MyBlogLog And The Power Of Bloggers

You may have heard the news that Yahoo! is sadly discontinuing the MyBlogLog service on the 24th May 2011. As a blogger, this is devastating news, especially if you have used MyBlogLog to build large communities which in return, generates a fair amount of traffic for your blog.

As a result of this news, I've just received an email from Antony Berkman of BlogCatalog informing me of a service and campaign that I'm sure you'll be interested in. Here's a copy of that email:


Subject: The Power Of Bloggers

BLOGGERSUNITE

"United We Stand, Divided We Fall" - Aesop

You don't need me to tell you that the world has its share of major catastrophes and disasters.

The people of Japan are in desperate need of our help and bloggers and other social media participants continue to raise millions of dollars for those in need.

I am grateful to say that BloggersUnite.org, thanks to a large number of bloggers, has been active in raising funds and awareness for those in need.

I am writing to you because there is a story that while it clearly does not rise to the same level of human tragedy, I believe strongly will make a major difference to the future of blogging.

Yahoo! recently announced the imminent shut down of MyBlogLog. While this news has been largely ignored by mainstream media, the event is disturbing because it shuts down a major channel of the blogosphere.

For years now MyBlogLog has been ignored by Yahoo! and now they are shutting it down because it doesn't fit within their corporate strategy.


What does MyBlogLog's closure mean to you?

• You may think it doesn't mean anything or even think whether they still exist, or whether you even have heard of them, the truth is that MyBlogLog is a valuable blogging network that distributes tens of millions of visitors to blogs each year.
  
  
• Yahoo! has shown no respect to bloggers throughout it's 4 year ownership of the site. Once again, they are failing to follow through on promises and responsibilities to bloggers. Perhaps Yahoo! believes it has no responsibility to bloggers.
  
  
• The closure of MyBlogLog represents a lack of respect to bloggers who have built tens of thousands of communities on the network and spent countless hours adding MyBlogLog widgets to their blogs.
  
  
• Yahoo! has made no attempt to dispose of MyBlogLog, yet it represents an important channel of distribution for blogs.

Why you should care?

BloggersUnite.org and BlogCatalog are ready, willing and able to take over MyBlogLog and turn MyBlogLog into a valuable tool for bloggers and blog readers. We shared our interest with Yahoo! over a year ago to do this. Yahoo! ignored our requests to talk to them, we had a brief conversation, they wanted to know our strategy for making the site more valuable and because we refused, their communications with us ended.


So, what difference will it make if I join this event?

The more members we have on BloggersUnite.org the greater the positive impact we can make to the world. A combination of BloggersUnite + MyBlogLog + BlogCatalog is "The Right Thing."

To-date, together with your help we have saved lives, made material differences in the lives of school kids, raised money for Haiti, helped build clean water wells in Africa, worked with the CDC to raise awareness about STDs, united refugees with their families, worked with Aids.gov to harness the power of the blogosphere on AIDS Awareness Day and we had hundreds of thousand of bloggers unite on Bloggers for Good Day; where bloggers from BloggersUnite were featured on CNN doing good deeds.

It makes little sense when people in this world are starving and dying because they lack clean water that Yahoo!, one of the largest technology companies in the USA, would shut down an asset that has value.

Why not sell it and give the money to a charity? Their site has value. As Warren Buffet says, "stupid in small things, stupid in big." I humbly ask that you please unite with thousands of other bloggers and explain to Yahoo! management what would be the "right thing" to do or add an Action Badge to your blog, or perhaps both.

To do this please click BloggersUnite because unlike Yahoo!, we are fully aware that when you combine your voice with the voice of other bloggers, that there is no greater force for good in the world today.

Antony Berkman
BloggersUnite


Will the closure of MyBlogLog effect you? Is it right for Yahoo! to discontinue this service knowing it will seriously effect the majority of bloggers who use it? Please share your thoughts.


As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509 and on Facebook at:
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http://www.facebook.com/DereksHomeandBusinessBlog

Enjoy the rest of the week!

Tips & Tools On How To Grow Your Twitter Following

Growing a large following is something many new Twitter users struggle with. They see all these big accounts with 20, 50 or even 100K followers and wonder how did they ever get there?

Today we will give you some tips and tools on how to grow your following steadily and we'll also make sure that you stay within the Twitter guidelines to avoid account suspension. There are certain practices that are not allowed and the last thing you want is to get your account suspended after you worked hard to get a decent following.


Quality or Quantity?

This is the first thing you have to ask yourself. Do you want a small number of followers where you can easily keep track of the timeline and interact with everybody or do you want to grow as big as possible and utilize Twitter lists to keep up with the tweets you care about?

If you have a Twitter account for personal use, the first option will probably work best for you. If you have any commercial aspirations and would like to promote your brand or business to the world market, your goal will be to reach as many potential clients as possible. Growing your Twitter following is an easy and low cost method to promote your business or brand worldwide.


Tools of the Trade

These are a few tools we use to manage our account. There are many more tools out there but today we will stick to the tools that work for us.

FriendorFollow

Simply enter your user name and it will show you who isn't following back, who is a fan and mutual followings. If you connect with Twitter, it will also give you the option to follow or unfollow users.

Manageflitter

Similar to FriendorFollow but more advanced and it can filter your account for a variety of stats such as users without a profile image or users that are quiet or tweet a lot. There is a pro upgrade available but the basic mode has all the features an average user will need.

Socialoomph

When your account starts to grow exponentially it becomes hard to keep track of all your new followers. If you want to set up a welcome message for all your new followers, this is the tool to use. You can set up an auto DM and welcome new followers. DO NOT add a link to that message because that's what everybody is doing and will only tick people off. Come up with something creative and original within the 140 character limit.

There are also features that will allow you to auto tweet status updates but that is NOT done as you should keep it real on Twitter, more about this at the end of this blog post.

Twiends

Fun and addictive would be the best way to describe this tool! You can actually use this to grow your stats on Twitter, Facebook, Website and YouTube. You can earn credits for connecting with other Twiends users and use those credits to let others connect with you. Sort of like a marketplace. You can even tweak your setting to get higher quality followers and there is an option to purchase credits if you don't have the time to earn credits manually.

Twellow

If you want to find followers in a specific geographical area or category, this is the tool for you. It lets you search for users per city or from a directory of categories. This is great if you have a local business and you want to connect with all the Twitter users in your city for example. You can also follow and unfollow within this tool.


Now How Do I Get Followers?

All the above will help you to manage the new followers as your account starts to grow. Obtaining new followers can done in many ways.

* Follow users from follow back lists. Many users have created lists consisting of people that returned the follow so there is a good chance those users will follow you as well if you start to follow them.

* Just Google: "follow back list twitter".

* Use the Twellow tool to find users in your niche or city and connect with them.

* Add Twitter links to your website, blog and email signature if you use one.

* Use the Twiends tool to get new followers.

As your new followers start to roll in it's time to use the account management tools such as FriendorFollow and ManageFlitter. Find out who followed you back and who didn't. You can also unfollow people that didn't return the follow if you wish but DO NOT mass unfollow people or unfollow those who did return the follow. These are bad practices that could get your account suspended. We're not celebrities that have 500K followers and only follow 10 users back. Your account should have a healthy follower ratio.

Remember that you can only follow 10% more than your follower count when you pass the 2000 follower mark. Example: 3000 followers will allow you to follow 3300 users.


Keeping It Real

This is what it's all about. It's alright to try and get a large following but don't do any of the following:

* Don't spam your product link over and over again.

* Don't use auto tweet tools except for a meaningful auto DM perhaps.

* Don't mass follow and unfollow since this could get your account suspended.

* Don't unfollow those who return the follow just to make yourself look more popular.

If you stick to these guidelines and use the above tools you can easily grow your following to any size you want.



About The Author: Want to stay in touch? Follow us @WildPeekDesign. This article is provided by Vince Peek founder of Wild Peek Design. Providing service everywhere from the middle of nowhere.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Getting Inspiration For Blog Posts

Most of the time, you can blog to your hearts content. There are occasions however, that finding a topic to blog about can be a real challenge. You sit in front of your computer and your mind is blank...so what do you do?

Here's a great article by Bas van den Beld that I just had to share with you which will hopefully, help you get the inspiration you need.


Where to Get Inspiration for Blog Posts

I write several blog posts every month -- most of which appear on my own site and here on Search Engine Watch. Most of the time I have no trouble coming up with a topic. After all, I read so much that something usually grabs my attention.

But some days I'm desperately looking for a topic to blog about. At these times, I might just walk away from the computer and do other things until an idea pops up.

But on other days the Internet is the solution. Here are some of the places you can go to get inspiration for your blog posts.


Twitter

It's almost impossible these days to think about an online world without Twitter. Within a couple of years Twitter has become one of the leading online services -- at least when we're talking about the tech industry.

In some other industries this social tool is only just emerging. Still, it can be a useful tool for almost every industry.

You can use Twitter to find a topic for your blog post. By looking at your timeline or looking at the trending topics you will see what topics are "hot."

What are people sharing? What are they talking about? It will give you a general idea of possible topics.

You can use Twitter search to filter down the topics by adding a keyword which is connected to the topics you usually blog about.


Google Trends and insights

Another way of seeing what people are interested in is Google Trends. It will give you an idea of what people are searching for worldwide or in a specific region.

Just looking at the trends might just give you a few ideas, but you can make them more specific by combining the trends with keywords you're interested in and checking them in Google Insights. You will most definitely find a topic to write about that way!


Q&A Sites

You want to write blog posts that people will want to read. You like to have an audience after all, right? That is why the trending topics on Twitter and Google are interesting to look at.

Looking at Q&A sites is another way of finding out what people are interested in. That is where people are asking the questions you might be able to answer.

A good example of a site like that is Quora. Just open up the site and see what questions people have. If you know the answer you can either answer the question or make a blog post out of it (or both).

Sites like Quora, but also Yahoo Answers and Ask.com, are great places to see what people want to know and what they want to read. They are practically asking you to blog about a certain topic.


Comments on Specific Niche News Sites

Many sites write about what's happening in the tech industry. In addition to Search Engine Watch, there's Mashable, TechCrunch, and The Next Web.

A site like Techmeme brings them all together. You have sites like this in most industries -- some more than others -- but look carefully and you will find them. These sites offer great content, but they will also tell you what's hot and what interests readers.

You should follow these sites and read the content, but more importantly: follow the comments. The comments will tell you what the readers think and what they want to hear. It is a great source of inspiration to eventually take a different angle on a story, based on the comments.


RSS Reader

One of my personal favorites is my RSS Reader. I've subscribed to many sites and I use different tools to read them, from the Google Reader account on my computer to Pulse and Zite on my iPad.

The sites I look at are the "bigger ones" I mentioned before, but even more important when it comes to inspiration are the smaller sites. Small local sites from different countries give you a nice insight in what is going on in their world. You will see that there are very many different topics you can choose from.


Your Analytics

A very good way of finding out what you should be writing about is your Analytics Program. It will tell you what kind of posts people like to read, but a closer look will also show you what they want to read.

A look at your analytics will give you an idea of what people were looking for when they found your site in the first place. Does that match the articles you have on there? Or could you maybe write something that would really fit the search they were doing?

Also, make sure you look at your internal search engine. It will show you the topics they expect to find on your site. Chances are you might get some inspiration there.


Ask Your Followers and Readers

A nice way to get inspiration for a post, and at the same time write content that fits the needs of your readers, is to ask your readers or your followers. Ask them on social media like Twitter or Facebook or simply put up a post asking for suggestions. I've seen it happen many times and the bloggers always received great feedback and tons of ideas for blog posts.


Conclusion

Hopefully these suggestions will help you create some great blog posts.

Where else do you look for topics or inspiration? Did you find this article helpful? Please leave a comment to let me know.


As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509 and on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/djones1509
http://www.facebook.com/DereksHomeandBusinessBlog

Enjoy the rest of the week!

Google Profiles Gone Secure & Blogger Getting A Facelift

Google have recently updated the profiles pages to secure. They have also introduced a new interface which is cleaner and easier to update and navigate than the old interface. If you're using the non-secure profile link on your blog or website, it will now automatically forward users to your new secure profile page.

Another, but not quite so noticeable change is with Blogger. When uploading images within a post, the URL to the image now starts with "https" rather than "http". Why the need for the images to be secure I'm not entirely sure but it could be something to do with Picasa Web Albums as all images uploaded via Blogger are automatically stored on this platform.

There will also be another major change sometime this year with Blogger. In a recent post on Blogger Buzz, Chang Kim, Product Manager announced that Blogger is getting a brand new design that is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also uses Google Web Toolkit, delivering the latest in web technology.

According to Chang, they'll also be showcasing the new content discovery feature that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you’re currently reading. More features will be unveiled throughout this year.

This is exciting news and the changes mentioned so far can only improve what has become a solid and reliable blogging platform.

What do you think?

NOTE: If you're a blogger or website owner, please consider putting a widget and/or banners on your blog or website and help support the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief Effort. Full details can be found at:
http://www.derekjones.co/2011/03/help-support-japan-earthquake-relief.html


As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509 and on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/djones1509
http://www.facebook.com/DereksHomeandBusinessBlog

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Have You Backed Up Your Blog?

Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything, what with doing blog posts, administering Bloggers Network, visiting blogs and websites, answering questions, research and marketing etc. What I do have (and make) time for however, is to backup my blog on a regular basis.

What are the things that you HAVE to do when it comes to your blog? The chances are that you have these things on your list:

- write on a regular basis
- pay attention to SEO practices
- get other people to visit your blog

But is backing up on a regular basis part of your must do list? Probably not! Backing up your blog is something that should be automatic and it's a practice that you shouldn't forget, whatever happens.

Just imagine...what if your server crashes or your site gets hacked? Maybe Blogger's automatic spam detection software accidentally considers your blog as spam and blocks (or possibly deletes) your blog. What will happen to all the data that you have accumulated over the months or years?

This may not be a problem if your blog is relatively new as you might be able to reconstruct your posts, but just imagine losing all your data for 6 months, a year or maybe 2 years or more...now that would be disastrous!


Here's how you can backup your blog if you use Blogger:

1. Log into Blogger.
2. On the Blogger home page, click on the blog you want to backup.
3. On the left-side of the "Overview" page, click on "Settings" then on "Other".
4. Click on the "Export Blog" link under the "Blog Tools" heading.
5. On the popup window that appears, click on the "Download Blog" button.

Note: If you have modified your Template on Blogger, you can back this up as well by clicking on "Template" on the left-side of the Overview page then clicking on the "Backup/Restore" button on the top-right of the Template page. Simply click on "Download Full Template" to backup your blog's Template.


Here's how you can backup your blog if you use WordPress:

1. Use an FTP client (FileZilla for example) to download all the site files (the WordPress folder).
2. Log into phpMyAdmin and select your WordPress database.
3. Click on "Export" and make sure that all the WordPress tables are there.
4. On the "Structure" section tick "Add Drop Tables", "Add AUTO_INCREMENT", and "Enclose table and field names with backquotes".
5. On the "Data" section leave all the boxes unticked.
6. Tick "Save as file" and download the database (you can use compression if your database is big).

Don't leave it until it's too late, backup your blog NOW and continue to do so on a regular basis. Rule of thumb is to backup your blog every time you publish a new post.

NOTE: If you're a blogger or website owner, please consider putting a widget and/or banners on your blog or website and help support the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief Effort. Full details can be found at:
http://www.derekjones.co/2011/03/help-support-japan-earthquake-relief.html


As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509 and on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/djones1509
http://www.facebook.com/DereksHomeandBusinessBlog

Have a wonderful weekend!