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Three Ways That Political Campaigning Taught Me To Be A Better Blogger

Posted in » Blogging Tips, Guest Posts - by Ades

22 Comments 

by Phil Van Treuren @KillerCampaigns

I was a professional political consultant for several years, but had never run for office myself until this year. I was successful in winning a city council seat in Amherst, Ohio, and discovered that being a candidate is much harder than being a campaign manager.

Surprisingly, there were a few things that I learned on the campaign trail that actually helped me become a better blogger. At their core, blogging and campaigning are both about defining your target audience and effectively communicating your message to them. Here are three successful methods that I used as a political candidate that I’ve also used to improve my blogging.

1. Take time to lay the groundwork, and work incrementally

In order to put together a successful political campaign, there are many things that need to be done to lay the groundwork for victory on election night. Building potential donor and volunteer lists, studying voter results from past election cycles, and formulating your campaign message are only a few of the tasks that should be complete before you announce your candidacy.

Laying the groundwork for a successful blog is every bit as important. Researching your niche, writing anchor articles, choosing the proper site layout and studying other similar blogs can help make eventual success much more likely.

Additionally, don’t think that success as a blogger will come overnight . . . or even after several months. Instead, take on blogging incrementally, much as I did with campaigning. I set myself small goals, such as knocking on every door in a given precinct or filling out a certain number of personal cards each night.

You can set similar incremental benchmarks for your blog when it comes to posting, visitors and subscribers.

2. Make sure your presentation reflects your professionalism

You might be a trustworthy, well-educated authority in your field, but people aren’t going to know that unless you present yourself to them in a way that reflects your professionalism. This goes for running for office and blogging, too.

On the campaign trail, I made sure that I was prepared with professionally printed campaign materials that explained my qualifications for office, and educated myself on the issues so that I could intelligently answer any questions the voters might have for me.

Similarly, you have to keep in mind that as a blogger, you’ll only get one chance to make a first impression with a new visitor. Make sure that your blog projects an accurate image of how seriously you take it. It doesn’t take much technical expertise anymore to put together a sharp-looking blog, and new readers are much more likely to bookmark for a return trip if they are impressed with your presentation.

3. Don’t stray from your message

A campaign without a well-focused message is often unable to gain traction with voters, just as a blog without a well-focused message won’t get many subscribers or repeat visitors.

While it’s your prerogative to focus on whatever you want in your posts, you’ll find a much more receptive and interactive audience if you limit yourself to a specific niche. No one likes to read a blog about nothing. By focusing on a topic that you are passionate and educated about, you’ll quickly build an audience that appreciates your authenticity.

Don’t be afraid to stray from your blog’s main focus and have some fun every now and then, but always keep in mind what your audience wants to learn about. The same can be said for campaigning, as well!

Phil Van Treuren blogs about political campaign advice on Killer Campaigning.

15 Tips to Unclog Your Blog : Breaking Blogger’s Block

Posted in » Blogging Tips, Guest Posts - by Ades

47 Comments 

Edward Khoo is a full time blogger from Malaysia. You can follow him on twitter at @squall768

The phenomenon of blogs has caught on, in case you hadn’t noticed. In just a few years, bloggers went from the unknown, unread, poor cousins of mainstream media to a powerful force that help shape everything from political policies to better eating habits.

However, keeping your blog fresh takes dedication, drive and hard work. It’s something you should do regularly and think about often as you drive around town. Here are some tips to keep you motivated, writing and posting. After all, your blog is important. It’s your little piece of the W3 landscape so take ownership and use it to spread your message.

1. Create a blog on a topic about which you have a passion or genuine interest.
It’s much easier writing about topics that actually interest you. So, if you’re interested in politics on a global scale, create a political blog that covers topics of interest to like-minded readers.

Writing about a topic that interests you is not a work. It feeds your natural, innate curiosity. You learn more as you teach others what you’ve learned.

2. Set aside a time each day to write your posts.
Schedule an hour a day (or more if you really want the world to read what you have to say) and stick to the schedule. Instead of turning on the TV after dinner, write a 500-word post for tomorrow.

If you opt to write when the spirit moves you, it may never move you and you may never post. There are thousands of dusty old blogs out there with posts that are five years old. Nobody is going to read that.

3. Visit blogs on the same topic as your blog.
You can’t copyright an idea. You can’t own an idea. So, visit blogs that cover topics similar to your own.

Now, you can’t (and shouldn’t) rip off content from other bloggers. That’s just bad form. But you will find topics you hadn’t thought of. Spin these articles to make them your own. Rewrite them from a different point of view. Reference other blogs and even link to them when the topic is related.

Blogging is a big part of web connectivity. Use it to discover people who share your interests, whatever they may be.

4. Take your blog seriously.
Think of it as a job – one wherein you’re the boss. No editor. You’re the editor. Post at least twice a week. Three times weekly is even better and daily is the best. Visitors to your blog will stop coming by if they see the same content each time they visit.

This ties back to point number one. If you have an interest or expertise about which you’re passionate, posting daily won’t be a chore. It’ll be fun. As you learn more about your topic, you’ll enjoy spreading the news.

5. Google the topic of your blog.
There are always new trends, new opinions, new concepts and new ideas available on the W3. Google keywords related to the topicality of your blog for new ideas and new topics about which to write.

6. Provide helpful information.
Even though it’s your blog – your digital real estate, your blog isn’t about you. It’s about your readers. Provide helpful information in your posts and you’ll soon start to build a following.

7. Keep your gadgets and widgets fresh.
There will be days when you just don’t have time to write a lengthy post on your passion for ceramics. However, you can post tips daily in your widget column. (See the miniblog on top of Adesblog? That’s what I am talking about!) Update these posts with quick tips. They’re only a few words and the tips you provide in your widget column will keep readers coming back. Read more »

WebHostingGeeks - Hosting Reviews

Posted in » Blogging Tips - by Ades

19 Comments 

If you are new to setting up websites or blogs on the net, choosing hosting companies can be a real headache. You wouldn’t know which one to choose, all seem to claim offering great services, low prices and guaranteed 99% uptime (find out what does that mean here).

WebHostingGeeks is a website that offers a platform for people to review web hosting companies. Independent reviews are published in more than 10 categories, eg; overall web hosting, dedicated server, vps hosting etc.

When getting a hosting for your website/blog, third party opinions and reviews matter a lot. Don’t just go and get a hosting based on what you see on their website. Rather do some research and see what others are saying about the company. For example, on WebHostingGeeks InMotion got over 200 reviews and most of them are positive. That says a lot about the company and its services.

Tip: If possible, try to keep your domain names and hosting separate (i.e don’t get both of them from the same company). Because, when you change your hosting, and believe me you will… it can get complicated. Normally, I keep all my domain names with goDaddy and my hosting with Pair Networks.

Website: webhostinggeeks.com

Results: Guest posting on Problogger.net

Posted in » Blogging Tips - by Ades

42 Comments 

Around 1.5 months ago I guest-blogged on Darren’s blog at problogger.net. Today I would like to share with you the results of this exercise.

I think the success of the guest-blogging depends on many things, on things like;

• Authority, traffic, user-base… of the blog that you are guest-blogging.
• Topic of your guest-post; how interesting it is, how beneficial it is, how well it is written etc.
• What you have done to capture the new visitors to your blog?

So, as you can see the variables are many. For this reason, it’s very difficult to analyze one guest-post at one particular blog and apply the results on other bogs. However, for simplicity reasons, let’s say what economists like to say “ceteris paribus (all other things being equal)” and proceed with the results. I am sure the results will be beneficial to many bloggers, despite the fact that it’s based on one guest-post on Problogger. Just remember to keep those variables in mind if you decide to guest blog on other blogs. Do some basic research on the blog and its followers, niche, traffic etc. before deciding to give away one of your best articles.

Should you give away your best articles as guest-posts?

When I was done with my blog post titled “5 Ways to Get Your Blog Indexed by Google in 24 Hours“, I was about to push that “publish” button in my WordPress and then I remembered “How about I give away this blog post as guest-post to some high-traffic blog?”. I was satisfied with the quality of the post so I decided to test if it is worth to give away your best articles as guest-posts.

I quickly made a list of potential blogs that I could send my guest-post to. From a handful of blogs that I have selected, Problogger definitely stood out, so I sent a quick email to Darren.

Few things to remember when sending an email:

• Write a brief intro about yourself (name), your blog (give URL) and the topic of your guest-post. Don’t make it more than 5 sentences. No one wants to read long emails.
• Attach the article that you wrote to the email. Top-bloggers are usually busy and do not have time to reply (especially when they do not know you). So make it easy to get published, attach your guest-post to the email.
• Give a time-frame to review and get back to you. 2-3 days should be fine. Let him/her know that if you do not hear back from him/her during this time-frame you will be posting it on your own blog or send to another blogger. This will make things clear for both of you.

The Results

The post itself on Problogger got over 900 tweets. So that’s a lot of traffic, even according to Problogger standards. It also received more than 150 comments.

On my side, Google Analytics is showing that Problogger sent me 384 visitors during the 20 days period after the guest-post was published. Which is not much but then again I am guessing that my WP-Cache plugin might have affected the real stats.

I use caching for my blog and it refreshes every 60 minutes. During the first week MyBlogLog statistics was showing over 100 visitors per day from Problogger. Anyway, my guesstimation is that the traffic was between 300 to 800 visitors for the whole 20 day period. (anyone have details whether wp-cache plugin affects traffic stats?)

RSS Subcribers: +50 (give or take)
Twitter Followers: +100 (give or take)

Conclusion

As a conclusion, for my case I would say the guest-blogging was definitely worth it. Increases in the RSS and Twitter followers and the flow of traffic for the first week was very significant. I certainly noticed the spike in all three.

As for you guys, you should definitely try guest-blogging as one of your marketing strategies. Only thing, like I said in the beginning of this post, choose the target blog and the topic of your guest-post very carefully and wisely. Also, titles play important role too, so make your titles catchy (but not misleading).

I hope you found this post interesting and beneficial. If you did, please tweet, stumble, digg… thanks!

Subscribe to my RSS: feeds2.feedburner.com/AdesBlog

WP Hack: Showing Only Images in Search Results

Posted in » Blogging Tips, WordPress - by Ades

25 Comments 

If you run a blog that has a lot of pics in it (perhaps photography blog?), you could easily display only images in your blog search results. WordPress by default doesn’t display any images in the search results.

For example, when people look for, let’s say “cars”, they would only see title of the post followed by pictures of cars in the search results. This would make your blog’s search function a lot more user-friendly and usable, because nothing is worse than looking for an image in the photography blog and getting search results in only text format.

Identifying images that lie behind the page through reading texts is a nightmare. Instead, it’s a lot easier to see few cars and decide which one to click right on the search results page.

Quick tutorial below on how to implement such a feature:

1. Download and install this plugin
2. Add the code below somewhere in your search results page (usually search.php). Make sure it’s inside the loop. It should be placed after the title tags and before the comments tags

<?php if ( function_exists( ‘get_the_image’ ) ) { get_the_image(’width=640&height=300&image_scan=true&default_image=http://www.yourdomain.com/default_image.jpg’ ); } ?>

Don’t forget to define the image width and height accordingly. default_image.jpg is the pic that will be used if the post doesn’t have any images in it.

You are done! Your readers are happy now.

Plugin Link: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-the-image/

Yahoo Meme, Posterous and Your Social Media Srategy

Posted in » Blogging Tips - by Ades

53 Comments 

As you might know Yahoo launched new service called Meme.Yahoo (Beta) recently. It’s basically an attempt to simplify the whole blogging and information sharing thing.

Will it get adopted? Hmm… given the terrible track record of Yahoo in Social Media sites (Delicious, MyBlogLog and Flickr are slowly dying), it’s hard to tell if this one will succeed. Nevertheless, as a service it’s very simple and extremely easy to use.

Check out my Meme at meme.yahoo.com/ades. Since it’s still in beta, if you want to register for an account you will need an invite for it. I have 15 invites at the moment, if you need one just let me know in the comments section of this post and I will send it to your email.

Posterous

Similar service Posterous.com on the other hand seems to be doing great. Many people are catching up, mainly pushed by early adopters and influencers such as:

• Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) - http://techcrunch.posterous.com
• Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) - http://scobleizer.posterous.com
• Guy Kawasaki (Alltop) - http://holykaw.alltop.com (using custom domain)
• Jason Calacanis (Mahalo) - http://jasoncalacanis.posterous.com
• and more…

How to Keep Up With Social Sites?

Social sites are cropping up like mushrooms after the rain these days. And they are getting replaced at a faster pace by the new ones. Remember sites like Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace? Now all we know is Facebook and Twitter.

It takes time to build your user base in every social site. And when these sites are replaced by the new, more recent one, you will most likely lose many users. Yaro Starak has an interesting read related to this discussion on his blog, titled “Social Media Mistakes: Are You Forgetting Your Fundamentals?“.

He basically suggests that you shouldn’t concentrate on building a user base on Social Sites per se. But your objective should be to utilize them to channel and build a user base on your own blog and most importantly a mailing list. He argues, Social Sites come and go, but your blog (or mailing list, or brand) will stay as long as you want it to stay. I agree.

Dashboard Screenshots of Yahoo Meme after the jump Read more »

Google Sidewiki and Your Blog

Posted in » Blogging Tips, Marketing - by Ades

37 Comments 

Google’s New Toolbar with Sidewiki is an interesting tool that can have great impact on the way people comment on blogs and websites (even if the websites do not provide commenting options).

Google describe Sidewiki as: “Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page.”

So, basically it’s a tool that allows you to leave comments on any website or page on the net. And anybody who has (New) Google Toolbar installed on their browser can see your comments that you left for that particular page.

What If I am The Owner of The Page (Blog)?

If you own the page, your comment will be displayed on top of all the other comments. So, this is a little privilege that you get by being the owner of the page. You can post a ‘welcome message’! (see below).

In order to inform Google that you are the owner of the URL, you need to:

1. Add and verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools. This process links your site to your Google Account.
2. Once a site is linked to your Google Account, visit your page and click the Sidewiki button to create an entry.
3. Select the ‘Write as the page owner’ checkbox in the entry form.
4. Click Publish.

Some Random Thoughts…

Few things come to in mind with the introduction of this Sidewiki.

• You can now comment on any page.
• You can now benefit from the comments of other people on particular pages/sites. You can read:
  • unbiased product reviews by actual people,
  • will be able to find out if the sites are ’scam’ or ‘illegal’ sites.
  • find out better deals from other people’s comments on e-commerce sites. Normally, sites wouldn’t link to competitors’ products ;)
• If you are blogger or website owner, it also means goodbye “comment moderation”. You are no longer in control of your comments, at least as far as Sidewiki is concerned (you have this much control).
• Just like in blog comments, bloggers can use Sidewiki to their advantage to promote their blogs by leaving comments on other blogs.
• Spam will be an issue. As usual.
• This is a speculation but Google actually might use the comments (Sidewiki) to improve its Search Results in the future. For example, if people comment that particular site is a scam site and let’s say there are 200 such comments by actual people who have been cheated by this website. Then Google might ban this website from its Search Results and Indexing. Thus improving its Search Results!

  I personally believe Google is moving in that direction, where the mass help improve Google its Search Results. As you know Google is already using people to improve its results, at least on personal level for the time being. (see below):

  

  But I think it’s just a matter of time before they go public with this feature i.e meaning that people’s actions on search results promoting some sites and dropping some sites, will actually affect Google’s Search Results in the future.

What’s your thoughts on this? Comments both on the blog and Sidewiki are welcome :)

5 Tips to Improve Your Corporate Blog

Posted in » Advice to Businesses, Blogging Tips - by Ades

21 Comments 

Are you a company that is into corporate blogging? Do you feel that somehow your blog is not taking off? Nobody’s commenting?

Well, I think it’s a common problem in many companies. They are just into it (i.e corporate blogging) because they saw their competitors had a blog, or they don’t want to be seen left behind, or the boss said so!

If you want your corporate blog to be successful, you can’t take it as another PR tool only. Sure, you can post the news about your company, new products and services, events that your company is sponsoring etc. But corporate blogging is not about that only, if you restrict your blog into all the above mentioned things alone then it’s not a blog… it’s just a “news page” that is located under your domain dot com/blog directory.

Recommendations and Examples

For your corporate blog to be successful you need to do at least several things, the more the better, namely:

• Write Interesting Articles in your line of Business * most important *
  So, we have established that people are not eager to visit your corporate blog and subscribe to its RSS just to receive updates of new products, services and all that PR stuff. What people really want is, to read blog posts that are interesting and relevant to your business. Things that they normally do not see or know. Things that you guys are good at.
  .
  For example, if you are an Online Ad-Network Company in Asia, it would be great to know things like
  • average click-through rates on banner types in Asia
  • future of banners, what type of banners are becoming popular, why?
  • regional studies on banner blindness, which banners are clicked most when placed in top, left column, middle etc.
  • what type of websites make the most money (i.e news, forums etc)
  • Banner standardization problem in Asia…. and many more related topics

  Read more »

         

  Related Posts Forrester: Company blogs are the least trusted source of info Are you boring your readers to death? Adobe launches it’s own blog crazyegg case study Keeping track of your blog on the web through Google Alerts

  21 Comments

  
  
  

WordPress: Displaying Related Posts Without Plugin

Posted in » Blogging Tips - by Ades

12 Comments 

When I was installing my related posts plugin I remember it was quite difficult to do it, since you had to tweak here and there. But now it’s possible to display related posts without any plugin. Just add the code into your theme (index.php or single.php) and you are done.

You can display related posts based on two selections: by tags or category.

Related posts based on Tags

The code below once added at the end of your post will display 5 Related Posts based on the similar tags.

<?php
$tags = wp_get_post_tags($post->ID);
if ($tags) {
$tag_ids = array();
foreach($tags as $individual_tag) $tag_ids[] = $individual_tag->term_id;

$args=array(
‘tag__in’ => $tag_ids,
‘post__not_in’ => array($post->ID),
’showposts’=>5, // Number of related posts that will be shown.
‘caller_get_posts’=>1
);
$my_query = new wp_query($args);
if( $my_query->have_posts() ) {
echo ‘<h3>Related Posts</h3><ul>’;
while ($my_query->have_posts()) {
$my_query->the_post();
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php
}
echo ‘</ul>’;
}
}
?>

Related Posts Based on Category

And the following code will display related posts based on the category i.e from the same category. Read more »

Showing ads only to people who came from Search Engines

Posted in » Blogging Tips, WordPress - by Ades

17 Comments 

It’s a fact that people do not like ads and they hate it when they appear inside blog posts ;)

It’s also fact that bounce rate for traffic from search engines is very high. Most of the time it’s above 60% for any blog. That means these people search for something in Search Engines, see your blog in the results, come to your blog searching for whatever they have searched, stay there for 5-20 seconds and then they are gone. Let’s hope that they have found what they were looking for…

So, how about showing ads to these bouncers only and not to your regular readers? Seems like a good idea.

WP Plugins

There are few plugins which can do that. The newest being the DailyBlogTips’ Search Ads plugin. It’s a simple plugin with simple interface. You install it and put a code that you want to show to visitors from Search Engines or from any site for that matter. Actually you can put any code in the HTML field; welcome message, subscribe to RSS message etc. But of course, for monetization purposes you will put Google AdSense ads.

There is also a more advanced plugin from Ozh called Who Sees Ads. With this plugin you can tweak the behavior of your plugin more accurately.

Plugin In Action

I have implemented Search Ads plugin on my Malaysian Island Review project. For example if you go to http://www.malaysianislandreview.com you will see a clean website without ads. But if you go through Google or other search engines, you will see an ad on top of the page. Example: Click this Redang Island Review and click to my website on the search results page. See what I mean?

I have yet to implement it on AdesBlog though, maybe I won’t. I just see that implementing in Malaysian Island Review makes more sense, since most of the ads are shown about holiday packages to that particular island. People might actually find those ads useful :)

What is your opinion on these kind of plugins?