I’ve been blogging for seven years. Over that time I have talked with many people about blogging. When I talk to people who are even slightly interested in blogging for themselves I inevitably run into the same argument. “But, I have nothing to write about.” I personally think that is a terrible argument. Everyone has something that they are truly passionate about and could talk for days about that subject. To prove that you can blog about anything and still provide value I submit this example of a perfectly good blog post on the topic of saving money.

My wife and I started working on Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University three weeks ago. In that time we have cancelled three inactive credit cards, a line of credit and we’ve paid off one of our active cards. We went to the cash based system and it changed our perspective so much. I found myself clipping coupons with such fervor and excited about finding deals. I found a great deal at CVS.

I use the Gillette Fusion Razor. I usually shave with the same blades for a long, long time because the blades are so expensive. Gillette is smart and they sell you a cheap razor and then they get you with the cost of the blades. Blades are what hit you in the money belt. A new razor however is not at all expensive and you can usually find good deals on them. I clipped a coupon for $4.00 off a new MVP Fusion razor from the Sunday paper. CVS had a sale on a new MVP Fusion razor of $4.00 off if you use the Extra Care Card. So, because I used my clipped coupon and my Extracare card I got a new razor and two new blades for only $.99. The cost of those two blades, if I bought a 4 pack ($15.49), would have been $3.87 each. So, with a little coupon clipping and planning I saved myself $6.75.

In this little post about my mundane life I did a few things.

Establish Credibility
My wife and I are working on becoming debt free and we are looking for ways to save money. We’ve already started eliminating our debts.

Tell A Story
Our lives have been changed by going to cash only, we now look very hard for deals.

Offer Value
I told my readers how to save $6.75 and get some decent razor blades with a tiny bit of work and planning.

For my friends who think they cannot blog because they have nothing to say; look again. Look at what is happening around you. Look at what you love. Look at what you spend time and money working on. Take that and follow the three little steps above and you easily can blog about that topic. Keep it simple, clean and accessible to your audience.

Think You have Nothing to Say, Think Again.


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Since I’ve been working at optimized blogs and articles, I’ve noticed there are a few distinct patterns that you can count on when you’re looking through the people that want to hire you to ghost write for them, and there are several red flags and promises that you’ll want to watch for as well as other tip offs that the people who you are dealing with will be great business partners.

First of all  the web content business is like any other business in that you get what you pay for. I’ve had offers that work out to one penny a word and while the people  that offer that kind of money will tell you that they can get others writers to work for that pay, there are factors here that these cheapskates won’t tell you about.
Sure, there are people who will work for that kind of money but the really serious content writer (or blogger) doesn’t need to worry too much about these folks representing any kind of real competition to the English-as-a-first-language professional. Almost anyone can set up a Wordpress blog and call themselves a content writer or blogger, but the proof is always in the pudding.
Not to cast any aspersions on anyone who is trying to make a living, but being a really good content writer isn’t something that you can be overnight.

Bad Content Equals Bad Traffic

There are many different ‘voices’ and styles that sophisticated clients will expect , and you should never think that what sounds good in a blog for a radiator repair shop is the same tone that you should use when you’re writing for an Internet Marketing firm. It comes down to the fact that you can optimize a blog to the best of your abilities so that it draws all kinds of traffic, but if the content isn’t professionally written you’ll wind up with possible clients who get mad and click away.

The Internet Is Competitive

And while the people that are looking to advertise on the Web want to get the best value for their content dollar, they should also understand that forging a relationship with a professional who knows all the ins and out of the search engine optimized world when it comes to good content is invaluable.
These are professionals that are trying to make a living on the Internet and when clients see that the words that they have on their websites and in their blogs are in fact a large part of the representation that their company will have on the web, it should be no contest when it comes to hiring the professionals that understand the intricacies of the English language.
Remember, you get what you pay for in all areas and that includes optimized web content. While it’s a given that great web content writers and bloggers need to be both fast and good to make a success of it, the clients who hire them also need to understand that spending a little more on this kind of advertising is well worth it in the end.

Remember That You Get What You Pay For


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

It can be hard to work from home, especially if you have various tasks that you need to get done each done; I know from first hand experience. If you’re working on a group/team project and do not work together in the same location, that can make things even more difficult. If you get distracted easily, it’s also common to waste a lot of time doing non-important things (like playing around on Facebook or Twitter), and before you know it a few hours have flown by. So, all 4 of these tools should be great for helping you be more productive and manage your time wisely.

LogMyTask

Being “a collaboration-friendly time tracking and task management software,” LogMyTask lets you track your own time as well as see what your coworkers are doing in real-time. Because of its great collaboration features, it is best used for managing teams and group projects. You can create teams and add members by email invitation. Once your invitees join, you can create tasks to be done by the team and for each member.

You’re also able to create and view productivity reports so that you can see where time is being spent most. You can also create your own personal tasks and add tags to help better organize them. Reminders can also be sent by email so that you don’t forget what needs to be done. In the summary section you can view, edit, start and stop tags. With the basic layout of the site, everything is pretty straight forward and best of all, it’s all free.

Project2Manage

“An online project management system that allows you to stay up-to-date, on task and connected with your team.” To get the most out of Project2Manage, you’ll need to purchase an account. Luckily, you do get a 30-day free trial on all accounts so that you can try it out before having to pay. There are 6 different account types: free; recession buster for $3.95/month; silver for $9.95/month; gold for $14.95/month; platinum for $24.95/month; and epic for $74.95/month. If you want to know the difference between the plans you can check out the pricing page.

This tool can be used for both large and small businesses. All of your tasks and information are separated by project so it’s easy to keep up with what goes with what. You can create one or more to-do lists to go with each project and drag and drop tasks to reorder them. Events can also be attached to your tasks. There’s even an internal messaging system so that you can communicate with other team members or coworkers from within the site. They can reply to you and also attach documents in their replies.

There is also a feature called “Spot2Jot” which lets you create collaborative documents with your team members and can even be exported to PDF files if needed. There are numerous other features that are included so, as you can see your money won’t be wasted at Project2Manage. If you want to learn more, you can check out their tour.

GoalKeeper

This is an “online project management, team collaboration and issue tracking” system and has 1 free and 2 paid account types.  The 3 account types are: free; freelancer for $29/month; and professional for $69/month – the freelance and professional accounts both come with a 1-month free trial. Once again, you get what you pay for since GoalKeeper has many great features to offer. You can manage projects, tasks, users, comments, tickets and more. You can also create filters to help better organize your tasks. Like Project2Manage, tasks can be dropped and dragged to suit your preference.

Tasks can be assigned to different team members. If someone has an issue or finds a bug, they can be tracked using the internal comment and support ticket system that is included in you package. Sharing files is also easy since they can be directly uploaded and then must be approved by the team leader. If your team uses another language besides English, that’s no problem since you can use any language to name projects, create tasks and write tickets. As you can see, you’re really getting an advanced, top of the line project management system with GoalKepper.

ToBeeDo

Lastly there’s ToBeeDo, a free “online todo list and task management service that saves your time and helps you to get stuff done easier and faster using its unique simple and fast ajax interface”. You can even use your Google account to login instead of signing up for a new account; it’s up to you. At ToBeeDo, you cannot create teams; the tool is geared more toward freelancers and those work from home. You can, however, create and manage tasks, time spent on tasks and projects.

There’s also an integrated journal that may come in handy for some just for taking notes or keeping a record of what you did for the day. The interface is not very pretty to look at; it’s very simplistic but that also makes it super fast. When creating tasks you can add a summary, context, links and due date. So while this is not great for teams, it sure could be a lifesaver for us bloggers.

4 Tools For Managing Your Tasks and Projects


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Everyone seems to be joining Twitter now and with the increase in users, we also see an increase in spam, inappropriate posts/tmi (too much info) and just things you don’t want to read about. Sometimes I find that it’s more of a chore and pain to read through my Twitter feed to weed out the good stuff but, this is where a site like TidyTweet comes into play. TidyTweet filters out the clutter that you don’t want to read in your Twitter feed by letting you personally customize what you’d like to see in that feed.

You will first need to signup for an account, which only takes a few seconds. Upon doing so, you’ll also be able to create your own customized, private web address to be used for your TidyTweet feed. From there it is pretty self explanatory. You’ll be able to add 1 or 2 feeds for personal use. There are quite a few filter and setting that you’ll need to customize before you get your feed.

Define Your Feed

This section is required. Here you’ll need to first add a “Descriptive Title”; this is just for your own personal use so that you can differentiate between your feeds if you add another (or more for businesses). Next you’ll need to add keywords for monitoring. When doing so, there are various search operators that you can use as well.

Choose Your Filters

Everything in this section is optional. You can choose to filter out specific languages and even inappropriate language (words included in their pre-defined list). So if you only wanted to see tweets in English, you can select English and everything else would be filtered out. A tweet is not very helpful if you cannot understand it, right? For the inappropriate language filter, you can also add in your own words to filter out. Next you can filter specific users. You can choose users that will be auto-approved and/or users that will be auto-rejected. This is great if always want to see what certain users are tweeting or always want to ignore others.

Finally, you can fine tune your feeds by selected “spam and clutter filters”. You can choose to reject newly created accounts that have been created within a certain amount of time; the amount of time can also be customized. Also you can choose to reject tweets that include multiple trending topics; this is often a technique that many spammers use as well. Here you can customize the number of trending topics in a tweet to filter out. You can also choose to reject all @ replies and retweets.

Monitor Your Feed

This is where you choose how the final product is displayed to you. There are 3 options: automatically approve all tweets that make it through your filters; manually approve all tweets that make it through your filters; automatically approve all tweets that make it through your filters after the following delay (customizable). If you have a pretty large feed, it’s probably smart just to automatically approve it unless you will have the time to go through all of them to manually approve.

Viewing Your Feed

Now that you’ve finished setting up your feed, there’s a few ways that you can view it. You can watch them auto-update using your customized URL that you created when signing up; this is called your public feed. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed to in a number of different ways. This may be useful if you use a feed reader quite often. You can embed the widget on your blog or website. If you want to use it on a WordPress blog, there’s a plugin for that. You can “see a visualization of your feed suitable for public displays at conferences, kiosks, etc” via VisibleTweets; this is really unique, customizable and can even be seen in full screen mode. If you’ve chosen to manually approve tweets, you can do this via the “moderate feed” button from the feed dashboard. This is also where you can edit or disable your feed along with viewing and sharing it.

Though TidyTweet is free for personal use, if you’re a business it will cost you $10 per month per feed. A personal account only allows you to add 1 user to manage and moderate your feed(s). You can only add up to 2 feeds on a personal account and the “Powered by TidyTweet” logo will always be displayed at the bottom of your embedded feed. On the other hand, a business account gives you more freedom by letting you add unlimited users and removing the logo. There is, however, a 14-day free trial for the business plan.

TidyTweet is definitely a great way to customize and tweak your Twitter feed in order to see exactly what’s important to you. Along with that, it’s also a great way to share those tweets with others. If you’re looking for a way to monitor specific keywords, reduce the amount of spam you see along with make reading your Twitter feed quick and painless, then Tidytweet is definitely for you.

Clean up Your Twitter Feed with TidyTweet


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Earlier this week, I decided that I needed to put my main site on a diet.

Simply put, the loading time of the site was nowhere near my personal standard and, though no one had complained about the time it took to load, I wasn’t pleased with the numbers I was seeing and even Google Webmaster Tools was providing less-than-subtle hints I needed to improve.

So I set my mind to do just that. I took an afternoon to research the problem and try to devise a solution. Fortunately, I didn’t need the entire time or even a quarter of it.

In fact, after about 30 minutes of research and just nine minutes of actual work, I was able to to shave an estimated four seconds off my site’s loading time. How did I do it? The answer is below.

Diagnosis: Slowdown

I used two different tools to attempt and diagnose the problem. The first was YSlow, an extension for Firebug, which is in turn an extension for Firefox.

Yslow allows you to test the loading time within a page and gives your site a grade from A to F as to how well it performs. Initially, YSlow gave my site an E, the next-to-worst grade, but many of the alleged problems, such as the lack of CDN and Gzip compression, appeared to be errors on YSlow’s part. With other issues, there wasn’t much I could do about as the errors came from external sources, such as statistic programs.

So I decided to change tactics and use Pingdom’s Site Speed Test. This test works by having their server pull down a copy of your Web page and then tell you how long it took to load the various elements. Elements that take a long time need to either be optimized or removed.

Initially, my site loaded in 5.6 seconds, a decent time by itself, but I knew that end users were likely experiencing longer delays.

The good news was that the test provided two very powerful insights. First, I realized that Disqus, which I was using as a comment manager, was adding significant loading time as it loaded all of the variables. Second, two plugins I was using were forcing the download of very large images and/or JavaScript files that weren’t necessary on most pages.

With this information in hand, I went into action.

Taking Action

Using WordPress, I simply went in and disabled the three plugins involved. The process only took a few seconds.

Most of my time was spent purging my site’s cache and making sure that I had a clean copy of my front page stored before going back and redoing the test.

When I did, I was very surprised by the results.

9 Minutes Later

After double checking that everything was ready, I re-ran the test and the results were stunningly different.

Free from the burden of loading many different Disqus elements as well as heavy JavaScripts/images, the load time of my site went from 5.6 seconds to 1.5 seconds, an over four second and an over 55% decrease in load time. Rerunning the test gave similar results, almost always below two seconds (outside of a few outliers).

In YSlow, my grade improved to a “D” though the errors and other issues remained. I immediately sent out messages to many of my friends to test the site and all reported a marked improvement in loading time. Though there were still issues to iron out, and still are, the site was clearly performing much better.

Though I am still not satisfied with the site’s performance, I am happier with it now than I was before I made the changes. Clearly, they were a major step in the right direction.

Some Basic Advice

If you’re a blogger in a similar position, in addition to running the two tests above, here are five easy things you can do to ramp up your site’s performance drastically without changing the look of your site.

1. Disable Unneeded Extensions: Weigh every extension you are using to see if you really need it. Though different extensions will affect your site in different ways, many will add new elements into your page that can drag it down.
2. Use Good Caching: WP Super Cache is a great caching plugin for WordPress as is the more advanced W3 Total Cache. Caching plugins are probably the only plugins that actively make sites faster in the long run.
3. Maintain Your Databases: Routinely repair and optimize your databases (as well as back them up obviously). Doing so will help keep your databases speedy and ensure your server has to do as little work as possible to load your site.
4. Optimize Images: Make sure the images that you use are sized correctly before being uploaded, are in the correct format and have been optimized for use on the Web. Using large or high-resolution images unnecessarily can be a tremendous drag on your server.
5. JavaScript at Bottom/CSS at Top: Finally, put non-urgent JavaScripts at the bottom of your template, in the footer, and ensure that all of your CSS files are in the top. Though this may not improve your scores significantly on Pingdom’s test, it can drastically improve the user’s experience.

But while these are some good tips, you should definitely give YSlow a test and see if it can offer you additional suggestions or if any issues stick out in Pingdom’s test results. You might be surprised what happens if you address those issues.

Bottom Line

To be certain, speed is not everything but without a reasonably fast site you do have nothing. The reason is that, if your site takes to long to load, readers won’t even bring up the first page and, if they do, they won’t stick around long or come back.

The good news is that, with a few simple changes, you can probably drastically improve your site’s speed, though you may have to sacrifice some of the more beautiful elements.

The other good news is that, as I was working on this article, Disqus reached out to me on Twitter and said they are working on a fix for their loading issues. So, I may be able to comfortably go back to it again soon.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep an eye on my site’s loading time and keep tweaking it until I’m finally happy with it.

Putting My Blog on a Diet


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Sorry, but it’s true. You cannot get rid of spam on your blog if you only use Aksimet if you get a lot of traffic to your site. Like most bloggers, I enable Aksimet as soon as I launch a new blog. It’s very effective when there’s not much traffic, but as soon as the comment spammers know you’re there, it’s a different story. In my experience, Aksimet alone is not enough. Over the years I have tried a lot of solutions to reduce the amount of spam I have to look at. Here are some of the combinations I have tried.

Aksimet and Simple Spam Filter

Simple Spam Filter made a great addition to Aksimet. Created by Joe Tan, the plug-in runs a couple of tests to get rid of all the obvious spam, cutting down on the amount you actually have to see. Unfortunately this plug-in has not been updated in a while so there’s no guarantee it will work with the latest version of WordPress.

Replacing Aksimet with Defensio

On some of my blogs, I’ve tried Defensio, an Aksimet alternative which assigns spamminess scores to comments and also allows you to filter comments by category, block malicious content and get rid of profanity. Defensio works pretty well and it’s easy to get rid of red or orange highlighted comments in the admin interface and reduce the amount of spam you need to see. Defensio doesn’t make many errors, though it’s not perfect either.

Other Comment Systems

I’ve tried a number of comment systems in the past year. Some of these integrate with Aksimet, such as IntenseDebate, while others, such as Echo, have their own spam filtering built in. I’ve even tried Mollom, though it stopped some legitimate people from commenting. All of these cut the amount of spam I had to see (Mollom especially) but didn’t improve the commenting experience for my readers.

Aksimet Auntie Spam

Aksimet Auntie Spam is a Firefox extension that sits on top of Aksimet to reduce the amount of spam you have to look at. You see just the first line of a spam comment, which is more than enough to judge whether it is true spam or a false positive, then you can merrily delete the whole queue. Now that Greasemonkey is coming to Chrome, I may use this extension once again.

Aksimet and No-Spam NX

This is my current spam fighting solution. No Spam NX aims to stop spam coming from bots (which on my blog, seems to be most of it). Since I’ve installed the plugin, I have to see very little spam and no one has complained about being unable to comment. For now, this combo seems to work well, so I’ll stick with it. What spam fighting combination do you use on your blog?

(photo: Thomas Hawk)

You Can’t Kill Blog Spam With Aksimet Alone


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

The majority of websites and blogs revolve around one thing—making money—whether it’s directly or indirectly. An example of a website trying to make money directly is one that sells products (tangible products, informational products, etc.) An example of a site being used to make money indirectly would be sites like writer’s portfolios—most sites on writing are a way to make money indirectly by building your online presence and attracting more clients or selling your published works.

First let me say that I’m no expert. I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts on anything I share in this post—your tips, tricks, or even if you think I’m wrong. After several years of half-heartedly thinking about creating a real online money making site, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge—and I’m probably just as lost as I was the first time I read my first report many years ago. With that being said, my site is not just about money but about my passion (health and wellness) and sharing that passion and knowledge with others.

This article, however, is about setting your goals and taking action steps to build your website and get it launched—something I am currently in the process of myself.

This is an outline of some basic steps for getting your site ready:

• Decide topic – scope of website
• Purchase domain and hosting
• Choose platform – I suggest Wordpress
• Set platform up on domain
• Start Planning
  • Content
  • Email marketing
  • Newsletter ideas and frequency
  • Twitter and Facebook accounts- other social networks
  • Affiliates and Ads
    • Sign up
    • Place on website during site build
    • Build Site
      • Implement above steps from Planning
      • Launch

Setting Goals

Setting daily, small action steps is not my strong point. I see the big picture very well, but breaking it down into smaller chunks is sometimes a major task for me.

The first thing you need to do is define your goals—see the big picture. What do you want from this venture; now and in the future?

Once you decide on your long term goal for this site you’ll need to break it down into smaller goals and action steps. I suggest SMART goals.

S – Specific. Your goals must be specific or you won’t know what you’re working towards.
M – Measureable. Your goals must be measureable, you need guidance. Having measureable goals will keep you from setting yourself up for failure.
A – Achievable. Your goals must be achievable. This also helps you avoid feeling like you’ve failed.
R – Realistic. Set realistic goals. This will help you from feeling overwhelmed if you can’t get everything done in one day.
T – Timed. Your goals should have a time limit on them—a due date. Don’t set it too far in advance or you may end up procrastinating. Also don’t set it too soon either because then you’ll feel overwhelmed if you miss the deadline.

Try not to do too much too soon. Set a steady work pace for yourself so your work is done proficiently and with as little effort as possible. That’s not saying you won’t work hard, but hard work can be effortless when you’re enjoying the work.

Once you have your goals broken down into daily, weekly or monthly action steps you can and should start using daily intentions and affirmations.

Setting an intention is simply “intending” what you want to get done during any given time frame. Affirmations are positive reinforcements to assure yourself that the work is worthwhile.

Action Steps

Action steps are the small tasks you do each day to help you reach your bigger goal. Action steps could include:

• Write one awesome piece of content each day.
• Work on informational product each day (an ebook or podcast).
• Spend time each day with promotions on social networks.
• Look for new affiliates to market on your site.
• Research in your niche.
• Create your own products to sell on your site.

A rather silly example of doing action steps towards a goal is to make a cup of tea. The goal is to have a cup of tea.
The steps would include:

• Put water on to heat.
• Add teabag to cup.
• Pour hot water over teabag.
• Steep teabag for 3 minutes.
• Remove teabag.
• Add sugar or milk if desired.
• Enjoy!

Making a cup of tea is not something you have to think about, you just do it. But you can see how this analogy breaks it down into action steps to reach the goal of enjoying a nice cup of tea. (I suggest a cup of Earl Grey.)

In doing (more) research for my own site launch I found some good information at StartUpNation.

Building a Website – http://www.startupnation.com/Building-a-Web-Site/58/7/

7 Secrets to Compelling Content – podcast – http://www.startupnation.com/media/episodes/9398/7-secrets-web-content.htm

Please share your comments, thoughts or how you set goals and take Action Steps.

Image courtesy: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3118/2853827999_5164b20ff7.jpg

Start Up, Action Plans & Getting Where You’re Going


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

The Internet is a great place to work. There’s no doubt about that. You can stay at home and get up when you want (although once you start rolling you rarely get to sleep in ) and you usually set your own pace. You can look for new clients and communicate with old ones online, and if you’ve got the right technology like a BlackBerry or iPhone you can stay linked to the ‘office’ no matter where you are.

Still, working on the Internet does present a few problems for the person that’s just starting out and doesn’t really know all the ropes yet, and there are a few traps that can be avoided if you know what to look for.

Blog Samples Have No Place Because Nothing’s For Free

One of the first things that I learned to avoid after being burned was the free sample blog that comes with a promise of a great hourly or per blog wage after the ‘test’ blog is accepted. Forget it. It doesn’t happen that way and you’ll never hear back from the people that asked for the sample again. If you think about that you’ll see why.

Imagine you’re one of those shifty types that sees the Internet as a way to take advantage of people in general and writers specifically. You need some content to fill your needs and once you put an ad out there, you get a massive response from the people who are looking to get a start in the business.

So, being that kind that still has webs between their toes, you decide to get all your requirements filled with the all the free samples that you get from these unsuspecting writers. It’s happened to me several times before I caught on to the scam. Hopefully, I can save you the trouble.

Your Name On The Web Doesn’t Pay The Bills Either

Then there’s the next classification of people who think they’re doing you a favor by letting you post a byline or some other kind of mention about your post.

“We can’t afford to pay right now, but our compensation is great web exposure,” they offer in their ads. These people should be avoided as well.

They know as well as you do that mention of your name in relation to a few blog posts will get you the same exposure as an individual grain of sand on a beach. If you want to get started in the business you should get used to the fact that you’ll more than likely be a ghost writer—a hired hand to make the company that needs your writing talents look good, and if you want to get your name out there as a writer-for-hire, you’ll need to set up a web site but even then you’ll not be able to advertise all the work you’ve done.

The people that hire you need to pay for your services. That’s the bottom line. Even when they agree to, you’ll need to be careful. I had one client stall for months on end because he said that Toronto didn’t have any kind of International banking system. Maybe I should have told him how hard it was to keep my laptop warm enough to work in the Igloo where I lived.

A Few Blogger Traps That You Need To Watch For


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Twitter is not only great for sharing information, links, videos and images but it’s also great for sharing the music that you’re currently listening to. I love listening to music while writing or just throughout the day while around the house. Because of this, I often love to share some of my favorite songs that I’m listening to with my Twitter (and even Facebook) friends – as I’m sure others do too. So, here’s a list of 12 great ways to share your music on Twitter.

Twt.fm lets you login via Twitter OAuth and then search for a song or artist. You can then “preview” a clip of the song to make sure it plays. If it does, you can create a tweet and if not you can try again. You are free to type in whatever you like for your tweet. After you send your tweet you’ll have the option to share the song on Facebook as well.

Twiturm lets you upload music to be shared on Twitter but, first you must login via Twitter OAuth. Click on the upload button to be taken to a screen where you can browse for your file and add details (artist, title, description, genre). You can even allow others to download it as well.

SongTwit lets you login via Twitter OAuth after which you can upload a song, enter a web address or search the library. I personally didn’t have much luck searching the library; it seems rather small. At any rate, once you do find a song, you can then add a short message (114 characters or less) to go with it. If you decide to upload a song and do not own the copyright, your song may have certain restrictions (see below).

Twittify is not for listening to music, but instead for discovering music that others are listening to via Spotify. You can search for different artists and songs that you enjoy listening to. You’ll then get results that will show you who is listening to that artist or song (on Spotify) and has shared it on Twitter. Then you can yourself retweet it.

Song.ly lets you share and discover music on Twitter. Just type in a song or paste an mp3 URL in the box and click submit. If you’ve searched for a song or artist, you’ll get a list of results with a little player that lets you preview it. If you’re satisfied, you can then send a tweet. You’ll be directed to Twitter with the chance to enter whatever text you’d like.

Swift.fm lets you login via Twitter OAuth and then lets you share what you’re listening to via a link, upload or search. you can also send regular tweets via the site as well. You can add messages (130 characters or less) to go with your songs and also associate your songs with a channel by adding a hashtag in your description. ie. #rock or #hiphop

Twisten.FM is unique in that it looks through Twitter for every tweet about music, and then posts it for others to listen to. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t use Twitter OAuth so you will need to enter your Twitter username and password to login. From there you’ll be able to see everyone you’re following and what music they’ve tweeted about. You’ll see a play button, share button and favorite button for each tweet as well as the source of the song that was tweeted. You can also search for songs, listen to them and share them right from the site. *personal favorite*

Blip.fm is a great way to not only share music on Twitter, but also share music on other social web sites like Facebook, FriendFeed, Ping.fm and more. You can either search for a song using their large library or add your own songs by URL. Since Blip.fm is its own community, you can add other “DJs” to your favorites and also earn badges. There is also a reblip feature, which is equivalent to Twitter’s retweet and lets you reshare what others have “blipped”. *personal favorite*

ListenTo.fm only needs your Twitter username in order to share your music. Sharing is done via an mp3 or YouTube URL or by searching. If you enter a URL, you’ll also need to enter the artist’s name and title of the song. After that, “a unique page will be generated with your design for your to share it to your followers”. Unfortunately, I kept getting an error message so, I wasn’t able to go any farther than entering the media info.

TinySong lets you search Grooveshark for songs and then gives you a shortened URL for sharing on Twitter. Grooveshark happens to be another personal favorite of mine and a great tool for listening to free music on the Web. TinySong is extremely simple to use and the interface is even simpler. Just type in your song, press enter, click on the song you want and viola – you’ll get your shortened URL to share on Twitter or anywhere else on the Web. You can also listen to the song before clicking on it.

Swg.fm is another super easy site to use. First enter your Twitter username (no password needed), then enter the name of an artist and song and click send. If your song was found you’ll see “tweet now” and then you can just click to share the song and link on Twitter. The link takes users to a song page on Swg.fm as seen below.

Twuzic is another site that does not use Twitter OAuth; so you’ll be required to enter your Twitter username and password. You can discover music that others have shared and favorite items or share your own via URL. When sharing you’ll be asked to enter a title, artist name, album title, description and message to be tweeted along with the URL. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way to search through songs that others have shared.

As a quick mention, I also want to point out TwittyTunes. It’s yet another personal favorite of mine and a great way to share music on Twitter and many other social web sites (Facebook, Skype, Last.fm and more). It’s a plugin that needs to be download for Firefox; unfortunately it’s not available for Google Chrome yet (my personal default browser), but one can dream! Since it’s always visible in your browser while surfing, it’s (in my opinion) the easiest way to share music on Twitter.

I know there are many others that are missing from this list. So, what is your favorite way to share what you’re listening to on Twitter?

12 Ways to Share What You’re Listening to on Twitter


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

I ask this question in the subject line because I’m not sure I know the answer. Most blog posts should give something to the reader, but I’m going to step out of the box here and ask for the reader’s advice and opinion. It’s been my experience that if the writer (blogger) doesn’t know the answer—the readers will.

I’ve recently written an article for another website about building a tribe. The research I uncovered was actually almost non-existent. It seems the term “tribe” was only coined in 2008 and its popularity is less than—well popular. I expected this “new to me” term to be something I’d missed the boat on. But what I found was very little information at all.

There’s practically no concrete or tangible advice out there about tribes or building a tribe. Even the book, “Tribes” written by Seth Godin received poor reviews. I was a bit surprised at this myself. Being a well known name across the Internet you’d expect a book by him to be a huge success. Unfortunately his term and definition of “tribe” hasn’t gone over too well.

The conclusion I came to is: (1) It’s akin to a community of like-minded people, but it’s not exactly a traditional community, (2) To build a tribe means to be a leader of this said community of people, and, (3) It simply boils down to building relationships online and offline.

Now, building relationships is vitally important; I understand that.

You don’t start out as a leader you build up people’s trust and then you start to build your tribe.

My questions are:

Isn’t that what bloggers do already?

Do we really need to coin a term like “tribe”?

Is it really that important to call it a tribe?

Do you think this trend is still in its infancy and will take off eventually, or is it just another flop?

Please share your experience, your thoughts or your knowledge on this seemingly mysterious new trend. Thanks!

Image courtesy: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3252/2925534266_d9c39fdd9d.jpg

Is Building a Tribe That Important?


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

One of the main things I dislike about Gmail is the fact that I cannot add links or HTML to my email signature; even Yahoo Mail allows that. Well, WiseStamp changes all of that by letting you customize your Gmail signature with HTML as well as share blog posts, social profiles, images and more all right in your signature. To do so, you’ll need an extension; there’s currently extensions for Firefox, Google Chrome, Flock and Thunderbird.

I personally use Google Chrome as my default browser, so I decided to give the Chrome extension a test drive. Once installed, you’ll get an icon on your toolbar that when clicked brings up the WiseStamp configuration box. As you can see below, there’s much you can do to edit your signature. Also, you can click on the arrow in the top right corner (seen below) to pop the box out into its own little window, which will make it easier to work with.

WiseStamp gives you the option to create both a personal and business signature. Just choose one or the other from the dropdown menu. You can also choose which one to use as your default signature. By default, the signature is set to be automatically inserted into your email message. This can easily be undone by simply unchecking the box (seen below).

As you can see, there’s a rich editor that lets you do all kinds of things like format your text, add images, insert tables, insert HTML and more. This really gives you a chance to be creative and is also a great opportunity for promoting your blogs and personal websites. There’s also a place to add URLs to your social profiles, IM usernames and even RSS feeds. Unfortunately, the RSS feed feature is not yet available in Chrome but it is coming soon. In Firefox, however, this gives the chance to display your latest blog post, latest tweet and more.

Although there are only spots for Facebook. LinkedIn, Flickr and Twitter by default, you can change these and even add more. Each box is a drop-down menu that will let you choose from various different social sites; you can pick which one goes where and add as many as you like. The same goes for IM services plus, you can even add your Google Wave account email under IMs. Even though there is a tab for RSS feeds (that’s not available yet in Chrome), you can choose “Blog RSS” from the social profiles dropdown list and insert the link there.

Once you’re done you can preview how your signature will look before clicking apply and ok. If you already have Gmail open, you will need to refresh it in order to get your new signature to show. If you have chosen not to automatically insert the signature, you can manually insert it via the new icon on your email editing toolbar. You’ll notice in the image below that there is a new button that will let you choose which signature to insert.

I love WiseStamp and having the chance to create such a unique signature; the possibilities are endless. I’m sure you’re bound to get lots of new comments about your new signature. It’s no secret, everyone will want to know how you were able to do that in Gmail. Well, now you know – It’s simple, just download WiseStamp and fill in the blanks.

Add HTML to Your Gmail Signature with WiseStamp


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Seesmic already makes two of the best and most powerful downloadable Twitter clients available, Seesmic Desktop and Seesmic Windows, as well as one of the best-loved Web-based clients, Seesmic Web. All three, however, are very traditional Twitter clients with familiar columns and features. They are powerful and work well, but they can be intimidating to new users of Twitter.

However, their newest product, Seesmic Look, hopes to change that.

Seesmic Look is a very different kind of Twitter client. It focuses on making Twitter as beautiful, simple and as non-intimidating as possible.

But while Seesmic may have succeeding in creating an application that is easier to use and read, power users are going to be frustrated with the tradeoffs required to make it work.

What it Does Well

There is no denying that Seesmic look is a beautiful application. Both its “Light” and “Dark” modes are very easy on the eyes and the app is extremely detailed. The animations look good and the entire interface is presented extremely well. All in all, Seesmic Look is easily one of the prettiest Twitter apps available, at least comparable to Blu.

It is also a reasonably powerful app too. It has all of the features you would expect including searches, lists, replies, direct messages and so forth. It also handles trends and has an interesting home screen where trending topics bubble in and out very slowly, in a way that is almost hypnotizing.

Also, since it is a native Windows application, optimized for Windows 7, thus does not use Adobe Air, it is relatively quick on top of everything and doesn’t seem to hog much in the way of resources.

But while Seesmic Look has beauty, speed and power on its side, it still isn’t exactly what I would call a great Twitter application as there are a few key flaws that keep holding it back.

Where It Falls

The biggest problem with Seesmic Look is that it is simply inefficient. If all you do is look at Twitter, specifically just one stream, it can be great. However, if you actually try to do anything with Seesmic Look, it becomes very clear that it wasn’t built to be an easy-access application.

For example, going from one of my search feeds to my direct messages requires three clicks with load times in between. While that may not seem like a great deal of effort, keep in mind that other Twitter apps, including Seesmic’s can keep both of these streams on the screen at the same time, just requiring me to look over a bit. Even one-column apps usually only need one or two clicks to get the job done and the Twitter site itself only needs one.

Power users of Twitter are going to be severely hampered by the way the program is laid out. The multi-column method of displaying tweets may be intimidating and ugly, but it is very efficient. Though Seesmic look is a fast application, it doesn’t feel fast to use.

To make matters even worse, the attempt to rethink the Twitter app resulted in some UI changes that can be a bit jarring for someone who is familiar with Tweetdeck or even Seesmic for Windows. For example, the location of the reply and DM icons to the right of the app (and the stream) seems out of place.

In short, you have to do a lot of relearning to use Seesmic Look and, even after you get the hang of it, you’ll find that it isn’t as efficient as other apps widely used.

Bottom Line

Seesmic Look is a beautiful, simple and elegant app that has a lot going for it. But like a lot of other beautiful, elegant things it simply is not practical.

The only real use I can see for Seesmic look is for absolute beginners who don’t want to be overwhelmed out of the gate. However, even then, the application’s layout may still confuse and create problems. Another good use might be to put it on a video wall at a conference or event (to “Look” at). For example, I could see a conference using it on their wall to display the hash tag feed for their event.

Beyond that, there seems to be a very limited niche for this product. With so many other great Twitter clients out there, including the three made by Seesmic, there doesn’t seem to be much use in downloading this one.

Still, other clients could learn a thing or two from it, at least in the looks department…

Seesmic Look: Miles of Style, Inches of Practicality


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

If you’re anything like me you may sometimes suffer from social media overload. It can get particularly bad on Twitter where you may be following hundreds or even thousands of other users. Twitter lists do a great job of helping you to focus on content from the users you care about but unless you’re on Twitter 24 hours a day, there’s always the chance that you will miss something. That’s where Feedera comes in. The application is based on a simple premise — making it easier you to follow tweets from the people who matter to you.

How Feedera Works

So how does it work? The first thing you need to do is link the application to your Twitter account using OAuth. Next you wait for Feedera to send you your first digest. Feedera scores stories based on the number of retweets, tweets on Topsy, Diggs, Facebook shares, Delicious bookmarks and bit.ly clicks. These popularity metrics give you a feed score and that helps the application decide what to send you. It can take a while to get your first digest; when I tried the application it took several days but once it arrived I was impressed. Actually, I was slightly shocked by how accurately the application found stuff that I would be interested in from people I cared about.

The Email Digest

The e-mail digest you receive is divided into photos, top stories, videos and music. I usually navigate straight to the top stories section where I can see the number of friends who have retweeted a story and can see the names some of those friends by hovering over their avatar. This is great for seeing whether someone you like and trust has been tweeting on a particular topic. You can also add stories to favourites, retweet them and e-mail them from within the Feedera e-mail and you can see more stories in each category by clicking on the link within the e-mail.

Working With Lists

Feedera also plays nicely with Twitter lists, and you can subscribe to a list digest. In my opinion, this makes it even more useful. It is a great way to keep up with information in a particular category (such as tech or blogging News) or to filter your news by particular users.) I’ve got a list of must-reads and the section of the digest related to them is pretty useful. If you haven’t got a list of your own, Feedera’s got several popular lists to get you started. Just click and you’ll get a new section in your daily digest.

Other Feedera Features

There are other useful Feedera features on the site, such as theability to see more than 50 items (there is a maximum of 100), and the ability to ignore particular domains or screen names. You can also see your last five digests on site or view a live feed (updated every three hours) of what your friends are sharing.

A Useful Tool

In the short time that I’ve been using it I have found Feedera to be a very useful application. I no longer have to wonder what happened on Twitter while I was away, or to start my morning by looking through all of my lists. Instead Feedera’s handy digest makes it easy to keep up with Twitter happenings without leaving my inbox. I think this is most useful for people who are following a lot of Twitter users, or who have particular niche interests. However, it’s also a good tool for people who just want the best of Twitter without bothering to login to the site.

Note: Feedera is still in beta, so you’ll need to sign up for an invite.

Cut Twitter Clutter With Feedera


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

If you’re like me, parentheses can pose a challenge for your writing, especially if they come at the end of the sentence. Today we’re going to discuss the basic rules and how to punctuate within parentheses and at the end of sentences.

Parentheses are basically used to separate nonessential information from the rest of your sentence, almost like a side note or thought. They always come in pairs; you must have an opening and a closing.

Rule 1: Use parentheses around information that isn’t essential or for abrupt changes in thought.

If the words inside the parentheses form a complete sentence, the punctuation goes inside them.

If the words inside the parentheses are not a complete sentence, the punctuation goes outside of the closing parentheses.

Exception to Rule 1: Always place commas, semicolons and colons outside of the closing parentheses.

Examples:

No personal calls are allowed on company time.
(Refer to the policy manual.)

The festival will be held next year (in August).

Rule 2: If the information inside the parentheses requires an exclamation point or question mark, use it inside the parentheses but only if the sentence ends with a different mark.

Examples:

Cinderella (remember that band?) will go on tour this summer.
Do you remember the band Kix (can you remember that far back) from the 80’s?

Rule 3: Use parentheses to clarify the preceding words.

Examples:

Next week we will study hydroponics (growing plants without soil).

Rule 4: Use parentheses when you need to reference documentation or a source.

Examples:

We have a strict privacy policy. (See Insert 1.)
Hydroponics comes from the Greek words hydro water and ponos labor. (Wikipedia.org.)

Rule 5: Use parentheses around acronyms and abbreviations if they’re used with the spelled-out words.

Examples:

Please refer to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Rule 6: Use parentheses in a horizontal list that contains letters or numbers.

Examples:

Bring these three items to your audition: (1) demo tape, (2) instrument, and (3) a good attitude.
Please include the following information on your application: (a) name, (b) instrument played, and (c) contact phone number.

Rule 7: Capitalize the first letter inside parentheses if it’s a proper noun or forms a complete sentence.

Examples:

Please verify all items. (Check the boxes that apply.)

Rule 8: Use parentheses around numerals that are used with the spelled-out number.

Examples:

I have ninety-nine (99) bottles of beer on the wall.

Rule 9: Use parentheses for minor subdivisions in alpha-numeric outlines.

Examples:

1. A.
   B.

(1)

(a)
(b)

There you have it—the complete rules of parentheses use for your writing. Don’t worry; I have to refer to them myself (Especially if I haven’t used them in awhile.)

Image courtesy: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/27660155_40c6a9869f.jpg

Now Where Did I Put Those Parentheses?


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Even though blogging as a profession has been around for a few years now, there is still an ongoing debate over the etiquette a blogger should use when constructing an article. Should bloggers remain journalistic with their content, or be as opinionated as they feel necessary? Whichever method you subscribe to, I think it could be an important practice to explore a little bit of both.

Reaching conclusions based on your own experience and personal preferences can be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it. But making that decision for your own blogging purposes can be a tough call to make. This is your professional presence we’re talking about.

As we continue to turn to web-based publishing as a viable option for sending information to people, creating accessible resources and making a profit, it becomes more necessary for us to apply certain standards and expectations around the online publishing industry. In part, the merging of traditional journalism into the world of blogging and online publishing has raised some important expectations around what a writer should do and how they should behave.

Aside from legal issues surrounding unconfirmed statements, misappropriated quotes and a link referral process that can send you around in Internet circles, such discourse has caused the online publishing industry to split into different families. The journalistic process is one that is being more readily applied to bloggers’ style, and this has been an ongoing trend for some time now.

Whether or not this takes away from the opinionated nature from which bloggers arose is another question. The matter of holding people accountable for their online content is an attitude that has swelled over the years, changing the very expectations of readers. Determining which method you would rather subscribe to is a matter of personal and professional choice, though there are some things to consider.

Even if you decide to be the type of blogger that expresses their opinion to the fullest, there is still the matter of that opinion’s origin. How did you reach the conclusions you made, and how do they relate back to your own experiences? Are you, in fact, jumping to conclusions or have you thought out your article topic to the fullest extent?

There’s really only one way to find out. Write about something you’re not entirely familiar with and see what your audience says. The feedback they provide can help you hone in your research for a given topic, and give you an idea of how well-received your conclusions really are.

Being a writer means that a level of creativity is present in your work. Building upon your innate creativity sometimes means stepping outside of the box. Make new content based on topics that you don’t know backwards and forwards, and jump to a conclusion every now and then. You might be surprised where you land.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that a practice or personal blog would be a good way to start branching out. This, along with the other ways in which we now have to verify content from bloggers, is enabling a new form of publishing content.

Opinionated Bloggers vs. Subjective Journalists


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/