I will be making the changes as I write the posts (not as they are published… I usually write posts a little ahead of time).

The first part included adding a newsletter/email subscription form.  Over at Problogger, it was their first step in revitalizing you blog for 2012.

I already had a MailChimp (affiliate link) account, so I didn’t spend any time doing that.  I spent about 15 minutes creating a list on MailChimp for this site, installing the MailChimp Plug-in for WordPress and getting all of the settings right.

Image via CrunchBase

At MailChimp:

• After creating a MailChimp account, go to “Lists” on the menu at the top of the page.
• Click the big red “Create List” button.
• Don’t worry too much about the sign-up form… you aren’t really going to be using it, just make sure you have the info boxes on it that you want.
• Mouse-over “Account” on the top menu.
• Move down and click on “API Keys & Authorized Apps”
• Push that blue button that says “Add A Key”

Image via Wikipedia

In another tab, open your WordPress blog…

• Go to Plug-ins > Add New
• Search “MailChimp”
• Install the MailChimp plug-in.
• Under settings, the first thing it will want is the API Key… copy/paste it from MailChimp.
• Select the right mail list from the drop-down.
• Edit the settings so that you have the text you want and the widget looks the way you want it to look.
• Go to Appearance > Widgets to install the widget in the location you desire.
• Open up your site in a new tab… adjust the widget and settings as needed.

Like I said, it only took about 15 minutes for me to do all of that.  It might take you a little longer, or you might be able to knock it out a little faster… I hadn’t done it for a while, and had to stumble around and take a few bad turns.

Good luck kicking off your email list… and while you are here, why don’t you sign up for mine.

Related articles

• New Guides for a New Year (mailchimp.com)
• MailChimp Doubles Forever Free Program – Send up to 12,000 emails per month for free (prweb.com)
• New MailChimp features: video-friendly RSS emails, discount for AlterEgo users, static segments (mailchimp.com)

Image via Wikipedia

My pal Mike Mueller is a FaceBook Whiz.  He has been all over the new Timeline feature from FaceBook… even though most people don’t even have a clue what it is yet.

Whether you are a fan of it or not, the new Timeline is coming.  You might as well get used to it and use it to its best advantage.  Mike has a few tips on his blog, AreWeConnected.com, and I’m sure there will be more coming in the future as he delves deeper into its capabilities.

Mike has a lot of other great takes on the Social Media sphere… as well as a great portfolio of FaceBook Pages he has designed for clients.  He’s also a huge hockey fan and a great guy.

One of the things I whole-heartedly agree with agree with Mike about is the use (on non-use) of FaceBook Profiles as a sales tool.  FaceBook’s Terms of Service specifically address using profiles as a marketing tool.  In a word, don’t.  That is the reason that they offer FREE FaceBook Pages for businesses.  In surfing around through a few profiles, it didn’t take long for me to run across a few that were basically real estate agent billboards.

So, check out Mike’s post… check out the new Timeline Profile feature and dive into the future.

Related articles

• Expanding Your Sphere: The Timeline (areweconnected.com)
• Facebook Timeline is Here… and it’s Coming for Businesses (progressivemediaconcepts.com)
• FaceBook Timeline: Just a Question of Time (bayintegratedmarketing.wordpress.com)

Humor, shock and amazement are the ingredients… but the exact recipe is pretty tough to figure out.

Click the pic to go to Voltier Digital's post on Going Viral.

I don’t have a relationship with Voltier Digital… I just saw the graphic and thought it would be a cool share.

Image via Wikipedia

You can’t get there without a map.  And even a poor map is often better than no map at all.  The map DOES need to be accurate enough to show you where things are in relation to one another… but the scale can be off.

Maybe you can think of your blogging/social media map as a kind of treasure map.  At the end, you will get the desired outcome from your efforts.

There are a few steps that you have to go through to get there.

• Figure out what you want.  And “money” is not the right answer.  That is a byproduct.  Some examples might be finding new business or expanding market share.
• What is the best path to take to get there… work the path backwards.
• If we are looking for new clients, maybe we would get them from marketing to an expanded email newsletter list.
• In order to expand the email list, we need people to opt in…
• To get the opt-ins, we need to have compelling content with a clear call to action.
• Since we have compelling content, we need to make sure that we are getting it in front of people that have an interest.  That would likely be through SEO and Social Media.

That is a pretty broad, unfocused view…  And several of those steps might actually involve a map of their own… or several steps.  The important part is to take a little time to think about it, and maybe even draw a map.  Mind-Mapping software is a pretty cool option.  I often use FreeMind, which is an Open Source option.  But a sheet of graph paper and a pencil might be just the set of tools to capture what you need (you can concentrate on WHAT you are doing rather than on HOW to do it).

The important thing is to actually do it…

Related articles

• Your Step-By-Step Tutorial On How To Start Off Your Own Email Marketing Campaign (thediamondringreview.com)
• Top 15 Ways to Build Your Subscriber List (townsvilletony.wordpress.com)
• How to Use Big Business Finance Principles to Grow Your Email List (problogger.net)
• How to Get Your Opt-In Subscriber List to the Next Level. (leccoworkshop.com)

The right tools...

Did you find them?

• Your winning smile
• Your firm handshake
• Your business card

Yep, 20 million tech tools out there, and most of them are free.  Some of them are even viral, but the absolute best ways to promote your blog are probably right there with you, right now.

For most of us, the people we want to read our blogs the most are actually the people we might interact with “in real life” (IRL).  They are local and you might even see them daily or weekly or monthly.

Walking up to a person, flashing your winning smile, shaking their hand with your firm handshake and handing them your business card, with a short explanation of what your site is about is WAY more likely to create a new reader than almost any other marketing you can do.  But there is another benefit, as well.  The cool side benefit is that the person you meet is also more likely to share your site with their friends… if they find compelling content.

I guess it often comes back to that compelling content, doesn’t it?

Related articles

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• Promoting your blog on a limited budget (webcontentxpress.net)
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• How to Drive Followers to Your Blog (jackofallblogs.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Big question in the blogosphere…

Should blog comments be open or closed?

The argument for open comments is basically that it allows consumers (readers) to interact with you through your blog.  It is a very strong and compelling argument.  And while most blogs will NOT get an abundance of comments, tossing them without deep thought would likely be a mistake.

The argument for closed comments revolves around spam prevention and keeping undesirable commentors at bay.  And I have had my share of both…  In fact, on my Active Rain blog, Gwinnett Garage Guy, I have been closing comments for the last few weeks.  And I maintain a spam detection service for my WordPress blogs.  Active Rain has internal monitors to detect and kill spam.  There are also issues that can arise with negative comments.

Image via Wikipedia

Personally, I fall on the open comments side of the debate.  I think it is very important to allow readers as many avenues as possible to interact.  However, I am beginning to close comments on old posts that get spam comments.  I have had negative comments, and find that transparency is the best option…

What do you think?

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• Is Spam Evil Enough Yet? (i.doubt.it)
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• Over 1,000 Spam Comments In 24 Hours! (friendswhocare.us)
• Why Spam Commenters Are Better At Marketing Than You (hubspot.com)
• The Simple Math of Blog Comments (hubspot.com)

Image by kenjonbro via Flickr

Back in the mid 1990s, people started to say that you HAD to have a website.  So, you hired someone to code up a few pages and it was good…  You were done. 

Ten years later, those same people were telling you that you HAD to have a blog.  The cool thing was that you didn’t necessarily have to hire anyone, you could just toss one up.  So you did it… and then it kind of languished after the first couple of months because you didn’t get any direct business from it.  You were done.

A couple of years later, you finally started hearing from some of your peers that that blogging thing actually worked… so you dusted it off and started posting.  You were done. 

Seemingly, 30 minutes later, the consensus was that you needed a Twitter account.  But before you could call it done, you needed a FaceBook Fan Page… then you needed a YouTube Channel… and a Yelp presence…

Now, if you aren’t on Google+, you are just wasting time with the rest of your internet program… or so say “the people”.

When does it end?

Does it end?

Image by TheMBG via Flickr

Nope.  It doesn’t.  Technology and “what’s cool” keep marching on.  There is always a new site and there is always a new way to engage consumers.  There are always new channels and there always will be.

What’s worse… or better… is that they are unfolding faster than EVER before.  Newspaper dominated for centuries.  Radio dominated for generations.  TV dominated for decades.  Websites dominated for years.  Now we are down to weeks…  Maybe days.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to try to ride EVERY wave that breaks on the shore.  In fact, it means that you shouldn’t.  A hundred years ago, you couldn’t go big if you weren’t in the newspaper.  It would take a while before the next wave came in.  Now we have waves breaking constantly.

Pick your battles.  Figure out what you are going to be able to do… alone or with your team.  Learn ways to automate without destroying engagement.  Aggregation and Syndication can be your friends.  Link and leverage your networks.  Pick your battles. 

Image via Wikipedia

You aren’t done.

But you never really were…

Related articles

• How to Squeeze More Lead Gen Juice From Your Social Presence (hubspot.com)
• Social Media Benefits (honesty556.wordpress.com)
• How to Increase Web Traffic with Facebook Page Promotion (jasonbartholme.com)
• 8 Creative Ways to Customize Your Facebook Business Page (hubspot.com)
• Social Media is a Waste of Time (e1evation.com)

Image via Wikipedia

On Monday, September 26th, I am hosting a “Lunch & Learn” at the NAMAR (Northeast Atlanta Metro Association of REALTORS®) offices in Duluth.  We will be talking about blogging for real estate professionals.

As part of the discussion, we will be covering a variety of topics, time permitting.  Among them…

• Blog Platforms
• Active Rain
• WordPress.com (remote-hosted)
• WordPress.org (self-hosted)
• Posterous
• Other platforms
• Content Creation
• Coming up with Topics
• Video
• Focus
• Details
• Conversion
• Plug-ins
• Hosting Companies
• DiY?
• Social Media Outposts
• Analytics

With only about 60-75 minutes to get it all done, there are a LOT of things to talk about.  We also want the specifics of the session to be determined by the people that show up to ask questions.  There is a good chance that we aren’t going to hit all of the individual bullet points.  In effect, we are going to take enough information to fill a three hour CE class and condense it down to around an hour.  Not only that, but we are going to allow time for discussion.

In order to make sure that the information gets out, I will be posting up follow-up posts AND hopefully kick out a mini-eBook… for free.  If you aren’t able to attend the NAMAR Lunch & Learn, it should still be a good resource… but if you ARE able to attend, it will be a great extension of what we talked about.

One last thing…  We are calling this prebarcamp.  If you aren’t familiar with rebarcamp Atlanta, check it out here.

Related articles

• Cha cha cha Changes… (lanebailey.com)
• WordPress.com or WordPress.org? (wpdrivenbusiness.wordpress.com)
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Image via Wikipedia

Do you hound over your site statistics?  Do you look at them to see where your traffic is coming from and which sources are the most fruitful?  If you aren’t, you should be. 

If you are using your website to attract business, you HAVE to track your traffic.  Just at with a traditional store, you track ads to see which ones are effective, with internet traffic you have to see which outposts and stratigies bring the traffic to your site.  you also need to track the quality of different traffic sources…  When people come from site “X”, are they sticking around your site or bouncing?  Does your search engine traffic bounce?  If you are selling a product or service, which sources provide sales or leads?

There are some great tools out there to accomplish these goals and know more about what is actually working for you.  Google Analytics is free and VERY powerful.  Personally, I use Clicky Analytics.  I find it easier to navigate and understand.  They have a free and premium level.  I have included an affiliate link.  Either of these tools will let you drill down to see what the traffic on your site is doing.  With Clicky’s premium service, you can literally follow an individual user around your site to see exactly what they are doing.

Just like with a traditional store, knowing what your customers want helps you to provide it.  Analytics provide the data about what your site visitors want…  And you can’t optimize for search engines without knowing what searches people are using to get to your sites.

Related articles

• What to Do with Your Google Analytics Data (singlegrain.com)
• Get Social Data Through Google Analytics (tjantunen.com)
• Beginners Guide to Google Analytics: Part I (problog.weddingwire.com)