Sunday, February 05, 2012

7 Powerful Ways to Increase Engagement on your Little Blog


So you're blogging and want to make a little extra money. It won't happen unless and until you begin to treat your blog as if it were a business!

Blogger Fabrizio Van Marciano recently published an article directed toward "Business Bloggers" - I've re-purposed that advice - I stripped down the essentials to points that little mister and ms bloggers should consider.

Know your Audience :::
First of all, there's no need to stop your EC dropping or bloghopping or whatever daily engagements or rituals you perform while you are online. But ask yourself "who am I trying to attract to my blog?" If there are a bunch of bloggers in that list, go examine carefully their blogs and read their posts so that you can determine what service YOUR blog can be to THEM. What could you present on your blog that would attract them in the way of widgets and interactive or affiliate programs? Certainly not things they already have on their blogs!

Make sure that the posts you write present new information or a new or controversial opinion or point-of-view on subjects THEY constantly write about and express interest in!

Fabrizio's take on that is "Don’t just use your blog to write about news and developments about your business although it’s good to do this, but use the blog at your advantage to get your readers talking about your products or services a lot more."

Fabrizio advises "one of the best ways to get feedback from your audience is to create a poll." - there are plenty of "free polls" on the Net that you can drop right in to your template no matter what blog platform you're on (maybe unless it's LJ, which is fussy!)

Contests and Giveaways ::: For the smaller, C-List blogger, and the newbie blogger, I'd advise keeping your distance from contests. Don't hold them unless you really have a valuable prize to offer. And if you get under 100 visits a day from the same people day after day, you need to encourage them to spread the word about your contest to others OUTSIDE your blog circle! This can be accomplished via posts on thier blogs and more effectively via their facebook, G+ and twitter accounts!

Unless you have no analog life, avoid the contests that want you to blog, tweet and facebook yourself and your links to death. You'll end up turning a lot of people off. Leave those contests to the Semi-pro and Pro Blog "gurus."

Let me add: ONLY if you are someone with a LOT of time - you're not going to jeopardize your studies or get your boss at work mad at you, or sit your ass at home on the computer when you should be with your family - if you have time, you can go ahead and partake in those social-media intensive contests.

Embed Videos ::: on YOUR little blog? ONLY if they are original content YOU created or uploaded!

Reply to All Comments! ::: YES, YES and YES! Before you do, there's something you should knwo about comments, and you'll find it here. Don't read on without reading that link first.

Make Sharing Easy ::: Stick with Fabrizio's words verbatim "No blog post should go without the tools needed to share content on the web, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and StumbleUpon etc. Ensure that they are visible as well and not small and hidden somewhere in your post…"

Give Praise ::: Giving another blogger a mention or praise is a great way to get others to recognize and interact with you and your blog. Nice words and abundant links!

Buy NO eBooks! ::: SAVE YOUR MONEY! Most are B.S.!

Here is a nutshell recap outline of the things you should do to increase engagement on your small personal blog or your C-list or (hopefully) money-making blog.

  • Keep doing what you're doing if it makes you happy.
  • Know your audience!
  • Back away form Contests & Giveaways.
  • Only embed original videos.
  • Reply to all comments!
  • Make sharing easy!
  • Give praise!
  • Don't buy any eBooks!

Now, if you have any tips or suggestions of your own you'd like to add, put them in the comments section below.


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All God's Children Gotta Have Their Freedom

Israeli soldier stepping on poor little Palestinian girl? Not quite...

(IT IS LIKELY) WE WILL GET FOOLED AGAIN ::: Case in point, this viral image which is not at all what it was presented as...
Blogger Wesley Muhammad posted it. He says he lifted it from someone else's news feed. Turns out that the image was tweeted last year in French, claiming to be from Syria's demonstrations and the tweeter begged for (and got) re-tweets. To the rescue, truth-seeking Arab blogger Omar Dakhane found the original photo (here), which is neither from Syria nor Israel but was snapped during a skit at a street theater performance in Bahrain!

Which bringe us to three essential posts about religion that you "must" read ::: The first is from Omar, entltled "Freedom of Belief and Religion" --- here's a snippet:
"The concept of freedom of religion and freedom of thought is misunderstood by many in Arab and Muslim countries; often they do not understand it at all. Typically freedom of religion represents the freedom of extremists to express and impose their radical point of view without affording the right to those whom disagree with their particular stream of Islam, those who wish to convert to another faith, or those who wish to embrace atheism." (more)
The second article is from the Michigan Telehone Blog, entitled "Why do people join fundamentalist religions? And why do they stay in them?" and last but not least from this humble weblog, "Mankind's Search For God."

Blog Comments: 7 Scenarios


Uh-oh! Thanks a lot, twitter! Now bloggers must begin intensely watching what commenters are saying!
There is NO REASON why you should allow comments to appear on your blog without moderating them!


Since the New Year began it seems like every blog which accepts guest-posts has an article
purporting to serve up advice for better blogging and monetization. Trouble is, these
otherwise noble writers have mistaken comments for an indicator and perhaps an influencer of
traffic and interactivity, if not popularity! That point-of-view, is, of course, flawed.

Comments are available on blogs for readers' convenience. They are not and never were intended to be a reflection of a blog or blogger's credibility or popularity. Matter of fact, one A-List blogger deliberately closed commenting on her blog for TWO YEARS! It didn't effect the strength of her words or the measure of her popularity by one iota.

Here are the 7 scenarios involving comments:

(1) COMMENTS AS A FORUM - I've seen this in action on LaShawn Barber's old political blog.
Her comments area was like the webforums you still see from time to time. It was not unusual for her to receive more than 100 comments on any given post! In the the forum for discussion model — LaShawn's readers asked questions, provided insight, and offered their own commentary. Later, when LaShawn changed her blog to one more personal (with music as a major topic) comments fell off to near zero.

You'll still see the "forum" style in action on major newspaper blogs whenever a
controversial story is published. That brings us to:

(2) STRONG OPINIONS - If you write about a topic that touches a raw nerve you will get
comments (unless nobody reads your blog - this is one of the best ways to determine how much "klout" you really have - oh, and your "regular" band of commenters don't count!)

(3) HOPING FOR TRAFFIC BACK - here's what CommentLuv is all about. There's even an app that sniffs out blogs using CommentLuv so your own URL can get a free ride. And that's what you really want: traffic back!

(4) GETTING BROWNIE POINTS - One of the latest blog fads involves a "contest" where people are judged on how many links they can rack up by commenting on other blogs and leaving reference to a particular contest or article URL. While you might be safe from being "banned" for now, there's a geek in Israel working on an app to reject and ban commenters who are associated with contests - he's setting it up the way anti-virus developers scan the net for trojans. Once installed on your PC it will update itself automatically to protect you against blog contestants out to win prizes.

(5) HOPING TO BE INVITED TO GUEST POST - Like the proverbial "snowball in hell," a great
majority of guest posters are poor writers - for some, English is a second language. I don't think you'll want to put up a guest post from someone who writes "I big blogger people read me daily" (that's an actual snip from a comment on a blog) as a guest-post on your blog anytime soon. (Or maybe you would, just for laughs. Tag it "humour"...)

(6) WANNA GET BACKLINK FOR SEO - there are also programs like "Drop My Links" that seek out blogs you can comment on, with the promise you'll build your blog's SEO and PR. They are so obvious! When I see comments like these I strip off the URL before publishing the comment!

(7) CIRCLE OF FRIENDS - blogs with these are easy to spot. It's the same 7 or 8 bloggers
(some of them with multiple blogs and multiple identities) trading comments back and forth
on the same 9 or 10 blogs - they usually give one another "first commenter" "best blogger"
and other ridiculous "awards" - outsiders are rarely allowed to break into their little worlds, and if they do, are carefully policed.

MORAL ::: Comments do not make or break any blog or website. I've seen blogs with ZERO
comments that get a million hits a day. I've seen blogs with 15 comments that get 12 hits a day.

Blogger BRENT SIMMONS has THE LAST WORD.

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Saturday, February 04, 2012

Buffalo Chicken Dip

This was a HUGE hit at my place last year on Superbowl Sunday... everyone has been asking me how to whip up a batch of my spectacular Buffalo Chicken Dip... it's mouth-watering and BONELESS... so here it is...Davey's Award-Winning Superbowl Buffalo Chicken Dip.

Prep time: 5 min
Cook Time: 44 min

Ingredients
1 1/4 pounds of fresh chicken breast, cooked then shredded*
2 (8 oz) packages of low-fat cream cheese, softened
1 cup of "name brand" Ranch dressing - NOT The cheap stuff!
3/4 cup Frank's Red Hot pepper sauce
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
Sprinkle to taste with Celery Salt
1 1/2 cups shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese

Accessories may include:
  • 1 bunch celery, cleaned and cut into 4 inch pieces
  • warm sourdough bread
  • assortment of various crackers, tortilla chips etc.

Heat your chicken thouroughly in a skillet over medium heat, with the hot sauce.
Stir in the cream cheese and ranch dressing.
Cook, stirring until well blended and warm.
Mix in half of the shredded cheddar cheese and transfer the mixture to a slow cooker (or a pot on "low").
Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top, cover and continue cooking on low until hot and bubbly.

At your discretion, add chopped scallions as topping!

Your guests will love my buffalo chicken dip and it will be lots less messy than serving buffalo wings themselves!

* I save the white meat from making Chicken Soup and use that! Store-bought rotisserie chicken is another option!

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