Great Find: Absolutely Del.icio.us Tool Collection

March 12, 2006 by Liz

Folksonomy and tag categories got your eyes crossed?
Has social bookmarking started controlling you rather than the other way around?

The Addiction

Hi. My name is Liz and I’m a social bookmarker.
At first I just did it on the weekends to keep track of a few sites and articles I liked. Then I started social bookmarking to get new ideas. Soon it became a daily habit–once, then twice, then many times a day. I got to recognize submitters names and tastes. I started submitting myself–things I saw that I liked.

Social bookmarking utilities were both a great boon and a great downfall to my productivity. I could go there to find a passel of spectacular ideas. But more and more I found myself lost in an enchanted forest, thinking I’d leave after the next look, or the next, or maybe the next. The disorganization of the folksonomy became an addiction–I kept thinking the next title I saw might be the fabulous prize I was looking for. It was intellectual gambling.

That’s when I knew I needed help, and I found it at Quick Online Tips.

The Prescription

Finally, someone has collected tools and tips from all over the Internet to help Social Bookmarking addicts.

Great Find: Absolutely Del.icio.us – Complete Tool Collection from Quick Online Tips
Type of article: List of posts on tools for using Del.icio.us
Permalink: http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html
Audience: Anyone wants to make the most of social bookmarking
Content: This list offers well over 100 posts that discuss how to use del.icio.us to get the most out of it. You’ll find the Beelerspace Beginners Guide as well as the popular Slacker Manager post, the Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us users. Most of the hints and helps here will work with any social bookmarking utility you use.

Click the screenshot to begin a new life of tackling that taxonomy.

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tool Collection Screenshot

If you try this at home, don’t read the entire list at one sitting. Choose one or two to explore each morning. Then come back to tag my best work to share with your friends. 🙂

Benefits for the “Magic Middle Man”

Social bookmarking is a powerful tool for research, idea generation, and promoting your business. It’s a great way for those of us in the Magic Middle to exert our control as an audience. Learning how to use it efficiently and effectively can

boost personal productivity,
offer ideas to promote your brand and your business,
provide a venue to showcase your best work to a wide audience,
and has an immediate, if short-lived impact, that may gain a few new readers.

Of course, I exaggerated the downside of social bookmarking at the start of this article, but the temptation to spend too much time exploring is also very real. How do you keep social bookmarking from eating up your time? How do you use it to its best advantage?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: Controlling Your Online Identity

March 11, 2006 by Liz

Great Find: Lifehacker: Have a Say in What Google Says about You by Gina Trapani
Type of article: Feature on personal identity, personal safety
Permalink:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/feature/geek-to-live-have-a-say-in-what-google-says-about-you-152444.php

Target Audience:Everyone should know this
Content: Gina Trapani, Lifehacker Editor, offers valuable advice on how to make sure that what people find when they Google your name is actually information about YOU and information you want them to have. To quote the intoduction to the article

A recent poll here on Lifehacker shows that for about half of you, information about someone else with the same name or a web site you donÃ¢â¬â¢t control gets returned in search results for your name. Today weÃ¢â¬â¢ll go over the ins and outs of setting up a nameplate web site that makes you Googleable with a web page whose content YOU control. –Gina Trapani, Editor, Lifehacker

Using your name page is also a great way to promote yourself, your brand, and your business. Everyone should take a look at this one. To read all about it, click the screenshot.

Thanks for this important information, Gina.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 20 SOBs

March 11, 2006 by Liz

muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this badge’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: TopicâBlog Promotion

March 9, 2006 by Liz

I was exploring on Technorati this morning and I found this for you . . .

Topic: Blog Promotion

Great Find: Topic: Blog Promotion
Type of article: Link list of posts on blog promotion
Permalink: http://mostbloggers.blogspot.com/2005/11/topic-blog-promotion-mostbloggers.html
Audience: Anyone who is looking to promote their brand, their business, and their blog
Content: The screenshot shows just a piece of the list. There are actually 23 links to posts on blog promotion. Most of the links lead to more links, directories, tools you might use to establish and promote a blog. To quote the post, the links are all about

discovering ways to spread the word about your blog, how to increase readership. . .

So here you go. Click the screenshot to explore what is there.

When you’re done looking, come back. I’ll be here.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Before You Publish–Check for Spiders and Opportunities

March 9, 2006 by Liz

Before you hit that PUBLISH button . . .

Publishing occurs whenever an author shares a work with an audience. An email memo, a note that says where you are going, a paper you wrote for a class in Econometrics, these are all forms of publishing.

–ME Strauss

Reading for Spiders

Publishing for the web has two audiences–people and search engine spiders. The first time I read my work over, I read it for people. I checked for errors that get between my readers and the message. I also had my proofreader check it to catch what my dyslexia missed. Yesterday, she caught quite bit.

Then I go over it a second time quickly for my second audience–search engine spiders–to make sure the spiders don’t trip and have plenty to eat.

Making Sure the Investment Pays Off

Prorating the time that I spent gathering ideas, I’ve probably spent 60-90 minutes on this one post. Time is money, and I think of that time spent as an investment. Now is when I make sure that investment pays off. I’ve made a short Pre-Flight Publishing list that I run down, before I pass say, “Go.”

Is the content keyword rich? By waiting to read for keywords until after all other checks, I make sure that I don’t forfeit quality to pray at the altar of SEO. Now, I can look for keywords my readers might search for and make sure that they find the relevant content that I have to offer. I won’t be reaching, and they won’t be disappointed. Current relationships will stay strong, and new readers will be pleased with what they encounter here.
What tags might I add that belong with this post? Tags can help search engine spiders properly index my post. Post tags are definitely blog, brand, and business promotion. If your blogging software doesn’t easily allow you to tag your posts, there are plug-ins and hacks for every platform out there.
What related articles do I have that readers might be interested in reading? Offering related articles for readers to go to when they finished your post, gives people more information about a subject they’ve already shown interest in. It also gets readers more involved with you, your blog, your business, and your brand. The intra-link that you make at the end of your post shows people how your content relates and is relevant throughout your blog–this helps search engines index it as well.
Are there opportunities for trackbacks? If you’ve mentioned another blogger’s work or if what you’ve said meshes beautifully with the conversation on another blog, send a trackback to let that blogger know.
Is this that one-in-a-million post that I should self-promote to other blogs? If you’ve written the post that reveals the nature of how to get “Google Goodness” from every post, carefully write a brief introduction of yourself and your post to a select few bloggers you wish to share it with. Do be sure it’s a one-in-a-million post, and do explain your reasons for thinking it’s a match with their blogs. If you don’t read a blog, don’t send a link. Period. Either way, it’s a long shot that a post really is the one-in-a-million post that we think it is.

Those are just a few ways I try to diversify and grow my investment. I like to make sure the time I spend continues to pay off, compounding interest well into the future.

You probably have other ways that you build promotion into the posts you write. Will you take a minute to share one with us?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List

March 8, 2006 by Liz

I’ve been having to go to meetings lately. So I’ve been printing my most popular articles and taking them with me, using them as writing fodder–as a place to get ideas. That’s what got me thinking how often it is that we forget the best promotion that we have is sitting in our blog archives.

Letting readers know what’s in our archives is a great way to invite them to become a part of our brands, our blogs, and our businesses in a more intimate fashion.

Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List

Here’s a check list of a few things we all should be doing to promote our blogs from within. I call it the Blog Archive Promotion To-Do List.

Put Popular Posts where folks can find them. I’m as guilty as the next guy, as I’m not a tech and I’ve not yet charmed one into helping me put up an automatic list of popular posts. But in the meantime, I have a Popular Post Page in the sidebar, and I’ll keep it even after I get that list of Popular Posts. If you can’t create a page, hand code links to your best posts.
Feature Related Articles at the end of every new post. When you finish writing a post, let folks know about other articles you’ve written that they might be interested in. Intra-linking of this nature is not only a service to your readers, it lets search engines know how the content on your blog has relevance and context for your readers.
Intra-Link to Past Articles when you can. If you have an article that perfectly fits what you’re talking about as my post Think Before You Intra-link so perfectly suits this one, remember to include a link to it.
Read your stats to see what’s popular and make more. Then read those posts to learn what made them favorites with readers. Keep popular posts in a collection. Try to figure out what they have in common. Use those common features to guide you as you write in the future.
If you get key word traffic, make sure it’s landing on the posts that it should. If it isn’t find a way to tag your posts so that the next person who searches with that key word gets to the post that delivers the right goods.

I’m sure I’ve not thought of all the ways we might be using archives as promotion. You must have ideas too. What are some creative ways that you’ve used your archives to encourage readers to visit more and stay longer at your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss