Blogussion » tips

Eliminate Distractions & Write Constant Quality Content with Ommwriter

Derek Jensen — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 04:00:03 +0000

Distractions are everywhere. Most of them are when you’re connected to the web or just being connected to your computer. What if I told you that you could eliminate these distractions? I’ve noticed whenever I am writing content for my blog and readers I tend to veer off. Everytime this happens the quality of my writing weakens. There’s a tool that fixes this.

It’s called Ommwriter. All it is is an application for Mac (sorry PC peeps) that just displays a text box, a suttle background, some ambient sounds in the background, and no ability to view or go to any other applications (unless of course you decide to exit out).

That’s really all it is, but the benefits of installing it are more worth talking about.

Before Opening Ommwriter

Prior to opening Ommwriter gather all the needed items that inspired or drove you to write whatever post you plan on writing. Grab a pair of earphones, a notepad with a pencil or pen, and settle yourself into a suitable working environment.

Then, say goodbye to any social networking sites, instant messaging like Skype, and any websites that you may have been looking at. This will all disappear or be hidden so you can focus on what’s in your mind on what you want your readers to know.

All of these items will only increase the effectiveness of Ommwriter and the chances for you to bring out that quality content.

Editing Then Formating

The process of writing quality content is very simple.

You come up with an idea, brainstorm a few things, start writing or editing on a document, format that document and make any adjustments, then hit publish.

Now, when I say “editing” I’m saying that you’re writing a draft that really just needs tweaked and formatted after you’re done.

Even though the process of writing seems simple, the true reality of the process gets disoriented. How? Soley by you and the choices you make. Mainly these are distractions, but it’s also because you go out of order or back and forth between two seperate steps. All this act does is make you happy because you’re doing your favorite parts of the writing process. Just know that more and more you are getting away from the quality of your content.

Focusing on the Quality of Your Content

It’s about your readers. It’s about inticing them. It’s about entertaining them. It’s about helping them. However you are striving to impact your readers it all comes down to the quality of your content.

As I’ve said before in a post called, Stop Blogging About Blogging Already, too many bloggers are saying the same things related to the blogging about blogging niche. Yes, everyone can be unique in their voice but your readers will know how good the actual content is and that will be the deciding factor on how you truly standout. Remember content is king.

Higher Opportunity to Over-deliver to Your Readers

When you limit your focus on just editing and not worrying about formatting are what links to include where, you dig deep into how this post will be effective or benefitial too many.

There’s a higher opportunity for you to over-deliver to your readers. By over-delivering you are sticking to the core of the post, but also effectivily branching off into solid points.

You want readership. You want discussion. You want to help them. Do yourself and everyone a favor and over-deliver. Ommiwritier creates that chance more than ever.

Formating and Developing Your Post Headline

Once you have your content written for a particular post, you save your document as a .txt file and then copy and paste that right into wordpress where you now start your post.

Here is now what you can focus on to make the quality content you’ve just written really stand out and get your readers engaged into what you’re saying to them:

Effective post headlines
Bolding, italizing, underlining, or any other formating such as blockquotes
Adding images or video related to the content
Rereading what you have and adjusting
Inserting links to add to your content

After installing this I’ve seen my writing time being more effective and producing better content.

An example of this actual post on Ommwriter

We get so caught up in certain specifics that would make up the post or get distracted by diverting away from writing, which all takes away from our content quality.

Even if you have a Mac or don’t, what are your thoughts on using something like Ommwriter to write quality content?

Forming Your Network of “Weak Ties” for Achievement & Success

Derek Jensen — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:32:59 +0000

Everyone has their personal story of how they got to where they are right now. But, what if I asked you if you’ve formed your network of “weak ties” or what others may call an alliance or even an inner circle. These “weak ties” I want to talk about are people you have many casual talks with, but when it comes time to press forward they are there for you and will introduce you to their very own.

Weak ties are relationships that can always be brought together but strive to be as casual as possible.

First things first. We need to form our very own network of these so called “weak ties”. Now, I formed mine by establishing a connection with someone, then they knew someone, and then I met another person who happened to be Rob Rammuny. Rob and I really connected and he would be my first “weak tie”. From then on I began to build this network. This could happen to you. It’s all about the right action, amount of effort, and what you’re willing to put on the line for others.

The Choice is Yours

Like with everything you have to decide and in this case you have to decide whether forming a network of “weak ties” is what you want. Believe it or not I know many bloggers or people on the web that continue to do great things because they have formed this kind of network. You might notice whenever someone endorses or promotes a product on their blog, more than likely that person is apart of that person’s “inner circle“.

This is no membership kind of status, its merely a knowing of great people that you have trust in and want to carry out a casual conversation.

Importance of this Network

When deciding to adapt to something like this and start putting it into practice you want to know the benefits. Here are some and really will all depend on the chemistry of your specific network:

Talking about any blog expansions before you test it out in your community.
A start of getting something to go viral and getting yourself to truly stand out.
People will start to see your network and appreciate you and everyone else in the network. Support goes up!

Time, Effort, and Many Conversations

Everything, if you want it to be done right in your personal way, takes time and effort but many people still don’t get this.

Think about your true friendships. They just didn’t happen overnight and there is no such thing as an overnight success. It’s about time and using the time to your personal fullest with as much effort as possible.

This kind of network of people takes that along with many conversations. These conversations could consist of the following:

Seeing something you’ve done, here’s my input.
What you do in the free time and how’s your day going?
I came across this and thought you’d be interested.

These are of course just some of so many ways to get conversations started with people that you would like in your network. Just refrain from too much self promotion and the possibility of annoying them.

Also strive to brings these conversations offline over a good and comfortable amount of time.

Who to Look For

Now, who should you be looking for to join your network?

It’s really all up to you, but think about who is at your or around your level and who is higher than you or really who influences you. For example, I think Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Darren Rowse, and Matt Cheuvront are higher than me. I determine this by overall community response.

It’s all a matter of you pushing them and them pushing you

Then, I look at who is around my level. This is everyone else. Most people know who is higher than them and they look up to them for advice. But, many of us don’t know who we should talk to that is not in this “higher level” group deemed by the general audience.

This is where you have to decide the following:

What’s their mission, vision, and purpose?
What do they really care about?
What drives them?

All of us need to think about:

How will this person benefit me if I make good conversation with them?

Who knows the people you begin to network with might have their own network and then many more doors open up for you.

The First Steps to Formation

Know who you’re looking for and that you can help them and they can help you.
Treat your conversations as if you were standing next to them, striving to get somewhere in a healthy manner, but as casually as possible. (No sales pitches here)
Start building the relationship without becoming annoying. Make them your friend. Begin achieving success together.

Do you have this kind of network? If not, why?

Photo by Daniel Zedda

Mind Mapping for Blog Expansion & Making Smart Mistakes, Part 1

Derek Jensen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:00:28 +0000

When it comes time to expand our blogs we need to take many things into consideration and use caution along the way. We can do this while in the process of expanding our blogs through mind mapping in the beginning stages. This practice surely does not eliminate any mistakes for building our blog, but instead smart mistakes will be made. I’ve learned to mind map the expansion of my blogs instead of just “going with the flow”. Here’s how to get started and expand your blog better.

There are many ways we can build our blog. Yes, we can just “go with the flow”. Yes, we can just expand however way or into area we want. We have so many options, opportunities, and methods of expanding our blogs, but we can just hope right into what comes to our minds initially, or what we even see for an idea initially.

We can forget our purpose when thinking about the future

I know when I want to expand a blog I get so much energy in this process that I tend to lose focus or regret how or what I’ve done in a very short time. I’ve personally been through many blogs since I first began in 2008 and all of them went under due to it not being my true passion and because I did not make smart mistakes while expanding. They were just mistakes.

Smart mistakes are ones that lead you down a path that turned out bad, but after the fact they helped you out while looking at the bigger picture.

Here’s how I’ve transformed my blog expansion and building strategy.

Beginning Steps

Having That Passion

First you must have that passion everyone talks about. Without this you will find yourself not wanting to really expand because you don’t have the drive to know how.

Establishing Your Tagline

One of the most overlooked items on a blog is the tagline

A simple tagline can say a lot about your blog. For example Blogussion’s tagline is “Next Generation Blogging”. What does that tell you as a visitor or reader here? This reaction or thought should be figured out and acts as a good foundation for your blog.

Purpose and Mission

What are you and your blog about? How will your passion and tagline go out and be that blog out to kill the competition? With no defined purpose and mission there is really no business model so you really can’t continue on.

Define Your Community

Who are you striving to attract, please, or change? You need to figure out and define your community so when things come up or ideas come to mind you are able to quickly analyze each and see which ones fit with your community and which ones don’t.

Your established community might change overtime, but you can’t change the established community overtime. If you are, then you need to go back through these beginning steps.

With the beginning but crucial steps out of the way, let’s begin mind mapping our blogs.

1. Brainstorming + Organizing Thoughts

Brainstorming is where we dig deep into our passion, purpose, and start thinking about the intial workings of our expansion. This is where you grab a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or use some software such as MindNode for Mac users.

I personally use MindNode and the iPod Touch version to do my mind mapping that can also be used when writing each of your posts to keep you on guard with your purpose and tagline.

Where to Begin in the Brainstorming Process

Where do you want your blog to expand?
Think about the most ultimate state of your blog
Figure out all the ways you are going to make money
Come up with strategic yet creative marketing strategies
Ways to go beyond the competition
How to further define you and your passion

All of these are just some thoughts and questions to think about while beginning your brainstorming process. Be sure you are recording all of these thoughts. Please don’t limit yourself to what I have quickly came up with.

The above video is of Darren Rowse talking about a brainstorming activity.

Organizing All Those Thoughts (Reality)

The time has come now to organize all of these thoughts or ideas you’ve brainstormed. Organize them in terms of reality and the true you.

Here is where you refer back to those beginning steps I previously talked about and these same steps are going to help you throughout the whole mind mapping process. Remember we are out to make smart mistakes while expanding your blog.

We’re not done. We’re are really just getting prepared for the real action. This is part one of two and part two we will start breaking everything apart, looking at analyzing our immediate action, and implementation of the thoughts.

With this only being part one, what are you looking forward to in part two and what have you learned thus far?

Photo by Lisa Bettany

Utilizing Twitter for Conversations and Information

Derek Jensen — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:00:09 +0000

Twitter is a tool that is becoming more and more widely used by bloggers, journalists, businesses, and the general public. It’s free to use, easy to get started, simple, but still highly underestimated and used. Let’s look at how we can use the best of Twitter for having conversations and gathering information all in real time.

Twitter is an experimental tool. It’s your experimental tool

Why is Twitter so underestimated and used? Why do I even say this? Let’s look at the different groups of people that use it that I previously mentioned. We bloggers mainly have used it to connect and socialize with other bloggers and make people aware of our own content. Link love! Journalists or news agencies simply publish their feed. Lots of link love! Businesses are slowly utilizing it to talk to their customers and competition. Finally, the general public is gathering information from the top Twitter accounts, news agencies, and just having conversations with their other friends that actually have Twitter.

After looking at the most dominate forms of using Twitter we can agree that it’s mostly used for spreading links, gathering links, connecting with people, and socializing with people by very many approaches.

Who are you?

In order to use a tool that has the potential to help out people in so many ways, we have to know who we actually are.

Simply put, “who are you?”

But knowing that this is far from simple, what do you feel defines you? I ask, because this question can also be “what is your passion”, and in order to use something like Twitter should establish this first.

For instance, if you are into knowing the latest news and staying updated you will use the best of Twitter than if you were someone who gets their information by talking with people and holding conversations. Or for that matter you could be both. You just have to know who you are.

Twitter is used both for conversations and information and I’ll be looking at the same four features of Twitter to help both out.

Conversations

Conversations are that social connection we have and can hold with one another. We all know that social media has increased this opportunity and frequency. Twitter is certainly a tool to take advantage and utilize for your benefit all while conversing.

Lists

You’ve heard of having groups. Well lists are just like groups and allow you to have conversations with people related to a certain topic, interest, or belief, etc. Many times when you have many followers or people you want to follow you forget who all would talk about what/who. Lists help you out with this potential dilemma. Oh, and if you wish to make a list private, meaning a group just for your use like the “connect” list I have (shown to the right) for people I want to connect with more.
It’s up to you.

Replying

Casual talk is on the rise. Just start a reply. It’s simple as that

Replying is when we decide to talk back, respond, or offer additional input to whatever they have tweeted out.
Say you see someone discussing or talking about a certain thing that interests you, you have the opportunity to respond to them at anytime with extreme ease. Think of it has a geeky (but the next) way of emailing or contacting someone and just to have a very casual talk.

Casual talk has a new meaning and new home, called Twitter. All you have to do is reply to them and all of your followers can see you actually conversing with people. Transparency is at an all time high.

Search

So many are unaware of how to start conversations with people using Twitter if they don’t really know who is all on that would be of interest to them.

Easy solution. Use search.twitter.com and search for a keyword that would be of interest to you to start a casual conversation with that person related to that keyword happy tweet. This is again how people can find you too (keep that in mind). You just never know when someone on Twitter might talk with you.

Third-Party Clients

Third-Party clients are things that allow you to use the basic functions of Twitter, but add more ease and function. Some examples are Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Tweetie, and Brizzly.

All of the ways to use Twitter for conversations I have already stated can all be more ease of use to you and strive for more conversations with people on Twitter through these third-party clients.

Conversations are for starters, but we can get more. Actual beneficial information.

Information

All of the above features I went though (all four) you can use to help you obtain useful and beneficial information for yourself, your followers, and even your blog community.

Let’s go through them quickly:

Lists: Use lists to categorize the type of information you are in need or want of. i.e. Social Media, Blogging Tips, World News, Gadgets, etc.
Replying: Respond to people related to each of the lists you have made to gain more information or ask any questions you may have about what they have published, reported, wrote, or commented on.
Search: Looking for something. Think of this as a real-time Google Search, but keep the search entry short.
Third-Party Clients:Gain and retain the most information at your finger tips. Here is where you have to dig into each specific client to see which one better suits your needs.

I’ve looked at four features of Twitter for conversations that also help with gathering information, but recognize how you can begin to start using Twitter in different ways.

Yes, there is so many ways to use Twitter. You just have to find the best ways that fit your way of connecting, holding conversations, or finding information. Remember Twitter is your experimental tool .
The video from Chris Brogan (to the right) even has more ways to use the best of Twitter.

I’m sure that you all have your one twitter tip. Well, how are you using Twitter to benefit you the best?

Let’s Hangout

King Sidharth — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:14:59 +0000

I wake up in middle of the night. Wow! This is the best idea I ever got – a niche that no one has even touched, a niche that everyone would like to talk about. In other words, it is the perfect niche to blog about. I am so excited that I buy a keyword rich domain, start writing articles and plan the perfect launch.

I buy ads, start creating hype, and start tweeting about my new blog. I follow the best SEO practises. I even hire a designer who could give me best SEO theme. I write articles with perfect keywords that Google can’t help but rank higher. I start building back links. I research my competitor’s website and see where they are lacking. I create a personal army of Stumblers and Diggers who’d bookmark my stuff right away.

Bury Your Blog

Sounds like perfect blog isn’t it? This cannot fail. This just simply cannot fail.

Wait a minute. We forgot something. It’s supposed to be a blog, right? Whom are we writing for? Are we writing for Google? Really? Are they paying us to write content? StumbleUpon? Digg? Google Analytics? Our Web Server Bandwidth Usage?

If that is so, I request you to shut-down your computer and bury your blog in a graveyard for that is what’s going to happen anyways. For you don’t even know what a blog is.

Blogging Is Communication

I am sorry to say but no Wikipedia or Oxford dictionary can define what love is, what a book is and what a blog is. It’s not a collection of articles arranged in reverse chronological order. A blog, my friend, is a means of communication.

You communicate or ‘talk’ and ‘hangout’ with your friends, beer buddies, play hide and seek, share secrets, have fights. Blog is supposed to do the same for you, the only difference being that with a blog you have 1000s of buddies, 1000s of hangouts, 1000s of secret sharers and 1000s of awesome people in your tribe.

It’s like chatting with 100s of friends, and making new friends and having a lot of fun, And making sure that both, reader and blogger, learn every time they interact. That is the power of a blog – A True Blog (Just like True Love).

The plan that looked so perfect in above lies was nowhere near hanging out. Don’t you think Blogussion is a cool place to hang out? Don’t you think Seth and Alex are the nicest common friends that we have? Don’t you think Blogussion is blog power? Now evaluate your blog in the same way.

A True Blog is a Nice Place To Hangout

Ask yourself this question “Where’d I like to hang out, interact, learn or be entertained?”

I’d answer this question, “At a place where I can find nice people with similar interest, a place where I am heard and given importance to, a place where my questions are answered and I feel good answering to others, a place away from this competition oriented world for I want to feel safe when I make new friends.”

Now, does that sound like your blog?

Define Your Niche For People With Similar Interest

So is your blog a place where you find people of similar interest in other words is your blog defined by niche? Are you talking about a wide and wild niche like Computers, Internet, Movies etc.? If you are than your audience is of wide interest and you won’t be able to create strong community. People are looking for everything from PC to MAC, from Blogging to Optic Fibres, from Hollywood to Bollywood, from Brownies to Curry – you get the point. I’d suggest you run a magazine rather.

Or is your niche very well-defined like ‘Productivity Tips’, ‘Blogging Discussion, Tips and Tricks’, ‘Windows 7 Tips’. All the people who will follow these blogs will be looking for similar things. You have a targeted blog.

The Interactive Content

Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers. -
Brian Clark, CopyBlogger.com

You posted the best articles that will be useful for your users (not search engines, they can’t blog- can they?). You encourage people to comment and they do! Now are you acting like a self-righteous and self-proclaimed authority or being honest with your readers. Are you shamelessly promoting yourself or genuinely helping?

If you are helping them, you will not have to promote yourself and if you are just promoting yourself then no one can help you.

Sound more like “Yea Sean, I’d love to help you out with that. Just let me know exactly what error code is Windows giving.”

Than: “Yes, we offer all kinds of tips and tricks to handle that sort of errors in our ebook. Buy the ebook here it’s just for $10.”

Hangout With Expert Friends

Will you go on stage to give a lecture or suggestions on ‘How to Pet Cats’ to 50 cat experts? Probably not, it feels absurd. That’s what you do when your language sounds more like a Congressional Bill.

I’d love to talk to 50 of my friends about ‘Petting Cats’ even if all of them know about it. So be more like friends than lawyers (Lawyers aren’t reading this, are they?)

Sound more like “Our cats love sleeping, cute little things.”

Than: “Cats are sleepy by nature.”

Your users love cats, talk like them, be one of them. Make them feel safe. They are not here to read science journals they are here to communicate on a blog. It’s all about blogging with personality.

No, seriously if you are sounding too cold thinking that it’s professional than read this and you’ll get my point:

This English woman is so refined. She has no bosom and no behind. – Stevie Smith

Make Friends

This is the best part. I have made so many friends since I’ve started blogging. Make friends, introduce people to each other. Help them connect. Give them credits for inspiration.

If you are helping them, you will not have to promote yourself and if you are just promoting yourself then no one can help you.

That was my answer and how I was going to make my blog a living example of what I believe in. What’s your answer? Is your blog a nice place to hang-out? Is it Article 32 in the Constitution of a country or article awesome like one on Blogussion?

Conclusion

So I will pack up all this by saying that your Blog is a means of conversation as in ‘chit-chatting’ which results in both – reader and blogger – learning more than they knew earlier. Make your blog a nice place to ‘hangout’, make your readers feel at home and be friends with them. Talk to them rather than lecturing them.

And yes let me know what you think of these concepts. Do you agree? Or do you want to throw this away? If you do agree, what will be your next action?

Help! My Writing Needs a Doctor

Seth — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:29:09 +0000

Last night I had a fever of 101.4 and felt completely miserable. My head hurt, body ached and I felt exhausted all throughout the night. Being sick made me think about the benefits of good health. Especially when my doctor started talking about the potential of having H1N1 or swine flu!

Under these conditions my sick mind thought up this post subject [which shows you how addicted to blogging I really am]. How often do we as bloggers take care of the sickness on our blog? Most importantly in our blog content?

Writing is a fundamental element of blogging. If you allow the writing on your blog to go without a check-up regularly, it might have contracted some pretty awful viruses. One of those viruses might be a weak conclusion.

Virus: Weak Conclusion

Often working towards the destruction of the entire organism, a virus first attacks the body’s ability to strengthen itself through weakening the immune system . Likewise, a weak conclusion destroys the rest of your article by disturbing the very structure and argument that gives your writing strength.

You have worked hard to put together a logical and interesting article which has a central focus and major theme it is trying to prove or make a point of.

If your article is the average length of most posts, you have spent 400-500 words trying to develop a strong organic structure for your article’s argument. At the very end of your post the reader leaves without any strong or defining solution if the conclusion is weak, leaving your argument or main point limp and in critical care.

Don’t do this to your articles. It’s like drinking gallons/liters of pig grease everyday after you have eaten healthily and excercised regularly. It doesn’t make sense.

Vaccine: Restate the Main Point

The easiest and quickest way to prevent your conclusion from dying out and infecting the power of the articles argument is by restating the main point you introduced earlier. The key here being that you know the main point of your article.

Restatement solidifies the post’s purpose and helps readers to connect the sub-topics and logical progression of your article with the main point. This tactic infuses the strength of your argument into the closing remarks of your writing, reminding the reader of the take-away you encourage.

The conclusion should not be a restatement of the entire introduction and main point. You should make the conclusion concise (exact) and brief (short). It is not a place to restate every point you tried to make, but rather remind the reader of your main point in only a sentence or two.

At Blogussion we try to make our conclusion’s as effective as possible in the articles we publish. To help this process we offer a summary of the article and main points below the post and in-between the comments section. Doing this does not replace a strong conclusion but rather serves as a brief reminder to assist our readers.

The conclusion within the article is meant to be apart of the persuasive and convincing argument being made. The summary is merely just a restatement of what was said.

Conclusion

Don’t get sick and avoid letting your writing go unchecked. When you do find a problem, fix it immediately. Especially if your problem is a weak conclusion to a good argument.

Firefox Makes Blogging Easier

Ali Hussain — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:37:44 +0000

Ali Hussain, author of Techuse.net shares with you 8 fantastic FireFox plugins to help better your blogging experience. Tools ranging from Editors to in-browser FTP, this article is not to miss if you’re an avid Firefox blogger.

Blogging is a very tough job. You need to do a lot of research, writing and understating. It takes hardship and loyalty to bring your blog to high standards. So, you must know on how to cut short your work using tips and tweaks. These tips and tweaks are like super fuel to your blogging careers.

Speaking of research and writing, most of the bloggers around the world use Mozilla Firefox for blogging activities. I have compiled a few plugins that I use to make my blogging job easier.

Editors Note: If you don’t use Firefox, we suggest you download Firefox now. Not only will this post be useless to you if you don’t have it, but you will never get the satisfaction of seeing what it really means to “surf the web.” without it!

SribFire

ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs. And the best part is that is supports almost all kinds of blogging platforms.

Download

MorningCoffee

If you routinely visit several blogs or websites as soon as you wake up (like check your stats or AdSense earnings), then this plugin is for you. It basically lets you open websites in tabs that are a part of your everyday ritual, in one click. This extension also lets you organize websites by day, which is handy if you follow a different routine on Sunday, than, say, Tuesday.

Download

Read It Later

Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest. Also, it has many other options integrated for our use.

Download

Shareaholic

So what do you do after posting a blog post? You promote it, don’t you? Well, this plugins eases your job as Shareaholic allows you to quickly share, bookmark, and email web pages across many web 2.0 social networking and bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicios, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Mixx and many others without cluttering up your browser with multiple toolbars and buttons.

Download

ReminderFox

Tied up in other works? Forgot to pay rent? Didn’t make a blog post? These are tasks you tend to forget when blogging or when you have a busy schedule. ReminderFox displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and To-Do’s. It makes sure you remember all of your important dates via easy-to-use lists, alerts, and alarm notifications.

Download

SeoQuake

SEO matters a lot in blogging. Especially when you are commenting or looking for keywords for your blog post. Are you keeping an eye on your competitor? Why not, use SeoQuake as it helps you to better optimize your blog for search engines. It shows detailed information about your competitors, such as their PageRank, the number of pages of their blog indexed in Google, AlexaRank, WhoIs info, and many more similar SEO parameters. Using this data you can know what you can do clinch that top spot for a keyword.

Download

FireFTP

Adding images to your blog post? Editing a theme? Or simply uploading new plugins. Now there is no need to open your heavy FTP programms. Along with transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SFTP, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more…

Download

IE Tab

Working on a theme? Do you want to check how it may look in the average Internet Explorer? No need of opening the I.E again and again. This plugin may also be useful when you want to open IE specific websites such as Windows Update.

Download

What are your favorite blogging tools for Firefox? Share them below in the comments!

Try These 4 Quick Blogging Tips & Tricks

Janith — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:48:43 +0000

Today, I want to share with you 4 things that I thought of in my head through the day. It’s unusual and quite random. I was just thinking a few ways, I could take Blogussion up a notch or two – and came up with a list of potential ways anyone could acheive the different aspects of blog-promotion.

Eventually, after some moderation on the list – I was left with a handful of random and disorganized tips and tricks that could help you either directly or indirectly in promoting your blog. What do you think?

Try misspelling a few words.

Purposely misspell commonly misspelled words and just watch the free traffic flow in. You would be surprised to see just how extra traffic will cumulatively build up – as you exploit this underlying loop-hole. It might seem a bit morally – wrong but we are not abusing the system… just making it easier for the lazy.

Try tweetin’ from your desktop.

To be honest, I’m not as active on Twitter as I would like to be. Well I wasn’t anyways. The concept of tweetin’ from your desktop has been around almost since Twitter’s launch but I never got around to using them. I’ve tried a handful over them over time but none of them… fitted my needs.

That was until I came across TweetDeck. I just cannot emphasize the value it has added to my Twitter account because with it – I feel like doing what Twitter was designed to do in the first place; tweet about everything that happens around me! It’s just an awesome tool, in fact I might even dedicate a whole post on the program and outline every single feature of it!

Try video marketing.

It’s not that hard: Get a web cam, some video-editing software + a free Youtube account and with a touch of your imagination you can potentially reach millions of people on the internet. This depends on your niche, obviously but if your in a market that can grow virally – just give it a shot. It can be anything from a game-play video with your narration to you singing the ABC 123 backwards!

It’s up to you, make something people want to watch – that has a direct relation to your blog; then just promote it.

Try to reply to your blog’s comments.

You can raise your blog’s awareness internally, as well. Writing up an article is just half the task, you need to then follow it up with promote it and once you do – act upon the response it gets. Most likely, the responses will be reflected on the comments and it’s absolutely critical to reply to most, if not all of your visitor’s comments.

Replying to comments goes a long way; because it entices the visitors to return to your blog and check up on the responses. It creates a more friendly environment and a warm feeling of community. Personally, I reply to every comment except those simply dropping by a Thank You, but everyone now and then – I reply with my appreciation for their contribution.

Blogging With a Passion Will Make You Successful

theblurr — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:00:56 +0000

When at first starting a blog, many people have “making money online” as their sole purpose or at least in the back of their mind. I know you have heard this before, but you must blog about something you’re passionate about.

People that do start of with ambitions of making it big online, usually give up soon – simply because, after picking the “highest paying niche” – they find it impossible to keep producing quality content in the long run. Usually within the first few months, most of these so-called “bloggers” have already given up.

There are many reasons on why passionate bloggers will succeed over the obsessed impersonators. Blogging is far more complex in its structure than the “slap content, earn money” idea that many have assumed it to be. It takes time, determination and perseverance over long periods of time to even deem yourself successful.

If you take a look around, today’s top-bloggers in a wide range of niches; all have been around for a very long time. This is just an reflective indication, that those whom hang in there – we’ll make it to the top.

These are just some of the reasons that I believe why you should blog with a passion. Take them into consideration and it might help you realize why passionately blogging is the key to success.

A plethora of blogs are created every day. I’m talking thousands here. There is no possible way you can create a blog about something you are not passionate about or don’t know much about and also stand out.
If you are not passionate, you will not update your blog. If you are not excited about your topic, you will not write – simple as that. If you don’t write; your blog joins the thousands and thousands of previously abandoned blogs. If you set out to make money and don’t make money quickly, you will swiftly grow bored and tired of writing.
Blogs are supposed to be fun. Sure most people want to make money, but bloggers like what they do. Otherwise, do you think they could bear to post daily?
Content equals money. Without great unique content you cannot make money. If you don’t know about your topic or you’re not passionate about it – you can’t create constantly updated unique content.
Blogs take a long time to make money. If your not in to blogging for the long run, you might as well not try.

Do you know why so many blogs are abandoned?

Have you done this yourself? How can you prevent it?

Take a step back from all the empty promises and overemphasized hype about blogging, and spare a moment to think. Then ask yourself the following questions;

What is it that you know a lot about?
What would you like to write about?
What will you never get bored of?

When you honestly answer these questions, you have your niche. After many posts later, many comments later, responding and helping your members, and a good design – you can then start making money.

I hope you realize that blogging with a passion is truly the only way about it. So, get our there and start blogging about things that make you happy!

45 Link Building Tips To Help You Promote Your Blog

Janith — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:44:12 +0000

In an ever changing approach by bloggers to keep up with the Google SERP algorithms, many of us get carried away with our “SEO Techniques.” It’s not a surprise nor a shame, because without this experimentation, we are bound to hit a plateau in progress.

Unquestionably, even here at Blogussion – we try many new things, in combination with the old to help build on the traffic from search engines. Whether it be validating the site using the W3C Markup or just typing a new category-description, Search Engine Optimization is a never-ending process that evolves on a regular basis and it is our duty to keep up with it.

However, in trying new things – we shouldn’t forget that some techniques will never die out and must be practiced as regularly as possible. I would just like to outline 45 tips that will help you build quality back-links to your site, with minimal to no costs!

Quality back-links serve two main purposes. Firstly, it helps crawlers find and locate your site. Once this is accomplished, the search engine crawler goes about indexing your site. The next purpose; back-links help crawlers identify how important your blog really is.

The first purpose obviously only applies to new blogs, but the second one will still be valid even 10 years down the track. These back-links also help the Google Crawler to assign your pages with a Google PageRank. Simply to put, the more authoritative websites that are linked to your site, the more important it is perceived to be.

List of 45. Starts Here.

Getting Links for Writing Content

1. Write content that is useful – Writing resourceful content will always attract links, hands down. If you write an article that is overflowing with useful and resourceful information – people will link to it.

2. Don’t forget trackbacks – This handy feature for WordPress can be great way of returning the compliment for a dedicated link.

3. Remind your readers to link to you – After each posts, just throw in a quick reminder that your article can be socially bookmarked or linked to.

4. Make a Top “X” List – Alex’s post on “100 Lists To Become A Better Blogger” is the most successful post on Blogussion, to-date. This just goes to prove how much people love “lists posts” such as your “Top X [Something]”

5. Debunk a Myth – There’s only one thing better than coming up with an idea, is to prove someone else one wrong. People love opposition and to see a debate bubble up, so don’t be afraid to challenge other people’s opinions.

6. Write with a touch of conspiracy – Just reinforcing tip #5. If you can create that atmosphere of retaliation, it will always raise a few eyebrows.

7. Spread the Love – Dedicate a post or two per week to link to other blogger’s posts that you found useful. More often than not, they will tell their readers “Mr.X linked to my post, how cool!”

8. Trade articles with webmasters – Similar to guest posting, just swap articles with a fellow webmaster.

9. Release a Press Release – This guide shows you how to write + submit a good Press Release.

Freebies/Giveaways for Link-Baiting

10. Hold a contest with an incentive. Contests are great for link-baiting because when people talk about it, there will always be “Check it out here” tagged along with it.

11. Release a free design. If you can make/buy a custom WP-Theme then release it for free to your guests, you can really kick off on a viral market. Just don’t forget the “Designed by [YOUR LINK]”

12. Release a free plugin. This serves a similar purpose as a design, but not so much with a direct back-link. Instead, if your plugin is useful, the incoming links will just grow exponentially.

13. When running a contest, reward your referees that bring the most referrals. This will encourage them to blog about your contest.

Connecting With Communities

14. Become active and post on relevant forums

15. Become active and comment on relevant blogs.

16. Try not to forget your signature on forums, otherwise the whole thing is an epic fail.

17. When commenting on blogs, try to use post URLs instead of just your Blog URL – This can help regulate your links evenly amongst your blog, and not just solely to your front page.

18. DON’T spam communities with your links to your site, offer a reason for them to visit and contribute with a purpose.

19. Submit your blog to directories – These are still helpful when it comes to getting indexed, especially these directories listed here.

20. Search up DoFollow Blogs/Forums – These will carry the most significant back-links.

21. Browse Craigslists and they can provide you with a free or cheap link.

22. Build on your Technorati Profile

23. Become a Sponsor – Whether it be a theme, whole website or a small project; the sponsors always get mentioned.

24. Run for Charity, and request others to help spread the word.

25. DON’T spam. This tip cannot be reinforced enough. A deleted comment will server no purpose.

Directories, Social Bookmarking + Discussion Groups.

26. Write content for Article directories – Publish content for directories such as eZineArticles, GoArticles or iSnare. In the “About Author’s” area, you can leave a link to your website.

27. Build a Squidoo Page – It’s easy and if you have the time to develop it, it can be very authoritative. If you don’t there’s heaps of services out there to help you out.

28. Join Discussions over at Yahoo! Answers – Providing useful answers, along with a link is an easy way to earn a back-link.

29. There’s also Google Groups – It’s almost the same as Yahoo! Answers, but owned by Google.

30. Submit your voice on Digg – First build a solid profile, where you have a network of loyal diggers. If you can hit the Digg front page, you are likely to get linked to by a lot of web-masters.

31. Build on your Twitter profile then link to your site using your “Bio Area.”

32. Tweet about your posts using Twitter, then request retweets from your followers.

33. Offer a “Tweet This Post” link on every post your write, this will make Tweeters easier to tweet about your article.

Direct Link Building

34. Contact your fellow bloggers with a personalized email – asking for an reciprocal link exchange. However, keep this to a minimal and be very selective in who you choose to trade with.

35. Post around on forums asking for reciprocal link exchanges, but yet again be warned on your selection.

36. If you are a part of organizations, clubs or schools – Ask them if they can link to you, because these types of websites are more often than not; authoritative.

37. DON’T ask Darren Rowse, ShoeMoney, Matt Cutts or Yahoo, MSN and Google for back-links. It’s just a waste of time, especially the last three “contacts”

Paid Link Building

38. Buy a Review – Most sites that offer reviews will naturally link to the reviewed product/site.

39. Many webmasters buy links on popular blogs for authority, even though it’s against the Google TOS (Use at your own risk)

40. Rent links from others website – Text-Link-Ads is most likely your best option.

Using Blogussion for Link Building

41 Leave a comment – All our comments are do-follow, so the link you chose as your URL will get link-love automatically.

42. Top Commentators – As you can see on the sidebar, we use this awesome plugin. Every month, our most contributing members will be rewarded with a link.

43. We use CommentLuv – Every comment you post, will carry a link to your latest blog posts.

44. Link to our posts – We utilize the uses of ‘trackbacks.’ Hence any links to our posts, will automatically be rewarded with a back-link to them! So, Why not share this post with your readers and followers?

45. Buy a Paid Review – We link to our reviewed sites/products.

That’s it!

There’s many more link building techniques and tips that I haven’t mentioned in this post, but these are just some of the ways you can always rely on for Link Building.

Naturally, following these tips will reward you with a higher PageRank too!

Lastly, is there anything you want to add to this list? Please leave us a comment below