via twistimage.com
Comment, call or use the contact form if you’d like to discuss how this applies to your business…
Keep Killing Your Blogs
I read a post a little while back from Mathew Ingram about people killing their blogs and starting email newsletters. While I think email newsletters and email marketing are alive and well (and I highly recommend them), I can’t see the value in killing a blog. A blog is a media property. It’s free organic search. It’s a way to communicate one to many, but then get extension (yes, people can forward your email, but how clunky). It’s a bit more object permanence, insofar as it’s out here on the web, even if you get it sent to your inbox, too.
Blogs are media. Cameron Rawson has TechLeash. He’s got a platform in northern UK that sets him out as a guy interested in tech and the future. If it’s just an email list, it’s much harder for him to be discovered. He has to be passed around like a secret.
Blogs are multi-faceted. Steve Garfield can teach you how to Get Seen, or he can send you Off on a Tangent. We can do many things with blogs.
Blogs are sales engines (if you want them to be). I’ve written about my worry reduction buttons before. Though you can market via email (and many people – including me – do), you can market even more with Google
’s and Twitter
via chrisbrogan.com
Not to mention the fact that done right with a tool like MailChimp, a blog can automatically feed your newsletter so you don’t need to make a choice between a blog or newsletter — they can be a tightly integrated part of your internet marketing…
Make the switch to Posterous [+ WordPress]
A couple of weeks ago, the brilliant guys at Posterous started an even more brilliant marketing campaign to tout the efficacy of their Posterous platform against other blogging tools. They culminated their campaign with a post on the ‘Top 5 reasons to switch from WordPress to Posterous’ by saying…
“We’d be crazy to declare war on WordPress. It’s the most popular blog platform in the world — gazillions of bloggers have custom WP installations with plugin functionality that Posterous won’t touch anytime soon.
But WordPress isn’t for everyone, a fact supported by the thousands of WordPress users who have switched to Posterous in the last two weeks. So we thought we’d let some of them tell you why they switched.” Source: Top 5 reasons to switch from WordPress to Posterous – The Official Posterous Posterous
I encourage you to follow the link and read the 5 reasons. They conclude by saying…
“We’ve made it easy for you to make up your own mind by making the move from WordPress to Posterous hassle-free. We’ll copy over your blog content, URL slugs, comments and tags. Just go to posterous.com/switch/wordpress and enter in the url of your blog and email address.
We’ll take it from there. You don’t even need to set up a Posterous account. We’ll email you when we’re done copying your blog. And don’t worry, your WordPress blog will still be there.” Source: Top 5 reasons to switch from WordPress to Posterous – The Official Posterous Posterous
Here’s where I’ll add my two cents — which I think is actually worth quite a bit more! While I have used Posterous alone to take down website competition with much bigger staffs and budgets, the point I’d like to make here is that the answer in business is rarely either/or — many times it’s both/and. IMHO, WordPress still reigns supreme when it comes to the ability to theme a site and leverage plugins — they said it themselves: “custom WP installations with plugin functionality that Posterous won’t touch anytime soon” but Posterous handles some of the more difficult WordPress tasks automagically. So, why not use BOTH?! Posterous can automatically post to over 25 different internet platforms so I post to my Posterous blog and then autopost to my WordPress site. That way, I can leverage the 5 reasons to switch while still using my powerful WordPress site with the theme, the plugins and the seo that I’ve come to love AND generate valuable seo links from my Posterous blog to my WordPress blog as well. As you can see below, it’s working like crazy…
My ‘e1evation workflow’ leverages the simplicity of Posterous and the publishing power of WordPress in one, easy to use approach. I used this workflow for the 2nd quarter of this year and my traffic increased 590%. What’s even better is that thanks to Posterous, it’s drop dead simple to teach. Comment, call or use the contact form to discuss how we can apply the ‘e1evation workflow’ to your business…
How to get a gravatar…
via en.gravatar.com
What is a gravatar? “On Gravatar, users can register an account based on their email address, and upload an avatar to be associated with the account. Gravatar plugins are available for popular blogging software; when the user posts a comment on such a blog that requires an e-mail address, the blogging software checks whether that e-mail address has an associated avatar at Gravatar. If so, the Gravatar is shown along with the comment. Gravatar support is provided natively in WordPress as of v2.5 [1] and Redmine web based project management application beginning with version 0.8 (2008-12-07) [2]. Support for Gravatars is also provided via a third party module in the Drupal web content management system [3].” Bottom line, your gravatar is a personal icon that is automatically displayed when you comment on websites. It’s easy to set up and it makes you look like a pro…
What Will Happen To My Blog When I Die?
As morbid as it sounds, have you ever wondered what will happen to your blog when you expire from the face of this earth? This post was prompted by a regular guest blogger on someone else’s blog who suddenly disappeared from the blogging world. Mails to him were also unanswered, and his popular SEO blog was abandoned and then deleted when the domain expired.
While I won’t be drawn into any speculation as to whether this blogger had suddenly passed on, this incident just reminds us of how short life can be and how death can be both swift and sudden. But in our online community, it just begs the question “What will happen to our blogs when we die?”
There are just 2 ways how our blog will end up when we pass away.
Follow the ‘via’ link to go to the source…
8 Habits of Highly Excellent Bloggers
Ever wondered what are the traits of the top, successful and excellent bloggers?
I have. Since I started my blog, The Personal Excellence Blog, in 2008, I have studied top bloggers extensively. I read many articles on how to build a great blog. I listened to different bloggers say their piece. Through personal experimentation, I learned what works and what doesn’t work, and integrated them as blogging habits. It has given me great results. After a lot of hard work in the past 1.5 years, The Personal Excellence Blog has grown into an well trusted and established resource on how to achieve excellence in life. It has 3,500 subscribers, 5,000 readers a day, 110,000 page views a month, over 160 articles, a bundle of free ebooks and has been featured on CNN and AsiaOne.
While there’s still quite a way before my blog reaches the ranks of A-List blogs like ProBlogger, Zen Habits and Seth Godin’s blog, somehow I’m not daunted by what’s ahead. If the past 1.5 years have taught me anything, it’s that the top bloggers of excellence have 8 consistent habits – 8 habits, which, when we practice duly, are guaranteed to bring you results. It’s not a miracle, it’s not luck, nor is it an abnormality. By living in line with these 8 habits, you become a highly excellent blogger as well.
via problogger.net
Preparing a Sermon and Blogging; Same Diff!
via youtube.com
Here’s one for all my pastor friends! imho? Pastors should be using blogging more to establish a thought leadership position and drive traffic to their websites — hopefully, get more mindshare and attendance as a result. [Note: this speaker Darren Rowse is one of the top bloggers in the world and imho means ‘in my humble opinion’…]
Blogging platform Posterous takes preposterous swipe at Tumblr
Direct attacks and unprovoked hostility are usually reserved for gossip blogs, not the people who make the platforms that power them.
But Posterous, the blog service that lets users post using e-mail, did just that Tuesday, taking a shot at a platform called Tumblr on its company blog. The headline: “Hey Tumblr users: Want comments? Need privacy? Graduate to Posterous.”
“Blogging on Tumblr is sort of like being in high school,” the statement reads. “But you know deep-down that you can’t be in high school forever. Eventually, you have to move on.”
Me? I’m a Posterous guy! What about you?
Practice the HALT Method to Curb Impulse Purchases
via lifehacker.com
To this acronym I add S for sleepy. I use the HALTS feature as a filter before making any major decision! Oh, and don’t forget: no drinking and emailing or blogging…
How to Write a Social Media Policy
An office worker was fired after her employer discovered her sex blog. A waitress was fired for venting about a customer on Facebook. A woman lost a job offer at Cisco because of something she said on Twitter. These incidents illustrate why it might be wise to create a social media policy for your employees.
“I would say it is absolutely crucial for any size business with employees to have a social media policy,” said Vivienne Storey, general manager of BlandsLaw, a boutique law firm outside of Sydney, Australia, that specializes in employment law. Storey also writes for the firm’s blog on social-media policy issues. “If you don’t, how do you manage and monitor what is being said about the company and how social media is used?”
A social media policy outlines for employees the corporate guidelines or principles of communicating in the online world. Do you need an explicit social media policy? We’ll outline steps to make that decision, as well as what to include and how to implement the new policy.
via inc.com
Marketing In Twenty Minutes (Or Less)
Let’s face it, when it comes to getting things done, most people want to do it either quick or easy (ok, sometimes both).
If you have a strategy in place and take the time to build some semblance of (loyalty) – and yes, that can be either online, offline or both – you can push your marketing to be cheap and easy (sort of). The truth is (and there’s no big insight here) that the best brands have built up enough equity within their audience that a lot of the tactical execution can become cheap, easy and effective to boot. Remember, cheap and easy doesn’t mean annoying and bad.
A Blog does this very well.
No, you can’t build your entire Marketing portfolio by simply starting a Blog, but Blogging and many of the other Social Media tools, channels and platforms do allow you to market on-the-fly. I recently sat down with some fairly senior marketing executives and when the topic of Blogs and Blogging came up, many of them reverted back to the old, “I simply don’t have enough time in the day to get to Blogging,” chestnut. Many of the other Marketing folks who were still updating their Blogs on a fairly frequent basis complained that they still need to allocate a chunk of time to get the Blogging done.
via twistimage.com
…and cheap! [quick, easy, AND cheap…]
10 Effective Ways To Monetize Your Blog
Every day people ask me how they can make money with their blog, so today I wanted to go thru my top ways to make money.
First thing you should know is if you want to make money with your blog long term , then you will need more then one way to monetize your blog..You know the old saying mom used to say “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” lol who knew moms advise [sic] would come in handy with my blog and making money.
Understand that “blogging” alone will not make you money, but using some or all of the ways I share below will help.
My list includes some fast to start ways and some long term with a little effort ways to make money. So regardless of your efforts, you can make money with your blog.
Follow the ‘via’ link to go to the source…
Why Should Your Business Use Social Media?
According to the Social Media Marketing Report for 2010, marketers are seeing a significant increase in web traffic with only a few hours of time invested per week. They also have a noticeable increase in their search engine rankings and are able to track deals that were closed due to their participation in the Social Media space. B2C’s tend to participate more on Facebook and B2B’s focus more time on LinkedIn.
The most common combination of efforts take place on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs. More companies are looking to forums to create smaller consumer driven social networks that are specific to their industry.
So, Social Media can be used to monitor, own and increase brand recognition. All with the end goal of obtaining more qualified buyers for your product or service. What’s stopping you from entering into the Social Media realm?
See <a href="http://elevation.company/2010/06/12/blogging-is-the-answer-now-what-is-the-question-2/…
http://elevation.company/2010/06/12/blogging-is-the-answer-now-what-is-the-questi…>
The Future of Cloud Computing
A solid majority of technology experts and stakeholders participating in the fourth Future of the Internet survey expect that by 2020 most people will access software applications online and share and access information through the use of remote server networks, rather than depending primarily on tools and information housed on their individual, personal computers. They say that cloud computing will become more dominant than the desktop in the next decade. In other words, most users will perform most computing and communicating activities through connections to servers operated by outside firms.
Among the most popular cloud services now are social networking sites (the 500 million people using Facebook are being social in the cloud), webmail services like Hotmail and Yahoo mail, microblogging and blogging services such as Twitter and WordPress, video-sharing sites like YouTube, picture-sharing sites such as Flickr, document and applications sites like Google Docs, social-bookmarking sites like Delicious, business sites like eBay, and ranking, rating and commenting sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor.
This does not mean, however, that most of these experts think the desktop computer will disappear soon. The majority sees a hybrid life in the next decade, as some computing functions move towards the cloud and others remain based on personal computers.
via pewresearch.org
Blogging is the answer. Now, what is the question?
My business website is one of the most visited sites in Wisconsin, outranking websites with much bigger brands, more popular products, and bigger marketing staffs. How do I do it all by myself? The short answer is that I blog. The longer answer is that I have a documented workflow that anyone can use to drive traffic to their website and value proposition and it’s driven by email and bookmarking – two skills that almost everyone has mastered in this new millennium…
Now I don’t know a whole lot about search engine optimization or SEO – if that’s what you’re after, you want to call my friends at Envano. I do know however, that if you use the right tools and process, there’s a natural SEO that occurs through frequent posting. That ‘right tool’ is a blog…
“B2B blogging experts understand that a blog is a lead generation machine. This blog generates more traffic than our main company website. Each month, tens of thousands of people find this blog through search engines and social media websites, and thousands of them like the content enough to take the next step and respond to one of our offers and become a lead.
Some B2B bloggers think a business blog is just about thought leadership. Yes, B2B blogging is great for thought leadership and brand building. But, with this blog we get all the benefits of thought leadership, and also get lots of leads. By maximizing the lead generation potential of your B2B blog, you can have your cake (thought leadership) and eat it too (leads).” Source: How to Turn a Blog into a B2B Lead Generation Machine
There are options to consider whether you have a website or not. The first situation may actually be easier to resolve, depending on how much you want your new blog to resemble your existing website. I used to be a real stickler on this, but as time has gone on, I’ve become less concerned about matching the exact look and feel of the site [just know there are options for you regardless of your perspective] and more concerned about just driving traffic.
It’s an easy thing for me to add a blog to an existing site that will drive traffic using my ‘e1evation workflow’. From a design perspective, it’s much easier to just start from scratch using WordPress – a blogging platform that offers blogs that are already integrated with websites – but starting from scratch begs the issue of how you will populate the other pages on your site with information about your brand and products…
The bottom line is that whether you have an existing website or not, there are a couple of “good, fast, and cheap” solutions that are available to you. If you’re trying to figure out how you can add blogging and social media to your already overflowing plate and still get home for supper, comment, call or contact me — I’d love to show you how…
Reblog this at your own legal risk
Bloggers rip, reuse and rehash text and media from the entrails of the Internet all the time, but the legality of doing so remain contentious.
Legal questions aside, the major blogging platforms have come to facilitate the reproduction of content from other websites.
Last week, WordPress, the top host of blogs, added a “reblog” feature. Clicking that button composes a new post housed on your blog suffixed with the headline, description, thumbnail and link to the source material — a process nearly identical to adding a link to your Facebook profile.
“Borrowing” content has been a common practice among bloggers practically from the beginning. You can take whatever you want as long as you give credit, right?
Not necessarily.
I ‘slurp’ content all the time as you can see here. Follow the ‘via’ link feature for a better understanding of the ‘dos and don’ts’…
Steve Jobs to crowd: ‘We’re having a little problem here’
Apple‘s chief exec and irreplaceable master of ceremonies has few if any equals when it comes to wowing audiences during product demos, but even Steve Jobs‘s famous reality-distortion field couldn’t protect him from an embarrassing Wi-Fi snafu during the big WWDC keynote Monday.
About 20 or 30 minutes into the big iPhone reveal, the Wi-Fi network that Jobs was using to show off Web browsing on the iPhone 4’s revamped screen conked out, leaving Apple’s normally poised, ultra-confident CEO a bit red-faced as the audience stared at a giant blank Web page.
“Our networks in here are always unpredictable. They are slow today,” said Jobs, as he waited, and waited, and waited. No dice.
Then Jobs asked the audience for a little assistance. “You know, you could help me out if you’re on Wi-Fi, if you could just get off. … I’d appreciate it.” Naturally, the members of the audience — probably half of whom were furiously live-blogging away — roared with laughter, and the guffaws only grew louder when an error message popped up reading “could not activate cellular network.” AT&T, anyone?
“Yep, I know that,” Jobs replied testily, as the wireless problems dragged on for another minute.
“Well, geez, I don’t like this. I’m afraid I have a problem and I won’t be able to show you much here today,” groaned Jobs, who finally resorted to showing off high-resolution photos from the iPhone 4’s photo roll, to some appreciative applause.
Then Steve tried the Web again — and still, no luck. “Well, I’m sorry, guys, I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, looking around for help. “”Uh … Scott, got any suggestions?”
Of course, some snarky goofball in the audience just couldn’t resist. “Verizon!” the guy shouted, and the audience roared again.Jobs smiled. “We’re actually on Wi-Fi here, so … “
Anyway, within another minute or so, the Wi-Fi was back, and Jobs moved on, albeit with the occasional plea to members of the press to please, please turn your Wi-Fi off. (The collective answer: Yeah, right.)
via news.yahoo.com
roflmao! There is a God and He has a tremendous sense of irony…
Your Blog Is Your Business
Think about your clients. Think about the work you’re doing. How did you happen to close those pieces of business? I’m lucky (some might say cursed), but a majority of the success we’ve had at Twist Image comes from the work we do – right here – on this Blog. When we started Blogging in 2003, we (and I say “we” because although this is my worded playground, it is a group effort and a huge part of the overall business strategy of the agency) had a few clients and a few employees. The mass media and industry publications didn’t care much about us, because there wasn’t much of a story there to tell. Blogging enabled and empowered us to share how we think about the Digital Marketing landscape with the world. This Blog prodded along (it still does), and whether it’s working with a major brand, securing a business book deal or getting talent bureau representation, we stay focused on the fact that a lot of that came (initially) because of this Blog (in fact, it still does). Yes, we needed the work to stand on it’s own (both the creative and strategic) and we need to keep nurturing all of those client and business development relationships, but to this day many brands find us (and want to work with us) because of the ideas we share here (amongst other reasons).
via twistimage.com
This is why I blog. What about you?
Bright, shiny objects! 
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