Fetching Friday – Resources, Easy Tweet Sharing Tool & Maru Meows

by Kristi on July 30, 2010 · 20 comments

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the resources mashup, an easy tweet sharing tool, and Maru, the box sliding cat, meows on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

Continue Fetching Friday – Resources, Easy Tweet Sharing Tool & Maru Meows

Increase Traffic and Authority by Listing Your Blog

by Kristi on July 28, 2010 · 51 comments

There are a lot of places to list your blog for getting the maximum exposure, as well as places where you can receive blog reviews that may be the first impression a visitor may come across for your site. Here are some to add your blog or submit your site to in order to increase your blog traffic and reputation.

For Reviews

Want to get reviews and ratings for your writing skills and your blog? Submit yourself and your sites to the following networks.

Scribnia

Scribnia is an excellent blogging community that lets you connect with and review other blog writers. I was added here as a contributor to Famous Bloggers, and my profile has already brought in some traffic, as well as connections and reviews from other awesome bloggers like Hesham, Andrew, Danny, Francisco, Julie, Meena, Arijit, and Antonia. I will be getting some reviews going for you all soon if I haven’t already.

Continue Increase Traffic and Authority by Listing Your Blog

Fetching Friday – Resources, SEO Blogging Contest & Sheep LED Art

by Kristi on July 23, 2010 · 22 comments

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the resources mashup, a new SEO blogging contest, and some creative sheep LED art on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon and retweeted on @kikolani this week.

Blogging / Writing

Continue Fetching Friday – Resources, SEO Blogging Contest & Sheep LED Art

The Pros and Cons a Home Based Blogging Business

by Brian on July 21, 2010 · 63 comments

This is a guest post by Brian Stephens of Moulin Website Design, a web design company supporting small businesses.

A home business sounds great, doesn’t it? Rolling out of bed in the morning when you wake, rather than to an alarm clock. No boss giving you grief for getting in late. You can do what you want when you want. Life couldn’t be better, or could it?

First of all, there are two ways to work from home. There is working for a company from a home base, and there is working for yourself, self employed and building your own business. Making money blogging as a business venture is a great example of a way to do this.

Working from Home

Working from Home for Someone Else

Lets discuss the working from home for a company option first. This is a real work at home job where you actually are working in your home – not out on the road servicing clients all over the country and not getting home until 8.00PM, exhausted from all the driving.

Here are the pros for a real ‘working for a company at home’ type job.

  • Save on the commute time to and from work.
  • Have some flexibility in your working hours.
  • No office politics to deal with.
  • Far fewer work clothes required.
  • You have a high level of autonomy on how you do your work.
  • You can enjoy a peaceful environment with little or no interruptions (assuming you don’t have others working at home or kids running around simultaneously).

Continue The Pros and Cons a Home Based Blogging Business

Inside the New Digg, Including New Auto Submit Feature

by Kristi on July 19, 2010 · 52 comments

New Digg Login

Somewhere, throughout my vast array of email filters, I must have missed my invitation to try out the new Digg 4.0 beta / alpha system, but this weekend out of sheer curiosity, I logged into new Digg site and got to play around with what is coming up. So, without further ado, here is a look at the inside of the new Digg system.

Finding Friends

When you first login to the new Digg, it will suggest some profiles for you to follow under a variety of topics, including Business, Entertainment, Technology, and more.

New Digg Suggested People
New Digg Suggested People to Follow

On the next screen, you are invited to connect your Digg account to Facebook, Google, and Twitter to find your friends on Digg from each network.

New Digg Find Friends on Facebook, Google, and Twitter
New Digg Find Friends on Facebook, Google, and Twitter

If you decide to skip these options when first signing in, you can find popular profiles and check your networks later by going to My News > Find Profiles, and you’ll see a little section for My Networks on the left sidebar along with the topics you can search for popular profiles in.

New Digg My Networks
New Digg My Networks

Continue Inside the New Digg, Including New Auto Submit Feature

Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Best YouTube Campaign Ever

by Kristi on July 16, 2010 · 37 comments

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the resources mashup, Blog World confirmed, and a farewell video from the Old Spice man on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon and retweeted on @kikolani this week.

Blogging / Writing

  • Blogs I Follow – this is the best way to organize your commenting strategy, Alltop style.
  • 15 blogs to follow if you want to kick ass online – these blogs cover everything bloggers need from straight up blogging tips to SEO, social media, and marketing strategies.
  • 7 not so obvious ways to get inside your readers’ circle of trust – if you liked Meet the Parents (or even if you didn’t), this shows you how to get inside the circle of trust, even when it’s difficult.
  • 100 great writing tips from the world’s top bloggers – great compilation of ways to make your writing better!
  • Why bloggers should care about Google suggest and online reputation management – is blogging so last year, for losers, or dead? How to combat the scam.

Continue Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Best YouTube Campaign Ever

Why Your Blog Needs a Mailing List

by Kristi on July 14, 2010 · 72 comments

For many bloggers, myself included, the thought of a mailing list is the furthest thing from their mind when starting out blogging. And many others think of mailing lists as only something you need if you are going to be selling your own products or affiliate products to your subscribers.

This, however, is a false assumption. I would say that anyone who is looking to get into serious blogging should start creating a mailing list as soon as possible. This is why!

Reasons to Create a Mailing List

Here are some great reasons to have a mailing list for your blog, some for even if you are not selling a thing!

1. Announce new additions to your site.

Whether it is a new design, social profile, or new resource page, announcing updates through your newsletter can get your readers excited about visiting your site again!

2. Alert your list when something is awry.

This week, there was a little hiccup in the networks between Cox and GoDaddy – certain people with Cox as an ISP couldn’t see certain GoDaddy sites, including this one and Dofollow. I didn’t know if I was going to have to make an emergency hosting move, but if I did, I would have been able to alert people on my mailing list immediately. It would certainly have come in handy around the time my sites got hacked a few months ago. Fortunately, GoDaddy solved the issue, while demonstrating some seriously good Twitter customer service skills.

Continue Why Your Blog Needs a Mailing List

Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Blog World Expo Early Bird Deadline & #FBCLcontest Update

by Kristi on July 9, 2010 · 31 comments

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the resources mashup, Blog World Expo early bird pricing deadline, ComLuv contest update, and Dude vs. Wild on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon and retweeted on @kikolani this week.

Blogging / Writing

Continue Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Blog World Expo Early Bird Deadline & #FBCLcontest Update

Twitterfeed, HootSuite RSS Feeds, and Blog Posting Schedules

by Kristi on July 6, 2010 · 59 comments

Are there blogs that you read regularly that you find so good that you end up sharing every post on Twitter? Do you hate it when you miss a post from those blogs, and wish that, even when you’re offline, you can promote new posts from those blogs to your followers because you know that each one will be valuable to them?

Twitterfeed and HootSuite offer the ability to take a RSS feed from any site and update it to your Twitter account automatically when new feed items are found.

Pros of Automatic RSS Feed Updating

Aside from missing out on your favorite bloggers’ posts, updating your feed automatically with one of these services allows you to:

  • Have your social networks updated often, even when you’re offline. Great for vacations or for tweeting blog posts from international bloggers who post at odd hours for you, but good hours for their audience!
  • Provide your followers with relevant content that is valuable to them without having to constantly monitor someone’s blog or Twitter account for their latest updates.
  • Support your favorite bloggers and show how much you love their posts, especially by attaching @blogowner to your tweets.

Cons(iderations)

I wouldn’t call these cons, but here are some things to consider when choosing an RSS feed to automatically update to your social networks.

  • Does the blog always post content that is valuable to your followers? If there is occasionally questionable content, you may want to only tweet posts after review and not automatically.
  • How often does the blog post new content? Keep this in mind when setting post frequency so you don’t bombard your readers with 5 posts or more per hour from the same site.
  • If you like to have particular status updates stay at the top of your account for longer periods of time, those could be bumped off by a latest RSS feed update. So if you have your feeds updated every hour, post other status messages at 10 minutes after the hour to stay up for awhile.

Now, let’s take a look at Twitterfeed and HootSuite RSS works.

Continue Twitterfeed, HootSuite RSS Feeds, and Blog Posting Schedules

17 CommentLuv Enabled Blogs to Visit

by Kristi on July 4, 2010 · 64 comments

In the spirit of the FamousBloggers and ComLuv blogging contest, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the various blogging sponsors contributing to one of the largest cash prize blogging contests who have, of course, CommentLuv enabled blogs.

I know that most of my readers are well aware of the reasons to love CommentLuv, including its great benefits to blog owners, readers, and especially commenters with the ability to promote blog posts and articles on article directories and networks such as HubPages, Squidoo, EzineArticles, & more.

CommentLuv Enabled Blogs List

Without further ado, here are the contest sponsors with blogs enabled with CommentLuv for your content pleasure!

1. The Home of CommentLuv – The ComLuv Network

The ComLuv Network

One of the top sponsors spearheading this contest is the network behind ComLuv itself where you can download the plugin and register your site to have your latest 10 blog posts / articles available to you when commenting. They also have a blog filled with contestants’ entries and great tips on how to use the CommentLuv system on your own site and when commenting. So if you are not yet taking advantage of this great backlink building and traffic generating blog commenting system, be sure to register now and start commenting!

2. Learn How to Blog at FamousBloggers

How to Blog

FamousBloggers is a great site to find lots of informative bloggers who know how to educate their readers on the art of blogging, social networking, and making money online. It is a friendly community that knows the importance of interacting with readers by responding to comments and reaching out to find quality writers to share a new wealth of information on how to succeed at blogging. It is also home to the other half of the entries for this contest.

Continue 17 CommentLuv Enabled Blogs to Visit

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