Guest Blogging is Like Helping a Friend Move

Bear with me on this one. I was helping my good friend move yesterday and in the tedium of moving box after box of their stuff into “the room” made my mind wander. While it was wandering I hit upon guest blogging as akin to helping a friend move. Let me illustrate.
It is not your house
No matter what you think of the house, remember that it is not your house. You do not have to live there but you do have to be a good guest. So, as you are helping a friend move you carry their boxes into the house, put them where they want them to go and just be helpful. Being a helpful friend during a move comes back to you in the end because eventually you are going to have to move too.
So, you might not like the look of the blog you are guest posting for and you probably would do things differently if it was your blog. But it is not your blog and you are there to help move the boxes and put them in the right place. Do a great job guest posting and when it comes back around your friend will give you a great guest post on your blog.
Everyone has weird stuff
When you are moving a friend’s stuff you might see things that you wonder why they would even have. A stuffed alligator head, toothpick collection, or rubber band balls, it doesn’t matter because it means something to your friend. Just move it in for them so they can enjoy it.
When you post a guest post the formatting of the blog you are guesting on might be completely different than your own and it might feel weird to you. Things that you think are a given might not be like formatting of lists where the spacing might be different than you expect or there might be a border automatically added to an image and you wonder why things are done that way. You have to remember my first point about, It is not your house.
So, be a good friend, write a great guest post, don’t disturb the house, don’t stand around grab a box and get going. If you do that when you help out your friends and it will come back around to help you in the end.

Add to Cart Guest Blogging is Like Helping a Friend Move

Managing Time In Your Blogging Day

I remember when the pundits told us that working online would be the key to our own personal freedom.  I remember they told us we’d have more free time to spend with friends and family when we decided to start working from our own homes. It all sounded so great for somebody who grew up in the 1970s and I had great visions of working from the back of a reconditioned VW bus with flowers painted all over the sides.
Then reality hit, but don’t get me wrong this one’s not bad.  Working on the web (and blogging is only part of what I do) has been the best career move I’ve made because finally I’ve become my own boss. Still, there are things you need to learn on your own when you start working on the web and once you understand search engine optimization and have a good background in writing that you can bring to the table, a few tips about time management can come in really handy.
That said, here’s a few things I’ve learned through trial and error.  These work for me but I’d love to hear about what you do to make those waves of blogs manageable at your end.

Don’t Be There Until You Get There

First off I learned in the years I’ve been doing this not to think about what I need to do until I’m in front of my laptop. At first that’s hard to do and I’m sure many of you who work in the industry might even say next to impossible, but I’ve got a little technique that works for me. A day planner is essential for me to keep things straight and jotting down notes there as I go along generally helps me to get everything done without forgetting anything.
I also need to make sure to understand that I can’t will blogs out faster than my fingers will move.  Like most lessons in life, I need to keep relearning the one that says you can get a lot more done with a little preplanning and a calm disposition then you can with that Bull-In-The-China-Shop attitude that I was sure would work if I kept it up long enough.
Here’s where I like to use the day planner again.  Usually by the end of the day I can see something that I didn’t get done and transfer it over to the next page.

Eyes That Are Bigger Than Your Tummy?

Finally, I need to keep in mind that the amount of work I take on means more money but I also need to be able to do it in a professional manner.  There’s really no easy way for any of us to gauge how much work we can really take on at any one time and I guess that’s one of the big obstacles we all need to overcome in freelance work.
Still I find it’s really helpful to sit down and time myself every once in a while and then average at those times to get a good idea about how much work I can do without stressing out.
That way I’ve got a benchmark to use when I’m searching for more work or being offered some because in the end sitting in that VW bus only to pull my hair out defeats the whole purpose

Add to Cart Managing Time In Your Blogging Day

Some More Helpful Hints To Stay On Top Of Things

Anyone who writes web copy knows how difficult it can be to stay on top of things and juggle all the different requirements at once. Working on the Internet is great because you always have lots of work to do but to be efficient you need to have a few techniques under your belt that will help you manage your time accordingly.
One of the first things I learned is not everything is about technology. To each his own of course but I don’t use anything electronic to help me plan my day. There’s lots of great calendars and BlackBerry apps available to help you along, but I still prefer to use a paper day planner that I can flip over and hold in my hands. I still like to cross things out with a pen and write things in as the day goes on and maybe it’s a bit old-fashioned but it still works for me.
Of course planning out my day is still important and beyond the day planner I like to use a dry erase board as well for those clients that have a lot of changing demands. It’s important to be able to juggle all of your work requirements but those aren’t all that you need to look at.
The idea here, especially when you’re working from your home, is to be able to juggle work and a reasonable home life. For me that’s the hardest part because there are always distractions and unintended noise that I really find quite a distraction. ( Of course having to Labrador retrievers doesn’t help any with the way they like to run around and accidentally rearrange things while I’m sitting at my laptop.)
All this brings me to the point of this week’s effort. Us stay at home writers need a support network of sorts and that means we need to share ideas about how to keep that dripping tap in the bathroom from finding its way into your work. I did write a column about this a while back and got some interesting feedback but I have a great feeling that there’s a lot more out there.
Another one of the techniques that I’ve found is a leftover from my younger days when I used to work in shipping and receiving while I was writing one of my short story collections. Earplugs of the industrial variety are a great way to block out a lot of the high-end noise that you can find distracting, but I’ve also found that when you let a neighbor’s thumping stereo get inside your head it’s really hard to ignore.
Don’t get me wrong.  I feel very fortunate to have a career in an expanding industry considering the fact that I live in a primarily industrial town and I’ve seen many friends lose their jobs. I just thought this may be a good time for a few of us to circle the wagons and share a few ideas about how to best work as freelancers from home.

Add to Cart Some More Helpful Hints To Stay On Top Of Things

10 Things Bloggers Should NOT Do

Every now and then I will see a list of things bloggers should do, but I notice people are not that inclined to do what they are asked to do, while they pay more attention to things they should NOT do. That is why I decided to create the list below. Here we go:
1. You Must Not Expect Results Overnight: This is happening everywhere and that is the major reason why a large percentage of bloggers fail. Many bloggers come online unprepared and with the wrong set of expectations. They think blogging is a bed of roses and they only need to write one or two posts and begin to make money right away. Wrong!
2. You Must Not Ignore Your Readers: Some bloggers start gaining traction fast, and after a while they start to make their blogs gravitate around themselves. That is, they start talking exclusively about themselves, about the things they like, about how cool they are and so on. Big mistake. Your blog is about your readers, not about you.
3. You Must Not Scrape Another Bloggers Content: This is funny but nowadays you will see many new bloggers who don’t even know the basics, and yet they start to scrape another bloggers content. Often times these people won’t even credit the source. You can’t get far with this attitude.
4. You Must Not Expect Success Without Promoting: Many people think blogging is like setting up a shop at the road side and that all they need to do is wait for people to start finding them. Build and they will come, as the saying goes. This unfortunately is not true. Even if you have great content you’ll need to work your butt off getting people to visit your blog and read it.
5. You Must Not Be Another Blogger: This is so common among many bloggers nowadays. They no longer want to be themselves, they now want to be one popular blogger they know. It is like using the “fake it till you make it” strategy. Will it work over the long term? No. So keep it real.
6. You Must Not Fail To Update Your Blog Regularly: You will see some bloggers telling you they want to be a problogger, only to leave their blog without updates for weeks. If you can’t commit to updating your blog regularly, why would you expect people to commit to reading it regularly?
7. You Must Not Ignore SEO: Nowadays, you will see many bloggers not optimizing their blogs for search engines, if you ask them why, they will say they don’t know SEO. The real answer, however, is “Because I am lazy.” Don’t be lazy and learn what you must if you want to make your blog popular.
8. You Must Not Ignore Networking: You should never underestimate the power of networking. As people say, it is about who you know and now about what you know in the long run.
9. You Must Not Have An Unreadable/Unnavigable Site: Many people think blogging is all about your content. No! Blogging is far more than your content. You should work on making sure your site is easily navigable and that readers can easily get what they want without looking twice. Usability is a big factor on the web.
10. You Must Not Throw Mud Around: Some new bloggers that if they attack other people or bloggers, they might create a buzz and increase their traffic levels. This might be true in the short run, but over the long term such attitude will create many enemies and burn yourself.

Add to Cart 10 Things Bloggers Should NOT Do

Google Instant: What It Means To Website Owners

Yesterday Google unveiled what is considered by many the biggest game changer the search industry has seen in years. It’s called Google Instant, and it basically shows search results in real time, as you type letter by letter. Here is a quote from the official Google Instant page:

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.
The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Google is gradually rolling the change around the world, and most people should already be able to experience this feature on the Google.com (English version) page.
The question that has been on my mind is how will this new feature impact website owners. Many other people are discussing this too, so I decided to make a roundup of the views and opinions I saw around the web, with my own take about them.
1. Google Instant will kill SEO (I don’t agree.)
Some people started linkbaiting suggesting that Google Instant will kill SEO or make it irrelevant. I disagree with this view. It sure will change how SEO is done, but if anything this will open new opportunities for the skillful and clever SEOs out there.
Companies will also keep needing help with their SEO and PPC management, so I don’t think much will change in this segment either.
2. There will be less traffic to long tail keywords (I partially agree)
Now that search results are displayed in real time, the keyword suggestions people will see on their search boxes will be much more effective. This means that people will be less inclined to type long and detailed keywords (i.e., long tail ones), so the traffic you’ll get from these keywords will be reduced. I agree with that.
But there is another side to this coin. Google tests revealed that real time results encourage people to make more searches, so this could off-set the previous effect, increasing the amount of traffic you’ll get even for long tail keywords.
3. Popular keywords will become even more popular (My own theory)
Another effect of the keyword suggestions is that popular keywords should become even more popular (as long as they are one of the Google suggestions). Someone who was about to search for “make money online with a website”, for example, will see a suggestion for “make money online” right after typing some letters, and there are good chances he’ll just click there to save time.
4. Title tags will become a lot more important (My own theory)
As you probably know Google uses the title tag of a page as its headline in the search results page. For this reason title tags were already important, but with Google Instant they become even more.
Why? Because your pages will appear in many more searches now, and if you have a catchy title tag you might convince the user to click on your link even if he was searching for something else.
Over to the readers: What do you guys think about Google Instant, and how do you think it will affect website owners?

Add to Cart Google Instant: What It Means To Website Owners

Check If Your Name Is Available on All Social Media Sites

Yesterday I received an email from one of our readers, asking on what social media sites he should try to secure his name (which can be either his personal name, or his website/business name, depending on what brand he is trying to promote).
In my opinion there are two that are absolutely a must: Twitter and Facebook. All the others are optional. Depending on the type of business you have some niche social sites might be compulsory too. For instance, if you are a photographer you should try to secure your name/brand on Flickr too.
That being said, if you have time available it could be a good idea to secure your name on as many social sites as possible. This will solidify your brand and enable you to interact with your audience/customers on many different platforms.
There is a web tool that helps with this task. It is called namechk.com.

You just need to put the desired name on the search box and the tool will check whether it’s available on not on around 150 social media sites. You can also use it as a list of the sites where you can go and create a profile, as some of them will also let you place a backlink to your website.

Add to Cart Check If Your Name Is Available on All Social Media Sites

4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results. If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.
Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).
Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.
If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

• create a giant list of resources,
• write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
• find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
• write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

• commenting on other blogs in your niche,
• linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
• interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.

Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

• letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
• letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
• getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
• getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
• posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

• a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
• a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
• a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
• a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

Add to Cart 4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic

5 Things Magicians Can Teach You About Blogging

At some level, blogging is really just a stage show. We, as bloggers, are up on a virtual stage giving a performance that goes on for as long as we run our sites. Whether it is a stand-up comedy routine or a serious academic lecture, we’re talking to the world and hope that our audience, no matter how large or small, will listen.
On that front magicians are masters of the stage show. Using nothing but a few tricks, which can range from very simple to unbelievably complex, their charisma and whatever effects they have at their disposal, they have to keep a difficult audience entertained and enthralled through their entire act.
So maybe magicians can teach us bloggers a few things about showmanship and how to keep our audience glued to the screen, no matter what type of site we are trying to run.
On that front, here are five tips virtually any magician can tell you that can help make your blog a little bit better.

1. Have a Catchy Name

Good marketing starts with a good name and magicians understand this. You can tell a great deal about a magic act based on just the name it goes by and magicians are constantly honing and improving their brand by seeking publicity and getting their well-chosen name out there by any means necessary.
Application: Spend some time coming up with a good name that is easy to spell and pronounce but is also unique and describes what you are trying to do. Then, promote that brand vigorously and stand by it unless you have some urgent need to change.

2. Dress 1 Step Above Your Audience

Magicians have a general rule that one should dress one step above their audience. If you are performing in front of a completely casual audience, they will wear business casual, if the audience is business casual, they will dress in a suit, if the audience is wearing suits, they’ll wear a tux. The reason is that this gives the performer a sense of authority while making them approachable and relatable.
Application: Your dress is your writing and your language. Try writing your content one small step above what your audience would write, making it more authoritative than casual writing but still easily understood and approachable.

3. If You Mess Up, Be Honest, Break the Tension and Move On

Mistakes happen and when a Magician goofs they do so in a very public way. However, magicians rarely try to hide their mistakes, especially if they know their audience has caught on. Instead, they’ll admit to the mistake, go for a joke to break the tension and then move on quickly and confidently.
Application: Going for the joke may not always be appropriate but when you goof on your site you need to acknowledge the error, end the tension quickly (either with an apology, a joke or whatever is appropriate) and then move on. Don’t linger on your mistakes once you’ve dealt with them.

4. Make People Look Where You Want

Half of magic is about diversion and drawing attention where the magician wants it. A majority of magic tricks wouldn’t work at all if the audience was not looking at the right spot while the trick part takes place out of view. Magicians achieve this by using motion, colors, lighting and anything else at their disposal to distract and direct the audience to their will.
Application: Tell the readers what you want to look at, use subheads, lists, tables, images and other things that draw the eye to make them look at the information you deem most important. Use such tools sparingly, otherwise the eye doesn’t know where to go, but don’t force your readers to figure out what’s important on their own.

5. Know Which Secrets to Keep

Magic thrives on secrets. As the TV character Jonathan Creek was fond of saying, once explained what was once magic becomes mundane. Magicians keep their secrets closely guarded to keep the illusion of their tricks being actual magic. Though the illusion is fleeting, most people realize magic is just an illusion, the ability to deceive oneself for a moment is an important part of enjoying the show.
Application: Blogging isn’t nearly as secretive as magic but you do have to think long and hard about what information you want to give away and what you don’t. You need to ask yourself what information will help your readers better enjoy or learn from your site and what will confuse and complicate things needlessly. Keep the secrets that you need to in order to stay on target and be effective, don’t try to throw everything out.

Bottom Line

Though magic and blogging have many differences, blogging involves significantly fewer rabbits for one, there are definitely enough similarities so that we bloggers can pick up a few pointers, especially when it comes to keeping our audience entertained and informed.
It might be easy to not think of blogging as a public performance but, in reality, that’s exactly what it is, the most public kind of performance possible and the fact that it merely writing, audio or video doesn’t mean that many of the same rules don’t apply.
So let’s listen to the magicians, they might have a lesson or two for us.

Add to Cart 5 Things Magicians Can Teach You About Blogging

Generate Passive Income with WP-Answers

Back in the old days, whenever you had a question, you’d have to make a trip over to the public library, sift through a pile of encyclopedias, and hope you that you find the answer you need. This process was time-consuming and not terribly reliable. It was even worse when your question was largely a matter of opinion rather than hard fact.
These days, our lives are quite a bit easier. If a search engine or Wikipedia doesn’t return the answer we need, we can just as easily turn to somewhere like Answers.com or Yahoo! Answers and pose the question ourselves. What if you could capitalize on this traffic with a website of your own?
Letting your “turn Wordpress into a cash-generating question and answer website” is WP-Answers. It’s a premium WordPress plugin and theme that helps you “earn cash on auto-pilot.”
They Ask Questions, They Post Answers
One of the best ways to generate passive income with a site is to utilize user-generated content and that’s exactly how a Q&A site works.

When you use WP-Answers, all you have to do is set it up, attract some traffic, and let the online community do the rest. Each question takes on the same properties as a blog post and each answer is like a blog comment.
If you get enough people coming to your site and participating, it really can run on auto-pilot while you make money from the advertisements you place on the site. WP-Answers is pre-built with places for contextual advertising, as well as ad blocks in the sidebar.
Earning Points and Getting Rewards
It’s up to you how you want to best utilize a site powered by WP-Answers, but it does provide the opportunity to reward your community members with points.

These points are tracked automatically and you can define the various values for posing questions, providing answers, and being chosen for providing the best answers. This added incentive can help you attract return visitors, but they all have to register with the site before they can do anything.
You’ll also notice that they can have profile pages and profile pictures, though the integrated utility for the latter is either missing or not obvious enough for the average user. Social networking being what it is, a strong profile page utility would be great for WP-Answers.
What You See Is What You Get
Using WordPress as its core content management system, WP-Answers is actually very easy to use, implement, and customize. After upload and activation, you can change several settings from within the WordPress admin panel.

This includes the ability to import both questions and answers using the Yahoo! Answers API. You can pull this content based on search term, geographic location, frequency, category, and post status. Yes, it’s scraping, but it’ll give your site the appearance of bustling activity (even if it’s not that busy).
WP-Answers is available now with prices starting at $89. After this introductory price expires, it’ll return to the regular price of $149.
Link: WP-Answers

Add to Cart Generate Passive Income with WP-Answers

Twitter for Dummies – part 6: The Most Frequent Questions You Will Be Asked

This series all started from the basic question “How do you explain Twitter to someone who is completely ignorant about micro blogging and social media?”. We went through the moves of explaining the social networking side, what you can use Twitter for, the software components that make Twitter work, the technical syntax of tweets, and how to tweet effectively.
Often though, you will hear the same questions coming back. Here are some I am asked all the time:

1. Is Twitter one more tool to overload me with information?

There is no ‘have to’ with Twitter. Just like the Internet as a whole, you use Twitter as and when you like. All updates from the people you follow are optional reads. Some days I am pretty active on Twitter, other days I hardly touch it. Sometimes, I only use it to look up information…

2. How should we regulate the use of Twitter in our organisation?

If there would be one rule, it would be the same rule applying to any web presence of your organisation: If you have a guideline governing official web sites, your organisation’s blogs, or the official use of social media in general, then it can apply for Twitter too. If the Twitter account is in the name of the organisation, of course.
If the question is about people’s personal Twitter accounts, then most probably other guidelines apply, assuring the employee does not break any non-disclosure rules. Other than that, there is little an organisation can do and should do to regulate the use of Twitter.

3. Will Twitter replace Email?

Although Twitter has the possibility of sending public messages (“Replies”) or private messages to individual users, it is unsuitable as an Email system: You can only send a direct message to one person at a time, you are limited to 140 characters, there are no discussion threads, nor can you embed graphic elements etc…..
As with many features and possible uses of Twitter, users will define how they can and will use it. It won’t be long before new Twitter-ers will find out the difference between Email and Twitter for themselves.

4. Will Twitter replace Skype or other Instant Messengers?

Twitter is mainly used for ‘broadcasts’ of messages to your social community. Surely, you can use ‘replies’ and ‘direct messages’ to “kind of chat” using Twitter, but it is rather clumsy because of the 140 character limitation and the delays which occur in posting messages. In short: Twitter does not even come close to the functionality of an Instant Messenger.

5. Will Twitter take up a lot of my time?

As part of your official duties in your job, I’d say: ‘Twitter is optional’, use it up to the level where it fulfills a purpose in your job. For the rest, use Twitter as you see best fit. You can drive a Ferrari at 10 mph, but you can also race it over the German Autobahn. You can spend one minute per day on Twitter, and be happy with a social community of 10 people, or keep on going until… until you have a million followers.

6. I still don’t understand what to use Twitter for.

Even after explaining all the bits and pieces as we have done in this blog series, some people still don’t grasp what Twitter can do for them. My only – and final – advise is: Give it a try. If you don’t like it, forget all about it.
It took me a few months to figure out how to use Twitter for my own purposes, and hey, I am a social media freak.

Add to Cart Twitter for Dummies – part 6: The Most Frequent Questions You Will Be Asked

Twitter for Dummies – part 5: 10 tips for effective tweeting

You have successfully created your Twitter account. Through part 1 of this series you got some pretty good idea what you will use Twitter for. You understand the importance of building social communities, and which Twitter tools can help you with those tasks. Part 4 in this series thaught you the basic syntax of a tweet.
Now it is time to concentrate on how to tweet effectively, in 10 practical tips.

1. Use hash tags

Hash tags, keywords prefixed by “#”, beef up a tweet. They can emphasize a word, “classify” a tweet to a particular subject and make it easily searchable.
So:

“Meeting urgent hunger needs is a long term investment…in stability and world peace”

… might be nice, but better to beef it up:

“Meeting urgent hunger needs is a long term investment…in stability and world peace” #g8 #foodaid #hum

The hash tags in this example identified the tweet with the G8 meeting, with food aid and showed we were talking about a hum(anitarian) issue.
The popular hash tags in the non-profit world are
#humanitarian
#hum (as a short for the previous)
#nonprofit
#aid
#activism
#fundraising
#charity
There is no particular place to put hash tags, although most people put them at the end of their Tweet. Clever users integrate hash tags within their tweet to save space without taking away readability of a tweet:

Record level of #hunger and #poverty looms on #G8 agenda

2. Use links effectively

Plain vanilla tweets are ok as a statement, an intermezzo, but not to drive a message through:

ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka #aid

… would be more effective with the link:

ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid

… and even better: include the source of the link

BBC: ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid

Or

ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka (BBC) http://bit.ly/141hnZ#aid

By the way: there is no reason to use long URLs. They clutter the readability, eat up effective tweet-space:

ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/south_asia/8141810.stm #aid

For the nerds amongst you: As Google page ranks all Twitter pages, some people think including the full link to their blog or website in a tweet will count as a valid back link. This is bollocks, as Twitter uses the “rel=nofollow” attribute for all links…

3. Make it easy for others to retweet you

The power of Twitter lays in how your tweet propagates through the tweet-o-sphere. Retweets are Twitter’s trade currency.
When someone retweets you, they give you a ‘vote of confidence’ by re-broadcasting your tweet to their own social community. Not only will a retweet re-broadcast your message but it will also propagate your Twitter-handle beyond your own social community so you can get ‘discovered’ by new potential followers.
In case you did not get the message yet: retweets are important. So, make it easy to be retweeted: Don’t use your full 140 characters for your tweet. When others want to retweet you, they need space to prefix “RT @yourhandle “ to your original tweet.
In the case of my private Twitter account “@TheRoadTo”, I know I can use 140 – 14 = 126 characters maximum for my tweets:

ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka (BBC) http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid

Will – by default- be retweetable as:

RT @TheRoadTo ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka (BBC) http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid

4. Don’t be scared to retweet.

The people I follow on Twitter, have interesting stuff to say. I retweet actively what I think is relevant, cool, funny, or controversial.
Don’t be a leech, though. When someone tweets a good link, give them credit by including their Twitter handle, and by making it clear you are retweeting rather than claiming this is YOUR original find.
Distinguish between plain vanilla retweets and edited retweets by changing the format of the retweet.
For instance, when my friend @breadcrumb12 tweeted:

BBC said that the International Committee of Red Cross will be scaling back significantly in North Sri Lanka http://bit.ly/141hnZ

A plain vanilla retweet would run over the 140 characters limit:

RT @breadcrumb12 BBC said that International Committee of Red Cross will be scaling back significantly in North Sri Lanka http://bit.ly/141hnZ

And no matter how much I love @breadcrumb12, I did not like the way this tweet was formatted. So, I’d like to re-use that link, while still giving due credit to @breadcrumb12.
Try this:

RT ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka (BBC) http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid (via @breadcrumb12)

Or

RT ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka (BBC) http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid (Tnx @breadcrumb12)

Some use an even shorter version:

RT ICRC scaling back significantly in Sri Lanka (BBC) http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid @breadcrumb12

If I want to retweet something, but want to include a comment of my own, I use something like this:

RT @breadcrumb12 ICRC scales back in Sri Lanka (BBC) http://bit.ly/141hnZ #aid [ed: leaves room for ethnic cleansing?]

5. Put some spank in your life tweets

If you use Twitter for your non-profit organisation, put some funny stuff or a personal message in between your ‘business tweets’.. It gives more of a personal twist to your tweets. There is nothing wrong with tweeting:

A busy day at work, working on a funding proposal for Zimbabwe school feeding.

Don’t hesitate to put a joke in the middle of serious business

Just saw a guy driving a motorbike on the highway with a dog on his lap

Or a picture of what you are doing at the moment:

http://twitpic.com/9rxn6 – Yesterday’s sunset view #Tuscany

Life is too short for business only. Put a bit of spank in your tweets. Your followers will love you for it, and it will show there is an actual person behind that Twitter-machine!

6. Interact with your followers

Twitter is all about social communities, so don’t use it to merely broadcast. Interact! Commend people on good tweets

@fighthunger nice find!

Or

@fighthunger thanks for your retweet!

And when people send you a direct message or a reply, respond! Nothing is as bad as to give people the impression you are a Twitter machine.

7. Ration your tweets

Twitter users who tweet continuously are seen as ‘noisy’, and often loose followers. Spread your tweets over time. Don’t overdo the amount of tweets you are broadcasting. Remember: quality masters over quantity.

8. Know when to tweet

Scheduling your tweets effectively is important. When you have important messages to tweet, make sure you tweet them, or re-broadcast them at peak times.
The most busy (and fertile) times on Twitter is when people arrive in the office between 8 and 10 am. As the main Twitter population lives in Europe and in the States, send out your important Tweets during those times, for the different time zones.
Weekends have low Twitter traffic. Statistics show there is a very low chance your important tweets will be picked up during the weekend.
In a future post, I will analyse the peak times and days so your tweets can be more effective.

9. Don’t just tweet links to your own website

Yes, Twitter can drive traffic to your website, and yes, I do tweet links to my own blogs actively. But I also tweet links to other websites and blogs I am reading. The world does not evolve around your blog or website alone!
Include links to interesting reads, controversial topics, and if you are tweeting on behalf of a non-profit organisation, also retweet what other organisations are tweeting. You will see that as time goes by, they will also retweet your tweets… After all, in the non-profit sector, we’re all in this together…

10. 140 characters of quality

Before you send out a tweet, re-read it. Check your spelling. Check the readability. Check the syntax. You are broadcasting newspaper headlines, so you have 140 characters to make mistakes. You have a space of 140 characters to show sloppiness or to show quality

Add to Cart Twitter for Dummies – part 5: 10 tips for effective tweeting

Twitter for Dummies – part 4: The Geeky Art of Nerdy Tweets

You have successfully created your Twitter account. You read part 1 of this series and have some pretty good idea what you will use Twitter for. You understand the importance of building social communities, and which tools can help you with those tasks…
And then… the blank Twitter prompt is staring in your face. What to do now?

Certain signs, abbreviations or keywords have a fixed meaning in the Tweet-o-sphere. Here is an overview of the Twitter syntax.

1. Handles:

Every user on Twitter has a unique user name (or call it “handle”). Within tweets, we refer to another user by prefixing his or her user name with the “@” sign.
“@JohnnyB” refers to the Twitter user handle “JohnnyB”.
Within a tweet, we use it like this:

Looking forward to meet @BloggerTip tonight

“@BloggerTip” refers to the Twitter username of this blog, BlogTips.
If you know someone’s user name, you can find their latest tweets with the URL http://twitter.com/username.
E.g. http://twitter.com/BloggerTip
By using uppercase and lowercase characters, users make their handle easier to read. For instance, “@ChangeThruInfo” is easier to grasp than “@changethruinfo”, no?

2. Replies:

when a Tweet starts with a handle name, it is a public message to that Twitter user:

@BloggerTip what u think about: “5 reasons Facebook is better than Twitter for your business” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

3. Direct messages:

Tweets starting with “D” followed by a user name are private messages from one Twitter user to the other. Contrary to replies, these messages can not be seen by other users. Note that both Twitter users need to follow each other before “D” between them is allowed.

D @BloggerTip check out “Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

4. Hash Tags:

Any word starting with the “#” hash sign, is a hash tag, indicating the subject of the tweet. More on the effective use of hash tags in the next post.

“Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC #socialmedia

The hash tag identifies the topic of this tweet as “#socialmedia”.
There are no fixed rules for hashtags, other than the need to start with the ‘hash’ sign. Popular hash tags come and go. Some like #earthhour (the day we switch off our lights for one hour, remember?) shot to the most popular hashtag on March 28, the day of the actual event, and then disappeared as fast as they came.
Other hash tags like #iranelection became a way to tag all Tweets about the Iran post-election protests. #CNNfail protested the lack of coverage of certain news events by mainstream media.
#nomaintenance originated around the same time and was a popular tag which pushed Twitter to cancel their plans for maintenance down time one particular night…

5. Retweets:

And last but not least: any tweet starting with “RT” indicates you are re-broadcasting someone else’s tweet.
For instance, when @BloggerTip tweets:

“Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

I can rebroadcast it as follows:

RT @BloggerTip “Facebook better than Twitter for your business?” http://bit.ly/1suvPTC

Retweets are at the core of what makes Twitter more than just a micro-blogging tool. In the next part, we will detail how to retweet effectively and how to make it easy for others to retweet you

Add to Cart Twitter for Dummies – part 4: The Geeky Art of Nerdy Tweets

Twitter for Dummies – Part 3: The parts that makes Twitter work

In part 1 of this series, I described what I use Twitter for. In part 2, I highlighted Twitter as a social networking tool.
In this post, we will go slightly more technical: looking at the parts in the engine that make Twitter really useful.

Twitter.com

The core of it all is the blue box, twitter.com. This is where all the Tweets and Twitter profiles are stored, and the engine with which everything connects.

The Twitter website

When you first sign up to Twitter, you connect via the web interface, Twitter’s main web page. It lets you modify your profile and settings, search for Tweets, add followers, browse through the updates or “Tweets” from all your followers, and send out Tweets yourself.
The usability of the webinterface is not the best, IMHO, e.g. the tweets from those you follow are not refeshed automatically, it is difficult to distinguish between “your Tweet updates” and “those of your social community”, etc.. But it lets you perform the basic functions: read what’s going on, and broadcast Tweets yourself.

Desktop tools

Most people use desktop tools (similar to what Skype has) such as Thwirl, Tweetdeck, or Seesmic. Each is a small Adobe Air application, which updates automatically the Tweets your community is broadcasting. They let you filter for “all tweets”, “replies only”, “direct messages”, and let you search for Twitterers or Tweets. I hardly ever use the webinterface, but always have a window open with Seesmic and Twhirl.

Input processors

There are additional ‘input’ tools, to ease posting stuff on Twitter. The most popular are:

• URL shorteners convert the links you want to use in your Tweets to a real short URL. Some, like bit.ly, which I use the most, also give you statistics for amount of clicks each of your links gets.
• TwitPic allows you to upload a picture and generates a link to the picture, which you can include in your Tweet. This is the tool Janis Krums used to post the famous picture of the plane in the Hudson river, by the way.
• Twitvid.io does the same for video
• twtpoll lets you post a small poll

There are hundreds of input tools. Twtbase is a great repository listing most of the add-on applications. You can post audio, include a link to longer updates if you feel too limited with Twitter’s 140 characters, schedule tweets, etc…

Using your mobile

Another way to interact with Twitter, is via your mobile phone. Many PDAs like the iPhone or Blackberry have a small application to read and write Tweets via an Internet link. You can also use your mobile’s SMS service to send or receive tweets via twitter.com directly. Or, if you prefer, use Email on your mobile to tweet, pictures and video as attachments, which get automatically converted into links via TwitPic or Twitvid.io.
This makes Twitter truly mobile.

Reusing content

A more sophisticated way of using Twitter is to take the RSS feed from your blog (or website) and tweet the titles and links to new blogposts automatically. Twitterfeed is the best known tool for this. Twitterfeed updates will through URL shorteners before being posted onto Twitter.

On the output site: search and query tools.

Between 10,000 to 15,000 Tweets are published per minutes, making Twitter a great data repository. You might not be interested in seeing how many people tweeted about the weather today, but searching for specific tags like #aid or #blogging or #michaeljackson would be more useful.
There are many query tools dependent on what exactly you search for, the depth of the search, and even more importantly, how it is presented to you.
Most of the search and query are also listed in Twtbase. My favourite query tools ar Twazzup and TwitterFall, which not only refresh queries automatically but also show pictures related to your query, the top users, related links, etc… Try also Twicsy to search for tweeted images.

Last but not least: reusing content from Twitter.

Dozens of tools let you take your (or anyone else’s) twitter updates, and republish them on an other website or blog automatically. You can also republish the Twitter content onto other social media services, such as Facebook, Friendfeed or Identi.ca…
If you are both a blogger and a twitterer, it is fashionable to include a widget to display your Twitter’s updates onto your blog or website. This interchanges readers from your blog with your Twitter account.

Add to Cart Twitter for Dummies – Part 3: The parts that makes Twitter work

Twitter for Dummies – Part 2: Twitter, the social community tool

In the previous post, I elaborated what I use Twitter for, both at work and for my personal sites.
So what is this “Twitter”-thingie then, hey? How can I explain Twitter as a social community tool rather than a blogging tool…? Well try these approaches:

How to explain Twitter? Think of Skype, but different!

You know instant messengers (IM) like Skype or MSN messenger? Then you know how with instant messengers, you can look for friends, add them to your address book and then type messages online.
At its best, you can add several friends into a conversation, type away and have some fun. All your “chats” remain private between those within that conversation.
Twitter is a similar tool, but all text messages are “broadcasted”: they are public messages with a maximum of 140 characters. I don’t have to be in a conversation with one or more people like in Skype. I broadcast. And millions of others are broadcasting just like me, resulting in a mega-stream of thousands public text messages per minute (currently about 10,000 to 15,000 per minute). Any of my “broadcasts” can be searched for, replied to, or rebroadcasted by any other Twitter user.
If people find the stuff I broadcast interesting, they tag me (or become a “follower” in Twitter-lingo). If people “follow me”, they will automatically filter my updates out of the mega stream of a zillion Twitter messages. They will do so for all their followers, effectively creating a message filter for stuff they like and people they are interested in.
In the following example, I “follow” Karim, Ann and John. Out of the millions of other broadcasts, I filter their messages, so will only see the Tweets they broadcast and no others.

Turning it around: I don’t only broadcast, I also listen (not enough, my wife would say, but that is another issue.. ). I look for friends, or broader, people who are interested in the same stuff I am, and “follow” them.
This interaction between ‘broadcasting’ and ‘listening’, results in each Twitter user building a social community of “followers”… People follow me, find my updates interesting, and stay tuned. Friends of friends (or “followers” of those who “follow me”) see interactions with me, check my broadcasts, and become my followers… Gradually, the group grows. The larger the group, the more effective Twitter becomes as a social community for me.
And Twitter communities grow organically. Using the same example, but showing a broader view of the communities around me:

Karim, Ann, John and me follow each other, this is my social community, as it is centered around “who follows me”. Likewise, Ann, Andy and me are the social community centered around Karim.
Twitter has made it easy to find out “who follows who”, and following new people is done “by a click”, so social communities grow very quickly and organically. Just like “friends of my friends” might become “my friends” in real life:
In the above example, do you see the chain of John-Roman-Suzy-Roanna-Mary? Roman follows both John and Suzy, but Suzy and John don’t follow each other.
Suzy will see Roman interact with John via Twitter, and as they have a common “friend” with John, I bet you Suzy will start following John, as there is a good chance they have common interests.

How do I explain Twitter to someone? Think of TV.

As you flip that dial on your satellite TV, you can find hundreds of stations. If you are interested in music, and news, you will put those stations you like in your pre-select channels: CNN, Al-Jazeera and MTV.
Twitter is the same. You scan for those users you like, and you put them in your pre-select channels by “following” them.
Except that you will watch to all your pre-selected channels at the same time, like some of those mosaic features some TVs have… “Listening on Twitter” is like watching that mosaic picture

How do I explain Twitter to someone? Think of CB radio.

Remember in the 70-ies, many of us had this little black box with a microphone, and a hidden antenna on the roof. Well at least I did! I would be one of those getting up in the morning, and shout out “Breaker, breaker, this is Rubberduck, gooooood morning to everyone!”…
In the beginning, nobody would ever come back to me, but as I started to interact with other CB-ers, we started to tune into each other’s channels, and I started to get replies to my “good morning” shouts. Later on, we picked one channel where we could always find each other, and interacted day and night…
A social community was built. How it was used, was up to the participants… Some of us, only used it to keep us company in lonely hours. Some used CB to have fun and joke around. Others used it to get traffic information, finding out where the “bears” were with their speed cameras. Other teens used it to work on projects for school, and there were people who organised fundraising parties for charity…
Twitter is the same. With one additional feature: I can record what others were talking about, and re-broadcast it on my CB channel.

Visualizing your social community

TwitNest, a cool Twitter network visualisation tool, shows exactly what I mean with ‘social networks’.
Here is a part of my Twitter network, centered around my @TheRoadTo, my personal Twitter username, showing a small icon for each of the people I follow, and a line connecting who is following who:

As you can see, this network, is centered around me:

Twitter user “@fighthunger” is part of my community. Here are the people within my community they follow, the followers we have in common:

And here are the users “@ithorpe”, one of my followers,… euh… follows..

Play with Twitnest, it is interesting as it also “groups” people, based on ‘who is following who’…
Sociologists would have a real go at trying to figure out how people are grouped, how social communities are formed and grow organically.
In my community for instance, I can clearly see different groups popping up, dependent on the common interest my followers have. Some of them are ‘aidworkers’. Other groups I recognize, are ‘IT people’, ‘those interested in social media’, ‘news stations’ and ‘nonprofit organisations’…

Add to Cart Twitter for Dummies – Part 2: Twitter, the social community tool

Twitter for Dummies – Part 1: more than a microblog

Last week, @gaurisalokhe invited Jon from (AidWorker Daily) and I as guest speakers in a short FAO info session about micro blogging.
I realized how difficult it is to explain what this social media phenomenon really is all about. Does “Twitter is a micro-blogging tool” associate it too much with “blogging”: “I publish, you read, and if all goes well, you might even comment”?
Maybe this is what Twitter was originally intended for, but how do you explain to anyone it is much more than just ‘publishing 140 character content’. How do you explain the dynamic and the power of a Twitter social community of “followers”?
Another challenge is to explain that apart from ”www.twitter.com”, the web interface for Twitter, there are hundreds of add-ons and tools that make Twitter work for you.

I use Twitter for:

• yep, publishing “content”: links I find interesting, updates about what I do (with text, pictures and video)
• build a social community with people who have similar interests by interacting with my followers
• get people interested in my blogs by tweeting links to new posts
• get help and feedback by asking questions, posting polls
• give help and feedback by answering questions and polls
• monitor news and trends
• reading up on what others are reading and find interesting
• monitor the latest updates from sites and subjects I am interested in, almost as an alternative to an RSS reader
• get inspiration
• live blogging from events, workshops
• have fun

But the person next door might use it for something completely different:

• fundraising
• announcing where you can get free Pizzahut coupons
• rallying up the masses to protest against the Iran violence
• bash CNN, just because they are such an easy target
• broadcasting what second hand items she has for sale
• stay in touch with friends
• …

Is Twitter worth the trouble?

Yes it is. Here are three cases which showed me the power of twitter:
1. Late one evening, someone in my Twitter users’ community tweeted me:

Are you guys expelled from Sudan? This article (link) says so!

The linked article indeed stated the organisation I work for was expelled from Sudan, around the time 13 NGOs were forced to leave the country. Which was incorrect. As this issue was very sensitive for us, I contacted our Public Information people, who called the publishers of the website. Half an hour later, the –potentially damaging- statement was corrected. Without Twitter, I would never have caught that article.
2. A few months ago, I tweeted:

Looking for a webguru to help us analysing a complicated portal development project

Sure enough someone from my community replied. He was available within two weeks. We started communicating via Email, and in the end, he actually found a grant from the Gates Foundation to fund his trip. I not only found a webguru, but got him fast and for free.
3. Last week, I tweeted:

Writing a post about blogplatforms. I know Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr but looking for a TypePad geek to help me out

Three people responded and assisted me in the article, filling in the blanks I left. Two were part of my followers’ community, the other one was just searching Twitter for the keyword “TypePad”.

Twitter for Dummies

In this series, “Twitter for Dummies”, or call it “A Twitter Primer”, I will cover this social media phenomenom from the bottom up. What Twitter is, what the different components are, best practices, the tricks of the trade, and a list of the most useful add-ons. How to make Twitter work for your nonprofit purposes?
In the tradition of BlogTips, I will spec these posts with my own experiences.

Add to Cart Twitter for Dummies – Part 1: more than a microblog

Love is… debugging the WiFi together

Cartoon inspired by the work of Kim Casali

Add to Cart Love is… debugging the WiFi together

Is blogging still fun?

I am not sure how often I feel like walking a road, ending up somewhere at a hurdle. And then I look around me and think “How did I end up here?”.
I mean this “blogging thing” is great. It gives the power to distribute information “to the masses”. Being an anti-authoritarian at heart, I cannot but get a kick out of how easy it is nowadays for any Joe Blow to publish information. No surprise I, like many others, took “the blogging thing” at heart and started to walk a road. But this weekend, I looked around me, and thought “how did I end up here” ?
Are you like me? When I use a tool, I develop a dependency on it. Like millions of other bloggers, I do my part to create meaningful content, to do a serious effort of making my blogs look good. But I also developed a dependency on my providers: the servers or services I use for my blogs. There is no worse start of the day than to wake up, check my blogs and find out one of them is down. Nothing as frustrating as having a spark of inspiration, starting a blogpost and having the thing crash in the midst of it. Curses fly when -once again- I upgrade one of my blogs or add a new widget only to find it all goes pear-shape because of a technical problem.
I guess it all comes down to a feeling of “with my blog I provide a service”. I create information or give entertainment. I feel sad when those reading my blogs are faced with a blank page. The longer it takes for the blog to come back up, the more frustrated I get.
I feel that the past months have been a particular hard time for bloggers. I don’t know where it all started.
Probably it started during the systematic and repetitive massive hacking of shared host providers, of which GoDaddy, one of my main hosting providers was hit the hardest. Tens of thousands of blogs were infected and started to spread viruses. Then I had a hard and long fight against the sub-standard uptime of my shared hosting servers.
In June, WordPress.com went down. The same happened – for a shorter period, this weekend. In the past weeks, Tumblr, the host of several of my blogs went down randomly. And last week, Posterous was hit by hackers, bringing down their servers through a massive DoS (Denial of Service) attack. The folks at Posterous released a new IP address for site with a custom domain, like my Shot from the Hip TwitPic equivalent. But the hackers followed, and hours after the remedy, the patient was sick again. Then Posterous decided to move to a new data center over the weekend, but as I write this, services are still not restored as they should be. There are still delays in posting updates via email. Cross-posting to Twitter lags behind too. It was kinda funny to see my yesterday’s “Good Morning”-post only coming up at 8 pm… People must have thought I was drunk.
No, the fun is not out blogging, that is for sure. True, I learn while fighting technical problems: during the adventures of cleaning my hacked GoDaddy sites, I learned a lot about security issues. Fighting inadequate hosting brought me to better analyse what I want from a hosting supplier. But still, I think it is good to stand still once in a while and evaluate how much time I spend creating content – what I truly like in blogging – and how many hours I spend on solving technical issues. And to make sure I don’t let it get too far.
What is your experience?

Add to Cart Is blogging still fun?

Power tools to manage multiple Twitter accounts

For the past 18 months, I managed a dozen different Twitter accounts. From each, I tweet simple text phrases, links, and pictures. I follow my social crowd closely, checking the replies and direct message I get. I also retweet and engage into conversations, as a good social media user should do. In short, I am a Twitter addict, demanding more from my Twitter tools than an average “Tweep”.
I experimented with many desktop, browser, iPhone and iPad tools which could make my life easier in manage these multiple Twitter accounts. While there are loads of tools available for single Twitter account, decent applications to manage a string of Twitter accounts simultaneously, are found far and between.
Here are the tools I have been using:

Managing multiple Twitter accounts from my desktop:
Seesmic Air

Seesmic Air, my favourite Twitter desktop tool

Most of my Twitter-action, I do from my desktop, for which Seesmic Air has been an indispensable tool. This free application runs atop Adobe Air, but the new beta version, runs on Microsoft Silverlight.
The main feature I chose this tool for, is its ability to combine the main Twitter stream for all my Twitter accounts into one single stream. Likewise, all replies and all direct messages for my accounts, are all viewed at once: Even if I have 15 Twitter accounts, I get an immediate overview of all the incoming tweets, as well as all replies and direct messages sent to me on all of my accounts, all in just three columns. No need to switch from account to account. This single feature, I found in no other tool.
I can easily open a separate view to check out the tweets I sent and received from one single account, as well as the replies and direct messages for each them.
Tweeting is a breeze, with the built-in URL shorteners and Twitter picture tools, pretty much a standard feature for all tools on the market these days. When I hover over a tweet, I can easily retweet (either with the new Twitter retweet function or with the conventional “RT” feature), adding my own comments to the retweet.
When I send a tweet, I can choose which of my accounts I tweet it from, and I can tweet from several of my accounts at the same time.

Managing multiple Twitter accounts within a browser: Hootsuite

Managing Twitter accounts with Hootsuite

I have to admit: I don’t use browser applications a lot to manage my Twitter accounts. I work a lot on websites, and my browser is my main workspace. All tabs I open in my browser are mostly related to the posts I am working on, and I avoid cluttering them with generic tools.
But if there was one web-based application I’d use to manage my multiple Twitter accounts, it would be Hootsuite.
Hootsuite is easy to configure, and lets you monitor your different streams, in separate tabs. Checking the streams, replies and direct messages for each Twitter account requires you to switch to that account by clicking its tabs. Even if that is within the same browser window, Hootsuite does not allow you to combine all streams into one single overview, as Seesmic Air does.
There are several features I like in Hootsuite, which I did not find in other tools: You can schedule a tweet, to be broadcasted at a later time, and it allows you tweet the content of an RSS feed. Each time a new item appears in the RSS feed, a new tweet will be broadcasted. A feature which is similar to what Twitterfeed or dlvr.it offer, but nicely integrated into the one single Twitter tool.

Managing multiple Twitter accounts from my iPhone: Twitterrific and Seesmic

Twitterrific for iPhone

As anyone with a sane mind, I only use Twitter on my iPhone when I am on the move. While waiting at the check-in counter, I love to browse through my different Twitter accounts to see what’s up. Twitterrific is my preferred tool then.
The free version for the iPhone lets you manage multiple accounts, but if you want to do away with the single ad atop of your Twitterstream, you’ll have to pay US$14.95.. The ad does not bother me, so I use the free version.
Twitterrific is a powerbundle with different functions, but its user interface takes some time to get used to. I like its the ability to check the profiles of my incoming tweets with a single tap, and it lets me retweet incoming tweets from one Twitter stream, from any of my other accounts. Indispensable when cross-posting tweets.
Weblinks in tweets open up in within the application, with an easy switch back to the main app.
I should confess, lately, I have been playing with Seesmic for iPhone too:

Seesmic for iPhone

While I lack Seesmic’s desktop feature to view all of my incoming streams for all accounts at once, I love the simple user interface. Seesmic for iPhone also allows me to tweet from different accounts simultaneously. They made it easy to retweet a post received on one account, from the other account. Love it!

Managing multiple Twitter accounts from my iPad: Twitterrific

Twitterrific for iPad

The iPad is pretty new on the market, so only a limited number of tools are available to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Luckily, there is Twitterrific to save my day.
The user interface is pretty much the same as for its iPhone application: you can switch from Twitter account to account, browsing each timeline, replies and direct messages. Viewing links, retweeting, checking profiles, all goes in a breeze.
The free version of Twitterrific for iPad only supports one single account, but you can upgrade to the full version for a mere $4. It was the first iPad application I ever bought.
I did play around with TweetDeck for iPad too, but once you configure more than three Twitter account, it becomes very slow and unstable. The latest software release is so buggy, I can’t use it at all. A pity, as I like some of its features.
As the iPad becomes an alternative to a desktop or laptop computer, more applications will be ported to this new platform. I can’t wait until Seesmic gets its iPad version out.
Twitter birds picture courtesy Urban Speaker

Add to Cart Power tools to manage multiple Twitter accounts

6 Uses for Google AdWords You Had Never Considered

Google AdWords is Google’s advertising platform that allows advertisers to display text ads on Google’s search results. Advertisers can choose what keywords should trigger their ads, and how much they are willing to pay for each click on their ads. The ads usually appear on top and to the right of normal search results. The image below is one example of an AdWords ad:

Traditionally the AdWords platform has been used by large advertisers and companies that want to promote their products, services, get more traffic to their websites and so on.
However, even individuals can become AdWords advertisers (creating an account is free, and just requires a valid credit card), and by spending $10 or so you should be able to accomplish some pretty useful things. Below you’ll find 6 of them.

1. Sell Your Car

The Internet has completed displaced the newspaper classifieds section. If you want to sell your car today, you should put an ad on Craigslist.com, AutoTrader.com, Cars.com and so on. The problem with this method is that you’ll be competing with tens of thousands of people who are also putting ads on these sites to sell their cars.
Can you do something to get an edge? Yes, and that is where Google AdWords comes into play. You can create a couple of ads, and target very specific keywords, so that when people search for them on Google they will click on your ad and end up visiting the page describing your car.
Let’s suppose you are trying to sell your Toyota Corolla. The first step would be to put it for sale on Craigslist.com (or on any other website you prefer). Once that is done, you’ll go to your AdWords account and create a couple of ads targeting terms like: “used corolla”, “buy used corolla”, “used corolla los angeles”, “corolla lost angeles” and so on. Finally, just make the ads point to your car’s page on Craigslist.
You will probably need to bid $2 or more per click to get your ads appearing on Google search results, but it sure will be worth the money, as these visitors will have a good chance of purchasing your car.

2. Sell Your House/Apartment

Just like you can use Google AdWords to sell your car, you can also use it to sell your house/apartment. In fact it will be even more effective here, because the return you’ll have is larger, so your advertising budget should be larger too.
The process is the same. You start by creating an ad for your house on some online marketplace (e.g., HouseHunt.com). After that you’ll create some ads on Google AdWords, and target keywords that people looking for houses might be using. Examples include “apartment new york”, “buy apartment new york”, “apartment washington heights ny”, “two bedroom apartment nyc” and so on.
Given the value of a house you could also consider creating a website to sell it. This would allow you to customize the visual elements, with more pictures, a larger description and so on. You would then drive traffic to your website using the Google AdWords ads.

3. Land A New Job

Picture this: the manager of the company you want to work for, Mark Smith, is on Google, and he decides to run a search for his name (who doesn’t do it these days?). Surprising as it sounds, the very first results says something like this: “Hey Mark Smith, Googling your name is fun, and hiring me will be fun too!”.
Upon clicking on that results the manager would be taken to a page with your resume and an explanation of why you want to work for his company, and why he should hire you.
This neat trick would certainly increase your chances of getting hired huh? You can do it with Google AdWords (e.g., by creating ads targeting the name of the manager you want to hire you). In fact this idea is not mine, and one guy already used it successfully. He landed 5 interviews with top advertising agencies in New York, and three of them offered him a position.

4. Get Accepted Into College

The same trick can be used to improve your chances of getting accepted into college. Having a high GPA or high SAT scores is not enough these days, as competition for the prestigious colleges is fierce. Often times the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of the applicant might make all the different.
You would just need to create some AdWords ads targeting the names of the staff who review the applications of the college you want to attend, pointing them to a website where you explain who you are and why they should accept you.
You could create ads targeting the name of the college too, with a headline like “Do you work at Stanford? Then You Got Know About This Kid!”. The more creative the better.

5. Get A Date

If you are into online dating, Google AdWords can certainly boost the number of contacts you’ll get. First of all you could use it to drive traffic to your profile page on existing dating sites (e.g., PlentyOfFish.com, Match.com and so on).
Second, you can also create a website to advertise yourself (including your bio, pictures and what not) and them use AdWords to drive traffic there.
As for the keywords, you can target dating related ones (e.g., “singles in nyc”), but also interest related keywords. For instance, you could target the keyword “punk band seattle” with an ad saying “Are you a girl who likes Punk music? You might be my soul mate then!”. You get the idea.

6. Prank Friends and Family

As you saw in point 4, the ability to target people’s name is Google AdWords opens a wide range of possibilities. Pranking your friends and family members is one of them!
For example, you could create an ad targeting the name of a friend or cousin, with a headline like “Hey Bob Jones, I Know What You Did Last Summer…”. The ad would then point to a page where you describe something your friend did in the past, mentioning that you’ll be sending it to a local newspaper or something like that.
Just make it clear it is a prank at some point, or your friend might call the police on you!
Over To The Raders: What other clever/innovative uses of Google AdWords have you seen around?

Add to Cart 6 Uses for Google AdWords You Had Never Considered

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website

There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.
For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.
The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.
The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).
The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.
List of popular CPC advertising networks:

• Google Adsense
• Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)
• BidVertiser
• Chitika
• Clicksor

2. CPM Advertising Networks
CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.
A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.
CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.
You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).
List of popular CPM advertising networks:

• Casale Media
• Burst Media
• Value Click
• Advertising.com
• Tribal Fusion
• Right Media

3. Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.
The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
Related links:

• How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
• Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
• Direct Advertising Sales for Beginners
• Openads Ad Server
• OIO Publisher Ad Platform

4. Text Link Ads
After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.
Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.
The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.
Text link marketplaces and networks:

• DigitalPoint Link Sales Forum
• Text-Link-Ads
• Text-Link-Brokers
• TNX
• LinkWorth

5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.
Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.
In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.
List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

• Commission Junction
• ClickBank
• Azoogle Ads
• Link Share

6. Monetization Widgets
The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.
Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

• WidgetBucks
• ScratchBack
• SmartLinks

7. Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.
Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.
If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.
List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:

• PayPerPost
• Sponsored Reviews
• ReviewMe
• BlogVertise
• Smorty

8. RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.
Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.
Related links:

• Feedburner
• BidVertiser
• Pheedo

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.
This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”
Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.
10.Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.
SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.
11. Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).
Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.
These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
List of popular forum software:

• vBulletin
• Simple Machines Forum
• phpBB
• Vanilla

12. Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.
Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.
The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
List of popular job board software:

• JobThread
• Web Scribe Job Board
• SimplyHired Job-o-matic
• Jobbex

13. Marketplaces
Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.
The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.
14. Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.
Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages
Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.
Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors
Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”
On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.
17. Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.
Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).
A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.
18. In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.
Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.
If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Ad networks that use pop-ups:

• Tribal Fusion
• PayPopup
• PopupAd
• Adversal

20. Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.
21. Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.
Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).
Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.
Related links:

• How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
• How To Sell A Website – How Much Is Your Website Worth?
• Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook
Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.
You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
Related links:

• Writing an ebook for your blog
• How to sell ebooks
• Processing payments for your ebook
• How to sell digital products online
• List of ebook selling software

23. Selling a Hardcover Book
Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.
List of self publishing and publishing services:

• Lulu
• Self Publishing
• iUniverse
• WordClay

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.
On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.
25. Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.
26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.
List of software to manage email newsletters:

• AWeber
• SendStudio NX
• PHP Autoresponder
• Constant Contact

27. Mentoring programs
People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.
Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.
Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.
28. Creating a conference around the website
If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.
Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars

Add to Cart 28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website