Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Been Reading About Blogging



Why Bloggers Should Freelance
freelancing pays. Blogging might or might not pay
Inside the Life of the Other Kind of ProBlogger
what about the other kind of problogger, the one who gets paid simply to write blog posts? You might think of them as freelance bloggers, or staff writers, or maybe you’ve never actually thought about them at all ... ProBlogger job board
Speedlinking – While I was Gone….
5 Blogs You Can’t Live Without
1. Problogger 2. Content Marketing Institute Blog 3. The Sales Lion 4. Copyblogger 5. John Chow dot Com
The 7 Bad Habits of Insanely Productive People
Stay focused, be motivated, get your exercise, floss twice a day and eat your veggies. ..... Most of the successful people I know are sensitive and perceptive. And yes, when they get criticized, they feel like shit... The more progress you make, the thicker your emotional skin will naturally get, because you’ll start to realize that you’re actually doing something that matters, and the peanut gallery isn’t. ..... Sensitivity is an asset, don’t try to beat it out of yourself. .. If you’re stretching yourself, you’ll drop the ball sometimes. .... You’ve got to selfishly draw some lines — around how you’re going to take care of yourself, around how much time you’ll give to your project, around getting enough sleep and taking some time off. ..... unless you’re under ten years old, if you don’t take care of yourself, no one else is going to show up and do it for you. .... It’s ridiculous to burn down your life to create a successful company. Ridiculous and unnecessary and antithetical to success. So don’t. .... (I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it. ~Dorothy Parker) .... The best (and most fun) way to make money is by helping other people … a lot. .... there are no accidental millionaires. The closest we have — lottery winners — rarely manage to keep hold of their wealth. ..... students who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were much better at solving creative problems than other students ..... "Although we live in an age that worships attention — when we need to work, we force ourselves to concentrate — this approach can inhibit the imagination. Sometimes it helps to consider irrelevant information, to eavesdrop on all the stray associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain. Occasionally, focus can backfire and make us fixated on the wrong answers." ..... some of the people you might envy for their laser focus have a hard time seeing the broader picture. They may be executing the hell out of their strategy today … but watch what they do in the long term. .... The more widely you read, look, watch, listen, and think, the more genuinely remarkable ideas you’re going to come up with. .... one marker of a business leader who succeeds over time is what Collins calls “productive paranoia.” ... for an entrepreneur .. a big dose of healthy self-doubt is much more useful. .... Toot your own horn. Admit that you’re kind of a big deal. .... for your project to become truly epic — to help an epic number of people — you’re going to have to get out there and talk it up. Which will make some people uncomfortable.
10 Ways to Get Tons of Massive Comments on Your Blog Every Time
great blog articles ‘stir the pot’, thus causing people to think, question, and have a desire to respond with their own sentiments .... I don’t think the ‘learning’, in most cases, starts until the comment section. The comment section is the place where the community converges and a synergy of diverse thought mixes. ..... the science of commenting on other blogs so as to build awareness, branding, and comment reciprocity. He set commenting goals, did studies, and once even commented on 100 blog articles in a single day. ...... Tristan’s blog took off like a rocket .... goes without saying you should reply to every comment someone leaves on your site .... we can do everything in the world in terms of great networking, but you’ve got to be a thought leader in your niche ..... learn to be the guy or girl that isn’t afraid to have a strong opinion regarding topics in your niche ..... Do you mention others in your blog posts? Do you praise your peers more than you praise yourself? .... at the end of almost all of my articles I’ll ask one or two questions to readers and then say something really silly, like “Remember, comment checks will be sent in the mail every 3rd Friday of the month”
15 Inspired Bloggers Who are Changing the Blogosphere as We Know It
the one component of blogging that I never anticipated, yet by far appreciate the most—the relationships I would form with some incredible people
The Best Blog Posting Schedule Ever: Finally, Proof and Real Numbers!
“We’ve run the numbers, and they’re much better since we started posting twice daily.”
Massive Blog Growth: Do You Really Have the Time it Takes?
after a couple of arduous months of little to no success, the reality of my situation became clear—The comments were few and far between, and I had no community. .... eventually I started to understand principles of blog commenting, networking, and relationships ..... now, roughly 18 months later, the Sales Lion community is rich with a thoughtful and active network of thinkers, movers, and shakers. .... although every new blogger seems to dream of the days when they’re getting 50 and 60 comments per post, I don’t think most understand just what this will mean in terms of time, dedication, and hard work. ..... even though the article was only 14oo words, my replies to all the comments were just a hair under 5000 words
9 Lessons I Learned From the Biggest Blogging Jerk Ever

How To Change Your Bad Blogging Habits

The BackLight
My Report on the First Half of 2012 (and Plans for the Second Half)
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John Chow: Rainmaker Blogger

SEO Takes Care Of Itself


Darren Rowse, the top blogger in the world perhaps, has a Google Plus post on SEO.
While I once did spend more time on SEO (particularly on structuring my site right, getting keyword density up, interlinking my posts lots and quite a bit of researching keywords) I've increasingly found more value in working on other areas of my business and have found that the result in doing so has been that SEO has to some extend looked after itself....... more search traffic to my blogs .. direct traffic, traffic from social, referral traffic .. Understanding the needs, problems and challenges of readers (and potential readers) is key. ..... you're writing on topics people are searching for, it means that when they find your content they are content with it and are more likely to share it (link to it) - all of which helps to increase search rankings/traffic. .... I work hard and getting inside the heads of my readers by surveying them, running polls, running focus groups, asking questions and giving them space to share what they are doing, learning and struggling with. All of these gives me a fantastic picture of how I can serve them better. ...... the creation of content that is both relevant and useful. This is a daily process of writing, commissioning our writers with assignments and editing their work. ..... ensuring high quality of work but also keeping the quantity up .... More articles mean more doorways into the site. ..... Community - giving readers ways and spaces to engage with you and one another brings a blog alive. .... a reader who feels a sense of belonging is much more likely to be sharing links to your blog than one who never interacts .... I spend a lot of time monitoring our site 'outposts' (Facebook, Twitter etc), creating community centred content (discussions, homework/challenges), focusing our team upon our forum area and investing into customer service (I have a dedicated team on this). .... the dPS Email strategy. .... That blog was well optimized for Google and naturally ranked well. The result was 90% of our traffic was Google traffic. All was good until the day came when Google changed its algorithm and the blog all but disappeared from Google. ...... for the next 6 weeks 90% of my traffic (and income) disappeared. It came back almost as quickly as it disappeared 6 weeks later but the experience taught me an important lesson - to work on other traffic strategies. ..... the graphic with the regular spikes and troughs pattern. The troughs are weekends and the spikes.... are newsletter days. .... Our newsletters drive massive traffic to the site. .... While I wouldn't want to loose the search traffic - the site is now at a point where we wouldn't need it to survive because we can now drive our own traffic each week. .... We now have 100,000 Facebook likes on dPS and it too is sending more and more traffic than previously. The same's true for Twitter and even sites like Pinterest. ..... diversifying our focus on multiple forms of traffic (particularly those we have complete control over like email) gives us a much much much stronger foundation than if we only focused our time and energy upon SEO
In short.

(1) Actively seek to understand your reader's needs.
(2) Write quality and quantity.
(3) Build community at the blog. Hello Disqus.
(4) Email/newsletter can be powerful. Facebook and Twitter are useful.
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Monday, August 06, 2012

Internet Marketing For Car Dealerships



Online marketing can work and is crucial for restaurants, for law firms, for grocery stores, and for car dealerships.

Marketing Your Restaurant Online

20 Killer Article Ideas To Get Your Car Dealership Blog Started
I am going to assume that you have already bought into why you should have a blog for your dealership..... Starting a blog is the easy part. The problem is a majority of blogs do not make it to see their 1st birthday because of a lack of vision, process, and content ideas. .... Your future car buyers are going to Google and typing in all the questions they may have about their next vehicle purchase or service. Once Google realizes that you are the authority on these topics you are going to make it rain with the search engines!! ..... Talk to the staff and find out “What are the top 10 questions” customers ask on a regular basis. Do this for sales and service and you will be able to get a list together in no time. ..... Review everything!!! New car comes out.. Review it! New option comes out..Review it (Navigation, Blue Tooth, Iphone App). Online shoppers will add the word “review” to the end of all kinds of search queries. ..... fresh original content
Car Dealer Internet Marketing
So, you have a strong dealership Facebook page...
Why Google+ Business Pages Cannot Be Dismissed
The Three Keys to Automotive SEO Under Penguin
The 6 keys to brand messaging through social media
The Single Most Important Thing Businesses Can Do To Improve Their Search Rankings
What the "Willys Jeep" Post Tells Us About Content Marketing for SEO
Search Engine Optimization is Dying. Wait, No It's Not.
(lack of) Speed Kills as 1 in 4 Abandon Websites that take over 4 Seconds to Load
Virality: The Value of Pinterest for Car Dealers
Leveraging Trends On Your Homepage and Social Media Can Create Buyers
Instead Of Marketing, Businesses Should Be Using Social Media For Customer Support
The 6 Basic Components of Modern Automotive SEO
Twitter is Too Easy to Ignore
Social Business: Why the Automotive Industry Should Be in this Infographic
Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community
Dealer Marketing
Izmo
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Lethargic Academia, Fast Media

Image representing Mendeley as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase
Doctors are stereotypically smart people. But health care sucks when it comes to use of IT. How do you explain that? That also applies to academia. Academics are even more stereotypically smart than doctors. But they lag behind when it comes to use of IT. That is a disservice. Because service is affected.

Mendeley injects some pace into academia with fast, big data
managing documents online is a pretty busy space right now ... Mendeley .... the site has become a big hit with academics and researchers, signing up nearly 2 million members from universities and institutions all over the world, because it allows them to keep tabs on all the research papers, documents and files ..... “The biggest problem in academia is the long waiting time: it can take three to five years from the time you have done research to get it published — all the decisions you make in an academic career are based around that time lag” ....... Between them, the site’s members have uploaded some 260 million documents, representing around 65 million unique research papers and studies — around 50 percent larger than any of the existing commercial databases. By mining those documents and watching activity around them, Mendeley’s able to help institutions understand the trends as they emerge… not years afterwards. ...... get to life-changing discoveries faster .... ResearchGate ... Digital Science
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