Pamper Your Visitors

When is the last time a website made you feel special? If a site made an effort to make you feel really special to them, would you appreciate it? If you’re anything like me, the answer would be a definite yes, and in fact, might even turn you into a brand evangelist. Today was my birthday, and although I hardly ever go to the home page of google.com (I usually just search from the address bar), I... read more

When Old-Fashioned Marketing Trumps Sexy Social Media Marketing

This is a guest post by Brandon Leibowitz. Something wrong is happening out there in social media world, and it’s taking over common sense. Social media marketing is an excellent tool for entrepreneurs who want a quicker way to establish brand identity, build relationships and recruit employees and independent contractors. However, there’s something wrong when it takes over your entire... read more

Four Ways To Become An Authority Blogger

The following is a guest post by Roko Nastic. There is no shortage of conversation online. An internet that was once barren – completely devoid of conversation as little as five years ago – has become remarkably social, attracting people from different countries, social classes, and ethnicities to interact and share their opinions. With equal access to information, communications, and publicity... read more

Great Example: Using An Interesting Story To Lead Into Your Point

I occasionally like to point out the usefulness of telling a story to create interest, engage emotions, and make your point in a way that connects with your readers. I noticed a tweet today that led me to a blog post that does an excellent job of using a story to lead into the blogger’s message. Drupal 7, the cocoon and the butterfly by Dries Buytaert grabbed my attention immediately with the short... read more

Wanna Know The Real Reason To Heart CommentLuv?

You know by now that I’ve entered the FamousBloggers Comluv contest. What you may not know is that I have a sweet spot for the whole CommentLuv concept. And no, it’s not for any SEO value. Forget about SEO for a minute. Forget about dofollow and nofollow. (BTW, CommentLuv DOESN’T turn your comment links into dofollow links, although many people who use the CommentLuv plugin often ALSO use... read more

Discovering New Bloggers and Blog Resources: Part 3 of 3

Thanks to the FamousBloggers ComLuv Contest, I’ve been introduced to several bloggers that weren’t already on my radar because they are generous sponsors of the contest. Discovering these new bloggers and resources is like finding money in a parking lot – it’s just a neat little surprise. So today, I’m focusing on introducing you to the ones that I was particularly happy to... read more

Blog Commenting, Contests, and Reach, Oh My!

UPDATE: The contest is over, and I finished in 2nd place! Thanks to everyone for all your support and hard work. I’ve been noticing all the hubbub lately for the FamousBloggers ComLuv contest, but I’ve been so busy that I hadn’t had a chance to really check it out until a week or so ago. Once I did, I realized that this was a great opportunity for me to share my thoughts on blog... read more

Twellow Categorization Tip Number 2 – Edit Your Profile

Recently, I told you about Twellow.com and gave you a tip on how to make sure your Twitter account was properly categorized in this new Twitter directory. Today, I’m here to tell you that there’s a new better way to handle this. Twellow has just released an Edit Listing feature, that allows you to add/edit/delete categories, as well as allowing you to make various other profile changes. ... read more

Twellow – Twitter Directory + Categorization Tip

A new site has just emerged, called Twellow (Twitter Yellow Pages), and it’s a nice little directory of Twitter users. At the moment, it contains 332,261 Twitterers, with that number growing at all times, I assume. You can search for people in two ways: either a search across the entire directory, or just within a specific category. The first thing I noticed was that I was included in the... read more

Using Superstition As A Hook

Since today is Friday the 13th, it seemed like the perfect time to talk about interacting with your readers at a really deep level – so deep in fact that it’s almost spooky. I’m talking about superstitions here. We humans are a superstitious lot, and I’d be willing to bet that even the sanest, most practical amongst us still have some superstitions lurking deep within them. ... read more