SlyVisions dot Com

Is Your Blog’s Name Holding You Back?

Paul — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:00:27 +0000

Your blog’s name may actually be holding you back.

I know, that’s a horrible concept, isn’t it? But it’s entirely possible that your blog’s name may be entirely, well, misnamed. Your blog’s name needs to do three important things, and if it fails to do any one of them, it’s holding you back. What are those three things?

1. Your blog’s name needs to summarize your blog. If people can’t tell when they see your blog’s name what you’re going to be about, then they’re likely to not care. Oh, sure, you’ll get some people who are intrigued by your name who wonder what it is, but unless they’re also impressed by what they see they’re not going to stick around. Let’s say you’re going to start a video game blog: Which of these three sounds most like a video game blog to you: The Big Score, Arctic Thunder, A Blog In the Dark. Now, the second one is an actual video game name. The third is a parody of the video game title “Alone In The Dark” But the first one probably sounds most like a video game blog to you–the second could be about snowmobiles and the third could be a religion blog for all anyone knows.

2. Your blog’s name identifies it. When people talk about your blog–and you want them to–you want them to easily remember what your blog’s name is. Do you want them saying: “Dude, did you read Explosion-of-cherry-pants.com last week?” “No, I tried, but I couldn’t find it.” “Did you add the hyphens?” “Hyphens? Aw man, there’s HYPHENS in it? No wonder I couldn’t find it!” Fast, simple, memorable, easy to spell. That’s your blog name.

3. Your blog’s name establishes its image. If I start a video game blog and call it Bit Bites, and populate it entirely with long form posts, chances are people will be confused and hate me. Conversely, if I start the same kind and call it The Academy of Video Entertainment Studies, and populate it with short, punchy, expletive laden articles, chances are people will feel CHEATED, and hate me. The kind of name you give your blog lets people know, on a limited level, what they should expect from it.

So that’s why your blog’s name is so important. Take a look at the brand you’re projecting, and if you’re not getting the kind of results you want, maybe you should reconsider the name.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

Thank The Academy–Nominate Yourself (and others) For Blog Awards

Paul — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:55:45 +0000

You may or may not have know this, but there are awards out there that your blog can win.

No, seriously–your blog could be an award winner. That’s actually kind of cool when you think about it, but by like token, it’s also kind of creepy. I mean, this isn’t like the Oscars; who could even name a blog award that could be won in the first place?

But one thing that winning a blog award would do for you, however, is get you some credibility. It’s one thing to be a blogger–anybody with a computer and ten spare minutes to sign up on Blogger.com could handle it. But it’s entirely another to be an AWARD-WINNING BLOGGER.

Yeah, you can just about hear the caps in “award winning blogger”. I’d give you a list of the blog awards you could compete for, but searching for “blog awards” on Google turned in over seventy three million results. This means there’s likely a lot of room to play in.

Or, even better, you could nominate OTHER blogs for awards and tell them you did it. You might even get a link out of the deal, and that’s never a bad thing.

So if you’re looking for a way to get you a quick knock of credibility, a fast link, or even just a little ego gratification, try being an award winning blogger.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

The Three Questions To Ask About Raising Your Readership Numbers

Paul — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:56:56 +0000

I know, it’s amazing that you can distill the thought of building your readership down to just three simple questions, but that’s what we do every day here at SlyVisions–we do the amazing.

So what are those three questions?

1. Why? Yeah, that’s pretty simple. But it’s a good question, WHY do you want more readers? And no, “I wanna make more money” doesn’t count–you’ll have to be specific here. Do you want to sell more merchandise? Increase your advertising revenue? Or do you just want to be regarded as a pundit so you can get a foot in the door with publishers? Each approach requires a different strategy–know what yours is.

2. Who? Again, simple–but who are these readers that you want to come to your site? Are you looking for experts who’ll fire a community up with high-level chatter about the minutiae of your topic? Do you want to make something warm and welcoming for the noobs? Do you want ad-clickers, or stuff-buyers, or just more readers? Again, different strategy for each.

3. How? This is the grandest question of all. But once you’ve figured out the why and the who, then the how will be a lot smoother. If you want to get the stuff buyers, then offer discounts or new and interesting stuff. If you want the ad clickers, make sure your ads draw sufficient attention that they’ll be practically begging to click. And so on.

With these strategies in mind, you’re likely to put a serious fire under your readership numbers.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

A Perfectly Cromulent Word: Make Up Your Own Words

Paul — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:52:57 +0000

Okay, now I’ve probably convinced about half of you that I’ve just plain old lost my MIND, right? Complete Daffy Duck, woo-hoo! territory now. But I tell you this…making up words for your blog may well be the best thing you’ve ever done.

First, a clarification of terms: the word of the day is JARGON. Jargon, itself a made-up word not so long ago, means essentially “insider-speak”, or the language used to refer to concepts that are specific to an industry. For instance, no one uses “calendar” as a verb outside of the business community or Dilbert comics. But in there, it’s a valuable phrase that means, basically, “to schedule”, or “to add something to your calendar”.

You can take that power of jargon and try to make up your own words for things. For instance, here in the blogging realm, we’ve got a lot of very specific concepts that can apply almost nowhere else. Linkbaiting is one such concept, and means, to create a post designed specifically to be linked to elsewhere.

Perhaps you might like “tideriding”, or the process of setting up links in your post to keep a tide of traffic moving throughout your archives. Or perhaps an application of surprising your readership by forcing them to look at a concept in a completely different light, or “bent space”. Why, we even took an item of masonry not so long ago and defined it as “a short punchy intro sentence designed to attract attention”.

Remember the “brick”?

This is exactly the kind of thing you can do in your own blog to keep people interested–an occasional made up word or two gives you a little extra industry force.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

Your Blog–EVERYWHERE!

Paul — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:37:44 +0000

Now that caught your eye, didn’t it? Sure it did. And why wouldn’t it? I mean, I just handed you your dream concept on a silver plate, didn’t I? Your blog, literally everywhere.

So how do you achieve this concept? Well, it’s an idea you may want to consider. You’re going to use two basic principles to take a shot at huge name recognition. Those principles:

1. People love free stuff.

2. Cafepress will put your name and logo on ANYTHING.

And that’s the idea. Put your name and logo on some stuff and give it away. Now, I understand that not everybody’s got the kind of cash required for such a venture, but the good part about this plan is that it’s scalable. You can start small or you can go huge, and you have loads of options.

For instance, let’s take a look at this idea: Create fifty bumper stickers for about a hundred bucks. Put them in envelopes and mail them out at random. Announce to your local newspaper that fifty lucky people will be receiving free bumper stickers as part of your (insert random celebratory event here) celebration.

With any luck, you’ll get a newspaper ad for your blog for less than a hundred and fifty bucks if I’ve done the math right. Plus, fifty people will hear about your blog, and if they actually USE the bumper stickers, you’ve got plenty of word of mouth advertising gratis. Got fifteen hundred bucks to blow? Up that to five HUNDRED bumper stickers.

Think outside the box, and who knows how far you’ll get?

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

No related posts

Ask The Toughest Question: Am I Any Good?

Paul — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:50:52 +0000

Folks, there comes a time in every blogger’s life where he looks at his traffic and his flagging adsense revenue and has to ask, is it ME? You go out, and promote, and promote some more, and you’re posting at a pretty good clip and at regular times of the day, and by all accounts, you’re doing the right things. Your posts have plenty of keywords but they’re not link bait. You’re drawing attention with your headlines but not ignoring the SEO possibilities. You read Problogger and SlyVisions EVERY DAY to try and catch new ideas (okay, so maybe I’m getting a bit grandiose there, but still).

And your blog just still isn’t going anywhere.

So like I said…you have to ask the toughest question of all. Am I any good at blogging?

This isn’t a question people want to ask. No one wants to hear they have no talent. That’s why most people would rather WATCH American Idol than go ON American Idol. They want to hear how badly OTHER people suck, not how bad THEY suck! But you can find out. Talk to your friends, any of your blogging contemporaries. Send out links to your blog. Specifically request they not spare your feelings as you want to improve, and MEAN it.

Then, see what’s wrong, and try to fix it.

There’s only one way to be a better writer, folks, and that is TO WRITE. It’s the very definition of “writer”.

Writer. Noun. One who writes.

But if you’re willing to practice, to turn in the work even if no one’s watching, keep up the promotion and everything else, chances are you can become a good writer…even if you aren’t right now.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

How Google Might Be Killing Your Google Rank

Paul — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:31:59 +0000

Now this was something that got me. I was reading over at Problogger about this, and the thought of it literally chilled me to the bone.

We all know that Google has a whole lot of reasons to kill your page rank, and most of them are things you’d deserve a penalty for. If you’ve been selling text links, for example, or anything else that might be in violation of Google’s guidelines. But what you may not know is that, at some point, for little or no reason, Google might kill your page rank and you wouldn’t even be responsible.

As it turns out, most search engines–and this includes Google–occasionally undergo changes to their algorithms, and when this happens, you might suffer an unaccountable, and unexplainable, loss in rank.

Now, this is for the most part generally temporary. But if you should ever find your post ranking suddenly crashing, don’t panic. It may well come back entirely on its own after just a couple days. So take a deep breath, grab a drink, write your posts like normal and wait a couple days. You might be surprised by what comes back.

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

When All Else Fails, Beg For Links

Paul — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:20:44 +0000

I probably got someone to spit their drink all over their monitor with that one. Apologies if you personally happened to be the person who did the spit take.

Anyway, the title’s a little misleading, but it’s pretty close to what I’m suggesting. If you’ve been having a hard time getting attention for your blog, try introducing yourself around. Take just a couple minutes a day and send a few emails out to the writers of big blogs in your industry or niche. Tell them who you are and offer up a link to your blog. Don’t specifically ask for a link, either–not this time, anyway.

It’s a long shot that may pay off pretty big dividends. I emphasize the may, of course–chances are your letter will be ignored and at the very worst you may well alienate the writers of some big blogs, but even this worst case can be worked against if you mention how fond you are of the site they right.

I’ll tell you this much–blogging, nine times out of ten, feels like screaming at an empty room. But getting an email from a regular is very encouraging. You may be able to use that encouragement to your own advantage.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

Want a Quick Shot of Credibility? Try Yahoo Answers

Paul — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:17:28 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve ever been here, but Yahoo Answers represents the strangest concept I’ve seen lately–try the human powered search engine. How it works is, essentially, you pose a question to the Yahoo Answers community and wait a few days. Come back and check it, and it’s entirely possible that people have answered your questions. Some answers are excellent, well-reasoned and clearly well thought out, while others are utter garbage.

But where this comes in for you is that, if you become one of those people, and one of those excellent, well-reasoned, and well thought out responses, you get to establish yourself, if only for a short while, as someone who knows what they’re talking about. And if you include a link back to your blog, you can continue to show the Yahoo Answers folks that you really know your stuff.

And convincing a community the size of Yahoo Answers that you are indeed an expert in your field of choice can’t help but light a fire under your readership counts.

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com:

Today on some of our blogs:

Paul — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:22:08 +0000

New Cellphone for Sprint, the Sanyo SCP-3810

250 GB PS3 spotted at Best Buy

Free Giveaway — Aliens in the Attic DVD

Reading this from an RSS feed or through an email subscription? Make sure you visit this post and leave a comment. Top commenters are awarded with cool prizes!

---
Related Articles at SlyVisions dot Com: