients who work with our sales consultants hands on. Additionally, we are starting to offer full service link building for clients. This includes both paid link acquisition as well as natural link building tactics such as social profile creation, direct webmaster outreach, sponsored blogging and blog postings, and targeted directory link building.

You can sign up for Text Link Ads here.

The post Interview: Tom Rusling, Text Link Ads appeared first on The Blog Herald.

We caught up with Lucien Burm, founder of Kimengi, which has created an interesting new tool for bloggers called feedforward (see demo). Here’s the interview.

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1. How do you explain what feedforward and Kimengi do to people who have never heard of them before?

The first thing I say is that we create a more lateral web, but most of times I need to explain two things first: recommendations and widgets.

Everyone knows about recommendations that webshops provide, such as ‘people bought this, also bought…’. So at first I explain to people that this is the functionality we provide. Then I talk about our widget as a very smart website within a website that can create the same kind of recommendations on your blog/title and even better. It is better because all widgets on all participating sites can work together creating cross-site recommendations. And then, the recommendations are not only based on what other people liked, we look into context too.

Finally, I explain that the widgets working together enable you to create your own dynamic blog network and start to create preferred recommendations between the members of your network. I sum it up as a widget based recommendation network using social and semantic technologies enabling a more lateral web, which means that surfing the web becomes a flow of socially and/or semantically arranged content.

As an important encore, I’ll try to make people see that calculating recommendations on a network scale is something that the usual algorithms cannot do without loss of realtime quality. So we are working on a whole new kind of recommendation engine as well. It is something that we don’t talk a lot about yet.

2. Where are your team members located?

Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It’s that little European lowland country with a history of invention, trade and exploring the world. In fact, just last month we were celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Dutch hitting Manhattan on their west-bound quest to Indonesia. Amsterdam nowadays is still the capital of our international corporate orientation and not surprisingly brimming with internet startups at the moment. We have a lovely office with a distinct wall paper and canal view. You should come and visit if you have the chance.

3. What tools do you use regularly to help you develop and promote your widget?

Our technological environment is mainly java applications that spawn smart javascript applications that spawn html. It makes for a very versatile widget platform that offers a lot of flexibility and few limitations. And all of that runs on Amazon Webservices, which is great for a growing a network of course. At this point we are still somewhat passive in promoting and like to have it grow organically for a while. We do reach out to blogs now and contact them directly if we feel they fit the network and ask if they would like to try it out and write about their experiences, but we are mainly trying to work out the best way to have the widget promote itself because of its main qualities. Though the widget is open to anyone and free for use, we still check for unsuitable or pure commercial content and filter that out. We don´t want this kind of content to mix with the quality stories that bloggers and publishers provide.

4. What has been the biggest challenge to you so far in trying to grow your company?

What we found most difficult is to explain the many options that f»dforward provides. We try to narrow it down now. The most hidden one so far is the ability to create your own recommendation networks. We are trying to bring that forward. Creating networks will increase not only traffic to your site, but it will also provide you with more insight about your audience through our unmatched social analytics. We can help you become a better blogger and make your blog more successful in general.

5. Can you think of a crowning moment of victory that you’ve experienced over the past few months?

There are some crowning moments I can´t talk about yet, but when we first started to test our social analytics this summer we were stunned by the click through rates of some recommendations. They are way above your average Ad CTR´s. And with the data on your best recommendations and the best recommendations of others (in your network and outside), we might be able to just show you in any given timeframe what to write about or what angle to use to improve your readership right now.

One of the first things we noticed was that the main news is not always a smart thing to write about in the sense of being it a good recommendation. Different angles on any current topic that provide interesting insights are apparently more attractive to people than the main news. News seems to be very personal in the end.

6. How does your product help the person who uses it – what’s in it for them?

I assume you are referring to readers this time. We want to help improve two kinds of reading and they are probably interwoven usages:

• 1. having an interesting, up-to-date read and
• 2. researching some more about a given topic.

f»dforward is all about following people around the web. So for the first usage, you can follow people that (have) read about the same topics as you. For the second usage, you can follow people around who might be an expert on the current topic you are reading about. So f»dforward recommends articles as well as people to you, based on both social and semantic technologies. With a growing network, we believe that with f»dforward, you will get what suits you (now) from the web. And that is what it is all about, optimizing your web experience: Creating a more lateral web that can give you a personal, linear experience of the current web. The best web experience, we think, is a flow of properly tuned information.

7. How is feedforward unique?

Most importantly, f»dforward is unique because it recommends both people and content and secondly it makes a new kind of web out of the social, semantic and read/write web hopefully providing the fabric for a more lateral web.

8. What kinds of partnerships with other business or organizations are you guys trying to create?

At this point we are looking for blogs and publishers that add to the network and expand it in a quality way. Secondly we are about to test with some corporate sites to see how we can provide companies with great insights about their products audience and thirdly we talk to online retailers that are interested in creating a smarter affiliate network for example.

9. What’s your revenue model?

We now focus on providing some launching professional publishers and companies those ‘unmatched’ social analytics.

10. Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

Yes – you, reader, please try out f»dforward and let us know what you think. We are deep in the process of improvement and getting it right, so we would like to know what works for you and what doesn’t and how else we can help improve your blogs and titles and general web experience.

Thanks again to Lucien Burm for providing these details on feedforward.

Have you tried feedforward?

The post feedforward: New Blog Traffic Driver? Lucien Burm Believes So appeared first on The Blog Herald.

That’s why it was such a shame when Curt Hopkins announced its closure, and such a good thing when Andrew Ford Lyons picked up the reins again. So let’s here what he has to say about Committee to Protect Bloggers and the future.

First of all, why don’t you tell our readers a little bit about Committee to Protect Bloggers and how you came to take over the reins after Curt Hopkins?

The Committee was formed in January of 2005. A lot of what it was about remains the same, but we’re adding to it some. The Committee to Protect Bloggers has always been “devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide” as the mission statement goes, with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government. But we also need to recognise that the world and the web has changed as has how people use it. We look at the uses of micro-blogging sites now, such as Twitter, and the use of social networks like Facebook, Friendfeed and so forth to communicate.

My moving into taking the site over for Curt happened pretty casually, really. I was doing some research on the situation in Iran and the use of technology. If I recall correct, it was the whole Motorola scandal, and in my Googling I came across Curt’s final posts about ending the Committee website. In my caffeinated research mode state I dashed him off an email about revamping the site some and that eventually turned into a conversation about taking the site over.

But this is how organisations are supposed to go. Any group has turnover, and that’s not a bad thing. It should happen because that’s what brings new life into them. I’ve organised and supported scads of campaigns and grassroots efforts and one commonality I’ve seen across the lot of them is high burnout rates. You have these groups with maybe four or five incredibly dedicated people giving 200 percent and its no surprise when life catches up. The unfortunate thing is that it can often leave such a bad feeling about the work they’ve done. Curt needed to stop focusing so much energy on this project and get his job situation sorted out. That’s a completely rational reason to want to hand the keys over. I picture a time when I’ll likely do the same, and also am working on ways of sharing the load of the committee website with others who are interested in free speech and blogging. We’ve retained two bloggers from the previous guard: James Buck and Victor Ng’eny. And along with myself, Nigel Parry has joined the group. I’m hoping to continue increasing the number.

(NOTE: You can find current committee blogger profiles here!)

What are your plans for the site?

I have a few ideas, but am always open to other suggestions. First off, I’m wanting to expand the number of bloggers contributing. I’m looking for folks who are fans of blogs. People who not only write blogs, but also read them, participate in their comment areas and like what blogs represent, whatever that is. It’s a hard thing to identify. People who get what it means that the barriers to publishing are being smashed and see that as a good thing. A challenging, tortuous thing on occasion, but a good thing. I’m also interested in filling out our ranks. I’d like contributors with technical web-building, design backgrounds, people with legal backgrounds and those who are already obsessively following blogger issues and writing about them.

I’m hoping to expand the site over time to include more participatory aspects. Rigth now it’s running on the most recent WordPress. One thing I’m toying with is a way to incorporate a Buddypress installation and/or forums and chat, so that we can turn the CPB site into a place where people can practice free speech as well as talk about it.

We are interested in campaign ideas to raise the awareness and profile of blogs. One campaign that should be coming soon is around the slogan “I read banned blogs” which sort of plays on those old “I read banned books” badges and stickers you’d always see at independent bookshops or on the sweater of that one parent who attends school board meetings to demand to know why the Judy Blume books were taken off the shelves. I’m hoping to turn that into some sort of a design contest for our new link banners and graphics.

Eventually I’d like to see us re-invigorate our fund-raising efforts and turn that money into a legal fund of some sort or support development and distribution of new online tools that bypass censorship and help preserve privacy.

Our hope is to keep our interests aimed at all things blogging, and to look at the “protect” part of our name in a slightly broader sense. Sure, we’ll still report on imprisoned bloggers, censored and harassed bloggers. People being injured, jailed and killed for expressing themselves or sharing information in this format, but we also want to celebrate the idea of blogging as a viable medium and raise the profile some. You know, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reports Without Borders and many others are conducting amazing legal fights for free speech and electronic media. It’s not exactly a neglected area. But it’s an area under wide attack from all sides. Those organisations do great work and the benefits to reach bloggers, but their scope is much wider.

We see our niche as focusing on the individual bloggers out there. The girl who mostly writes about fashion but one week when a coup is under way in her country she becomes one of the most read political reporters. The Iranians who use mobile phones, Twitter accounts, blogs and Facebook groups to get the message out as reporters in their country are sequestered to the office. We also want to show people the tools to use for better blogging. Some of these are technological, like open source systems, proxies, security settings and the like. But they can also be things like legal guides. Letting people know their rights. We also want to highlight information about how to report on things better, file freedom of information requests, protecting their identity online and maybe some decent essays on just how to write better. All these things have the accumulative result of protecting bloggers. Because were in the day and age now where anyone can launch a website in a few clicks. It’s very easy to spread a message now. It’s also very easy to get yourself into more trouble than you planned for.

How would you say the situation for bloggers are across the globe these days? Are there any specific cases you would like to single out?

Both good and bad. It’s good that more people are blogging. It’s good that the range of topics people are blogging about is growing hourly. But it’s getting scarier as well. People are writing things, expressing themselves, getting something off their chest, but often not knowing what the response can be. The Committee supports people saying what they need to say, and we think blogs are a great way to do it, or we wouldn’t be doing this.

But we don’t live in a world where everyone simply respects everyone else’s right to free speech. When we think about censorship most of us traditionally look at actions taken by an oppressive government. That is of course, still happening all over the place. But the barriers to becoming a censor are lowering almost as fast as the barriers to becoming a blogger. Companies troll the internet and fire employees who are posting content they deem damaging to their brand image. They sue first and let the potential legal costs silence people. Cut-rate hackers launch DOS attacks because they don’t like what they’ve seen on someone’s website. The same social networks that build the systems so many of us use are sometimes too quick on the trigger to kill a group, profile or conversation that may be viewed as offensive by someone somewhere. Political action groups launch mass email campaigns to get sites taken down, siting poorly worded, vague TOS reasons that may or may not apply to what they are complaining about, but the service provider shuts them down anyway.

We try to report on these situations when we can but people also need to share the information with us however and whenever they find it. In Virginia a woman was jailed for reporting on local narcotics cops in her town. In Azerbaijan two bloggers were arrested on trumped up charges over a satirical video they posted. A woman who very likely did commit an act of libel was hit with a legal ruling that challenges blogger safety elsewhere by forcing Google to reveal the identity under rather broad conditions. All these are on our site now, but there is are loads more cases like them out there. In Iran right now people are allegedly being asked to log into their social profiles when landing at the airport so security can see what they’ve been posting on them.

You’ve appearde on Al Jazeera. Tell us a little bit about that,
please!

I participated in an episode of The Listening Post, which aired last week on Al Jazeera English.

The show was focused on the limits of online anonymity; how much people really have and how easily it can be taken away. While we work to promote the right to privacy for bloggers we also want them to be aware of existing laws as well as the very real possibility that they could be identified through their content, by their blog host or through intensive investigation by a motivated person. Bloggers need to know their rights and also the ways of keeping themselves safe, but they also need to know how much anonymity they can expect.

I’d like to thank Andrew for taking the time, and urge all of you to visit Committee to Protect Bloggers. They’re doing important stuff, so make sure you check them out.

The post Committee to Protect Bloggers: An Interview appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Earlier this week Syntagma Media launched its most recent venture, the first in a series of “hyper-local” websites. So how do you go from blog network to local websites? That’s what this interview is about.

But first some disclosure. I did the design for the non-rainbowy Syntagma blog network template, and I also design the network magazines, now discontinued or rebranded. If that isn’t enough for you, I’m also the designer behind Devon & Cornwall Online, the recent launch. With that in mind, I’ve stayed clear of anything remotely close to design or branding. I’ll post on that over at tdhedengren.com as a small case study at some point instead.

You have shrunk your Syntagma network quite a lot since its biggest iteration. Why did you decide to do that?

We went to 55 blogs on the wide network model. That model was extensively funded by text links and SEO plays. Eventually the bonanza was destroyed by Google defending the integrity of its backlink system and also its less lucrative Adsense.

I came to see it was better to have one or two composite websites than dozens of little ones. Some of the early blogs were ridiculously small-niche anyway and doomed to underperform.

I took away from the wide network model the conviction that only mainstream topics truly paid out online. Income from sites about sacred dolls and kickboxing for chimps were never going to rise above baseline costs. “Having fun” is fun, but doesn’t pay the bills for a serious business.

So what do you think about b5media’s business model then? You’ve voiced opinions on that in the past, as I’m sure long-time readers will remember.

Like all the wide networks that started after Weblogs Inc. was sold, the b5 model suffered from hubris, a lack of branding, and dependence on celebrity and narrow tech culture.

My own attempts to consolidate our multitude of sites into branded “magazines” — which you (TDH) designed — was ultimately followed by b5. However, we were coming from a direction that wasn’t quite right, and we were associated with past mistakes across the sector.

The most recent project, Devon & Cornwall Online, is a part of a network of local sites. What’s the idea here?

West Country Websites takes the West Country of England two counties at a time to build four large websites. DCO (Devon & Cornwall Online) covers many topics that are popular advertising magnets in the local press, including the “river of gold”, the classifieds.

The need for local advertising is constant, even now in hard times, and will not go away. In fact, with the local press and TV declining, the need will only grow.

We’re building this up gradually, and taking on staff as we grow. No venture capitalists are involved. It’s all in-house cash, as it was with Syntagma.

Next up, is Hants & Dorset Online (Hampshire and Dorset), then Somerset & Avon, and Glos & Wilts. If they are all successful, we may look eastward to the south, and northward beyond London. But I may have run out of energy by then.

What are the goals, traffic and income-wise, on these sites? Do you have a target percentage of the local ads market that you want to capture or something like that?

DCO has a maximum advertising income potential at Ratecard of £650,000 ($1,066,000) a year. The other sites will be similar, generating at peak over £2.5m ($4.3m) per annum.

Naturally, discounting is part of the game, so anything from £0 to £2.5m/year is possible. The upper number is our only goal apart from delivering a quality product. Fun doesn’t come into it, but will feature heavily as income rises.

As for traffic, with the exceptions of ad agencies, we will be dealing with people placing small ads and personal stuff on the site who won’t really know what any of the stats mean. That segment of our readership is potentially very large indeed, but difficult to estimate in advance.

Why aren’t these local sites blogs?

They are built around WordPress — largely because I know it well, it’s versatile and constantly updated. I’m sure there are other ways of doing it, and we may try them out in further sites.

I don’t think of them as blogs because the word has long seemed incompatible with serious business. However, when you aim eventually to post 30-40 articles a day on a single site, blog technology is perfect for that rapid turnover. That doesn’t make them “blogs” though.

But couldn’t they just as well have been more traditional blogs, with comments and everything? What makes you think a more traditional site approach will work better than the bloggish one?

We are emulating a local newspaper, not MySpace. The look is important, as is the type of article. The whole bloggy, tech-ridden, link-away style would detract from that impression. Whatever anyone says in the blogosphere, most people are happy with the newspaper format and feel reassured by it.

As for comments, I’ve long dropped them on my blogs, 1) because they are a total waste of time, and 2) you leave your business wide open to attack and possible legal problems. Comments are a vanity play that I can well do without.

I’d like to thank John Evans for doing this interview. Be sure to visit Devon & Cornwall Online, as well as the Syntagma blog, err, site. Naturally we’ll report on the upcoming sites as well here on the Blog Herald. After all, it is interesting to see how blog platforms and blogs are transforming and hiding under various names and designs to appeal new audiences.

The post From 55 Blogs to 4 Local Websites: An Interview with John Evans appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Blogs.mu lets anyone host their own WordPress MU powered site. What’s the idea behind the service? Who should use it?

That people should be able to run a WPMU based blog network without having to find their way around a server.

Anyone who wants a WPMU site but can’t bring themselves to brave the install process!

Although we do offer some very simple and easy guides opn how to use and install WordPress MU at wpmu.org – heck, if I could do it back in the day I reckon most people could do it now.

How many users do Blogs.mu have? Is it pulling its weight in cash yet?

It’s actually undergoing some pretty steady growth and usage – we had a *huge* launch which was really exciting, but like anything else – you’re never going to have a win on day 1.

You’ll see it becoming more refined and focused over the next 6 months I’m sure, and we’ll see if the idea really catches on – as the baby of our offerings it’s interesting to see how it does and doesn’t work.

I’m curious, how have you sorted out the hosting? Theoretically, Blogs.mu’s clients could each be huge blog networks on their own.

Absolutely, we’re going to be using the same hosting platform that we use for Edublogs for blogs.mu as it grows. We certainly faced a lot of challenges as that grew initially, and hosting would be up there with my no.1 headaches, but since we’ve employed our SysAdmin things have been really smooth.

It’s like wordpress.com pre-Barry, they had their own huge speed issues – ours just lasted a bit longer ;)

Another recent venture of yours is WP.mu, the WordPress MU install service. Since WordPress MU can be a bit troublesome to install, I assume there is demand for a service like this?

Absolutely, this was one product that grew entirely out of users demand… although what we think is really cool is that we don’t just install WPMU, but we also add in all the themes and plugins from premium.wpmudev.org and then install BuddyPress and bbPress and sync the user database, cookies and all that jazz.

Now, if you thought WPMU was hard to install, try integration BuddyPress and bbPress :) That’s where our real value prop is – making it dead easy for people to get their own sites!

Then I take it it’s been a good deal for you guys already, launching WP.mu?

Yeh, it’s worked out pretty well, although we’d be happy to hear from new hosting and promotional partners – and we’ve got an unbelievably good affiliate program too which might interest Herald readers.

It’s not without it’s challenges though, the systems we’ve got in place have been massively difficult to set up, but we’re pretty
pleased with it overall.

What kind of services and benefits do you off your WP.mu customers? Or, in short, why should anyone capable of installing WordPress MU on their own consider WP.mu in the first place?

It’ll save them days or weeks of pain, provide them with hundreds of $s worth of themes and plugins and let them benefit from the experience of the most experienced WPMU-ers on the web. We think it’s kinda cool :)

Finally, WordPress and WordPress MU are slated to merge. What are your thoughts on that?

I’m really excited about it to be honest – I mean suddenly having the whole wp.org community as clients is going to be pretty cool, and I think will be a real boost for WPMU… just as long as Automattic don’t decide to rename it or anything daft (when your entire business is based on domain names like wpmu.org, wp.mu and wpmudev.org… you don’t want them to suddenly start calling it multi blogs!)

I can see that! However, we could flip it around too. It would mean that the whole single hosted WordPress community, including the agencies and developers, suddenly enters your sphere too. Does that worry you?

Not at all, I think that’d be brilliant – in fact we’re looking into entering into the single user WP sphere ourselves shortly, so it’ll be a meeting of minds I hope :)

At the end of the day for us, while we love doing client work, Incsub isn’t our main focus – we like running our own projects and working with the community – if we can provide plugins, themes and support for thousands of developers doing MU-style things, then we’ll be much happier (professionally, as much as economically) than just working on a few big client MU projects.

Plus I’m a massive fan of anything that earns while I’m sleeping ;)

Ideally, how would you want WordPress and WordPress MU to merge? MU features as plugins, or what is the perfect setup, do you think?

Well, I think that in the end Matt and Donncha are going to be the people who know how best this will work – but obviously they are going to have to maintain the difference between a regular plugin and an ‘mu-plugin’ (i.e. one that’s auto on and not an option) so I’d expect that there’ll be an installation & post installation option to run the extra databases and site admin menus, and that MU will be a core option.

I did mention I’m not a coder though… right :)

Finally, what’s next for Incsub?

Well, we’re doing a big push and lot of work on Edublogs right at this minute, but that should be complete (in terms of core work) by the end of August.

But after (and possibly during that) we’ve got a really exciting new project that’s aimed more at the single user WP market, and we’re going to be continuing to add to WPMU DEV Premium – especially around BuddyPress themes and plugins, as well as some new commercial applications and the odd CMS style tool.

And one of these days I need to update the Farms theme pack (I’m Farms, btw)… sheesh… there’s a heap of a lot on :)

I’d like to thank James Farmer for taking his time doing this interview. Be sure to check out Incsub, Edublogs.org, the wp.mu install service and the blogs.mu hosting service, as well as wpmu.org and WPMU DEV. Yes, that’s a lot of links, Farmer’s a busy man for sure!

The post The James Farmer Interview: Part 2 of 2 appeared first on The Blog Herald.

So what are his thoughts on the platform, all the new projects that Incsub has rolled out, and so on? I certainly got them in this mammoth interview, split into two parts. This is Part 1.

First of all, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your company, Incsub?

Incsub is about my 4th professional incarnation, before that I was an editor at theage.com.au, lecturer at deakin.edu.au and teacher at stacks of different places.

Essentially, while I was in the lecturer mode, I started Edublogs.org to fill a need that I had – providing blogs for people – and it grew (really quick) so people started asking me about making similar sites for them.

Luckily I had also got to know Andrew Billits via the WPMU community by that time, he’s a damn great WPMU coder, and hence Incsub was born.

Incsub is something of THE WordPress MU specialist out there. How come you went down that road?

Well, we reckon there’s very little we can’t do with WPMU! Seriously though, it’s an amazing – stunning in fact – platform that we were both using for our own and client work… and it’s what a lot of large organisations (as well as hobbyists) want to use to power their blogs.

We were pretty much demand driven – as soon as we launched it became clear that there were lots of people wanting to use WPMU, and very few agencies specializing in it. Of course that’s not true now, but that’s cool because 90% of them use our code from WPMU DEV Premium anyway :)

Ah, WPMU DEV Premium. There’s a lot of discussions around GPL right now, people thinking that themes are not GPL and things like that. What’s your take on selling GPL’d content? You obviously do it, but aren’t you afraid someone will download it all and upload to the wordpress.org directory?

Well, there are a few ways of looking at it.

First up, I’m 100% a supporter of developing GPL pluigins and themes – it’s the WordPress license and if you don’t like it then you should probably look for another platform.

Sure, I’ve had my doubts about how it’d affect my business, in the past, and I’ve publicly voiced them – but I’m a convert now :)

My take is that we don’t really sell the content per se – we sell continuous and professional updates, responsive and in-depth support, peace of mind and security and guaranteed continuity… just to mention a few things.

As for the plugin repository, I think it’s safe to say that our plugins won’t be added to it, mainly because the first sentence here goes: “You can add the plugin you’ve written”.

And, even if people did, how would WPMU site owners know they were safe, secure or stable… it’s way too big a risk, and that’s what WPMU DEV Premium removes.

You’ve previously built Edublogs, a successful WordPress MU site if any. Why did you do that, and what lessons have you learnt over the years running Edublogs?

Ahhh, how long do you have? I could go on for days – buy me a few beers and I’ll make your ears hurt ;)

It’s tough to summarise, but I think the real core has been staff, we have an incredible community manager in Sue Waters and our SysAdmin is absolutely unbelievable too (and I’m not telling you his name ‘cos I wanna keep him!) – there’s only so much that Andrew, Lol and I can manage on our own – so finding and employing the right people in the right places has made my life, and the site, so much better!

Monetization, that’s another massive issue, one that I covered in a lot of detail here.

What sort of impact has the release of BuddyPress had on WordPress MU?

Well, it’s interesting. BuddyPress doesn’t really complement WPMU – it kinda takes it over – so while there’s obviously some crossover and it’s generated some interest in WPMU, really it’s like it’s own separate beast.

That’s interesting! So you don’t think it is a good extension of a regular WordPress MU blogging community, to add the Facebook-ish features of BuddyPress?

I think it’s a good extension of WordPress – and another way to use a WPMU site… will we be adding it to Edublogs.org? Simple answer, no, because we can’t.

It dominates an install, so it’d better be part of your plans from the get go rather than a later addition.

Having said that, we’re experts at Incsub of moving one blog platform to another (we recently exported 35,000 blogs off vgb.no
(some archaic Russian platform) to WPMU… so we’d be happy to look into it on a custom build :)

Stay tuned for Part 2 in this interview tomorrow! There we’ll dig into the various Incsub projects, GPL, and other interesting things.

The post The James Farmer Interview: Part 1 of 2 appeared first on The Blog Herald.