Get Blog Networking!

Getting a blog off the ground is hard work and takes a lot of effort but believe me when I say that in the long term it is worth it. Networking with other bloggers and professionals within your niche is essential, especially for new blogs.

Here’s a tip!

Visit a high profile blog within your niche – leave comment, and give your own opinions and views on the topic. Ask questions, and make sure that you do not spam, or leave any links which are not appropriate to the topic of discussion.

The result!

I did exactly this and have a link to my blog on the likes of Conde Nast Traveller, USA Today, and other high profile blogs. Having links on authority blogs like this helps you rank better in the search engines and also drives visitors to your blog.

Yahooed!

How many have you visited Yahoo Answers lately? I have, and I try to at least weekly. Why? Well, if someone is asking a question that I can answer, I reply, and where it asks you for a source you put your own blog.

Make sure the question is relating to your niche, and make an effort to write a concise answer. This drives traffic to your blog because as people search for the question in the search engines Yahoo Answers usually ranks quite well.

Have a great New Years Eve, and Happy New Year!

Share One blog tip with the Performancing Community

If there’s one tip that I would give to any blogger, it is keep in touch with news and events within your niche and make sure you write about it – don’t copy news, write from your own perspective giving your own views and opinions.

In the past 7 days I have received over 2,900 extra unique visitors from Google and 854 from StumbleUpon [at the time of writing] because I blogged about a news story which is going to have an impact on millions of travellers.

Now, I want every Performancing community member to write 1 blog tip in the comments, so that we can all learn from each other

Holiday Trivia: How do you know when your site is being penalized by Google?

It’s that time of year when the Internet goes into a virtual slumber. But we here at Performancing wanted to keep things a little spicy (just like that spiced butter rum you’re drinking). So we’re offering you a trivia question to keep your mind active (and free from complete holiday comatose):

Besides getting an explicit notice in Webmaster Tools, or an email from Matt Cutts, what is the clearest sign that your blog is not in the good graces of Google?

I have one specific answer in mind. It’s really obvious and gets at the core of what Google is all about.

Here’s a clue: what’s the most important stat chart that an SEO can look at?

First person to get my answer gets a free submission in the EatonWeb blog directory. I’ve told the answer to Ahmed Bilal, so the answer is locked in.

Any guesses? Post your answers in the comment section. First person to answer correctly wins.

Performancing Interviews Steven Snell From Vandelay Design

A few days ago, I was able to interview Steven Snell from Vandelay Design. In less than a year, Steven’s blog has become one of the most read blogs in the “blog design and usability” niche. In fact, the Vandelay Design Blog has over 1000 subscribers to its feed, a major milestone.

One of the reasons I picked Steven for an interview is that I believe he’s performing the art of using a business blog to perfection. Unlike so many corporate blogs, that seem to exist just to exist because it’s trendy, Steven’s blog provides useful information, establishes his knowledge and authority, and makes his customers confident in his abilities. Most importantly, it gets him business. I know excellence in execution when I see it…so I present to you an interview with Steven Snell, from Vandelay Design.

1. Tell us a little bit about your design business, how long you’ve been on the web, and the services you provide.

Vandelay Website Design has been in business for about a year. We provide web design, blog customization and website maintenance/updates. The blog has been online online for about 9 months, with the first 3 months being very inactive.

2. I believe that all businesses should use blogs for promoting their business. But so many either don’t, or do a poor job at it. How do you use your blog to promote your business?

Well, first of all, I agree that blogs are a great tool for any business that has the resources to run a blog. The whole purpose for starting the blog for Vandelay Design was to get some additional content on the site that would draw search engine traffic, and ultimately more web design business. There are so many web design companies out there that it’s extremely difficult for a new one to compete well in search engines for popular words and phrases. The blog posts obviously create additional pages on the site that draw some long tail searches. In recent months the blog audience has really grown steadily and the blog itself is now more of an asset then was originally planned. The search traffic is now taking a back seat to additional opportunities that might be possible, like developing new services (such as marketing, consulting, etc.) that could be promoted through the blog. Actually, when I saw the announcement last week that Performancing is offering some new services I thought it was ironic because that is almost exactly what I would like to do at some point.

3. What’s your primary method of monetizing your blog?

Right now the blog creates no revenue except through promoting design services, and also promoting my writing services. I plan to start using a few advertisements in coming months on the blog (not on the rest of the site like the design portfolio).

4. How much time do you spend blogging (and on blogging-related activities) every day?

I would say about 2 hours per day, 7 days a week. Sometimes it’s hard to draw the line between what is blogging-related and what is business-related. That includes time to read other blogs, visit social media sites, check email, and obviously write articles.

5. What are you three favorite blogs (the ones that you visit and read the most)?

That’s a pretty hard question. It changes from time-to-time, but I would have to day Dosh Dosh, Pro Blog Design, and Smashing Magazine. Maki always has very original and useful articles for any online marketer. Michael (Pro Blog Design) has articles that are insightful and informational for blog designers, WordPress in particular. Smashing Magazine is the type of blog that I would like to run sometime in the future. It’s focused on a strong niche and recognized as a leader in the industry.

6. Are there any challenges that are specific to blogging in your niche?

One of the challenges is that it is pretty saturated. Sometimes it’s difficult to be original, and it’s almost always difficult to write about a topic in a way that hasn’t been done before. At the same time there are so many potential blog readers in the target market that getting traffic is easier than in smaller niches, so I think it works both ways.

7. On a scale of 1-10 where 10 is “most important” – how important do you consider visitor statistics to be, and what are some ways that you use your stats to improve the performance of your blog?

I would say 7. Statistics obviously don’t make a blog successful on their own, but I’m kind of a statistics guy, so I like to analyze and learn from the past. Specifically, I use stats to see what topics create the most interest. If I am going to develop a post specifically to target social media users I’m going to focus on some aspect of design rather than something about marketing, SEO, or blogging. Over the past few months I’ve seen repeatedly that design articles produce the best results for me when I want/need big traffic. Readers like the other topics too, but they just don’t do as well with social media for me. I think I also use stats to improve the blog by setting goals and holding myself accountable. I’m a pretty competitive person, so I set specific goals for traffic and I go after it. I know that ultimately stats won’t get me to where I want to be, but if they can help me to improve my blog through motivation, that’s a big step.

8. If there was one niche besides design that you could successfully blog in, what would it be?

I would love to write about sports, specifically football. It’s on my list of things to do once I can achieve my goals with my current projects. Actually, if I answered #5 truthfully, rather than listing blogs that are relevant to the topic of my blog I would have said that my favorite is the University of Miami athletics blog from the Sun Sentinel.

10. Has Performancing helped you? In what ways? Is there anything we could do better?

Performancing has helped me by providing some of the best articles about blogging. I’m only 6 – 9 months into be a blogger, so I’m learning every day. One of the things I really like about Performancing is that readers get several perspectives from different writers. The collective knowledge of the staff is far greater than any one individual. I haven’t really given much thought to what you could do better. I know you guys have great networks, so maybe some type of improvement to the networking opportunities for readers. I know you have the forums, and honestly I haven’t taken advantage of them and definitely should start. So maybe you don’t need improvement, maybe I need to improve how I use the site.

11. Are you a quantity, quality or “somewhere in between” kind of blogger?

I would say I’m somewhere in between. I post about 4 – 6 times per week, so certainly not at the quantity of some bloggers who crank out several posts a day. Quality is definitely crucial, regardless of your niche. I don’t want to take quality so far that I can only produce 1 or 2 posts per week. So far the middle ground has worked pretty well for me.

The New Economy of Digg Blackmail

Let me paint the picture for you. You spent the last 8 hours perfecting a killer linkbait. You’re proud of your work. You think it’s going to do well on Digg, it collects some votes…

…a few hours later, you receive an email from someone claiming that he’ll get your account deleted and your article removed from Digg if you don’t pay him $1000.

Well, not having $1000 to spend, and not believing for a second that this is for real, you ignore it…

…and then bang, your story’s gone, your account has been deleted.

Welcome to the brave new world of Digg blackmail. Where sophisticated online users earn a living by abusing the Digg abuse reporting system. It’ a reality. I’d heard about it, but I’ve now seen it happen…and you should prepare for it to happen to you too.

So, you want to try your hand at Digg blackmail?

Here’s how you do it.

Step one, monitor the lower portion of the right hand column of this URL:
http://digg.com/all/upcoming

Step two, for each story, visit the link, and then find a contact e-mail.

Step three, construct and send the message from an account that won’t give away your identity: “Hi. I notice that you have an article that’s doing well at Digg. I have the ability to get your article removed from Digg and would like you to pay me X dollars to help your article make the front page, rather than get it removed. Please let me know if you’re interested.”

Step four, if the person responds within [define your limit, e.g. 1 hour], then good. If not, then A) Put your bury brigade network into action and B) Contact Digg at the following email address: abuse@digg.com with a message like the following: “Hi. The people behind this article are using email spam to get dugg. I received a copy of this spam, which you can see below:”

Why it works

Digg blackmail works because Digg’s abuse team has it’s finger on the trigger. It’s sort of like the modern prison system, or Guantanamo Bay… penalize as many candidate abusers as possible, and even if you’re accuracy rate is below 10%, you’re still improving the quality of the product (in one case Digg, in the other case society).

Whether you agree with Digg’s abuse policies or not does not matter. What matters is that people are now making money through Digg blackmail. It’s a very interesting phenomenon, and I’ll be interested to see what Digg does about it.

10 Ways To Get More Done In Less Time

Web entrepreneurs, especially those who work outside the confines of the traditional workspace, often have trouble managing their time.

This article proves 10 time-tested methods to get more work done than before AND free up the time we tend to ‘borrow’ from outside our work schedule.

These suggestions are work well for bloggers, entrepreneurs and especially anyone whose work routine needs to be flexible because of their family / social circumstances. The key is to integrate these habits into your daily routine, otherwise it’s not going to bring you any results.

General Tips

These are general habits that set the foundation for increasing productivity and using your time effectively.

1. Time & Task Chunking

There are two things you must start doing right now:

• Think of the time available to you in ‘chunks’ or ‘blocks’.
• Group related tasks together, and assign them time chunks.

Working on related tasks in the same time chunk makes it possible for you to get through those tasks faster than you would otherwise as your mind becomes attuned to doing a specific type of task. You might have heard the tip on writing your blog posts for the week / day in one go – this works because once your writing juices get flowing, it’s easier for you to write that second and third article for the day / week,

Why time chunks? I’ve discussed in detail later, but in essence the idea is to a) break down your work day into manageable time periods (input, output or just processing) and b) help you concentrate better on your work.

2. Smarter Email Management

Ideally you should be checking email just once a day – however in practice this is a difficult habit to adopt from the start, so I recommend restricting yourself to 2 checks – once in the morning to deal with the urgent stuff and once in the evening to answer emails, etc.

Daniel has more on effective email management. A great tip from the article is to NOT read your emails unless you’re ready to deal with them (reply, take an action based on it, etc). Usually what happens is that we tend to read an email once and then don’t take action on it for a few hours (or days). That leaves an open loop in our work cycle – either you’ll keep being reminded of unfinished business by looking at that unattended email or you’ll have it floating around in your head.

Only read an email if you’re ready to take immediate action on it. This is why I suggest splitting your email checking time into two steps – urgent and regular processing. Scan email headlines to pick out urgent matters and discipline yourself to leave the rest for later, when you can go through each email and deal with it there and then.

A last word on email – learn to write emails that deal with such simple follow-up questions as ‘what if this happens?’ or ‘how do I do that?’. Close possible loops by discussing alternative scenarios and solutions, as well as providing references in advance in case someone needs to know how to do a particular task.

3. Say No To Feed Abuse

Earlier this year I wrote an article on Search Engine Journal on why you should dump 90% of the feeds you read. At that time, I was spending 2-4 hours every day just browsing through feeds, and at the end of it I’d have so much in my head that I would find it difficult to sift through the unimportant stuff and focus my thoughts on the important, bloggable material.

Since then, I’ve dumped my feed reader altogether. I now rely on 2 types of news sources – editorially-aggregated news (a good example of this is the Search Engine Land’s SearchCap) and my network of contacts who end up emailing / IMing me the the hottest news. I wouldn’t make a living as a news blogger this way but in terms of ‘winning back’ time that can be invested elsewhere, this approach is an absolute must.

You don’t have to dump your feed reader, but cut down to reading aggregated roundups of your niche (and if there isn’t anyone doing that currently, that’s a perfect opening for you in that niche).

4. Downtime = Networking

Schedule some downtime for your self during the day – afternoon is a good slot, so is late night after you’re done with everything else (including planning for the next day). By downtime I’m not talking about taking a break, I’m talking about indulging yourself in IMing and random web browsing – putting aside time for IMing is one way to get the most out of the exercise, especially because the short time forces you to do the important things first (including networking, of course).

Some people will disagree with this approach, and I admit that I’m quite often online all day, if only because these days me and Ryan are coordinating a few Perf projects. In such cases I’m only available to chat for one or two people and with everyone else, I’ll have to wait till the important stuff gets done first. It’s hard but it’s the only way to eliminate the distractions that get in our way and stop us from getting work done.

5. ‘Heavy Lifting’

Set aside time daily for some heavy lifting – i.e. intensive work. You don’t have to do this at the same time every day (although in terms of building your rhythm and improving productivity that surely helps) but you should allocate the same amount of hours to it every day.

The ideal solution for me is to have two ‘heavy lifting’ chunks – one in early / late morning and the other either late afternoon or early evening (never at night). This allows me to start the day off by getting a good chunk of my work complete, and before the day is over I’ve done everything for that day, giving me time to enjoy the rest of the day and obviously plan for the next day ahead of time as well.

6. Input / Output / Processing

I’ve started thinking of a typical work cycle as 3 distinct phases.

1. Input: Any task that involves the intake of information. Browsing, feed-reading, etc are input-oriented activities.
2. Output: Any task that involves you producing something – blogging, programming, designing, etc.
3. Processing: When you’re dealing with ideas, knocking off action items, planning for the next day or evaluating progress.

In practice, you want to limit your inputs to the ‘absolutely necessary’ and maximise your output. Most of the time we spend our day the other way around – reading a lot and doing / writing very little. In terms of achieving your goals, that’s a brain-dead approach – why would take up any habit where you’re deliberately limiting the amount of work you can get done?

Sometimes people don’t segregate processing from their input / output states. I disagree – it’s vital that you set aside time for processing your inputs as well as for planning what needs to be done in the future. The processing phase is key to giving your perspective on what you’ve done, what you want to do next and how to get that done.

Like the concepts earlier, thinking of your work cycle in terms of these 3 phases will help you focus on why you’re doing certain tasks and therefore help you get the most out of your time.

When Working / Heavy Lifting

The 6 tips mentioned above concern basic habits. From #1 and #5, you’ll remember the concepts of time chunking and heavy lifting. The rest of this article concerns tips on how to make the most out of your working time, especially the time when you need to be 110% productive.

7. Stay Offline

Turn off your browser, your IMs, etc. If you’re blogging and need access to feeds, open all the required web pages in your browser and then disconnect.

There are two major problems when you’re online and blogging / writing / programming / strategising at the same time: one, you have the option of distracting yourself, and two, you’re leaving yourself open to the possibility of being distracted by someone / something else (a news item popping up in your feed reader, an email).

I can hear you saying – ‘what if its important?’ Sure, it probably is, but you’re smart enough to know that the work you’re supposed to be doing is certainly important, while something that you might miss in those 3-4 hours is most likely not important. You’re most likely not missing much by going offline, but you’re definitely losing a lot by dividing your attention.

Of course, there are obvious exceptions. However for 95% of us, those exceptions are just theoretical (we’re not as special, essential or important as we like to think).

8. Turn Off Your Phone

I don’t know about you, but phone interruptions are the worst when I’m blogging. Whether it’s a message or a call, even the one minute it takes to shift focus from one thing to the other and then bringing it back can have you lose your momentum, pushing you back by 5-10 minutes or more.

Turn your phone off, or at least on silent and train yourself to ignore the phone. When blogging, check your phone between blog posts if you absolutely must, not during.

What if it’s an emergency? Like I said earlier, our imagination paints the world far worse than it really is. In case of an emergency and especially if there is a real need for you, the person looking for you will find a way to contact you. In any case, keeping two numbers (one for social and professional contacts, one for close friends and family) allows you to turn one off and then you can decide to ignore the second one. This only works if implement it properly and make it clear that the second number is only for emergency use. Drastic, yes, but since you’re only going to be doing this for a few hours each day, it’s worth it.

At the end of the day, us ADD-affected entrepreneurs need every little bit of help they can get.

9. Be Alone While Working

Admittedly this is more of a personal issue – I feel that I cannot work at my best, with full concentration, if someone else is around in the room. From getting distracted by what they’re doing to feeling the urge to strike up pointless conversation, I tend to get very little done when there are people around.

To get the most work done, find a quite spot where you can be alone. If that’s not possible, try ensuring that your immediate physical area is clear and free of distractions.

If all else fails, chain yourself to the desk and lock yourself in the room until you get work done.

10. Deadlines

When faced with a project, nothing ruins it more than having a deadline far into the future. Break your projects down into smaller, bite-sized tasks and set impossibly short deadlines for getting them done. You’ll find that not only do you psychologically motivate yourself into getting things done quicker, you’re probably doing less work than you would if you approached it as a large chunk and set aside weeks or months to get it done.

Process each project, break it down, and get it done as quickly as possible.

(Bonus) 11. One Thing At A Time

This part is especially for those people who claim to be multi-taskers. I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as multi-tasking.

• If you plan your work in advance, you’ll never be rushed enough that you need to do 2 things at the same time.
• And if you concentrate on one thing and get it done before moving to the second, you’ll get both of them done faster than if you tried to ‘multi-task’.

If you’ve lived all your life multi-tasking, it’s possible that you’ve achieved some success because of that approach. Unfortunately, multi-tasking is an emergency, short-term response to a failure of planning and a product of panic. It slows you down, and as a long-term strategy it’s just stopping you from planning your tasks properly.

Multi-tasking forces you to be inefficient and unproductive. Don’t fall into / stay in this trap.

Summing It Up

I hope you found the above tips useful. Following any one of these tips will immediately boost your productivity, but when you start applying several of them together is when you will see the real benefits – these tips were far better in tandem than they do on their own.

Comments are welcome.

Also read: 10 Tips for Razor Sharp Concentration.

Supplemental illness cured by Google

The Google supplemental index is gone.

Whatever it was good for now it is better (Google says)

Just stumbled over the article at the official Google blog: The Ultimate Fate of Supplemental Results

Having articles in the supplemental index (SI) was always seen as some sort of banning pages into some sort of 2nd class drawer. Rumors tell that webmasters have been hanging around dead after having too many pages in the SI. Now this supplemental illness can be cured and those webmasters get a new life just in time for the upcoming Christmas frenzy.

Now we’re coming to the next major milestone in the elimination of the artificial difference between indices: rather than searching some part of our index in more depth for obscure queries, we’re now searching the whole index for every query.

Good that no people had to be killed after letting out this info. Google sees ‘killing people’ as not, hmm, really well fitting to their ‘don’t be evil’ motto.

Originally, I was going to give the stock Google answer, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” However, I’ve been informed by management that killing people violates our “Don’t be evil” policy,…

That news is sheer madness. Nothing happening here. Move on…

Announcing The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards – Call For Nominations

Performancing is all about encouraging bloggers to make good blogs. And this year, we’re going to recognize the best blogs in the business with the first annual Performancing Blog Awards.

Starting today, we’re opening up nominations for the best best blogs or bloggers in each category. You are free to nominate your own blog, but we’d also encourage you to nominate others…blogs and bloggers that you truly believe in.

In addition, why not help spread the word about the Performancing Blog Awards by making a post on your own blog. You are free to hotlink the image and also include the following categories that are up for nomination.

Each category will have a single winner, two runners up, and possibly some honorable mentions. Our goal is to highlight the very best that the blogosphere has to offer, and we appreciate any tips/help that the Performancing community can provide to help us make our decisions:

Official Categories For The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards:

1. The Best Overall Blog
2. The Most Influential Blogger
3. The Best Blog Design
4. The Best Blog Typography
5. The Best Blog Name
6. The Best New Blog
7. The Best Blog Community
8. The Most Improved Blog of 2007
9. The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of
10. The Best Blog Podcast
11. The Best Use of a Corporate Blog
12. The Best Video Blog
13. The Best Writing/Blogging Blog
14. The Best Science/Technology Blog
15. The Most Controversial Blog
16. The Best SEO Blog
17. The Best Celeb/Style Blog
18. The Best Business/Money Blogs
19. The Best Photo Blog
20. The Best Sports Blog
21. The Best Blog WebHost
22. The Best Family and Parenting Blog
23. The Best Political Blog
24. The Best Food/Health Blog
25. The Funniest Blog

It’s the people’s awards afterall…

26. The Best Travel Blog
27. The Best Education Blog
28. The Best Entertainment Blog (Music, TV, Movies)

The awesome Performancing Blog Awards logos were designed by Randa Clay, the official graphic designer of Performancing Services.

Legal Issues of Posting E-mail Correspondence on Blog

My question is simple:

If someone takes private email correspondence and, without asking permission, posts the other person’s email message to a blog, what is the legal status of that content? Does the person who has not granted permission have a legal case to bring against the person who posted the content of the e-mail message?

Twitter as Popularity Contest

I love Twitter. Of course I didn’t always, I have both loved and hated it with equal measure. It can be an incredible waste of time but if you are careful about who you follow there is just the right mix of socializing and signal v noise that I am kept involved.

The funny thing is the service today has been taken over by talk of the “Tweeterboard” which ranks users based on their conversations by counting how many times their name is referenced. Will this turn it into a popularity contest?

It seems if today is any indication, a lot of people are trying to game their rankings. I do hope this is a one day aberration.

What do you think? Do you Twitter? Will this spoil it for you?