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Great Find: Have You Been Stumbled Upon?

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This being Friday, I hadn’t planned on writing another post. I had a few lined up for the day and that MIT book I’m working on is staring at me.

But I was stumbled upon again—Successful Blog was stumbled upon last week and now this. I couldn’t help myself. My famous curiosity kicked in, and I had to check it out. Once I did, I figured you might want to play with Stumble Upon over the weekend. So here I am writing this post . . .

Stumble Upon 50 image

Stumble Upon is a more user-friendly, more organized, more social–yeah, that’s what I mean–a more social, social bookmarking tool. For the web pro, del.cio.us has an interface that offers the credibility and appeal of an indexing page. For the rest of us, Stumble Upon has that “Frosted Mini-Wheat” appeal–it’s visually pleasing and fun enough for the kid in me, but sophisticated and organized to satisfy the adult as well. For the social butterfly or the college kid this one wins hands down for it’s personal interaction features.

The time it takes to get up and running on Stumble Upon is short and sweet, and a quick check at Technorati shows that it already has 1500 users linked to it. I think this is the next sleeper hit. Well, just look at the difference. The developers have met most of the problems people have with using its competition.

Stumble Upon My page image

You can edit the backgrounds, pick the categories, and do random searches to “stumble upon” sites under tagged themes. It’s addictive and fun. You can also meet people and share what you’ve found–if you so choose. More than that, it’s much nicer to look at and easier to find things.

If it’s not what you’re looking for, it might be the perfect thing for that friend or relative who finds del.cio.us overwhelming or visually intimidating.

Here’s what some of the big magazines said about Stumble Upon.

Give it a try. You might like it. I did, but then I stumble a lot even without it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Mastering Content in Your Niche

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Guest Writer: Gary Fugere

Gary Fugere of Earn a living without a job took me up on my call for posts by sending in his How to become the “Go To” in your niche.

This post, originally written as a submission to Darren Rowse’s 31-day challenge, offers head-on advice for getting in control of the information grapevine in your blogging niche. Main points that Gary covers include

  • Be a reporter, not a writer. Readers are looking for answers.
  • Get plugged in with a news aggregator such as Bloglines.
  • Learn to find compelling content nuggets. He offers several strategies, including how to master the nuances of Bloglines search, Google Alerts, Yahoo Buzz, and Google Zeitgeist. I was impressed that everything you need to know is there and complete.

To finish off the document there are eighteen additional links to resources you might explore. This post is well worth checking out.

Here’s a taste of the resources Gary has to offer.

Look Smart Search for Articles

Thanks Gary for sharing what you know with us. This is what a community blog is all about. 😛

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Directory Listings as Blog Promotion

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The blog looks great. You’ve been through the Blog Review Checklist. You’ve got several posts with great titles and compelling content–to let readers know you’ll be around, when they come back. Now it’s time to let people know that you exist.

List your blog in the Blog Directories. Which ones? All of them–every one that you can find the smallest reason to. Listing is a slightly longer and more involved task than changing phone companies. However if you take the time, your work will last for the life of your blog.

Prepare a document with the following information before you start. Keep this document. It’s your blog’s biography. You’ll have reason to use it as your blog makes friends and influences people.

  • Your username Pick one with no spaces. Many directories and forums require that, and no one needs too many usernames.
  • Your email address This email address will get directory updates and be used for verifications. You may want it separate from your personal email address. You’ll need a system to keep track of directory correspondence. Much of the login/password email that you want to keep will have subject lines that start with blog-something.
  • Your password I’m sure you know the cautions and rules about passwords.
  • The name of your blog Be sure that you have the spelling, spacing, and everything about the name exactly as you want it. Some directories make it difficult to go back to change it later.
  • The URL This is http:// (nameofmyblog) .com
  • The feed Some directories will ask for your RSS or XML feed. You should be able to find that address within your blogware documentation. It will look like your URL with an extension.
  • The description Though you’re probably anxious to get done, don’t hurry through this one. This is your advertising, and it will be out there a long time. Again, in some places you may not be able to change it later. Make two versions one under 150 words and one under 300 words. Some directories have stricter length limits.
  • Keywords Choose keywords that readers would use to look for a blog like yours. Review them to make certain that they’re not so broad that they apply to every blog, or so narrow that only you would know them.

Then start with one of the lists below. Approach the task as suits your nature. I did a few every day until I was done. That way I could work on writing and do things on other parts of my blog too.

Here are three blog directory lists to get you started. As with all things on the Internet, Directories may have changed since these lists were compiled.

Google’s Blog Directory List

Robin Good’s RSS Top55 – Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Free Web Directory List From Smiley Cat

–“ME “Liz” Strauss

Steve Rubel’s Technorati Hacks

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THIS JUST IN:

You may have heard about this already from Darren at Problogger or directly from Steve Rubel himself. Still it’s the hot topic of our day, and it belongs in the Survival Kit.

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion is sharing Ten Technorati Hacks geared for the “digitally inclined” who want to get more mileage out of the Link King. This post is one in Steve’s series of hack postings. It’s complete with visuals and plenty of things that you can’t do in a Blogger template. However, even the newest blogger will find some useful information in a quick read.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Title Tags and a Poem to Technorati

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I promised you a Tuesday post on tags and this is it. One thing this successful blogger knows is that you don’t tell your readers that you’re going to do something and then not follow through with it. I’m following through with it.

When I started getting my notes together, I knew something about tags. I had put keywords deftly in my template just as Darren Rowse describes in his article, The Importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization. In fact, I had done things so much like he had, I’d done the same things wrong.

This post explains the importance of title tags in how search engines look at our blogs. Darren added a two-word term to his. Then he graphed what happened. In just three days, his position on that term at Google changed from 65th to 10th. On MSN, his listing went from 40th to 1st. The comments that follow the article also add some new information, including how to respond gracefully when you mess up your host’s template.

Now for something completely different–a poem to Technorati Tags.

Oh Technorati
you fickle one
you really had me going
thinking if I chased enough
I might find solid ground.
But your faint mystery
was finally unraveled
when I found Improbulus
who carefully explained how the
premise is structurally unsound.

In other words, I found a post by a writer named Improbulus, Technorati tags: an introduction that provides everything you’d ever want to know about tags with a capital T and probably more.

I’m a saturation learner, so I found it fascinating to see exactly how the Technorati system might be used. Improbulus provides subheads to guide us through this well-organized analysis of the possibilities. Be sure to read the end where Improbulus gives an opinion of the downside of the system.

–ME “Liz” Strauss