I’m sure you are already asking yourself, “Why is he promoting someone else’s content?” Well, the truth is this blog is all about you. I am supposed to be helping you become a better blogger so pointing out phenomenal articles is part of that.
Many of you probably know the blog DOSH DOSH and many of you might not. It doesn’t matter though because you can begin reading it right now. It is one of my favorite blogs ever since I started blogging three years ago.
The problem with these kind of blogs is that they will never go over the same information they’ve talked about before. I get that same feeling when I’m trying to help you become a better blogger. Over the past year I have bookmarked my favorite articles from the Dosh Dosh and I ended up with 18 of them.
If you would have just started to read Dosh Dosh today you probably would not have gone back and read these articles. Like I mentioned before, this blog probably won’t write articles about the same stuff so then you’re stuck missing all these articles. That is exactly why I have created this post. Below are the 18 articles from Dosh Dosh that can make you a better blogger.
He doesn’t write a lot of articles anymore but it seems like he tries to get out one article a week. These articles are still very helpful and even though they might have been written six or eight months ago they still work in the present time. I’ve included the first two paragraphs of each article so you kind of understand what the article is about before you go to the URL.
The 18 Articles:
- 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
- How to Create Digg-Friendly Content: Cracked.com’s Template
- Publishing for Profit and Influence: It’s All About the Passion
- How to Get More Twitter Followers: Some Methods That Work
- Rethinking Blog Comments: Much More Than Just A Quick Way to Get Web Traffic
- Building a Popular Social Media Profile: Seven Essential Characteristics
- How to Become an Authority in Your Niche: Eight Content Development Tactics
- The Art of Propaganda: 7 Common Tactics Used to Influence Behavior
- 48 Social News Websites: A List of General and Niche Social Media Communities
- 16 Effective Strategies to Expand Your Blog’s Reach in 2008
- Stepping Outside Your Niche: How to Reach New Readers and Potential Customers
- Social Media Marketing in a Nutshell
- The Secret to Building a Popular Blog (and Getting Tons of Readers)
- The Smart Way to Get Traffic and Links: Creating a Prospect List for Bloggers
- StumbleUpon Networking: How to Easily Share Content and Build Relationships
- Social Media Marketing Strategy #1: Re-Submitting Linkbaits for Viral Success
- 7 Easy Ways to Get More Weekend Traffic for Your Website
- Reinvesting Your Income to Build Traffic and Authority for Your Website
Twitter is a micro blogging platform which allows you to publish short messages of less than 140 characters through different mediums like IM, cellphones and the web.
It has a social element as well, as it allows users to befriend and monitor each other’s messages or updates. So what you have here is a publishing tool that can be either public and private.
A while ago I wrote about using selective reporting to frame news, grab attention and make your content stand out from the rest of the competition. Now lets looks at creating original content specifically for a social media channel. How do you increase the chances of your article striking a nerve and spreading like wildfire within a specific community?
The answer is simple. I’ve mentioned it before. First of all, you need to start by gathering tactical knowledge on the specific website. Know your audience’s fetishes. Know what they love/hate and know what they talk about. Know what cliques exist within the community. Know what totems, symbols, personalities and ideas are embraced by the general populace.
After maintaining several blogs for a couple of years, learning about web publishing and observing different niches, I have come to the conclusion that success for web publishers mainly relies on how much passion you have for the topic you cover. Not exactly a ground-breaking insight, you might say. But let me explain how I personally came to realize this.
I’ve built quite a few sites throughout my life online and the only ones that remain or thrive are the ones covering topics, for which I have a very deep and strong interest. The other sites gradually slowed down and died because I only had a passing fancy for them.
Darren Rowse recently wrote a series of posts about increasing your Twitter presence, in which he mainly talks about how to use Twitter by adding value in order to increase your Twitter following. While Darren made several good points, I want to give you my perspective on it, which is somewhat different.
You’re interested in increasing your Twitter followers. You want more people reading your messages. It’s not difficult to build a prominent profile but I think it’s important to start with the right understanding. This is the first thing you need to know: It’s not really about how you tweet, what you say or who you talk to but who you are.
A comment left on a popular blog may be viewed by a few hundred people in one day. Multiply that by the lifespan of the blog and you’ll see that a simple comment may say a lot about you. Every blog comment is usually permanent. It’s not just a hyperlink but a long-term representation of your brand.
Too many webmasters view blog commenting as only a traffic or link building strategy. This rigid marketing emphasis has led to certain modes of behavior. For example, one might make the effort to comment exclusively on blogs with nofollow turned off, while using keyword names in order to increase the search engine ranking for one’s website.
If you’re a new or not yet established brand, how should you use social media to build a reputation for yourself?
Apart from making sure your product/website is relevant to the social media channel, it is also useful to participate in social media communities as an end-user or brand representative.
Online content is usually created to express opinions or share information with others. For entrepreneurs and web publishers, content is developed as a means to generate direct/indirect income.
However, one should not only view content as a means to receive immediate benefits like traffic or revenue. It is not just fodder for pageviews but a tool to enhance more abstract factors like reputation, reader trust and peer relationships.
Propaganda is created to influence the minds and actions of people, in order to generate a response that achieves the goal of the propagandist. Politicians and governments often use propaganda to obtain support/compliance for their policies.
Propaganda is similar to marketing/advertising in many ways, particularly in the way messages are selectively formulated to emotionally engage the recipient.
I recently wrote a beginners guide to social news websites and this article follows up on that by offering a list of the social news websites you can use to get information and web traffic.
There are a great deal of social news sites on the internet, sometimes too many. Most of them are dormant and are no longer active, largely because they were poorly marketed and hence, never had an active community of users in the first place.
It’s 2008 and you’re looking forward to growing your blog even more this year. You are eager to build a large readership and maybe even make a full-time income from blogging. You want greater influence and a stronger reputation. What you need is an expansion plan.
Yesterday, I spent some time planning growth strategies for my blogs and noticed that all of these tactics had something in common.
One surefire way to attract new customers and readers is to go outside of your existing niche boundaries. While some individuals are exclusively interested in one or two topics, there are many who have broad interests and will be receptive to your content.
Your website will probably appeal to more visitors than you imagine. Avoid falling into the trap of over-focusing on your niche audience.
I previously talked about the importance of social media marketing and I reckon most of you are interested in learning how to use social media to your website or business’s advantage. So let’s get started.
First of all, we’ll take a look at the central concept which should underlie all your social media marketing efforts. Understanding the big idea behind social media marketing is crucial because it gives you the building blocks you require for guidelines and procedures which drive action.
Breaking into a niche and accumulating critical mass quickly for your blog is not an easy task. While popular blogs in your niche have established brands, it is possible to ’steal’ their mindshare and build a strong readership of your own.
The success of a blog often depends on its audience size. When many people read your blog regularly, your content will potentially be circulated widely, which grows your site faster.
You want links and traffic from some of the bigger bloggers in your niche. You desperately want to promote your content or business because you think you deserve a bigger audience. Perhaps you want to make money online and need all the referral traffic you can get to develop the critical mass needed for success.
The problem is you can’t seem to get anyone to drop you a link. The bloggers ignore your email pitches and don’t write back.
StumbleUpon is a great way to not only share interesting content you come across, but also your opinions on various websites or issues. By thumbing up and reviewing a website, you give it more exposure by increasing the possibility that others will view it as well.
But that’s not the only way to share a website that you like; you can also use the toolbar to send any webpage directly to both your StumbleUpon friends and other non users as well.
As you might already know, link baits are content, tools or webpages specifically created to pull in links and traffic from other websites and popular social media websites like Digg or Reddit.
Creating an effective link bait can take a lot of time and effort and I think initial control over the distribution process is very important. You want someone who has influence or connections to submit or promote your link bait to the social community you are targeting.
Web traffic for most websites drop during the weekend because less people are using the internet to look for information or checking their favorite websites for new content.
This is a natural and inevitable occurrence and a corresponding dip in traffic figures or sales is nothing to be alarmed about.
An easy way to expand your website’s reach and audience size is to market it extensively within your target market. Building your site reputation and getting traffic to your website can help to make your site profitable from early on.
I’ve previously written a list of paid advertising models you can use for your website and now I’ll like to expand on the topic of reinvesting whatever income you’ve earned to promote your site.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Very good article DOSH DOSH is one of my fave blogs
Those articles that you’ve mentioned are really interesting.
I don’t think its so bad to highlight the articles of someone else that have been written and are very helpful. It is definitely better to give the person who came up with it the credit than just rip off another blogger like most MMO bloggers do!
Chelles last blog post..5 Ways to Change Someone
This is a great article that I even gave it a little digg love for you! What a creative way to create content from another blog that has already done and done it so well. Very clever, and it seems like a lot people have really enjoyed it as well. It’s full of quality information that to be honest not to many can say it better or rewrite it!
Erics last blog post..$200 For Being a Commentator It’s Just That Simple – Keep it SEO Simple
Dosh Dosh is an awesome blog and it is amazing how far they have come without barely any promotion or competitions or anything. This shows how well good solid content can be for marketing your blog. This is a really great list of articles which I know anyone would appreciate. I am going to dive through them this week. Thanks for the heads up
This is one of my favorite blogs to read also. He is such a good writer and that’s what makes me like it’s blog. I do think it makes a difference as to whether someone will read your blog by your writing style. I know a lot of bloggers are telling people that your writing style does not matter but it just proves that your writing style can really help you out.