1. Guest Bloggers

Guest bloggers are really a good idea.  Having someone blogging an article a month or something similar can really benefit your blog.  The readers get diversity in views and even styles of writing.   Your guest blogger can come from many different sources.  Maybe a different friend each month, or user submitted stories to your blog.

2. Group Blogging

This is something that seems to be occurring in the professional world.  This is very similar to journalism, but is more personal.  Sites such as WebProNews and Mashable use a similar style.

3. Partnering with Another Blog

This is a combination of Group Blogging and Guest Bloggers, the concept is that you “trade” stories with another blog that has very similar content.  You create an article for them, and vise versa.  Not only does this add diversity to your blog, but it also allows your article to be viewed by people who may never have visited your own blog.

The diversity that these suggestions provide, could even draw in more viewer who wouldn’t have looked at your blog if you were the only writer on it.  It also helps your blog not grow stale to the readers, and expands the content.  Some of the suggestions even give you the benefit of taking a little time off, which is a personal gain.

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Expanding the diversity of your blog

There are some advantages that blogging has over tweeting.  As pointed out by Alex in the debate, there is ad revenue.  If your ad revenue is covering the price of your hosting and domain renewal, you aren’t really loosing any money, and any extra you are actually making a profit.  So in this case, blogging would be a benefit.  Another benefit of blogging is you are not limited by the length of your post.  The 140 character limit on Twitter, really limits what you can express in that amount of characters.  If your blog is like PureBlogging, most ideas can not be expressed in 140 characters.

On the other hand, Twitter does have it’s advantages.  With Twitter you don’t have overhead cost of hosting and domain renewal.  You also don’t have the responsibility to update your blogging software when ever it is updated.  This itself can be a huge benefit if updating your blogging software can be a headache.  You can express ideas that you can’t really create blog out of, is another advantage.

So as you see, blogging and tweeting has it’s advantages and disadvantages.  Each person should access what they think is best for them, but I encourage you to use both.  Use your Twitter account to tell people when you updated your blog, and to give more personal information to your followers, like what you think about the restaurant you just ate at.  Keep your blog to express more insightful information.  One person that has really done well combining the two is Infinity Ward’s (Developers of Call of Duty 4) community manager Robert Bowling aka FourZeroTwo.  His blog is used to keep Infinity Ward’s community up to date with the latest news, while his Twitter account will give small but more personal updates.

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The Great Debate: Twitter vs Blogging

Twitme - Twitme is a Twitter plugin which tweets for you whenever you post a new article. The great thing about this plugin is that it automatically creates a short URL for the tweet, and you can format tweet anyway you want. This plugin even allows you to tweet your older entries, which is great if you just created a Twitter account, or if you want to make for sure all your articles have been tweeted.

Twitter Tools - Twitter Tools can be summed up as a conversation between your blog and your Twitter account. Some of the features which Twitter Tools support are tweeting from the Admin panel, tweeting from a sidebar on your blog, create a blog entry from your tweets, and pass your tweets along to other services. Twitter Tools’ ability to create a blog entry from your tweets is really great, since there are times you may want to tweet about a website you saw, but don’t have time to write a full article about it. The only downfall to this plugin is that the author no longer supports the plugin, so you must rely on the community for any issues you may experience.

Social Profilr - If you ever wanted to display all your social profiles on your blog, this is the plugin for you. Social Profilr adds links to all your social profiles via a sidebar widget. This plugin seems to benefit the visitor more than you, but this isn’t the case. If the visitor chooses to follow you on a social media site, then their friends can see your profiles also. Which if your profile is about your site, then there is a chance the visitor’s friend will visit, thus spreading your site’s name.

Sociable - Sociable is a popular plugin that allows users to submit your site to multiple social sites via the click of a button. The plugin includes most of the popular social sites, like Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, but also includes less popular sites like Blogmarks. With Sociable, you are encouraging visitors to submit your site to their favorite social media site, it may also push those visitors who thinks it is to much work to submit articles also.

Digg Widget - This is a simple sidebar widget which allows users to see the last 10 articles from your site which have been submitted to Digg. If the visitor is a Digg user, this will make it easier for them to find posts which have already been submitted to Digg.

Digg This Badge - This plugin allows you to display the famous “Digg This” button in your article. Digg This Badge, interfaces with Digg’s API, and allows you to choose when to display the Digg badge, based on the number of diggs an article has. This is another great way to display how popular (or unpopular) an article is on digg.

We covered Digg, and Twitter heavily in this article. But if your site does well on Reddit, or Stumbleupon, then head over to Wordpress’s plugin page (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/) and search for specific plugins based on those social media sites. We just gave examples of what the community provides. There are way too many social sites for us to attempt to list a plugin for them all. If you have any other great social media plugins, tell us about them in the comment section.

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Social Media Plugins for Wordpress

1. Put Yourself In The Situation

You should take your idea one step further and put yourself in that situation. If you are blogging about a news report where a suspect was wrongfully treated, take a moment to reflect on how you would have reacted in that situation, as both the suspect and the officer. By putting a small spin on a story such as this, will not only allow you to see the story in a different aspect, but would also allow you to show those ideas to your readers.

2. Create A Debatable Subject

Take an idea and turn it into a debate against yourself. If you are talking about SEO, debate if being the number one result is better than being the number four result. You can find a debate on almost any subject. Debating the subject will allow you to think of new ideas and facts about the subject. Using the SEO example, we can use information like does an actual user who clicks on the the first result find it more useful compared to the fourth result, or how much more content is actually useful out of the two results.

3. Describe The Subject To A New Beginner

At first this seems really hard when you are writing, and you may also feel as if you are offending your readers, but start writing as if your readers have just found out about the subject a few hours before reading your post. Going back to the basics will allow you to remember what it feels like for the subject to be new again, it could also change your perspective on the subject. This is something that you hear about in sports all the time, the fundamentals are important other subjects also. Always remember KISS (Keep It Simple Silly), when writing.

4. Keep Your Subject Fresh

Talk about something along the same topic as your site, but with a different twist. If you have a site based on car audio, you may want to talk about the car’s stereo effect on the alternator or battery. By keeping the subject fresh on your blog, you are making for sure that you and your readers are not bored. When branching out with other related topics, you may find other subjects to explorer in later posts.

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Tips On How To Expand Content

1.  Design

I don’t know how many times this has been said, but design really plays an important part in a lot of things, not only websites.   Apple is considered the “hip and cool” computer to use, this is in part because of their advertising, and also because of their design.   When you ask any person if they like the design of any Windows based computer compared to an Apple made computer, you are more likely to have the person tell you that they like the Apple design.   Recently Tropicana redesigned their packaging.  The result was a 20% drop in sales.  This shows how much of an impact design has on people.

2.  Knowing Your Audience.

Knowing who your audience is, is one of the fundamentals in writing.  You have to know where to meet your audience.   If your site is called Simple Photoshop Tutorials, you don’t want to skip steps in your tutorials which a more advanced user may understand.  W3shools.com is a great example of a site which knows their audience.  They will give a step by step description as to what elements and attributes do.  On the other hand, PHP.net assumes that you know a lot about the language.  The examples that they give will leave out important aspects which the writers assume you already know and understand.   Understanding who your audience is will make for sure you are connecting with your audience.

3.  Be Consistent

Consistency allows your users to connect with the site.   They know what to expect when they visit your site.   If you visit the site for Wired magazine, you are expecting something either related to the magazine’s latest edition or something along the same subject.  If you are blogging about current events, don’t start talking about your favorite comic.  The user won’t know what to expect next from your blog and may be turned away.

4. Add Your Personality

Don’t be afraid to put your own options in your blog.  After all a blog is similar to your personal journal or diary that you are letting the whole world read.  Going back to the news example, if you are a blogging about current events explain how you feel about the events.   If you don’t like a certain subject, voice your ideas and why you don’t like that subject.   Your visitors will appreciate your views, and be willing to share their own also.

5.  Interact With Your Visitors

Most popular blogging and content management software, like Wordpress or Drupal, allows you to enable comments for visitors to give you feedback.   Replying to these comments, especially if you think it’s a great comment, will make a connection between you and your site’s visitors.   Even updating your blog entry to include additional information given by visitors is a way to interact with them.  Just remember to give credit to the visitor.

6.  Write About Something You Enjoy

Blogging can get very stale and old really quick.  To keep this from happening, write about something you enjoy doing.   If you enjoy building model cars and think that you can offer tips that will help other people who enjoy the same hobby blog about it.   Not only will you find it more fruitful and enjoyable, but you can interact with the your visitors a lot easier.

7.  Be Knowledgeable On Your Subject.

Blogging is more than just typing an article.   Knowing the subject will help you out along the way.  When blogging about electronics, it will be easier for you to connect with your audience if you know the difference between Ohms and Voltage.  If a visitor thinks you are rambling on about something that you don’t understand it will show.  It will also effect the image of your blog over time.  It only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole basket.   If one user thinks you don’t know what you are writing about, then that user starts spreading word that you don’t know what you are talking about, it can hurt your blog a lot.   At the same time if you choose to interact with your visitors, being able to respond to complex questions will earn you additional respect.

The seven tips above won’t give you over night success, but it does allow you to control your site’s image.   Controlling your image means everything in the business world.  By making your site look well it builds a reputation, and with that reputation you are building a user base.   That user base will continue to grow if you can control the way your blogs image looks to the world.   Sites like Digg, Facebook, MySpace, and others didn’t become a “superstar” site over night.   They were able to make themselves look really good, and built a user base on this.   If we compare MySpace and Facebook, we can see that these two sites, although very similar, have completely different images.   Based on those images, determines what type of user’s they draw to the site.  Just remember, your blog’s image means everything.

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Tips for Improving Your Blog’s Image

Another point they do bring up in the video is ad blending.  Jennifer Slegg (the interviewee) stated that ad blending is a good idea, but it seems that the practice has become too well done.   Stating that ads are blending into sites very well, Jennifer informs the viewer that your ads start loosing their effect at that point.  She suggests that web designers find a balance between making your ads stand out enough to know that it is an ad, and blending them into your site design.

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Ad Balancing Act

There are a few ways you can take advantage of social media for your blog. Sites such as cracked.com seem to be on Digg’s front page daily, and this success shows. Blogstorm.co.uk recently released a list of 100 sites based on how often they reach Digg’s front page. Cracked.com was ranked 26 on this list, and looking at Alexa’s stats is seems that it maybe a lot of where their visitors are coming from.

So, what advantages does social networking provide for blogs, and what are some ways to use them effectively? The most obvious advantage is traffic directed toward your site. From this traffic you can make some revenue, which is the goal for most sites. You can also build a loyal support base via social media. Looking at any of the social media sites, you can tell that they are very loyal to their brand. Just visiting any of the sites, you will notice arguments like Facebook is better than Myspace, or Reddit has a better user base then Digg, and so on. This loyalty is something that takes large companies years to build, but via social media you can do the same thing in less time.

In order to effectively use social media, you have to be part of the community. As we already stated, the communities are loyal for the most part, but they are not welcoming to outsiders. If you were to submit a blog entry to Reddit, or Digg, it will most likely get lost in the shuffle. If you were to only use Twitter to announce a new blog article, your chances of looking interesting to other users can be very low. So how do you break this trend? You have to become part of the community. This can require a lot of time. You will have to build a relationship with the users, and get to know them. This is a key feature that most people who use social media for advertising don’t fully understand. Most people are drawn to social media because it is a “free” way to advertise. Then they wonder why their plan doesn’t work, when they are not apart of the community. Some ways to start to fit into the community is simple, acknowledge the community. Comment on stories at Reddit, reply to tweets on Twitter, send personalized messages to people on Facebook. After you build a good network, then start linking to your blog, but continue to communicate in other ways. You can send a personal tweet or message telling a user that you thought they would be interested in an blog entry you posted, but only do it when you really mean it. After doing this, you have to remember not to “abuse” the community. After building friends, don’t send them links to every blog article you wrote. Respect the users of the service. Remember the saying “Respect is a two way street”, and in social media this is really the case. By not spamming the people on your friend’s list with every article you write, you are respecting them. When you actually do send them a link, they are more likely to read the link.

Don’t seem like you are in the community just for advertising. If you are using Twitter, make tweets about other subjects. On Digg, submit stories from other sites, which you truly find interesting. Making yourself not look like a person spamming just one site, will allow you to build friends also. A person may enjoy the article enough to look at your past submissions, and if they feel like there is something in common they may check out your profile more often.

Write about something the community will like on your blog. If you know that most of your followers on Twitter really like 80’s TV show, talk about those shows and be creative when doing so. Talk about how you think the MacGyver would respond to current events, or how a reality show would be if the A-Team was part of it. If people find your site interesting, and can connect to the content, they will be willing to look at what else you have to say. Posting an article on Digg about how to rebuild a car motor wouldn’t do as well as how to hack an electronic road sign. This is another aspect where being active in the community helps you understand what will do well on a social network site.

Make your site social. Allowing the user to interact on your site via comments, or a forum will make the user feel part of the site. They will be able to voice their ideas about the blog entry, and in doing so it will start to build your own community. This also allows you to get feedback from the community. If you post an entry that you thought was great but the community says they thought it was horrible, then you know not to write similar articles in the future.

Just like wine, it takes time to get the best out of social media. If you are expecting that social media will make a large influx of traffic to your site over night, then you should not use social media as a mean to advertise your site. Social networking doesn’t make advertising easier, it just makes creates more of a level playing field for the small blogs. With hard work, social media can be part of a site’s success.

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Using Social Media to Advertise Your Blog.

The Future of Content in the Age of Information Overload

Getting More Blog Readers and Twitter Followers

How to Host Effective Blog Giveaways

When Do You Stop Commenting on Other Blogs?

The Outing of a Blogger: The Fear of Being Found Out

Happy Blogging!

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Thursday Links - 4/2/09

Rise Of The Blogging Service Industry

Google Updates Blog Search Algorithm

How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer

How To Move Your Blog To WordPress

Is your blog prepared for Earth Hour ‘09?

Happy Blogging!

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Thursday’s Links (3/26/08) on Friday

12 Reasons Why You Should Own Your Blog

Why and How to Join a Feedburner Network

How to Build Your Blog Using Good Old-Fashioned E-mail

Designing for RSS Feeds

The Ins And Outs Of Tweeting

Happy Blogging!

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Thursday Links - 3/19/09