Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

68 Ways to Make Your Blog Work for You

With more than 180 million recognized blogs and countless more not on?Technorati’s list, it’s clear that blogging continues to enjoy huge popularity, despite claims to the contrary.

Yet blogging itself isn’t easy – you need to put in love, time, effort, commitment and a whole lot more to really make it work for you. Which is one of the reasons so many bloggers ditch their writing within the first few months.

Business blogs also need to see a return on investment as well (even though much of the real ROI comes from the interaction you build up with your readers who are all potential customers).

To help you in your blogging efforts, personal and business, here’s a list of some tools and tips that you might find useful.

Free Blogging Platforms

Starting a blog has never been easier. Free blogging sites like WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal and Vox help you get started quickly and easily. They have a pretty good range of theme designs as well to help you choose one that fits your personality and needs.

If the idea of blogging and design seems too much like hard work to you, sites like Posterous and Tumblr offer great alternatives to full-on blogging. You can still choose to post yourself, but both sites offer you the option of emailing in your post(s) and attachment(s) and their blog team will do the rest for you.

Self-Hosted (or Premium) Blogging

If you want to go the self-hosted route (where you have more direct control over your blog’s appearance and optimization), you can either download software to help you get your blog going or use your web host’s software.

For web hosts, companies like Bluehost offer an excellent all-in-one option of buying your domain and setting up your monthly web host account. Other options include GoDaddy, JustHost and Host Gator.

WordPress.org, Movable Type, TypePad and Loudblog (excellent for media blogs or podcasts) are all great options when it comes to downloading the software you need to get your blog up and running on your new domain. Squarespace is a solid alternative that lets you buy your domain, monthly package and design your blog from the start.

Theme Your Blog

Making your blog your own is a lot simpler than you might expect. Gone are the days when you needed an in-depth knowledge of HTML or CSS coding skills – now most of the hard work is already done for you behind the scenes.

Blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger and Squarespace offer drag-and-drop options to help you set up your blog’s look easily.

If you’ve gone the paid route, then you can buy a variety of themes to help set your blog apart from others. On WordPress you can buy themes like Headway (used on this blog), Flexx, Lifestyle and numerous others. There are also some excellent premium-styled themes available for free download.

Even Blogger allows you to pay a small fee to upgrade to a premium account which then allows you to design your own theme, either via CSS coding or buying a ready-made premium Blogger theme.

Widgetize Your Blog

Widgets (or plugins) allow you to add anything from popular posts, recent comments, calendars, blog badges and much more. Not only are widgets excellent for helping add depth to your blog, they can help your readers find you online elsewhere.

For example, Twitter widgets are available for all the main blogging platforms like WordPress, TypePad and Blogger. This can help your readers find you on Twitter as well as see your latest updates, search results and more.

As well as the standard widgets available in many blog themes, there are several websites that allow you to design your own. Widgetbox is a great example, as is Yourminis and Wowzio. Toying with widgets and seeing what works for you is a great way to really personalize your blog.

Promoting Your Blog

So you’ve set your blog up, written a few posts and are ready to share it with the world. What next? Apart from your friends and family, how else can you get readers to your blog? Community networking.

There are a host of excellent blog communities around that will help you both promote your own blog and find other bloggers to read and learn from. Scribnia, BlogCatalog, Technorati,? Bloggeries, Loaded Web, Alltop, CommunitySpark and others are great starting points.

If you’re on Facebook, then the Networked Blogs application is ideal for letting your friends and their friends know about your blog (and you can place your Networked Blog badge in your blog’s sidebar to let new visitors know you’re on Networked Blogs).

Additionally, offer the option for your readers to share your blog post on Twitter as well as Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Delicious, Newsvine, Netvibes and other social bookmarking sites that will help you gain new visitors and traffic.

Knowing how search engine optimization (SEO) works is hugely effective at helping your blog stand out in the search engines. While in-depth understanding of SEO really needs a specialist, experts like Lee Odden offer some great free SEO resources for you to use as well as paid consultancy services.

Check out Google’s free keyword tool as well as software like IBP website optimizer.

Open Up and Share

Blog readers love to learn things and read about stuff they might not have seen elsewhere (I know I do, as a reader of numerous blogs myself). So open up and share your blog.

Offer tips and advice that your readers will enjoy. These can be lists like the one you’re currently reading, or how-to features, or even something as simple as a cooking recipe. Share your knowledge and ask for the views of your readers and you’ll soon have a thriving and interactive blog community.

Offer other bloggers guest slots on your blog as well. Not only does this allow your existing readers to hear a new voice and mindset, it also allows your guest blogger to share your blog with their own readers, again opening up your blog to a wider audience. Simply put, the more you share of you, the more of you will be shared.

Measure Your Blog’s Success

While the amount of comments and interaction are a good measure of a blog’s success, they don’t tell the full story. And if you’re a business that’s blogging or you need results from a marketing perspective, then you need to measure your blog’s success.

Free tools like Google Analytics, Woopra, Quantcast, Social Mention, Backtype and StatCounter give you a mix of traffic and what’s being said about your blog online.

If you need more in-depth analysis, there are numerous premium analytic options. Some of the best include Radian6, OmniTure, WebTrends and VisiStat.

Monetize Your Blog

If the aim of your blog is to make money, there are various ways to do so.

However, making money blogging isn’t as easy as it sounds so make sure you’re prepared to look elsewhere for income as well.

If you’re looking for paid blogging opportunities (where advertisers pay you to write about them), Pay Per Post, SocialSpark, ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews are just some examples of sites that pay bloggers for their views.

Another way to make money from your blog is by being an Affiliate. By signing up with a company to promote their product, either by on-site advertising or links to their products, you get paid each time one of your visitors clicks the advertiser’s advert or when a sale is made from that click.

Companies like Neverblue, Commission Junction and LinkShare are geared towards bloggers looking to make money from affiliate sales.

These are just some of the ways that you can turn your blog from being just another journal into a fully functional personal or business blog. Yet just like any list, I’m sure I’ve missed a ton of stuff along the way.

What do you use to make your blog work for you? Feel free to share your tips and recommendations in the comments below.

Note: This blog no longer runs on the Headway framework. Instead, it’s a custom WordPress design by Lisa Kalandjian of SceneStealer Graphics.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks
photo credit: Simon Pow
photo credit: faeriebell
photo credit: Cayusa

Is This How to Market Your Product?

If you’re a marketer, are you thinking about how to promote your new website or product? And if you’re a consumer, are you getting tired of lazy pitches and ideas?

Take a look at the five images below – each one belongs to a Twitter account that I was notified was now following me.

Every single message is the same, from how old the girl is, where she’s from, what she wants to do this weekend and what video she’s just watched.

Now, either the UK is currently enjoying a great spell of Twitter awareness in provocatively dressed female teens or there’s a little bit of shenanigans going on here. I’m going with the latter.

Looking at the accounts themselves, it would seem that it’s a marketing push for web host Cool Blue Solutions. Each account has a background designed by the web host company, and Cool Blue’s Twitter account mentions designing the background for our teen friend Sandra B. Smith.

But then you look at the URL for each of the five girls. That takes you to RevTwt.com, which used to be known as TwtAd, an advertising model for paid tweets.

They’re in the process of a relaunch of the service and are looking for advertisers. They claim to put your ad in front of more than 23 million Twitter users – pretty impressive considering that’s about the estimated number of all Twitter users at present (including bots and spam accounts).

So what’s the story here? Is it a marketing push to promote the web host services of Cool Blue Solutions? Is it an advertising push by RevTwt on behalf of Cool Blue Solutions? Is it a little of both?

Whatever it is, here’s the thing. Marketing your message properly means targeting your audience properly. It means knowing who would use your services and what would attract them to that service, and why it stands out from the rest.

Does a semi-nude teenage girl create the right message for Cool Blue Solutions if it’s their campaign? Are they looking for business users of their web services or teenage boys hoping to hit it off with a girl just like the one in the above Twitter accounts?

How about RevTwt, if it’s their push? Did they target anyone with these Twitter accounts or is it just a hit and hope approach? I only ask as I had all five accounts follow me in quick succession, and their bio’s just make your BS spider senses tingle.

Whatever the deal is here, I don’t think it succeeds. The majority of people have moved on from booth babe advertising and marketing pushes and are looking for real people behind the products. Teenage girls in bikinis don’t quite shout web host to me.

What do you think – is this kind of marketing still valid? If you’re a consumer, would you be convinced to sign up to Cool Blue Solutions from the recommendations of these Twitter accounts?

What if you’re an advertiser and RevTwt is behind these accounts – do they make you want to run a campaign with them? Or would your approach differ?

Update Monday July 06. Looks like Cool Blue Host may not have been as marketable as they thought. All Twitter accounts mentioned in this post are no longer live and their domain is also available.

Why Being Yourself is the Only Thing That Matters

I’m getting a little jaded currently by various professionals, consultants and business “superstars” on their blogs and other online forums.

The biggest issue is where a point’s been made by the author, someone disagrees because of a personal opinion, and the author backtracks and jumps the other way.

Why?

If you didn’t believe in the thing you wrote about or spoke of in the first place, why mention it? Was it to court popularity? Or appear that you’re agreeing with the majority when instead the opposite would have been true?

The funny thing is that this is happening more and more, and instead of showing that you’re open to debate and differing views it suggests that you can’t make your mind up. Or worse still, are hesitant on the validity of your own beliefs (business and personal).

If that’s the way some people want to play, fair enough – everyone’s entitled to handle themselves the way they feel is best for them.

But just because someone disagrees with you, do you really need to then agree 100% with them on their point? Or does that just weaken your original argument and authority on the topic at hand?

I’m all for admitting that your original thoughts may not be completely right and understanding other points of view, but don’t lose your voice because of it. One of the best examples of someone that stays true to their beliefs is Geoff Livingston. We’ve butted heads in the past and I don’t always agree with his approach, but I respect him 100% for staying true to himself.

The one thing that separates you from everyone else is your belief. It’s what makes you who you are. It’s your conscience; your moral fibre; your business mantra; the reason people either respect you or don’t.

When you lose that, you lose yourself and any respect that people may have built up in you. Surely that’s more important than any perceived popularity contest.

Isn’t it?

photo credit: ATIS547