Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

From blogging to eBooks

By Greg on October 10th, 2011 4 Comments

If you are not aware, our SeededBuzz community includes writers who have published eBooks. In fact, this article was inspired after reading a Seed planted by Joseph Rinaldo over at Read Rinaldo . He published the eBook “A Spy At Home” which you can download from Amazon.com for $1.99.

Why should you write an eBook?

When you hear the term eBook, you might automatically think of electronic versions of published full-length novels that you can download to your Kindle or iPad. However, eBooks can also be the equivalent to pamphlets that are informational and cover specific items. It is the latter that this article focuses on.

EBooks are a natural extension of your website. You’ve already established a following because people enjoy what you have to say and respect your opinion, so why not put that into a format that can reach others? Let’s spend a moment to see what an eBook can do for you.

Identify you as a credible authority on a given topic: You have spent months, if not years, building your website focused around your niche topic. In that time, you may have written 20 very popular posts that are constantly drawing visitors. This popularity shows that your readers value your opinion.

By taking those same points and compiling them into a single eBook, you can begin to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. For starters, you become a published author – something that many do not attempt to become. Secondly, your eBook becomes a reference material for those who would rather trust an eBook than simply a blog article. And lastly, with an eBook that mirrors your most popular articles, you create credibility to your leadership within your niche, which can lead to increased readership and branding.

Expanding on your topic: In many cases, online visitors tend to have an attention span to read about 500 – 700 words before moving on to the next article of interest. Consciously or not, bloggers tend to write within these boundaries (the average of the five most recent Seeds is 492 words.), making it a challenge to fully cover a topic in detail before losing your reader. With an eBook, however, the reader is already someone who will put in the added time to read a larger section of text.

With an eBook, you can not only cover the content that was in your popular posts, but you can further expand into the “nuts and bolts” behind your topic. In turn, your eBook becomes a practical reference tool for the readers who are looking for the detailed information, rather than a blog post that only scratches the surface of the topic. Not only does this help your readers to better understand your niche, but – as noted above – leads to identifying yourself as an authority on the topic(s).

Reaching a broader audience: How do you achieve your goal by creating a larger audience to your site? One thing you can do is write an eBook and upload it. If you upload it to your site, encourage your readers to download the file and share it with their friends (word-of-mouth advertising can be more successful than paid advertising). Another option is to upload it to some of the free eBook hosting sites, such as Lulu.com. This is a great way to reach audiences that typically do not read blogs.

Return on your investment: Beyond simply increasing your readership, eBooks can also lead to an increase in site revenue. If you happen to monetize your website, you can realized increased revenue through CPM advertising, affiliate marketing, as well as creating a larger pool of reader e-mail addresses. With CPM (cost per mile) advertising, the increased in viewership results in increased page impressions, meaning that your site will receive more revenue.

If you participate in affiliate marketing, you can include your personalized links into your eBook, directing the reader to your advertisers’ websites. If the reader of the eBook has already accepted you as an authority on the topic you are writing about, then they might be willing to sign up for whatever site you are directing them to more so than simply displaying the link directly on your website.

The last point would be the reader e-mail addresses. Depending on the type of website you are running, direct marketing via e-mail addresses (as through newsletters, special announcements, etc) can be a major source of revenue. By having readers register with your site in order to obtain your eBook, you create a larger pool of addresses for you to build your customer base. And since e-mails can be forwarded, the potential for continued growth is limitless.

This is only four reasons why you should consider creating an eBook to see if it is right for you and your site. For those of you that are interested, in my next article, I will provide you tips on “how” to go about creating the eBook. If you have already created one, please share your experiences with the rest of the community.

Exploring Google+

By Greg on August 14th, 2011 2 Comments

Google made a ‘buzz’ in June with the release of their new service Google+ (or Google Plus, if you wish). This direct competitor to social media giant Facebook was released in Beta form to existing Google members, with only a few accounts made available. If you weren’t one of the few to receive access to the site directly from Google, you could gain access by an invite. Even with this limited access, Google+ (Beta) membership spiked to 20 Million within three weeks.

Google+ is the second attempt by the internet search engine giant to break into the social media world (currently dominated by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook). Their first attempt (Google Wave) was met with initial interest, but soon died off – Google eventually transferred control of Wave over to Apache Software Foundation – and their second attempt (Google Buzz) failed to make a buzz. Both services had promise, but neither lived up to their expectations. Will Google+ succeed with the others failed? Let’s take a moment to explore the major features available in the Beta version of Google+.

Circles: Circles is a way for you to manage your contacts. You can easily create groups for friends, family, business, and more by simply using your mouse to “drag” your contacts into the different categories. Why would you want to organize your contacts in such a fashion? When you go to post a new message, link, or other media on your Stream (Google’s version of the Wall), Google+ requires you to identify who is able to see the post. In the field below your message, you will see default text reading “+Add circles or people to share with.” Clicking on that text will bring up a menu listing all of your circles for you to identify by whom you want your post to be shared.

Images: Photos are a way for us to communicate to viewers in a way that words sometimes can’t. How can you describe a particular sunset in a way to create a clear image in the minds of your audience? Google+, like other social media sites, solves this problem for you by allowing you to upload and organize your photos into albums. Just like in posting text, you can choose who can and cannot view your images as you upload them to your profile. However, unlike other sites, Google allows you to add effects to your images without needing to process your photo initially through a secondary graphic-editing program.

Hangouts: This is an area where Google can take on Skype. With Hangouts, you can identify that you are online to chat (or “hang out”) with your friends in a video chat. When a session is established, up to 10 of your friends in your circles can log in and join in the fun. The interface has one large video screen and 9 smaller video screens below it – all live. As the participants talk, the software recognizes who is talking and displays their video in the large video screen area. When the next person talks, the prior speaker has his or her video moved to the bottom bar, and the new speaker is elevated to the large viewing area.
Sparks: To me, this is one of the more interesting features within Google+. With Sparks, any article or subject that you “like” is received by Google and returns articles or websites that contain related content for your viewing. So, if you were to like a site like SeededBuzz, Sparks might return to you other sites about social networking, blogging, or writing (for example).

There are other differences between Google+ and Facebook as well. For example, Google+ is an “overlay” on the existing Google platform. Once you have a Google+ account and are logged in, a black navigation bar appears at the top of any Google page notifying you if you have any new messages, as well as provides you quick access to your account. However, unlike Facebook, Google+ lacks the private messaging functions as well as the “page” concept that existing Facebook users enjoy.

For SeededBuzz users, I feel that you can benefit from using Google+ for a few reasons. IF (and I say “if” because of Google’s past record) Google+ continues to grow in popularity:

1) It is safe to say that Google will weigh articles and websites linked within Google+ higher than those from Facebook. So while you are informing your viewers and your friends about your latest article, you are also giving your site that additional bump in popularity within Google’s algorithm.
2) With the “+1” option built into Google/Google+, the more pluses your articles and website receives, the higher your articles and site will rank in Google search results. By sharing those articles within Google+, the odds are your readers and followers will be more likely to plus up your content.
3) By creating Circles for your targeted audience, you can better inform your readers and viewers about your latest articles or website updates.
4) When sharing links to your own site through Google+, your odds increase that your content will be shared with others through Sparks. Also, you can track who is commenting or referencing your brand name by searching for it through Sparks as well.

I encourage any of you who have started using Google+ to share your experiences with others within the community. Any tips you can provide to help your fellow bloggers to maximize their viewership will be appreciated. I do have an account with the site if you are interested in being invited so you can explore the features listed above. Simply leave a comment below and I will use your provided e-mail address to send you an invite.

4 Great Blogging Tips for a Successful Blogging Experience

By Guest on May 15th, 2010 No Comments

One of the great benefits of writing and communicating with the world is the endless opportunity it brings and the thousands of things you can do to get better and better. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re blogging that will help you be a great blogger and help you and your readers get the most out of your blogging experience.

1. Choose a niche

One of the most important things you can do for yourself as a blogger is to choose a niche. Many beginner bloggers, and even many who fancy themselves intermediate or advanced ones but wonder why they don’t get the results they want, try to appeal to everyone and fail. They end up with a watered down, non-authoritative, hodgepodge of randomness. Effectively, what will be achieved is the opposite of what is intended – not wanting to alienate any potential readers.

If a person is interested in technology and comes to your blog for a great article, but then the next article is about gardening, and the next is about cars…no matter how great your technology article was, the reader isn’t going to be back.

People only stick around for what applies to and interests them. There is enough information out on the web that they can easily go elsewhere for what they’re looking for – and you’d better believe, they’ll be going to someone who has established themselevs in their niche. And they’ll keep going back, again and again.

You will, by nature, have to exclude some people who have different interests or priorities when you blog. This can be hard to do. But there are billions of people out there, many of whom want to read your stuff about the topic both you and they are most interested in. Let the others go. It will be ok.

2. Be an expert

This naturally follows suit with choosing a niche. When you choose one area to focus on, you can teach everything there is to know about it – or at least as much as you can learn about it. Do this with quality and consistency, and you will eventually emerge as an expert in that field. If you genuinely seek to educate yourself and your readers, you will gain credibility and authority. Building your name, reputation, and voice online has begun.

3. Find your voice

Once you’ve got the ball rolling, you can probably expect some bumps and bruises along the way to figuring out how you want to be heard and what you want to sound like. A new blogger can expect unexpected and random criticisms to come out of the blue occasionally, which can be very discouraging when you are trying your best to do well. Use these moments to test your passions and your character.

Take well-meaning and well-said feedback into consideration. Try to be forgiving and understanding of lesser well-said feedback, even if the poster didn’t necessarily mean well. Some people can just be jerks online. Try to remember that they’re still real people (even if they didn’t extend you the same courtesy) and that you would probably talk nicer to them in response than you might at first be inclined to when put on the defensive online. This is all part of finding your voice in the online community and on your own blog. You have a voice in both these things; use it well to do well.

4. Provide great content

There’s a shift occurring in blogging. People have become so adept at manipulating search engine results, search engines are constantly updating and altering their algorithms to keep the results as relevant as possible. Bloggers are starting to realize they have a choice for what they should dedicate their time to: figuring out how to game the system, or create quality content and build a community of genuine followers.

With the rise of social media becoming increasingly more prevalent in contributing to a blog getting noticed and appreciated, which do you think is more important: trying to figure out how to beat Google’s algorithms to arm wrestle millions of other websites for a spot on Page 1 for that week, or writing something really knock-out good that people will be clamoring to plaster all over their Facebook statuses, Twitter feeds, and Stumble, Digg, or otherwise happily promote for you to thousands of other people who are keen to read good material?

How do you employ these ideas when you blog? What are some of your tips to have a successful blogging experience?