December 2008

How To Promote Your WordPress Blog on LinkedIn

by Diana Urban on December 20, 2008

Wordpress LinkedIn

If you’re not familiar, LinkedIn is like Facebook for professionals. You display your professional experience, connect with current and past coworkers, and even meet new connections. It’s a great online networking opportunity. If you’re a professional blogger and want to boost your credibility as an expert in your field, you should consider putting your blog on your LinkedIn profile.

In the spirit of research, I put U Stand Out on my WordPress page, which you can see on my LinkedIn profile page. Here’s how to do it: Click to continue…

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How To Create Content Worthy of Social Media Marketing

by Diana Urban on December 19, 2008

Social Bookmarking

This article was originally written as a guest post on The Internet Marketing Blog for Today. Thanks to the blog owner Erwin Tan for hosting!

Starting a niche blog is both exciting and overwhelming. Once you post a few articles, that “if you build it, they will come” mentality sets in, and you start checking your stats every 5 minutes. And then you realize that maybe “if you build it AND promote it, they will come.” So you spend hours submitting your articles to social media sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, BlogCatalog, commenting on blogs, replying in forums, and so on. Now you’re checking your stats every 30 seconds.

There are some bloggers out there screaming, “This is how I did it! Just follow these steps, and you’ll get a thousand visitors a day!” But for most bloggers, this is not how it works. It takes dedication, passion, and time. But most of all, it takes content that’s going to get people’s attention enough for them to stick around, bookmark it, and tell a few people about it. Here are some tips to creating quality content worthy of social media marketing. Click to continue…

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WordPress Plugins that Encourage Blog Comments

by Diana Urban on December 16, 2008

Wordpress Logo

Why is it so important to encourage commenting? This problogger article discussed a study revealing that 90% of people online are lurkers (read or observe content without contributing), 9% of people contributing a “little,” and only 1% of people actively participate online. This is referred to as the 1% rule, and it’s your job to figure out how to break that rule on your blog.

There are so many WordPress plugins for comments, and sifting through them to find the best ones can be overwhelming. So here are four simple WordPress plugins I recommend to encourage readers to comment on your blog.

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Part Time Bloggers

Bloggers often think that posting daily is the key to getting regular traffic. They scramble to fill their blog with content every day, even multiple times a day. If you’re a full-time blogger or have a ton of free time on your hands, you might be able to post quality content every day and be successful.

But if your time is limited, posting just to fill the space isn’t as effective as posting high quality content every few days. So if you have a full-time job or other obligations that keep you from being a full-time blogger, here are some reasons why it might not be best to publish every day:

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Snip URL is Better Than Tiny URL – By Far

December 9, 2008
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Snip URL is an online tool you can use to make those ridiculously long URLs shorter… and it offers some awesome features that leaves Tiny URL in the dust.

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How to Improve Your Website’s SEO Using LinkedIn

December 6, 2008
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If you’re planning to use LinkedIn to find job opportunities, optimizing your profile will help you stand out. But did you know that you can also use LinkedIn to improve the SEO of your website or blog?

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Facebook Connect: Spreading Your Identity Throughout the Web

December 3, 2008
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Facebook Connect allows you to sign in to other Web sites using your Facebook login info. But should you be sharing your profile with 3rd party sites?

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Avatars in Social Media: Value or Risk?

December 1, 2008
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Using your real photo as your avatar can help brand you, and help people recognize and relate to you. But is it worth the risk of losing your privacy?

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