Blog Flux
We have just included our blog in BloxFlux’s directory. Click the chicklet and see where we rank and/or add your site to be listed.
Meeting in Person
Blogging and the interaction of social communities is the foundation to the blogosphere’s success. But one thing that doesn’t happen to often is meeting other bloggers face-to-face and only recently have I begun to get out there and professionally socialize with other bloggers in the community.
I have met most of the founders from ActiveRain and one from Social Media Systems but haven’t extended it more due to work and other obligations. But on Thursday the 17th, I had the opportunity to meet up with a blogger from Las Vegas News blog for lunch while spending some time in Las Vegas. It gave us more time to ask questions and pursue discussions in a shorter time frame than what usually happens in the blogosphere.
Social networking is nothing new but blogging has given people another avenue to connect on and I encourage anyone who has taken up blogging to get connected to also get out and meet other bloggers face-to-face. Start small by asking someone to a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks and let the conversation begin.
Social Bookmarks
Today I have been busy working on inserting social bookmarks on our blog and after tons of trial and error I found one that worked great, though pictures would have been nice, download.
Update: Social Bookmarks w/ Images
Social Bookmarking is an easy way for bloggers to save all their favorite posts using a variety of applications. They can be found at the bottom of every post and some of the most popular are Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsvine, Reddit and Stumbleupon.
Why are these a important items to have on a blog? One they give a way for people to save posts and second, the big one, that they assist in building quality backlinks from many sources.
Saving Posts: Saving posts, or submitting them to news readers, builds upon the social networking of blogging. The interaction between website and user is taken to another level where users can rate, to encourage readership, or burry, to discourage readership, of posts.
Quality Backlinks: Having users submit posts to news readers a blogger has the potential to achieve thousands of backlinks in a very short period of time, for example Digg.  If a blogger A breaks news, or has a really excellent written blog, and many people Digg it then blogger A will gain a link to their post from all the Digger’s profile pages. Getting a thousand links from Digg is every bloggers dream.
Take some time to add social bookmarks to the bottom of your blog and you’ll find it a nice little bonus when links come in.
Do you Squidoo?
Squidoo.com is a social networking site that allows users to create free lenses which was discussed in Quality Backlinks part 1. TW Resource Group has been working on its small business seo lens and it is coming along nicely but still pretty plain. Squidoo has a different feel compared to most social networking sites since it doesn’t employ a blog feature but uses modules to add content, images and links.
Lenses are an excellent way for small business owners to get more exposure for the business. Squidoo has gotten a lot of attention since its launch and no wonder since it was built by Seth Godin, marketing guru. Lens have a solid seo foundation to them enabling them to rank really well for highly competitive keywords. One of our clients, Barnett Associates Real Estate, LLC, uses lens to spread the word on their local real estate market and has gotten excellent results, with some hard work, in just a few months.
If you don’t have a lens yet just sign up and start one today.
Social Network and being a Featured Blog
Blogging has SEO benefits that can give leveraging power to a blog or website trying to come up in the blogosphere but there is a benefit that has yet to be discussed here and that is being a featured blog. This blog stems from some news that reached me just a few hours ago. My personal blog, Goingbigger, has just become a featured blog for the third time by a major network.
The blog is housed on the social networking site of MSN Spaces and it’s approaching it two year anniversary quicker than I thought, especially when I remember how it was when it was created. MSN Spaces is the social networking site that is similar to MySpace but the difference lies in the construction of the Space with tech gadgets and SEO usability. Well the first time the Space was featured was on FoxSports.com one week prior to Superbowl XL for my attendance, blogging and uploading images of Seattle Seahawks game in which I attended. Then it was picked up by the MSN Spaces team for the same thing for Superbowl XL.
Being a featured blog gave the site exposure only dreamed of, in my opinion, and drove large amounts of traffic to the site and generated loads of comments highly relevant to the posts. Now the site has just become a featured blog, again, on MSN Spaces Live homepage under the category What’s Your Story that is halfway down the page.
So what am I alluding to you maybe wondering and it is if a blogger works hard enough and long enough there site is going to get picked up and featured by some major websites.
Being a Featured Blog (s) (er) lends itself to massive amounts of benefits that are not surface level.
First: A featured blog gets PR passed to it from the site that is hosting the feature.
Second: A featured blog gets large amounts of traffic from a major portal.
Third: A featured blog can gain new readers and subscriptions.
These three items help to encourage a blog to become a authority blog in which gains high search engine rankings and continued traffic. As a blogger it is quite an honor to have such a large site feature a blog because starting out each blog is a small fish is a pond that is exponential growing and content is always being added (this blog is included in that category being less than one month old).
So how a blog can become or reach this type of recognition? For now I will touch on the main three principals of consistency, interaction and time.
Consistency: A blog is only valuable if and only if it is regularly updated. Some recommend at least once a week strategy but I go for the daily position myself. Posting daily trains (might not be the right word) people as well search engines to visit on a highly regular basis to look for new information. If a blog is not regularly updated then people and search engines go else where and that is not good for the blogger.
Interaction: Get involved in the blogging community by reading and leaving worth while comments on other’s blogs. These don’t have to be blogs in the same network like MSN Spaces, MySpace or ActiveRain but other blogs that are stand alone domains (ex: www.twresourcegroup.com) or parts of other networks like FaceBook, Ning or Squidoo. Blogging is social activity in which participates need to engage in otherwise their blog will die.
Time: Don’t expect to start a new blog up and have it become a featured blog or have massive amounts of comments on it. It takes time, relative as it may be, and being patient will pay off, even if you don’t agree just try and see what types of results the blog gets.
Being part of social networks and achieves the honor of having a featured blog is something that will pay long-term dividends that won’t be actualized until the statistics show up in the results.