Franklin Bishop

Reasons Why I like Podcasting for Blogs

Franklin Bishop — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:43:44 +0000

Podcasts are becoming more popular among bloggers. There are many people that still think that Podcasts cannot drive traffic to your Blog. However, there are ways to go about it that will make people happy that do not want to listen to audio and people that just went to read.

I am going to start having Podcasts here on this blog but I definitely will still have articles. Hello I have gone through the reasons why like the idea of having Podcasts on blogs. There are probably many more reasons that it will work, but these are the reasons why I have decided to do it.

Reasons for blog podcasting

1. Podcasts allow people to listen

This will allow anyone that likes to listen and not read to do so. This might give me more subscribers because they are given the choice of listening. This is probably one of the best reasons there is to have podcasting on a Blog.

2. Transcript choice

You can write transcripts for the people that would rather read the information. This will give you subscribers that would rather read and listen and that is a plus. With the choice of audio or writing, it will give me the potential to get many more subscribers than I thought possible.

3. SEO friendly

They will be SEO friendly for me because I will write transcripts out in article form. I like this idea because than I can still get traffic from search engines but make the people that like audio or writing happy.

4. Podcasting is easy

I have gone through and practiced a couple Podcasts. It is much easier to talk about something then to write an article out. When I go back and write my transcripts I will fix any stuttering or any issues that would make it not read like an article.

5. It makes you human

Your readers and other visitors will still like to actually know you and I see that as one of the benefits of podcasting. I will not sound like a robot by just writing articles that have no voice whatsoever. They will hear the confidence I have in what I am doing and advice I’m giving out.

I will go through step-by-step to show you what I’m doing to have podcasting on my blog. It could give you many ideas for your own blog and you might just start having Podcasts also. I’m hoping it more subscribers and satisfy many more people.Similar Posts:

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How to Create an Effective Email Marketing Newsletter

Franklin Bishop — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:08:09 +0000

Businesses send out regular newsletters about updates and new products and services to existing and potential customers. This task requires complete attention and management although it is extremely time consuming to manage it manually. Therefore companies use customized newsletter software tools to manage such tasks efficiently and effectively. Newsletters play an important role for the development of your business provided they contain information that is pertinent and useful to the recipient. The structure and content of newsletters is very important to convince your readers to take action. Here are some tips and tricks that can help to create a useful newsletter for your business.

Subject line plays the key role in increasing open rates of your email newsletter. It should contain hints to what the reader should expect in the email message. You should excite their curiosity with your subject line and make your reader to open and read your message.
Your newsletter should be written in the first person; it is critical to create professional contact. It should not be written as you are advertising your products and services shamelessly. Write is a style that would be familiar to your readers and don’t forget to personalize your newsletters.
Your newsletter should be simple because complex messages may confuse your readers. You should not include too many graphics, tables and links. It should look like a proper email otherwise it will be treated as spam or junk mail. A large number of newsletter software tools are available to create effective and useful newsletters.
Your newsletter should not be long and boring since readers do not have much time to read long articles. You should format important paragraphs and points with bullet points and numbers to get readers’ attention.
You should add links at the start, middle and end of your email newsletter to increase response. Newsletter software can do that effectively because they contain tips and guidelines to help you write effective newsletters.
You should add illustrative & decorative pictures of your product since that will enhance your response rate. If it is impossible to add a picture of your product then you can add some related graphic or graphic of the packaging to get attention of your reader.
Give e-books, software or some kind of other incentives to your readers free of cost. You should be careful in using the word “free” in your email message because it is one of the most attractive words in email marketing.
You should not forget to provide your contact information in your marketing message. Newsletter software tools have a feature to use your contact information as signature. Your contact information should be complete in all respect containing your web site address, email address, postal address and phone numbers.

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6 Blog Efficiency Tips

Franklin Bishop — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:19:05 +0000

As a blogger everyone wants to be more efficient whether they know it or not. 90% of all blogger’s do not blog as their full-time job. That means that most blogger’s need to be efficient otherwise you will not get much done in the day. Here are six tips I have for you to be more efficient so that you can be more productive everyday you work on your blog.

1. Have an idea journal

This is good because every time you get an idea for a post or anything else, you can just write it down. Too many times you are not around your computer and you forget an idea you have. Then when you need a post idea it will be right there in front of you. You will not have to take 15 to 30 minutes to think of an idea and plan it out. You already have your idea and plan written down in your journal. You should then be able to type up a post in 15 minutes.

2. Limit your reading time

Try to only takes 15 minutes every day to read other posts on the Internet. You should not take too much time reading tips and other things. Pick out a few of the best blogs and get new ideas from their posts everyday. You can only get so many tips everyday so 15 minutes should definitely give you enough time to read.

3. Track your traffic

This will tell you if you are doing things correctly or not. You never want to be doing a whole bunch of work and it’s not helping make your blog more successful. Use the plugin I talked about in my post track your SEO performance. It will show you what articles are getting traffic and from what websites were search engines. This will show you if you’re techniques are working.

4. Learn keyboard shortcuts

Learning keyboard shortcuts will make you what a more efficient. Whether it is for your browser or Wordpress, you will definitely get things done quicker. Just go to Google and type Firefox shortcuts or whatever kind of shortcuts who were looking for.

5. Stop distractions

This is definitely a must. Turn the TV off, radio, video games, and everything else that is distracting. You will be much more efficient if you are only concentrating on your blog. What I have done is put my computer in a room where there is no TV or anything else that could distract me.

6. Do most important items first

You might as forget your most important things done so that you can help the blog right away. Being more efficient and productive definitely doesn’t mean getting the crap done first. The important things have got it down so you can continue to climb the ladder.

I know most of these are just basic common sense, but so many times people forget about them. If you just forget to turn the TV off it can definitely slow you down as you continue to look up and watch little bits. Make sure you do these things everyday as you work on your blog and you will definitely continue to see improvements.Similar Posts:

Track Your Seo Performance

Franklin Bishop — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:00:57 +0000

Many people like to track there SEO performance. Whether you are trying to use Wordpress SEO or just trying to see where you are performing good at in search engines, there is a simple way of going about this. Yeah, there are many programs and scripts that can help you track your performance. However, I believe my way is pretty simple.

SEO Performance

First off, if you are trying to rank for searching keywords then you can honestly just go to Google and search for those keywords. Of course you have to go through and search for your websites homepage or your article. The only problem is, you won’t be able to track your SEO performance on keywords you don’t know you are ranking for.

I use the WassUp plugin to easily track my performance in search engines. Here are the reasons why this plugin is so helpful:

1. It is basically showing you visitors coming to your blog live. It is not like Google analytics where you have to wait till the next day to see how many visitors you’ve had and where they came from.

2. You can just track visitors coming to your blog from search engines.

3. It shows you what’s search engine they came from.

4. It tells you what they searched for.

5. And best of all, it tells you what page they were on when they found you for that keyword or phrase.

6. It will also give you a link so that you can go and see your article on that page in whatever search engine they used.

Those are all my reasons for loving that plugin to track my search engine optimization performance. You can also use Google analytics to track your SEO performance. However, I do not like it is much because it doesn’t give you the details like this plugin.

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Shoemoney ignores me on Twitter, funny

Franklin Bishop — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:46:34 +0000

There are many people on twitter that seem to ignore their followers when they have a lot. I guess these people just appreciate their followers whenever they feel like it. Don’t get me wrong though, there are many people with a lot of followers that will try to respond to every question or statement that “needs” a response.

For Shoemoney, that his definitely not his style. I noticed a couple weeks ago that his background was not what it should have been. If you look below at the screenshot I took, then you will notice that his slogan says, “Skills to Play the Bills.” When it should say, “Skills to Pay the Bills.”

Click Image to Enlarge

I tried to contact him four different times and never got a response on twitter. I decided that I would only try to tell him through twitter since it was his twitter background. I wanted to see how long it would take for him to respond to me or change his background. Well, obviously he never responded and never changed his background.

So is twitter a bad thing? Will this upset your readers if you do not respond to them on twitter? I know it doesn’t really bother me because it is really his problem. I am just surprised that he has never changed it considering all the people that come and go to his twitter page.

I know most people that have a lot of followers will respond to me, even if they are not following me. The point of this post is to try to see the point of view of others who also do not get responses from people with a lot of followers. I kind of feel bad for Shoemoney that someone created his background for him and didn’t even write the correct slogan. Maybe he will change it one of these days.Similar Posts:

Thesis Tutorial: Color Navigation Bar

Franklin Bishop — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:33:57 +0000

In this thesis tutorial I will show you how to color your navigation bar. Everything shows up fine in Firefox and Opera, but doesn’t show up fine in Internet Explorer. You can see the images below of the before and after of this tutorial. If you have any problems with this tutorial, then let me know when I will help you with your navigation bar.

Create an image that is the width of your page. The width of my page happens to be 974 pixels so that’s how wide I create the image. The height of my navigation bar was already at 32 pixels so I decided to create my navigation bar a little taller. It will not show up on your blog being taller as long as you send your height correctly. I set mine at 32 pixels but make sure you set the height in the code below to however tall your navigation bar is.

My Navigation Bar Background

The code below has to be used with the custom functions code no matter what. It will not work without it. Make sure you change my URL to your own images URL. Then changed the height and width to whatever you use for your navigation bar image.

Custom CSS

.custom #customnav { position: relative; height: 32px; width: 974px: padding: 0 1em; background: url('http://franklinbishop.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/nav-background.gif') 100% 100% no-repeat; border: none; }

I recommend just using the code below because it is definitely the easiest way to go about having a colored navigation bar. You may also need to use the custom functions code to go along with it. Make sure you change the URL that I have going to my image to your own. Plus chang the height to whatever the height is of your navigation bar.

Custom CSS

.custom ul#tabs { width: auto; border: none; height: 32px; background: #7da46d url('http://franklinbishop.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nav-bckg.gif') no-repeat; }

WITH

The custom functions code below will need to be added to your custom functions file. It is easiest if you use this code with both ways above. If you do not want your navigation bar before the header make sure to change it to after or wherever else you want the navigation bar.

Custom_functions

remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'thesis_nav_menu');
 
function custtomnav() { ?>

 thesis_nav_menu(); ?>

 }
 
add_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'custtomnav');

Unfinished Navigation Bar

Finished Navigation Bar

That’s basically all there is to it. Thesis is really easy to use once you get used to working with code. I know there are many people that did not know how to have a colored navigation bar in Internet Explorer, but this should work. If not let me know and I will try to help. Similar Posts:

Google Pagerank Sucks

Franklin Bishop — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:43:18 +0000

Google pagerank sucks, I know I know. I was surprised to get a few emails talking about how much pagerank sucks. I guess my last article explained what Google pagerank is reminded people how much they don’t like the current system.

Basically, it’s really not that bad. I know it could be a lot better, but basically all pagerank is telling you is how much Google trusts a blog. It gives you some link power, but that shouldn’t really be a big deal. Your pagerank doesn’t help you get more search engine hits and it’s not going to get you more subscribers.

It is just a trust factor. If you are looking to be trusted more and maybe you should then try to increase your pagerank. For the people that think that Google pagerank sucks, just remember it is not going to get you better search engine results. Wordpress SEO will definitely get you more traffic from Google.Similar Posts:

Google Pagerank Explained

Franklin Bishop — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:30:20 +0000

Explaining Google pagerank isn’t an easy thing to do. However, I think I have a great idea of how it works considering I took this blog all the way to a PR 5 in less than a year. That should give me some credibility when it comes to explaining Google pagerank.

Google Pagerank Explained

Here is how I currently see it in my mind. Right now Google could care less about do-follow and no-follow links. Matt Cutts from Google recently confirmed this on his blog. So any kind of link to your blog is counted in some way. That means every link I have received to my blog by commenting makes it look good to Google. Google does one at how many links are pointing towards your blog. Even if you have 30 of them coming from one blog (because of commenting) it still helps you. Pagerank Tip: Comment on many blogs over and over.

Google pagerank is also decided on how you use your linking power. What I mean by this is that you already currently have a pagerank. Your pagerank is diminished if you link out to a whole bunch of websites. However, if you just link out to a few web sites then your link power is greater. So linking out to 200 web sites is worse than linking out to 50 web sites. Pagerank Tip: Link out to less web sites. Link more to your own articles.

Your pagerank will also be decided by the kinds of web sites you link out to. My pagerank increased because I chose to link to web sites that have a pagerank of four or higher. This makes my blog look less spammy and more trustworthy to Google. They will notice that you’re not linking out to a whole bunch of no-name blogs. Pagerank Tip: Try to only link to web sites that have a higher pagerank. Anything lower than a PR 3 begins to look suspicious.

That is basically all pagerank it is. It really isn’t science like many people make it out to be. Try to link out to less web sites, link out to your own articles more, link out to web sites with a PR 3 or higher, and get more links to your blog by commenting and submitting your articles to do-follow social bookmarking sites.

All pagerank says is that Google likes you and when you link out to people it gives those blogs or web sites more power. It does nothing for your search engine results. Trust me, I would know.Similar Posts:

Amazing Thesis Theme Skins for Wordpress

Franklin Bishop — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:21:31 +0000

The Thesis theme for Wordpress is one of the most popular out their. Now people are rolling out the Thesis skins. Although there aren’t many now, wait a couple months down the road. There are going to be so many skins you won’t know what to do with yourself. Check em out yo….

Looks Good Naked Thesis Skin

Wasabi Dark Thesis Skin

Wasabi Light Thesis Skin

Pwned Thesis Skin

Straight Shooter Thesis Skin

Minimal Thesis Skin

Fresh Company Thesis Skin

Flawless Thesis Skin

Wufoo Thesis Skin

Cotton Candy Thesis Skin

Neoclassical Thesis Skin

Simple Life Thesis Skin

Reputation Thesis Skin

Gnarly man, that’s all there is. But if you know of any other Thesis skin, then let me know. I’ll add it ASAP. Similar Posts:

Wordpress SEO Secrets

Franklin Bishop — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:02:02 +0000

Your Wordpress SEO is one of the most important things for your blog unless you are not worried about getting traffic from search engines. There are many simple things you can do for your blog’s SEO with the Wordpress platform.

It is so simple that all it takes is downloading a few plugins to your blog and you can dramatically have better Wordpress SEO. Below you’ll see that I have gone through and talked about what each plugin will optimize. They are definitely a must if you are looking to get traffic from any search engines.

Webhosting Optimization

I have noticed that ever since I changed webhosts it has resulted in better SEO for my Wordpress blog. The speed of your server can decide how long Google stays on your page to scan your content. I changed to Bluehost a year ago and it has been heaven ever since. As soon as my content was scanned again by Google after changing webhosts, I got around 60 extra search engine hits a day.

Many people do not put emphasis on how well there Web hosting is. However, that could result in you hardly getting any search engine traffic to your blog. Next time you are thinking about a webhost, pick one with a server that has speed.

Wordpress SEO Post Plugins

It is important that you use plugins to help your Wordpress SEO. There are many plugins that can do this for you but if you want the best SEO for Wordpress there are a few that are better than others.

The one I use is either All in One SEO Pack or HeadSpace 2. They both let you optimize your titles, descriptions, and keywords of your posts. Both of them will do the same for your overall blog.

Download: All in One SEO Pack | HeadSpace 2

Permalinks

Your permalink is very important for SEO. One of my favorite plugins is SEO Slugs because it gets rid of the words that are not important in your blog post title so they don’t end up in your permalink. Search engines don’t really care about unimportant words so this plugin is a must if you’re looking to improve your Wordpress SEO.

I also make sure that in my Wordpress settings I have it set up so that when I post an article my blog name doesn’t show up next to the article name in search engines. I found that this helps with getting my articles ranked higher because it gets rid of unimportant words that do not go with the article.

Download: SEO Slugs

Title Optimization for Wordpress SEO

Title optimization is important for Wordpress SEO. You definitely need to download the plugins that I mentioned in number two. These plugins will allow you to insert any title that you want to have show up in Google for your article. It is important to write good titles that Google loves.

Make sure that any keywords that you are targeting are at the front of your title. It seems that Google and other search engines give you a better ranking for the keywords at the beginning. Try not to use one of those automatic title makers.

Description Optimization

Your description is important even though some experts are saying that it isn’t so important anymore. The reason I do disagree with some of these experts is the fact that when I use descriptions all my posts are ranked higher in Google and other search engines. Make sure you download one of the plugins in number two so that you can insert descriptions for your post and blog.

Make sure when you write a description user keywords at the beginning of the description and some at the end. Remember though, you only get so many characters to write so make it short and sweet.

Image Optimization

Google loves your images to be optimized for their search engine. Lately, it has been showing that it hurts to not have your images optimize. Their spiders have a difficult time searching through your content when they come upon an image that is improperly formatted for Google.

The easiest way to go about optimizing your images is by using the SEO Friendly Images plugin. Your Wordpress SEO can become a lot better if you use this plugin. It might begin to bring in traffic to your Blog through Google image search.

Download: SEO Friendly Images

Template Optimization

Template optimization is a must if you’re looking to improve your Wordpress SEO. It is definitely hard to find a template that is only optimize for search engines. You definitely want your page to load as fast as possible and you want search engines to be able to search through all your content simultaneously.

What I did too optimize my template is move to the best Wordpress theme on the planet, Thesis. This Wordpress theme is one of the fastest on the Internet and would dramatically help your Wordpress SEO. I create all my Blogs on this theme and I have never seen better results.

Page Optimization

Page optimization is also important if your looking to improve your SEO on Wordpress. The simple things you can do is use the breadcrumbs plugin so that you can show search engines around your Blog. It will be easier for search engines to find all your content and at a faster speed. Page numbers will also help your SEO so use the WordPress SEO Pager Plugin.

Download: WordPress SEO Pager | Yoast Breadcrumbs

Speed

Speed is an important part for every blog if you are looking to get search engine traffic. Google has loved fast loading blogs for some time now. Although some do not agree with this, I have only got more hits from search engines since optimizing my blog for speed.

Wordpress has many plugins that can speed up your blog for SEO. I use the ones below because each one has proven to help the speed of my blog. The way I checked how each plugin helped the load time of my blog is by using each plugin by itself and then comparing before and after

DB Cache – This plugin caches every database query with given lifetime. It is much faster than other html caching plugins and uses less disk space for caching.

WP Super Cache – This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

WP CSS - This plugin GZIP and strip whitespace from your CSS files. It allows you to confidently use @import inside a CSS file and not worry about what happens on the user’s end. It will look through your style.css file and put any @import files into it. A cache expiry time can also be set.

PHP Speedy WP – PHP Speedy is a script that you can install on your web server to automatically speed up the download time of your web pages.

Optimize DB - For some People running WordPress, the use of phpMyAdmin appears to be a risky thing. There’s just too many options. This plugin lets you do just one simple task: optimize the tables of your database, to reduce their overhead.

Download: DB Cache |WP Super Cache |WP CSS | PHP Speedy WP | Optimize DB

10.

Wordpress SEO Results

It is important to look at your SEO results so you know what is working and what is not working. However, make sure you give your article sometime to be indexed in the search engines and get a good ranking. I use WassUp so that I can look at live traffic coming to my blog. Many people use Google Analytics but I just use that past days. It doesn’t give you any live feedback on the traffic coming your Blog.

I have seen good results when I noticed that an article is not performing well in search engines and changing it. Keeping up on what’s working and what’s not working will definitely help your Wordpress SEO also.

Download: Google Analyticator | WassUp

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