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5 Tools to Make You a More Productive Blogger

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This post was written by Lior who is an adviser to Producteev, an online task management start-up.

Productivity on the Web is hard. Not only does every Web worker have several things to do at once (email, writing, IM, etc.) but there are distractions everywhere from social news sites to funny videos on YouTube that can pull you away.

Finding ways to stay organized and focus in the digital age are great challenges that every blogger must overcome. Fortunately, there are several tools out there that will help you cut through the digital clutter and get things done.

Here are just a few of the key ones that you need to know. [Read more…] about 5 Tools to Make You a More Productive Blogger

Weeding out Guest Blog Post Submission Spam

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Getting more incoming links to your blog or website from influential and popular sites is a great way to boost your search engine rankings.  That’s one of the reasons that guest blogging is popular.  Not only does it help the guest blogger get in front of a wider audience, but it also gives the guest blogger more incoming links to his own blog (most guest bloggers include a bio with a link to their website or blog).

The Ugly Side of Guest Blogging

However, there is a growing trend online where both legitimate and questionable companies pay people to craft “guest blog posts” which those writers blindly submit to websites and blogs in an effort to build incoming links for a company.  Whether or not the writer knows the actual purpose of the guest post in terms of link-building is less important than realizing a company is paying someone to submit guest posts using specific keyword phrase links within those posts.

Recognizing Guest Blog Post Spam

Sometimes these posts are actually relevant to the blog’s audience to which they are submitted.  Other times they are not relevant at all.  It’s the relevant submissions that can be harder to detect and weed out.  For example, I get guest post submissions on my various blogs frequently and often keyword phrases such as “online colleges” or “payday loans” or “credit card processing” are found in these posts along with no writer bio or a very brief writer bio.  These types of guest post submissions immediately raise a red flag and get sent to the trash.

You’ll also get requests that actually reference your blog saying something like, “I’ve been reading your blog and really like what you have to say.”  They might even be more specific and include a link to a specific post saying how great it was.  In the end though, you’re likely to find one of those two red flags mentioned above (the very specific yet somewhat random keyword phrase links and the nonexistent or extremely brief writer bio).

Tackling Guest Blog Spam

Remember, it’s your blog and if you find a guest post submission questionable, you don’t have to publish it.  Another option is to include the HTML NoFollow tag in any questionable links.  The site could still get traffic from click-throughs, but the incoming link won’t be counted by search engines like Google when they rank search results.  Most importantly, follow the links in guest posts submitted to your blog to ensure they lead your audience to legitimate sites before you publish those posts.  The last thing you want to do is upset your loyal audience and tarnish your brand image by leading your audience to spam sites.

Finally, it’s a good idea to publish some guidelines for guest post submissions and actual post entries.  While most of the spammers won’t even bother to look at these guidelines, it can help to reduce the number of submissions that you would never publish.  It also protects you by warning people who submit guest posts that you reserve the right to approve, decline or edit any and all guest post submissions without notice.

Is there a type of guest blog post submission that you get frequently which is clearly spam or spammish?  Leave a comment and share your experience!

Image: stock.xchng

How to Use Elance to Scale your Blog’s Content Strategy

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Guest Bio: Charles Sipe is an online marketing manager at Criminal Justice Degree Schools, a resource for individuals seeking information on justice degrees and careers in criminal justice.

Creating high quality content that is useful and engaging to your target audience is one of the most important aspects of growing a successful blog, however it is often difficult to find the time to write great content on a regular basis. Many blog or business owners know how important fresh content is, but they often lack the bandwidth to write all the articles they want to. What if you could hire a team of talented writers to research and write the articles that would attract lots of targeted traffic to your blog for $10-$20 an article? Elance is an amazing tool that blog owners can utilize to build a staff of writers for a fraction of the price of hiring a traditional staff. In this article you will learn how to use Elance to scale your blog or website’s content strategy. [Read more…] about How to Use Elance to Scale your Blog’s Content Strategy

Should Pro Bloggers Choose Service Hosting Over Self Hosting?

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A long time ago at the beginning of geek time there were two types of bloggers. Those who blogged for fun (or passion), and those who earned a profit from blogging (the latter who were often referred to as “pro bloggers”).

Back then it was easy to tell the difference between the two as more often than not pro bloggers chose to self host their sites while the masses opted for the free version.

Fast forward towards today and many blog platforms allow users to pro blog on the cheap.

In fact by purchasing a domain one can turn a site like Blogger, Tumblr, or even OnSugar (for you Drupal fans) into a professional site for the price of the domain (which for most is $10/year).

Faced with those expenses, should a person even consider service hosting their blog instead of self hosting?

For those wondering whether self hosting is the best option for them, here are the pluses and minuses for service hosting one’s blog.

[Read more…] about Should Pro Bloggers Choose Service Hosting Over Self Hosting?

The Laws of Brand Focus and Contraction and Why Bloggers Should Care

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I’m a marketer by profession, and one of the basic laws of building a brand tells us that a highly focused brand is stronger in the long-term than an unfocused brand.  In other words, the most powerful brands own a word in people’s minds.

On the other hand, there is another marketing law that tells us it’s better to be the leader in a category than it is to be better.  That’s because the category leader, meaning the brand that is first to enter that market, owns the broad word that defines the category simply by being first.  Later entrants into the category are challenged with the need to differentiate their own brands from the category leader in order to steal market share from that pioneer brand.  For example, Microsoft might own “operating system” in the world of personal computers, but Apple owns “design”.  Apple effectively positioned its brand against the category leader by differentiating its brand as a market challenger that was focused on a very specific part of the category which the leader couldn’t offer as well as Apple could.  The strategy worked for Apple just as it does for many other brands in many other categories.

And guess what?  It works for blogs, too.

If you take a step back from your blog and the social web, you’ll see that your blog is just one within the broader category of blogs and websites that publish content about your blog topic.  There is probably a leader in that category, and there are many, many smaller competitor blogs in that category.  The first step to finding focus for your blog is determining what that area of focus will be, so you can effectively position your blog against your competitors.  What is the category leader doing and how can you bring your own niche expertise to the category to challenge the leader?

Think of it this way — if you write a blog about parenting, then you have a lot of big competition from established blogs and companies with deep pockets and pre-existing brand awareness to work against.  However, if you find your focus and contract your content and brand to that niche, then your chances of finding long-term blogging success are far greater than if you keep a broad brand and try to compete head on with the bigger players in your category.

Looking at the concept of brand focus from another perspective, consider General Motors.  This is a company that focused on the wrong thing for many years.  Upon seeing the dollar signs that selling large, gas-guzzling vehicles like Hummers could bring to the company’s bottom-line, focus shifted to these money-making brands.  Short-term earnings trumped long-term sustainability for General Motors.  When the economy tanked, so did General Motors.  Today, the Hummer brand is nearly gone and General Motors has been vocally touting its new focus on fuel-efficient vehicles for the future.

Suffice it to say, you don’t want your blog to go the way of General Motors, because a bailout for your blog is unlikely.  Instead, make sure you choose an area of focus, your niche, that has long-term potential, so you can stay competitive and hold your position against the market leader and other blogs in your category.

Image: stock.xchng

Why Google Chrome Is The Fastest Browser (and great for blogging!)

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This is a guest post by Modi, an SEO and web design consultant who works for a 18th birthday gifts company. If you’d like to connect with him, follow him on Twitter as @macmodi.

There’s nothing more annoying for any blogger than a browser that stops responding and eventually crashes. And as most of us have witnessed, it usually happens just before you are about to submit and publish that great post. Then you have to start all over again while wondering how come we are in the year 2010 and still have to deal with that sort of very annoying issues. And to make things even worse, you need to kill the entire browser application, losing all other open tabs and windows!

The good news for all bloggers, however is that with Google Chrome this is not necessarily the case. [Read more…] about Why Google Chrome Is The Fastest Browser (and great for blogging!)

Blogging Pitfalls: How to Avoid Lazy Writing and Editing

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At the end of the day, the most basic activity a blogger must do is write.

While it is true that bloggers are, with good reason, expanding more and more into video and audio, at some point every blogger is going to have to write something. It might be a description, a bio or even just an advertisement but, at some point, a every blogger is going to have to put words onto paper.

But not every writer has the heart of a poet or the writing skills of a hard-hitting journalists. Bloggers come from all different backgrounds and styles and many have had little training or experience with writing prior to starting up their blog.

The good news is that you don’t need to be the next Shakespeare to be an effective and popular blogger, in many ways it helps not to be, but you do have to be able to write clearly and in a way that is engaging to your reader. It may not require a Ph.D in literature, but it does require that you work on honing your craft and make your writing as good as possible.

Failure to do so can sink an otherwise great blog and make your previous hard work a complete waste of time.

[Read more…] about Blogging Pitfalls: How to Avoid Lazy Writing and Editing

Branding Your Business or Blog with an Avatar

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Veronica Davis is a freelance writer and internet business columnist for Examiner. She works with and writes for businesses online, and recommends every business create an avatar to call their own.

Unless you have been hiding under your bed for the last few years, you know social media is the new norm. It’s how you meet people, communicate ideas, express your thoughts, interview for a job, grow business and just have fun. The days of a big smile and a firm handshake are no longer by any means a form of introducing one’s self. Your avatar is your first impression as you meet and interact with others on blogs, social networks, and in other online communities. [Read more…] about Branding Your Business or Blog with an Avatar