Archives for March 2011

INFOGRAPHIC: How Do Bloggers Compare?

Mar. 24, 2011 By Ari Herzog

Compared to other bloggers around the world, my U.S. residency marks me in the 33 percentile and my self-employed status is among the 21 percentile. I also join 81% who’ve blogged over two years and I’m among 43% with a graduate degree. I also use Facebook and Twitter, and social networking sites account for comparable percentages of inbound blog traffic. Blog revenue is an area I’ve purposefully strayed from but is also an area where I’m progressively seeking to do more.

Where do you stack in the below infographic?

[Source: Grasshopper Group]

Is a Blog Necessary for a Business?

Mar. 23, 2011 By Ari Herzog

In the wake of Steven Papas sharing 4 tips on internet marketing to increase targeted traffic to business websites, how necessary is it for that business to have a blog?

There’s no denial blogs can bring in new readers and introduce conversations about the brand and product line, but considering business blogs are prone to 5 failures, who on staff is responsible for writing, curating, and promoting those blog articles? Who will write blog articles regularly and who will interact in the comments?

Referring to statistics and jargon from a Hubspot inbound marketing report, Sarah Ryan insists that all firms, whether a Fortune 5000 company or a sole proprietorship, need to build and maintain a blog. She believes a business without a blog will fail.

Does there come a point when blog upkeep is too much work?

Do the organizational goals and objectives support the blog? Without a foundation, the blog will not survive.

Would tweeting or facebooking suffice as shorter-form blogs?

Can you think of successful competitive businesses with positive revenue that do not have blogs? Or, do you think Sarah is correct that businesses fail without them?

Highlight This: A New Way to Comment

Mar. 22, 2011 By Ari Herzog

Always on the lookout for new technologies, scripts, and plugins to enhance productivity and enrich conversation across the social web, I’m introducing a new plugin that enables you to highlight any text and be prompted to email it, tweet it, send it to Facebook, or add a comment.

That’s right. With Highlighter, you can add a comment to the in-line text itself that is separate from any comment you leave farther below.

If you can’t see the video, click here for the overview.

Give it a try. Click that highlighted sentence, which I just created.

You can create your own highlights by highlighting anything else.

You can also mouseover images and see the same pop-up prompt.

The magic is when people comment on the same content, sharing different ideas and thoughts about something I write or someone else’s comment.

Click and play with it here, see the summary box below, and then share with your friends. Highlighted comments will be moderated to combat spam.

Eh?

UPDATE: I’ve since removed it due to little use and comments of cons outweighing pros. If it could be turned on for specific articles and not be on by default for all articles, there could be a use. Or, if the blog turned off comments, this could also work. But for now, it’s turned off here.

Yes, You Can Steal This Blog

Mar. 21, 2011 By Ari Herzog

You read that title correct.

This is not a new concept. More and more blog writers are opening the floodgates and insisting the world steal their content.

If you read something in these articles that inspire you to share it somewhere else, go on and copy and paste it. While it would be nice to receive a contextual link back with a citation of my name to whatever you’re quoting, you’re not obligated. Just take it, use it, share it, blog it, mention it on television, include it in your book, whatever.

This blog’s content policy is specific, quoting in part:

All words, images, video, and other content on this blog are uncopyrightable except where specified as the property of someone else.

That language has been there for many months. I’m announcing it now.

Click that uncopyrightable link to read what Leo Babauta writes about copyrights vs uncopyrights.

Here’s the meat:

Copyright stems from a protective mindset, one that believes the creator owns his work, and must protect that ownership in order to profit from said work. The creator will share his work with others, but only at a price, and anyone who takes without paying, or uses it as a basis for further creations, is stealing.
That’s the copyright mindset.
The uncopyright mindset is that of someone who gives without any guarantee of profit, who lets go of ownership and believes the world owns his creation. He hopes to contribute to the world in a small way, and if others benefit from this contribution, that’s a good thing. And if others use his contribution to create something new and beautiful, that’s a wonderful thing.
The uncopyright creator lets go of ownership, because to hold on to ownership hurts the world, and to try to protect that ownership leads to unnecessary stress.

Christine and David Schmitt want you to steal their picture above from Flickr, too, as long as you abide by this attribution notice.

Why should my blog be any different?

Cognizant so-called scraping websites have stolen my blog content in full or in part for years, I point you once again to the updated list of plugins on this blog and that the RSS Footer plugin has been installed here for over two years. Scroll to the bottom of this scraped page to see the plugin in action, to see my name and my source link in the footer.

Some people cry foul at stolen content. That’s their right.

To the scrapers and to you, I encourage you to consider that stealing is sharing and I humbly ask you to share the social web with me. Use what you want, link back to me and mention my name if you have a good heart but you can use it without mentioning my name if you prefer.

Who’s with me in giving up control?

How to Increase Web Traffic

Mar. 18, 2011 By Guest Blogger

The following is written by Steven Papas.

Nobody can survive as an internet marketer without traffic. Traffic is the reason a seller will make sells, it is the reason you will get subscribers and it stands at the center of internet business and money making.

Targeted traffic on the other hand refers to people who already have interest on the content of your site and will constantly visit it. Why will they return often? Probably because you have a content that appeals to their needs and they will continue to come back as long as you retain your high quality creation efforts.

How Do You Get Targeted Traffic?

Check related blogs.
One of the easiest ways of getting targeted traffic to your blog is from other related blogs – blogs that treat issues on the same niche as you. If you are able to find blogs with high and constant targeted traffic already, you will profit more. iBlogZone can get you started.

You can start by leaving quality comments on those blogs and with time you can extend your efforts to guest posting.

Combine these two tools and consider buying advertisements on that blog too (if the webmaster sells ads).

Use related forums.
Forums are places that many people visit everyday to find solutions, enrich their knowledge and find out what other people in their niche are doing. Many people gather at forums like Blog Engage and Blogger Forum to discuss and help each other out. Join forums that are related to your blog, following their rules and regulations. Put a short but action oriented description of your blog and a link to it on your forum signature and as you are posting, you are building backlinks and getting targeted traffic in return.

Use search engines.
You can either buy ads from search engines, which might be costly, or go for traditional search engine traffic generation. While thinking about generating traffic through search engines, you have to think about using keywords or must learn how they work first. The entire work and services of search engines can be laid down to keywords and keyphrases. The best way to come up with keywords is to think about what people would type in search engines to find you.

Recently, it has been identified that searches are now conducted more using the long-tail keyword phrases than keywords alone. It means that instead of searching for “cat rearing,” web users are more specific in order to narrow down the search and save time and will type something like “cat rearing mistakes to avoid.” The more you can narrow your blog contents down to solving specific problems with long-tail keywords the better. I receive traffic and make sales because of such long keyword phrases.

Use social media and bookmarking sites.
Social media and social bookmarking sites, such as StumbleUpon, are other online space where you can meet with great number of people. People who are already interested in your niche along with potential buyers and followers are all there; you just need to reach out to them. Some of these sites like Twitter will allow you to reach out to many people with just a single post.

Is Targeted Traffic Important?

You can’t survive without traffic; it make the whole process of internet marketing go round.

Blog commenting plays a major role in forming a community around a blog and attracting new followers and subscribers. You can’t generate sales without targeted traffic. They are the reason we are out here blogging and if they are gone by any means, our entire blogging efforts will be grounded because there will be no profit and thus no encouragement. The more backlinks you build, the higher your ranking you get in search results for your targeted keywords.

When you end up in the first page of Google your traffic explodes. The greatest advantage of getting traffic through Google first page is that your average bounce rate decreases dramatically, because these users know exactly what they are looking for and they land in your nice well-crafted webpage.

I advise you make a plan of your daily activity using the above techniques, especially guest posting and stick to it 100 percent of the time. You will soon enjoy your hard earned traffic.

Tweet Manually and Be Sincere

Mar. 17, 2011 By Ari Herzog

I recently received three direct messages from people after I followed them on Twitter:

1. Thanks for following. I try to mostly tweet interesting stuff I find. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting as well.

2. Thanks for following! I do check my messages daily, so be sure to DM me if you ever need anything in blogging & social media!

3. Thanks for following. I look forward to your tweets!

Direct messages are private messages that can only seen by the sender and receiver. You can only DM me if I follow you. If I follow you and you don’t follow me, I can’t DM you back.

While many people treat direct messages as fodder for personalized content, some are prone to send the same direct message in bulk to everyone. The above automatic messages were likely scheduled through applications such as Social Oomph.

By contrast, here are manual DMs I received from three other people. Note the personalization and inclusion of my name:

1. Ari – Thanks for the re-follow. I hope all is going well with you. Been busy?

2. Well hi Ari! Thank you for following me back! I am happy to be connected with you here! Hope this finds you well.

3. Thanks for following, Ari – I seriously appreciate being in your select few: hope the weather is getting a bit warmer for you now.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer to be treated as a name and not a number. Stop sending automatic DMs. You’re hurting your reputation.