swansonager – what is matt up to?

Matt has posted a summary of his 2007 WordCamp SEO Whitehat list for Bloggers – if you’ve not seen this one, it’s a great watch/read Thanks Matt!

For some people [Serena Williams] it’s tennis , for you it might be knitting or blogging or kayaking or being a tech geek. Whatever your passion is in life, I encourage you to find a job in that area – or maybe start a blog about your passion. You’re very knowledgeable about your passion and know the best things to share about the subject.

What more could you want than an outlet to share your knowledge with others. You can even get paid for it – yep, that’s right, paid for it!

If you haven’t started a blog today about your passion, why not start today, there’s nothing holding you back. I’ll be talking about way to monetize your site once you get it up and running in the weeks to come, so be sure to come back for a visit.

There are times when I just assume that everyone knows the little tips and tricks that I use when I work on my computer everyday. Sometimes I need to take a step back and do a better job at sharing things with others that I’ve picked up over the past 10 years in the internet industry. One major area that I constantly hear my friends complain about is how slow their computer is running or acting. I’m sure you’ve been there.

I run Windows XP Professional on my Dell XPS M1330 Laptop (not that you really care what type of machine I work on daily, but thought I’d throw it in there). Here are some things I do to ensure that my machine is running fast, quick and snappy on a daily basis.

#1 – Use AVG for FREE Virus Protection

#2- Surf the Web with Firefox

Ditch IE and Surf with Firefox today – it rocks.

#3 – Use Sygate Personal Firewall

I know that AVG Free has a firewall but I personally like Sygate Personal Firewall (I use version 5.5) much better. It’s very good at probing any incoming IP or site that might try to gain access to your machine and will prompt you to either allow or not allow the connection. It’s great and I’ve used it for years now.

Free Download of Sygate Personal Firewall from OldVersion.com

Using a firewall will ensure that any spyware that you might have inadvertently gotten infected with can’t call out to the mothership (i.e the annoying person that infected you with it). On that note if you do have spyware, most of the time a fresh install of XP or whatever Operating System you are using is in order.

Which tools do you use to ensure your machine is running fast?

Your might not have ever stopped to think about the inside of a Casino in Las Vegas, but let’s do that for a quick second. Typically the floors in Vegas Casinos are busy as all get out with the crazy carpet patterns and the ceilings in the Casinos are plain jane and usually just white or a solid color. Why is this you ask…it’s pretty simple actually: the Casino ceilings are boring and the Casino floors are busy so you’ll focus on one thing – the gaming machines and poker tables. So the next time you’re in Vegas, make a conscious mental note to take notice of this fact.

photo credit: destination360.com – Las Vegas

So what does this have to do with my blog you ask? Plenty of things. I’ll hit the top 3, imo.

1. Customer Distraction – avoid it.

Are you distracting your customers with parts of your site that take them away from the goal you want to accomplish. For e-Commerce stores, this is the purchase of the product. For bloggers, it might be getting your readers to subscribe. Whatever that is for your business, I’d take serious look at peripherals that might be distracting your customers to other activities that aren’t revenue generating for your site/blog/business.

2. Give your Customers Something for Nothing

Another lesson we can learn from the Casinos in Vegas is how they use the Comps. Back when Vegas was first starting to evolve, some of the early Casino operators realized that if they could make their customers’ experience even better by offering things such as free drinks while they were gambling, free room upgrades and even free accommodations altogether. This practice has evolved and is an integral part to the Casino industry today.

Look at any areas that you might be able to enhance your customers’ experience with your business or blog. If you run a restaurant, maybe it’s offering free drinks to your regular customers. If you have an e-Commerce site, maybe you give return visitors that small item that would compliment their purchase that they didn’t even order – trust me, this will wow them and the PR you get from doing something like this will pay you back 10x the cost it was to your bottom line.

3. The Personal Touch

To return to our Casino example, when you arrive in Vegas you are immediately waited on hand and foot by everyone. They want to make sure you have an experience that will keep you coming back again and again. Heck, some casinos will even give back .40 on the dollar to customers who lose all their money.

Casino operators do this to make their customers feel good – even about losing. That’s why people go back to Vegas, again and again.

It’s all about the experience and personal touch. What personal touch are you giving your readers or customers? Maybe it’s offering an ad-free experience to users who subscribe for a nominal fee yearly so they don’t have to see ads on your site. There is something you should be doing for your customers to give them a personal touch. It will keep them coming back as well as like in point #2 – you’ll get a 10x return on the little things you do for them.

Here’s a personal example that we just experienced: PF Changs recently gave us three $2 shot glass desserts the other night. Did that cost them the $6 menu price? No way. …And they gave us an experience that we’ll return for as well as tell 5 more people about.

In this economy, you must be doing things like this to keep your customers happy.

Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Short post today – what’s your frame of reference? For this person it’s obvious, but what is yours? Does that shape what you blog about or write about for your business? Frame of reference is KEY – what factors do you think about when framing your posts for your readers? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

photo credit: swansonager
 
No, not that IT, this IT: Posting Content on your site – EVERYDAY

You don’t have to be a clone trooper, or even wear one of these clone trooper helmets to make your impact in the blogging world, or on the business world. What you do have to do is something everyday for your business.

The biggest thing you can do, imo, to keep a good following for your blog or niche is to be creative and talk about what’s on your mind – everyday. When you are in the startup phase of a site or blog, you must do this everyday. If you don’t, then chances are you’ll lose returning visitors in some capacity. I’ll be sharing my stats at the 30 day mark for swansonager so be sure to come back on June 13th for a post about what this site has seen in the first 30 days of being live. It’s pretty interesting.

We all have our goals and dreams of what we’d like to do ‘one day‘ but how can you make that happen? For me, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it’s taken to get to where I am today. It’s really nothing more than just doing something. What’s that mean you ask? Great. Glad you did.

If you dreamed of being an architect that would one day redesign a mega mansion for a Will Ferrell, you couldn’t just step off the street and attain that goal. What you can do is this: Start doing things everyday that will get you on the right path.

If we all take a look at where are now, and think back in hindsight, what steps did it take for you to get where you are now. Take a look at the last 10 years of your life. I’ll bet there were many, many steps you took to get you to where you are today. Each one of those steps incrementally helped you progress your skill set to enable to you be better equipped to handle new projects, roles, and responsibilities.

Without taking steps to ensure you’re doing something on the right path to get you where you want to be, you’ll never get there.

photo credit: shawnrdavis via flickr

The Kamikaze Surfer

Think about it like a Kamikaze Surfer. If they want to ride the perfect wave and be the best they can be, they can’t just go to the ocean and ride it out of the shoot. What they can do is paddle out and practice for hours and hours over the course of time. It’s about the process, learning and experience. This process will enable them to know how to ride the perfect wave when it does arrive. Also, each fall they have will help them know what to not do the next time around.

It’s all about process (practice and patience).

You’ve got to try something and be persistent with it before you’ll know whether or not it’s going to work for you. In the spirit of lean development, you might not want to go too deep too fast, i.e before you spend tons of money on the best surfboard and gear, make sure it’s something you are going to want to keep doing in the months to come. Use the tools you have now to deploy early and often with your efforts. Learning quickly and deferring decisions are two things you can use in your approach to take steps now to get you where you want to be in the next 3 years.

photo credit: swansonager – Hurricane Gustav waves in Destin, FL

While I am not an elite runner by any means, I do enjoy working out, both running and mountain biking along with a lot of tennis. That being said, we all aspire to be better in whatever our passion might be – SEO, working out, seeing rich people, or whatever it might be for you.

When I was out running 3.2 miles this morning before 7am, I thought of something that I read in runners world a couple months back from an elite marathoner. He said this:

“If I’m working out when my competition is sleeping, then I know come race time, I’ll have the edge on them”

My question for you is this:

What motivates you to keep a step ahead of your competition. Is it working while they are sleeping? Maybe for you it’s automation to make things easier. Whatever the case, what’s your motivation to keep one step ahead of your competition in your niche?

Chuck Norris uses two Total Gyms at his house. Why you ask? One for him, one for his wife. Since he has to leave at 6am for the office, he uses the tools he needs to make his workout happen. What are you doing to make it happen with your website or blog?

Just do it.

Something that is. If you have all the tools necessary in your tool box to build your business, but sit around and do nothing, you won’t amount to much in the world of building a successful blog or business. Just do a little bit everyday. Much like working out, You won’t get lean or in shape over night, but doing a little bit each day will help you reach your goal. Don’t think you have time? Shoemoney nails with Time is all we have

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

Just like Chuck has only 15 minutes to workout – he has a specific routine to do. Chest, Lats, Tris and Bi’s.

You might only have 15 minutes a day to do something for your business or blog, but you’ve got to make the time and stick to your plan. If you fail to plan, plan to fail. You need a defined plan to use your time effectively and be productive with your tools and time.

An un-used blog or stagnate website is a dormant site collecting web termites. You don’t want web termites – trust me.

Using your tools will energize you

Look at what others in your space or the web/seo space are using to help increase their traffic and customers. Just like Chuck’s wife didn’t know about the Total Gym before they got together, you might not know about other great tools out there that others are using – look around and ask. (note: I’m putting together a post on this topic later this week so ping me if you would like to share your top 3 tools with everyone)

Like Chuck’s wife says – “just try it and maintain your daily workout” (or work in our case) – by just using the tools you have at your disposal, you will be moving in the right direction and see some positive results.

I always think back to the successful things I have done or been a part of in my life — all the experiences I went through to get me to those places that brought me to that point in time. Without each step along the way, you can’t get to the next thing that’s 5 steps ahead of where you are right now. Are you taking the steps today you need to get where you want to be next? If not, why not?

Ok, so not really merging in a physical sense, but in more of a virtual sense of what each service offers their users from a feature perspective. In this post, we’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks of each blogging platform as well as each of the following services: Blogspot, Wordpress.com, Standalone Wordpress Software.

What are the different options for blog owners and authors that provide the most flexibility, ease of use, and the best benefits for both power and casual authors that want to create a blog for their business or passion.

Earlier this week, Alison commented on my post about how to get natural traffic from google in under 3 days and posed this question:

Thanks, Matt! Great post! As for those of us who use blogger, do you have any suggestions regarding it specifically? Or if not, is it a good idea to switch over to Wordpress?

She brings up a great question. A lot of you might know even know what the options are when it comes to starting a blog using some of the great open source and free options you have available. So let’s give a breakdown of those services first. You can basically have a blog that is either:

Option One – Use a free blogging service

For example, Google offers Blogspot for their users as a free service, or Wordpress (more on Wordpress in a second though)

Cost: FREE – Maybe you want to setup a free blog with blogspot

Cost: FREE – You could setup a free blog with hosted wordpress

Option Two – You host the Blog, Software and Database

In this option, you install the blog software you download on your own web host or web server (you could go with something like Wordpress, B2Evolution, or Dot Net Blog Engine)

Cost: FREE (you only pay hosting and bandwidth + domain registration) -You might want to use the wordpress standalone software

I mentioned that Wordpress is a different beast in a way because they offer both option 1 and option 2 above – You can use Wordpress.com if you want to have a blog that is hosted by Wordpress or you can download the standalone version of wordpress from Wordpress.org to run the software yourself.

If you’re a .net guru, then dot net blog engine might be for you

Another option for open source is B2 Evolution – I used this back in early 2003-2005 to blog internally when I was a Sr. Software Engineer at CareerBuilder.com

What’s the best option to go with?

Really, it’s different for everyone. Like with most things, it’s really what you are comfortable using. Most beginners or folks that don’t come from a technical background, or have an understanding of html or any scripting language for that matter will probably go with Option #1 above – it’s free and very intuitive to set up and use. Most of the third party hosted blog provide ample functionality for the casual blogger to get started and run a site.

That being said, there are some drawbacks to using a third party blogging service:

1. Lack of broad plugin support (what a plugin you ask? we’ll use Wordpress for example – anything you could ever want to do has a plugin that someone has built)

2. Domain and URL Structure Control – you’re domain will be xxxxx.blogspot.com or xxxx.wordpress.com. (Note: you can use the cname process with blogspot though) but most folks have no clue what that means and I won’t go into it now…) Full details here: CName’ing your site with Blogspot

3. Root access for uploading files…sitemaps is done in a non traditional route for notifying Google which pages you have on your site – Lenin writes how to upload a sitemap for Blogspot…..

4. Database backup and storage backup – with Blogger or Wordpress.com backing up your data can be tricky and not automated that I know of (please someone correct me if I am wrong) – but with a standalone Wordpress site, you can easily backup your wordpress database automatically

5. You want your content to boost your domain – let’s face it, if you are going to put the time and effort into any business venture or blog, you want to have full ownership of the site as well as experience the full benefits down the road – like if you sell your site for 1M one day. Building out your site on a Blogger domain isn’t the best choice for setting up yourself for future success, imo. You can always migrate from blogspot to wordpress later on, but that can be tricky for the general blogger to complete successfully, etc.

Where Third Party Hosted Blogs win (usually)

Those are just a couple drawbacks but I’d like to mention a key area where Blogger or Wordpress might really be able to help you – it’s scale. You want to make sure your efforts will be seen by the masses and that your site can handle a lot of visitors, right? Blogger and Wordpress.com a used by millions of people everyday and they will be up 99.999% of the time in most cases. Running your own site does put you at risk to make sure your web host can handle the traffic load when you get on the front page of CNN – ok, that might not happen right away – but you need to be ready and set yourself up for success.

Conclusion of Third Party Hosted v. Standalone Blogging Software

Basically you can get a free blog that is more of a black box (blogger or hosted at wordpress) or you can do it yourself…Having ‘under the hood’ access if you will, provides way more flexibility but at the same time, requires a deeper understanding of technology.

On a personal note, if your friend wants a blog and knows nothing about the tech side, set them up with a wordpress hosted or blogspot blog, otherwise you’ve just got a new non paying customer to support

If you decide to go with option #1 above, Pulsed has published an excellent list of the features of a BlogSpot v. Wordpress.com Features that’s updated as of May 2009.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on which features of each type of service you love or hate… please comment and let me know!