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I have a blog, now what?

I am by no means an expert on site promotion, but I am asked this question pretty often:

“I have a blog. Now what do I do?”

The basics of blog promotion aren’t difficult concepts, but the process requires time, attention to detail, and focus. Most of the things I’ll cover here are pretty common sense stuff about which many of us probably would never think twice.

Is your blog REALLY done?

Once you decide, “I’m finished! Now to promote my blog!” Take a step back for a moment and look closely at your blog. Are you sure that you’re really done? Before you can start any heavy-duty blog pimping, it always helps to make sure your blog is optimized.

What does this mean?

Optimization is pretty much any little enhancements that make your blog “friendlier” — whether for your readers, or search engines, or marketing, etc.

Things to consider:

Are you using the default template?

Every blogging software or service comes with one or more default templates. Most of them are nice enough to get you started, but using one would hardly set your blog apart from the others — especially if all the blogs look the same! With the number of free blog templates growing exponentially every day, there really is no excuse for using the default template on your blog.

Link decoration: to underline or not underline? That is the question!

This one is more of a personal preference issue, but I always advise blog owners to make links stand out in their posts. Whether you prefer underlined blue links or bolded green, it doesn’t really matter as long as your reader can see that it is a link. It should be notably different from the rest of the text.

Favicon? What’s that?

Have you ever noticed a little image by the web address in your browser’s address bar when you visit certain websites or bookmark a site? That’s a favicon. You can get one made very easily with the many free services available out there. I highly recommend adding one to your blog. When a user visits or bookmarks your site, that little image can help them associate and remember your site.

Can you be contacted?

A personal web pet-peeve of mine is not being able to contact a website’s owner. Make sure you have a contact form, email address, or something available so that your visitors can reach you. Feedback is always a good thing, so make it easier to receive it!

Are you feeding your visitors?

Every blogging software and service under the sun nowadays have any number of formats available for feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.). Make sure that your feed information is located in a prominent position on your blog! This is usually in the form of a link or button. If it is not immediately noticeable, some visitors won’t bother searching for it (and therefore, won’t subscribe)!

Try to keep in mind that your visitors may not be as familiar with your site’s layout as you are. Pass your link on to loved ones and friends, ask for feedback. Discuss any problems they ran into, such as problems finding specific content, getting lost / navigation issues, etc.

A friend of mine used to say, “Make your site navigation so easy a child could use it” — if needed, borrow a child!

Ok, just kidding, but you see where I’m going with this, right?

Ok, done. Can I start linking now?

Yes, I think at this point you are ready to start promoting your blog. Take careful consideration though. You do not want to go crazy adding links to “every Tom, Dick, and Harry”, nor do you want to ignore the whole blogosphere. Let’s start small — build your blogroll.

What’s a blogroll?

A blogroll is a list of links to other blogs that you like. Having a blogroll allows you to feature a list of favorite blogs, usually in your blog’s sidebar. One might consider blogrolls to be a sort of new “link exchange” programs. The biggest difference is that all sites who participate benefit from the added exposure of being displayed on another member’s site. It’s a good way to gain new readers and repeat visitors for your blog.

It’s an unwritten rule that if a blogger adds your blog’s link to his/her blogroll, you should reciprocate with the same. Of course, everyone approaches this with their own blogging goals in mind. Sometimes it may simply be that you may not like a blog that links to you through its blogroll, and therefore choose not to link back. Whatever the reason may be, it is considered “proper” blogging etiquette to at least review each blog that links to you through its blogroll to decide if you’ll want to add that blog or not.

Blogrolls are often used to express connections between blogs. By having a blogroll on your site, you are telling your visitors:

“Here are other blogs that I like — check ‘em out, you may like them too.”

“Here is my community — I belong to this group.”

(When linking to other blogs) “I like your site and I think my visitors will too.”

If you are new to the blogosphere, a quick way to get your bearings and branch out is by joining open blogrolls. An “open” blogroll is simply a blogroll that is open to new members. Some blogrolls are general, others are specific. Most will have a set of guidelines or criteria posted to allow you to judge for yourself whether or not you belong, or would want to join.

How do you find open blogrolls?

I enjoy adding blogrolls to many of my own sites. However, I found it increasingly hard to find blogrolls pertaining to certain topics and had yet to see a directory or index of blogrolls that are out there, available to everyone … so I decided to make my own: BlogrollDirectory.org

There you will find blogrolls grouped by topic or interest. Simply click the Location link posted and follow the directions posted on its website.

Now, on to Blog Directories!

Submitting your blog to blog directories is perhaps one of the easiest ways to gain exposure to your blog. Blog directories can often drive a good bit of “new” traffic to your site that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

In the vast and infinite sea of the Internet, there are literally thousands of repositories and directories of links. Rather than try to list them all, I’m going to give you a few to get you started:

• The Basics: DMOZ (which fuels the Google Directory), Yahoo!, and LII
• A list of blog directories by topic
• Top 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To
• Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
• Best Blog Directories: Free & Paid

Start with those and branch outward. The goal isn’t to spread your link around to anyone and everyone as fast as possible, it’s to garner quality repeat traffic.

Note: Keep in mind that some directories may require registration and/or a reciprocal link!

To be continued …

I’ll be posting Part 2 of this article next month, so keep an eye out! I’ll most likely cover topics such as SEO and social media, as well as any topics requested here.

As always, feedback and constructive criticism are welcome. Simply leave your remarks via the comments form below!

Site changes coming soon!

I’ve been working on a design for this site over the past few months and am pleased to say that it’s nearing completion. I’ve spent just about every lunch hour for the past three weeks debugging scripts and correcting sloppy code. An updated look is overdue and I think it will make browsing easier on my readers (y’all!) — and will hopefully keep any new ones that may breeze in from the random Google search results that I see in my server logs.

My and Jim’s one year anniversary is a week from today, and with that our trip and travel deals less time to concentrate on this. I had originally set a week from today as my “go live by” date. With any luck, I’ll be done in the next couple of days, so I may move it over sooner.

Anywho, I just wanted to post a note of warning … if you see the site down or something’s looking “off”, it’s just me futsing around at the controls!

LinkedIn is useful

I’ve been on LinkedIn for well over a year but never really got into maintaining my profile until recently. Honestly, I never saw much use for it until I started working for UAB. A couple people in my department are heavy LinkedIn users and encouraged me to use the service to “grow” my connections, by reconnecting with old friends and coworkers and reaching out to new ones. (I even ran across my old auto insurance salesman on there!) It’s been pretty cool so far. LinkedIn has added plenty of new features over the last year or so and recently overhauled their Groups. I’m a member of a handful and hadn’t really gone back to check out the new additions.

At the urgings of a coworker last Friday, I logged into my account and checked out the new features — namely the discussions for each of my groups. I’d spent a little time over the past couple of days reading over various discussions for a few of my groups: SharePoint Users, the Libertarian Party, GMail Users, Internet Professionals Society of Alabama (IPSA), and so on.

I’ve discovered that there are a LOT of interesting things posted to these groups. I was reading over the Tweeple (as in “Twitter People”) postings this morning and ran across two Twitter-related gems that I wanted to share with y’all:

• How to add your latest tweet to your email signature
• How to send a DM to a person who is not following you

There are plenty more where those came from …

I’m not really sure why I overlooked this aspect of LinkedIn. Given the new groups I’ve recently discovered, I’m looking forward to finding a lot more insightful tips in the near future on various topics.

Tres geek. Sweet. :mrgreen:

I like GTD

GTD = Getting Things Done

My life is busy. (read: INSANELY HECTIC!!!!) So I rely on reminders and “nag” services to get things done, meet deadlines, and generally remember anything important. Currently I rely on Microsoft Outlook for work-related things and Google Calendar for personal, family, SA-related, et. al., but I am always looking for newer and better ways to GTD, but with minimal hassle and/or cost.

For instance, I would love to find something that I can use at home, at work, and on my cell that would handle everything — and I do mean everything! I’ve enjoyed looking at various apps over the past few months and am always willing to try out something new. (and would prefer something relatively cheap!)

Seriously, to some people this is as exciting as buying office furniture … me, if I got something really handy that works, I wouldn’t mind throwing a few bucks at it.

Though free is always better!

Doomi

I ran across a neat Air app this morning called Doomi (via LifeHacker). It’s pretty, you can set custom reminders to tasks (which I love). The only thing I could not do is delete an active task. (But you can set it as completed and clear all completed tasks.)

Overall not bad. And hey, it’s FREE! There’s a list of scheduled improvements on the website and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where the developer takes this app. The only downside is that this app resides on my computer at work … I can’t view it on my cell nor sync to my laptop at home.

Remember the Milk

Several people have recommended Remember the Milk to me. It’s a FREE web-based service that helps you manage tasks and offers various ways to manage them, as well as receive reminders. Two of my favorites are mentioned right on the front page: Twitter and GMail.

Sweet. :mrgreen:

The UI is pretty self-explanatory, and I haven’t played around with many of the more “advanced” features yet. I do know there’s a mobile version of the RtM site, and I am seriously digging that.

There’s also the option of upgrading your account to “pro” — this includes priority support (via email) and RtM apps for iPhone, Crackberry, Windows Mobile. While none of that suits nor interests me, if they are planning to add support for other providers (or a Java version!!!), I may see that as a justification for going pro.

We’ll have to see.

Anything else?

Got any suggestions or tips to share for GTD? Please hurl ‘em my way!

Mobile links

One of the things I hadn’t thought of looking into backing up on my Helio Ocean was my bookmarks. Sure, I have my custom bookmarks for Opera Mini stored on their server, but the ones to my native Helio browser are gone. I had quite a few that I can’t seem to find at the moment. So, in the meantime, I thought I’d pop a few in a post so I can surf back here and recover them later.

Note: feel free to add your own via the Comments box below!

• 30 Boxes: http://m.30boxes.com/
• ABC News: http://wireless.go.com/wireless/abcnews/index
• CNN: http://m.cnn.com/
• eBay: http://wap2.bonfiremedia.com/
• ESPN: http://mobileapp.espn.go.com/wireless/espn/redesign/index
• Facebook: http://m.facebook.com/
• FedEx: https://www.fedex.com/mobi/
• Fox News: http://foxnews.mobi/
• Foxmarks: http://my.foxmarks.com/mobile/
• Google Mobile Apps: http://www.google.com/m/products?hl=en
• Google Search: (“soft” mobile gateway) http://google.com/gwt/n
• Helio Magazine: http://www.heliomag.com/mobile/
• Heliocity: (mobile downloads & more) https://downloads.heliocity.net/
• HelloTxt: http://m.hellotxt.com/
• Live Search: http://m.live.com/
• MapQuest: http://wap.mapquest.com/
• MSN: http://home.mobile.msn.com/en-us/default.aspx
• MySpace: http://mobile.myspace.com/
• National Weather Service: (set your location) http://cell.weather.gov/ and http://mobile.srh.weather.gov/
• Remember the Milk: http://m.rememberthemilk.com/
• The Washington Post: http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/
• The Weather Channel: (change location for yours!) http://weather.mobi/xhtml/cc/BHM
• USA Today: http://m.usatoday.com/
• Wunderground: (beware of ads!!!!) http://mobile.wunderground.com/
• Yahoo!: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/
• YouTube: http://m.youtube.com/
• Animal Planet: http://m.animalplanet.com/

Also: you can view the mobile version of any Tumblr blog by adding /mobile to the end of the the URL.

Example: http://nitallica.tumblr.com/mobile

Sources: MyOpera, Heliocity & Heliocity Forums, Great Mobile Sites Directory

Cell goodie…

I’m already done downloading all my wallpapers, ringtones, video rings, and am now re-installing my apps (and discovering a few new ones, courtesy of Heliocity!).

One thing I’m missing is my Helio screen cleaner charm. My existing one has taken a beating and is pretty frayed and barely held together by a thread or two … so I went looking for a new one. Called Helio Sales, they don’t sell their charms separately. (dammit!)

I’ve looked in various shops off and on for the last 8-10 months, looking at charms (I knew then that I was soon to be needing a new one!). Never saw anything I liked. It was always too “girlie” (God, how I HATE PINK!), or the same junk over and over, and I never DID see any locally that doubled as screen cleaners. So tonight I decided to hit the web … struck out on eBay and Amazon, so I hit Google. Their Product Search didn’t do squat for me, but a curious hit on their web search caught my attention … “Strapya.”

It turns out it’s a Japanese shop of various device accessories, and had THE most unique selection I’ve ever seen. In fact, I found something I hadn’t seen anywhere else AND it doubled as a cleaner!

I can’t say ‘no’ to DBZ!

For the soldiers’ requests

Things with Soldiers’ Angels have been going well. I’ve so far managed to collect a box full of dental supplies from an area dentist and have received expressed interest from a couple food vendors who may be able to provide some snacks to our guys and gals overseas.

YAY!

I’ve been spending my spare time emailing companies that I’ve run across from Google searches. I started with the list of “needed items” and went looking for vendors and manufacturers to approach regarding donations. I think in the span of one week I must have emailed a good couple hundred companies and snail-mailed a couple hundred more.

I know, I’m such a spammer … I show go work for a prohormones seller or something!

Seriously though, the effort is worth it if even one company decides to help out!

Wanna help?

If you’re interested, I am always looking for help mailing out letters and contacting companies regarding donations and sponsorships!

Magnolia Weekend

Caution: Busy weekend ahead!

Jim, Jess and I will be setting up and preparing for the the Magnolia Festival today and tomorrow. A big thanks to Jeremy Haynes and the NSR staff for lending me the equipment I needed to finish setting up the booth!

The Bama Angels site has really taken off and I’m hoping to get the word out about it this weekend and in coming months. I’m looking for news and events posters, so if any area SA members are interested, holler at me!

Sharing

I had set up an auto-post thingy in Del.icio.us, but it hasn’t posted yet so I don’t know if there’s a problem, or it has to be up a certain time before it starts? (scratching my head on that one…) I have been sharing plenty via Google Reader though, so feel free to check those out anytime!

Funny moment

Jessie and I stopped by the grocery store last night to pick up a few things I needed to make dinner. I had stopped at the pharmacy section to look for some allergy medicine for her and when I turned around, she was standing in front of the acne products with a funny look on her face. I asked her what she was looking for, and she pointed to one of the bottles and says, “This says it’s the best acne treatment, is that true?”

I replied that I didn’t know (because all those products either make me break out or dry out my skin something awful!), and asked her why she wanted to know. She said, “I think I got a bump on my face and I need something to make it go away.”

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that her “bump” was a mosquito bite.

I laughed and told her that I had something for it already at home and not to worry, we’d take care of it.

Share the wealth…

Someone told me last week, “You always find the neatest stuff!” Then I’m asked how I find these things. My response was something along the lines of a laugh and, “I have neat friends.”

Usually when I get something neat — a site, story, video, etc. — I bookmark it. Most often, I run across stuff by emails from friends or my feeds. Sometimes I surf and will just meander from one site to the next, bookmarking stuff as I go. Occasionally I will tweet something I find, or post it to my blog, but most often than not, it just sits in my bookmarks file. For a while I’ve thought about how to most effectively go about sharing the wealth. I’ve looked into a few things and have started sharing, little by little.

I’ve most recently started sharing items via Google Reader. I’ve also switched to a very awesome Twitter client, Twhirl, which makes make re-tweeting much easier. Something that I’ve seen done before, but haven’t attempted yet, perhaps start posting re-tweets on my blog.

Now, I’m left with the 500+ bookmarks I have right now. I may go the route of del.icio.us or something along those lines (Lord knows there are a million different franchises of bookmarking services out there), but I haven’t decided yet. I’m most familiar with del.icio.us, and if I’m able to seamlessly integrate it into one of my personal bookmarking services, I may start posting things there.

Time will tell … but for now, Google Reader and Twitter are my current carriers of goodies.

EDIT: Oh! I almost forgot about Friend Feed … this pretty much covers anything/anyone I’ve bookmarked, friended, shared, favorited, etc. recently. It rocks.

A stereo ad

Sometimes I get the strangest Google ads showing up in my Gmail account. I was reading an email from a friend this morning about a Bose home theater he bought a few weeks ago. I noticed a link to the following article on the Electronic Warehouse site: Home Theater in a Box: Not Just for Newbies?

It reminded me of a conversation Jim and I had recently, about how stereos were much larger when we were kids. I can remember my mom’s home stereo system had a turn table, 8 track player, and these HUGE speakers that were bigger than I was! LOL! Stereos have since gotten more powerful, and a lot smaller.

Sometimes I think that we truly live in a marvelous age (technology-wise).

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