Note: Plain text version because the many links sent the original article into the moderation queue at performancing.com.

• Using a redirection service like the classic tinyurl is nice but what if the service dies down or is offline for a while?
• As far as I can see tinyurl.com (Alternative b.tinyurl.com) is down at the moment. Only a 500 internal server error is coming up.

Well, you can't do much but for the ongoing link exchange via .i.e. Twitter or chat you can use some alternatives to tinyurl:

• urlsmash.com - Offers the additional alias feature. This way you can choose a name for the redirected link instead of an anonymous number with tinyurl.
• shorturl.com - Many features
• urltea.com - 'Earl Tea' is so ugly that you have to love it :) Nice for SEO: You can add descriptions to the URL (urltea.com/1?lol_at_the_photo).
• snipurl.com - I think snipurl is a classic one like tinyurl.
• Last not least: Here are 44 screenshots from tinyurl competitors with links in the descriptions on Flickr.

Hat tip to bloggersblog.com for the information about tinyurl alternatives.

Tell me in the comments which URL shortener you like and why.

• Follow-Up for Another Timeline Tool: Dipity TimeTube
• UGC = User Generated Content
• CGC = Company Generated Content

I'll show you a great live example for a product timeline

Out of fun (because I am a fan) I have added a nice product timeline for Gorillapod mini-tripods using a mashup of UGC and CGC. As I have not the rights to post script code I can only recommend to follow the link at the bottom of this article. Search performancing.com for Gorillapod to see about which product I am talking about.

Check the live example and you can see how you can add great dynamic content for your content niche or to (company) websites...

Read the rest of this entry

Wow, what a PR stunt!
British humor at its best.

Paddding lamp posts and draw lines on the pavement

• Pretend to be serious.
• Publish a study and people will jump on that 'scientific' train.

Classical PR linkbait by a classical company on a London road attracts classical media (and me). Kudos for that great and funny approach.

The scientific hook

Britain's first 'Safe Text' street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.

Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a "walk 'n text" street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.

The 6.6million accidents have caused injuries ranging from mild knocks and embarrassing cuts and bruises through to broken noses, cheekbones and even a fractured skull.

Here is the full story: Brick Lane made Britain's first 'Safe Text' street with padded lampposts to prevent mobile phone injuries

What is the whole PR stunt good for?

From the about page of 118.com:

Text your question directly to us, you already know the number, its 118118, We’ll text you your answer back, each response only costs a pound.

Only one British pound...

Interested in lists?
Lists are a great source to get some awareness?
At least you have something to blog about :)

The Guardian has taken the chance to rank 'The world's 50 most powerful blogs'

From Prince Harry in Afghanistan to Tom Cruise ranting about Scientology and footage from the Burmese uprising, blogging has never been bigger. It can help elect presidents and take down attorney generals while simultaneously celebrating the minutiae of our everyday obsessions. Here are the 50 best reasons to log on

Clever linkbait from a classical media...

Read the rest of this entry

Wise words about good writing spoken out by Matthew Peters @ copyblogger.com.

In short:

• Give your readers some fine beef to take away
• Don't over optimize for social media

If the purpose of your blog is to provide meaningful content on a subject, then don’t forget that one of the main actions you want your readers to take is to keep reading. Use your skills/tips/tricks at the beginning of your writing to snag the reader’s attention but then don’t be afraid to set those tricks aside and earn that attention with your quality content….with your meat. That is how to engage social media consumers and start to build a relationship with them that will lead to whatever ultimate goal you have.

The Unexpected Trap of Writing for Social Media

Hat tip for bringing this article to my attention goes to expressitwrite

Thinking about publishing an e-book?

I found an e-book example which IMHO looks like an e-book project template for e-book beginners.

Caroline Middlebrook has published (and maintained!) an e-book about 'How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress' (link below). Her e-book is not only an e-book but a whole e-book project! Three arguments why I like this specific e-book:

1. What makes this e-book so outstanding in my eyes is that the e-book shows a very concrete and practical approach instead of hammering out philosophic statements.
2. The great bookmark and navigation structure which makes it absolutely easy to pick out essential single items.
3. The e-book is accompanied by a live website. You can always go there and see live how the website looks. Creating a live website for an e-book is pretty outstanding.

What I don't like: Her approach to create a static website with the blog CMS WordPress. Reading my blog entries you will know that I do not recommend to use the blog CMS WordPress for static pages. For this task I would always use Textpattern which is not only a good blog CMS but handles static pages much better (Performancing.com: Tag Textpattern, Search Textpattern).

The reason for choosing WordPress is clear though. The goal is to get as many e-book downloads as possible. Why? The monetization aspect of the free e-book is to make money from the many affiliate links. Is that goal worth to choose the IMHO wrong CMS platform? From an affiliate point of view the approach is at least understandable.

Having said that here are some details about her e-book project...

Read the rest of this entry

Creating a blog is like breathing for you?
What about the content?

And here comes a client who needs a website/blog.

Almost always somebody who needs a website/blog will have some special know-how in a niche. He/She is a specialist for a content niche (let's say plumbing) but has no web development and (!) no writing skills (but maybe thinks so).

Artem is writing in Have Profession - Will Be Paid for Writing:

If you have skills in pretty much any area, you can easily earn extra $5-20 an hour by freelance writing in a relevant niche blog - the writer's skills are not important.

His perspective is good and a specialist able to write can make some extra freelance money from his know-how. I always experience it the other way round :)

How I make long term money from content development...

Read the rest of this entry

Raj stated: "You seem to despise WordPress, even though it's better than TextPattern ;)"

• Well, are you developing themes for WordPress?
• Do you want content being different depending on page, category, keyword, article, tag, list, sub-directory,...?
• Do you have to write documentation for client projects?

The Textpattern CMS/blog system offers a great set of template tags!

In the development process of a website/blog time is an important issue. Doing website development for clients also means to have the ugly task to write a documentation. I am not sure how website development with WordPress is done but I can show you how easy it is to develop a content driven website with Textpattern and achieve a nice logical overview (plus easy documentation).

Let's see how to realize different sidebars dependent on the single output page...

Read the rest of this entry

Is local content important for you?
Do you geotag your articles?

SEO: Localized user generated content is becoming more important

Localizing your content if possible is important. Behind the curtains Google is pushing localized search results and user profiles more and more. The anouncement of Google My Maps in April 2007 opened the borders of easy to create geotagged placemarks to the wide audience. Beside the possibility to track your personal walkabouts Google My Maps opened up new SEO and SEM possibilities.

If you have localized content you should geotag your articles in Google My Maps!

Read the rest of this entry

Are you using i.e. Google personal maps?
How do you promote your maps?

Ongopongo is a specialized directory for maps with some digg-like features.

When Google made the 'My Maps' service public in April 2007 (Map-making: So easy a caveman could do it) it only took a very short while until Riley created Ongopongo. This Drupal driven site is a kind of specialized digg clone for links to maps. As far as I have checked out Ongopongo all of the submitted maps are hosted on the Google My Maps service. But you can submit every kind of map because Ongopongo takes links as submission.

Don't expect explanations for the name Ongopongo from me :)

Read the rest of this entry

A must read: BASIC principles of online journalism: S is for Scannability

Online news borrows from both, but because it is a medium where users are active readers, scannability is key to effective online journalism. There are a number of techniques that enhance the scannability of any webpage:

All points well written, nicely listed and explained.

Table of content:

• S is for Scannability
• Accessibility and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• The first two words are crucial
• Linking effectively
• Low-literacy users

Related: Create a structure for your blog posts

Follow-Up to Great comment battle "for CMS suggestions"

But the valuable content is coming from the commenting crowd. Most of them are talking about real life experiences with the many different CMS.

That CMS discussion looks like a great pool of CMS knowledge exchange.

What CMS do you use - and what does it do well or badly?

Paul Bradshaw from onlinejournalismblog.com also asks his readers what CMS to suggest.

I’ve been teaching my student journalists how to use the content management system for our new news website (more about that in a later post). We’re using Joomla - it does a lot, but it’s not exactly user-friendly, which ironically makes it a very good experience for anyone who’ll have to use newspaper CMS’s.

And this begs the question: what CMS do you use - and what does it do well or badly?

Well my answer on onlinejournalismblog.com was eaten by the WP comment system (no reason given) but here is my comment mirroring my actual point of view:

Read the rest of this entry

• Do you use categories?
• Do you use tags?
• Do you offer a full text search?

Are you satisfied having three different search result pages inside your blog?

Let's say we have a blog with 300+ articles, 1,000 tags, about 50 categories and some archive pages. And maybe you are linking to your internal full text search results via search links too. All those internal links are good for SEO.

But are three different search result pages a good approach to offer a valuable site search?

I say 'No' because your site and archive pages are transparent but not all (!) pages are mirrored in the results. Only specific parts of your site show up when doing a tag/category/full text search. I am not even talking about the valuable content inside the comments (like here on performancing.com) which normally is not indexed internally at all.

Let's introduce the web 1.0 'fuzzy search' box...

Read the rest of this entry

For a niche oriented blogger it is pretty natural to come up with new subject ideas all the time. Raj wrote an inspiring article How Many Niches Should You Pro-Blog? but focused on the questions involved and the problems showing up when doing multi-niche blogging.

Let me show you my very 1st concept phases for a new website.

The basic idea is to work out a content concept 1st and to ignore design issues. If you fall into the trap of designing a new site 1st then you will see how decelerating design issues are.

Read the rest of this entry

• Do you hammer out your daily dose of blog posts?
• Are you and your readers satisfied with your blog format?
• Are your readers leaving your page after reading one page?

If the answer to the last question is a proud 'Yes Sir' then we have found a bunch of classical blog problems related to 'archive pages'.

• Visitors read the latest article and leave
• Visitors find a good article via search engine and leave

As the new performancing.com staff writer James Mowery pointed out in How To Make Your Previously Written Content Valuable Once Again there are good reasons to give your readers a lightning fast way to previously published great articles (Read: buried stone dead in the archives). Let's use a more generic and less performance consuming approach...

Social bookmarks are perfect for publishing...

Read the rest of this entry