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Ten Blogs you should follow

February 24, 2011 By Todd 2 Comments

It's good to learn from the best

So, I have decided to put together a list of blogs that I think you should follow. Aren’t you glad I have decided this for you? Of course, it is my opinion, and I hope you will allow me to express my opinion.

These blogs can be put in a few different categories. There is the category for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), a category for social media, blogging, copywriting, technology, and website design including the use of graphic design. These are many of the things you should know when running a website and/or blog.

As a bonus, I threw in a blog about running a small business.

If you are in charge of your company’s website or blog, then you need to learn about these areas in order to make your website/blog more successful.

So, here goes.

1. SEO Book

One of the two best blogs on the internet when it comes to learning about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Subscribe to the blog, or just spend a lot of time looking at the posts. A blog, or website, with no traffic is silent. If you have the money to invest, they also have tons of great resources.

2. SEO Moz

The other one of the best blogs about SEO on the internet. You may not understand everything on their blog, you can find some good information on how to optimize your website or blog.

3. Copyblogger

Copyblogger is copywriting meet blogging. The articles are excellent and reading them is like getting an education. Brian Clark is the mastermind, and he invites other masterminds to join him.

4. Problogger

Daren Rowe runs, quite possibly, the best of the professional blogs. He has learned everything there is to know, and, in fact, is still learning. You can learn a lot of information about running a blog from a professional level by following his blog.

5. Shama.tv

I began my trek in to the world of social media by watching the little videos at Shama.tv. She puts on high quality productions with good tips on using social media for your business. There are also tons of excellent resources available.

6. Chris Brogan

Brogan keeps up with all things social media related. However, he also delves in how to run your business. His specialty is connecting the human with business.

7. Mashable

If you are interested in trends, technology and social media, then Mashable is for you. They do an excellent job of showing how these things are current. It is one of the best examples of how to run a news website on the world wide web. In fact, it might be the best example.

8. Tech Crunch

If you want to keep up with the tech world, then follow TC. It is the best blog for keeping up with the tech world.

9. The Small Company Blog

Ran by Eric Rudolf, he covers many of the topics that are so important to running a small business including the topics that are mentioned by these other blogs.

10. Smashing Magazine

This is one of my favorite blogs for getting design ideas for websites. They give terrific tutorials on many different aspects of websites including graphic design and html. SM is actually made up of a team of individuals who are extremely talented.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blogging, business, top ten

Three Myths of Business Blogging

February 7, 2011 By Todd Leave a Comment

Blogging is one of the single most useful things you can do to get your business noticed. People notice you and your business as an expert in your industry and you stand out in your community. Further, it gives your website (you do have a website don’t you?) activity leveraging the power of the search engines to find and display your website in their search results.

Flickr: Stephanie Booth

However, many small business owners fail to see the benefit of blogs. Regardless, the results speak for themselves. The dynamics of blogging help boost your online visibility.

So, with so much data in favor of blogging, why do businesses not blog? I suppose there are several, but I think there are at least three reasons.

1. Diary

Small business owners may see a blog as a diary. That’s understandable as people still use blogs that way, and that is how “weblogs,” as they were called in the day, got started. Nevertheless, blogs have become more sophisticated with elaborate publishing platforms for news publications, businesses and other organizations.

2. Time Consuming

Some business owners think they need to write a blog every day. Not so! Figure out a publishing schedule and organize topics you want to write about. Write up several posts and set the publish to specific dates. It doesn’t take too long to write up posts that range between 400-600 words. Add a compelling picture (Flickr can help!) and publish. If you make time to market your business, you can make time to blog. After all, blogging is a part of your overall marketing strategy.

3. I already have a website

Congratulations! You have definitely entered in to the internet age. My question to you is, “does anyone visit your website?” Many businesses have had well designed, pretty looking websites only to have no traffic. A website has to be optimized to get visitors, and one of the best ways is to have an active blog.

So, there you have it. What is keeping you from writing a blog? Let me know!

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blogging, business, myths

Five not-so-secrets, the follow up

October 8, 2010 By Todd 2 Comments

Continued from here.

3. Aesthetics or Pictures

Pictures are a non-negotiable. Every article needs to have a picture, and sports bloggers know this better than anyone. I believe you can do a post consisting of just pictures, because, if done right, pictures can tell the story.

The prettier the girl in the picture, well, the better. Sports bloggers realize that their audience is largely made up of guys, and guys like to look at pictures of pretty girls. Therefore, it stands to reason, that they need to include pictures (and videos) of pretty girls.

What kind of picture would your audience want to see?

4. Community of Readers

Bloggers usually post on a blogging platform such as WordPress or Blogger, therefore, comments are a big part of creating a community. They encourage comments, debates even. It keeps people on the site. Sometimes, the headline (see above, magnetic) will “stir the pot” so to speak. Controversy brings people in. A group of people who are passionate about the subject, and feel they have a voice, will build a community. For a good example of this, see Fanblogs.com.

In the early days, it was all about message boards, and, indeed, some still use that forum. Message boards get really hot at websites such as Rivals and Scout. The dynamic of community is still the same. Create some controversy, engage in debate, and enjoy. Ironically, it builds a community.

5. Good Content

The content has to be good. A blogger can’t just blog about fluff. There has to be some substance to it. In fact, many sports bloggers set, at least, an informal schedule to keep the blog moving forward. Some sports bloggers talk about stats or break down games (see SmartFootball.com). Some are humorous while articulating there opinions well (see Jones Top Ten).

There you have it. Five lessons from the sports bloggers.

What have you learned while blogging?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: bloggers, blogging, sports, youtube

Five not-so-secret lessons about blogging I learned from sports bloggers

October 5, 2010 By Todd Leave a Comment

I have been writing a college football blog since sometime in 2006. It has been a lot of fun, and it was my first training ground for writing a blog. Several bloggers were very helpful to me when I started out, but some were not. A lot of the help depends on the person, but all-in-all, it has been a good experience.

As a sports blogger, I have learned a lot about how to run a blog. Many of the tips I learned in that area I have brought with me to my other areas of blogging and writing. Some have been confirmed by other bloggers such as Copyblogger, Problogger and Chris Brogan.

So, I am going to articulate five of the lessons I learned about blogging from my time blogging about college football.

1. Magnetic Headlines

This is where the sports bloggers often excel over many of the folks in today’s print media. It is unfortunate, but the sports bloggers know how to sell an article with a title. Compare these two titles form the weekend of October 2-3:

Washington’s Jake Locker leads way as USC loses for first time under Lane Kiffin (USA Today)

versus

Huskies put USC back in its place, which is anywhere but the top of the Pac-10 by Matt Hinton, otherwise known as Dr. Saturday.

2. Videos

Visit a top sports blog website, and you will find lots of videos. Videos serve different purposes, but mostly, people like to watch videos rather than read words. As a crafter of words, I don’t like that, but it’s reality. Therefore, videos need to be used regularly. They are what is known as “sticky” content. Youtube and Vimeo has made it easier, plus several other media websites offer the ability to embed their videos in your page. It’s really pretty easy to do.

Token Video

You watched it didn’t you?

To be continued. . . I leaned that from them too. . . . it’s called creating a “hook.”

photo credit: joelogon

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: bloggers, blogging, sports, youtube

Ten Reasons to Build Your Website with WordPress

May 28, 2010 By Todd Leave a Comment

People are looking at websites more with function in mind than before. Previously, companies wanted a good looking, dynamic site with pizazz. Those things are good to have, but if no one can find you in the search engines, then you have just wasted your money. While WordPress is not considered a Content Management System (CMS), it easily doubles as both a blogging platform and a CMS.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/juanpol/

The power and flexibility is enormous, and i have become a believer in it as a product.

Therefore, I am listing ten reasons to build your website on WordPress.

10. Syndication

If you are an online publisher, you know that getting your content in front of as many eyeballs as possible is the name of the game. One of the best ways to do this is through syndication. WordPress has RSS feeds built in to its framework. It automatically parses your content in a raw RSS feed. This makes it easier for other readers to find and import your content in to their favorite reader.

9. Theme Customization

If you are concerned about having a bland-looking website that looks like 250,000 others, you shouldn’t have to. There are tons of amazing designers who can customize a theme, or build a new one from the ground up just for your company. So, you don’t have to share your look with thousands of others on the world wide web.

8. Categories

The posts you publish have a unique URL, but you can use the power of categories to make them easily accessible for your visitors. Categories can be customized as a gateway to that particular content, and your visitors may not know the difference between them and a regular static page. You categorize posts chronologically, or by subject.

7. Community

WordPress builds a comments template in to each post (each page if you want to) allowing visitors and readers a chance to “comment” on a post and making them feel like they are a part of the community. Inherently, it is one of the best community building platforms since the message board, and I, for one, like the comments better than the message boards.

6. User-friendly Publishing

If you can use a word processor, you can use WordPress. In fact, most blogging platforms are built this way. If you are a writer, the easiest way to publish online is with a blogging platform, and the most powerful of the blogging platforms is WordPress. The learning curve is not very hard.

5. Blogging Website

A website that shows up in the search engines well is one that has activity. A blogging website allows publishing to happen quickly and often giving a website built around it all the activity it needs to be “seen and heard” by the search engines. Build your website as (see @Shama The Zen of Social Media Marketing) a blog and you will be “found” easily by Google and the other guys. WordPress is uniquely made to do this well.

4. Large Support Community

Most folks who are regular users of WordPress are very helpful. You will find the support you need, particularly from WordPress.org. People are always writing tutorials and their are WordPress groups across the country. Linkedin even has a WordPress group. There is no shortage of help.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamperegrino/

3. SEO Friendly/Standards Compliant

The themes are usually written on the latest website design standards. This, along with activity I mentioned above, makes WordPress very Search Engine Optimization friendly. It kind of helps with the search engine thing.

2. User Friendly CMS

WordPress, as I mentioned before, is very user friendly for publishing online. This makes it a very easy-to-use CMS as well. It allows writers to do what writers do best, write and publish.

1. Free/Open Source

WordPress, the software is free to use under open source! Everything about designing a website costs money from the domain registration, to the hosting, to the designer’s fees, so why would you want to add to the expense by paying thousands of dollars for the CMS software?

These are ten reasons I came up. You can find a full list of features here.

Filed Under: websites, WordPress Tagged With: blogging, Ten Reasons, website, WordPress