There is much more to blogs than just their content.

What works for a blog is its reputation and this isn’t purely built by delivering engaging and quality content to readers. What actually gets the blog’s popularity soaring is the fact that its reputation is unblemished by any negative feedback.

But this isn’t enough. Yes, to get your blog’s popularity right up to stratospheric levels, you will need to take proactive steps to develop a reputation for your blog and make sure that you are able to maintain this reputation that you have so carefully developed.

So, let’s take a look at how you can develop your blog’s reputation:

Leverage Social Media

Why not use the most popular social phenomenon in recent times for your benefit. You can use platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to market your blog. Any new blog update, just Tweet the link; or share it with your Google+ circle, or paste the link onto your Facebook profile.

By doing this, you are not only promoting your blog, but you are also sowing the seeds for improving its reputation. For e.g. if the followers on Twitter find your content worthwhile, they are going to ‘retweet’ it; your Google+ circles will share it with their circles, the same is the case with Facebook, your fans will share it with people on their network and so on and so forth. You can ask people in your Google+ circles to +1 your post or you can ask your followers on Facebook to press the ‘Like’ button if they like your blog post.

In no time at all, your blog will go viral and so will its reputation.

Another way of using social media is to monitor what people are saying about your blog. It’s important to understand that social media is very much like your neighborhood barber shop. This is the place where you get the latest news, especially news that you can use. You can keep track of all conversations taking place about your blog content and know whether the content is a hit or a miss. If it’s the former, good for you, but if it’s the latter, you can take immediate steps to rectify any mistake that you have made; or you could see to it that you do not repeat your mistake/s in your future posts.

High Quality Content

Now somewhere right at the beginning of my post I have mentioned that content is important, but it’s not the only thing that is important. Now, I am not going back on my statement, but want to dig a little deeper into the importance of content.

A blog is nothing without content. More importantly, it’s nothing without quality content. The keyword here is quality; it stands for interesting, relevant, readable, precise, usable, accurate and factual content.  These are the parameters that define successful content. Your reputation is made or broken on the anvil of your content. It is the foundation of your reputation and as we all know, you need a rock solid foundation before you start building anything.

Create a Brand Name and use it everywhere

You need to call your blog something. This can be your domain name or something else. Say the domain name for your blog is www.example.com , but you address yourself as ‘Speak Easy’. Think of which is the name that is going to help your branding efforts. In order to ensure that your brand is unique and has recall value, you need to use a name that not only sounds unique but also feels unique. So, in this case, if you choose to go by ‘Speak Easy’, then this name inherently becomes the personality of your blog.

Your readers are going to remember this name rather than your domain URL.

Whenever you are talking about your blog on any platform on the internet, whether it’s social media or something else, for all purposes, you will need to address it as ‘Speak Easy’. This is your brand. Don’t think of it as your blog. Even if you are putting up a banner advertisement for your blog, don’t use some other name on the banner. This will be your blog’s identity.

You will find that it’s easier to market this identity than your blog as a whole.

There is a very thin line of difference between branding and reputation building. One could call ‘reputation building’ a subset of branding. It cannot exist without branding.

Spread the Word through Forum Participation

A reputation building exercise with respect to your blog is all about spreading the good word about your blog. You have an opportunity to do so by becoming a member of various forums that belong to the same niche as your blog.

This helps you interact with users of the forum, who can be potential readers of your blog. You can share the link to your blog while you participate in discussions on these forums.

Most people who are discussing various topics on such forums are either looking for expert advice or want to share some latest development in the niche with other like minded people. So, it’s important to showcase your expertise in the forum. The equation is very simple, if you are regarded as an expert and have a reputation as problem solver, your blog will be highly regarded as well.

If they believe you are an expert, they will believe your blog is an expert too.

Never Underestimate Comments

The cardinal sin of blogging is that bloggers tend to ignore all the comments that their blog post attracts.

Agreed, there are comments that are spam and there are other comments that are just posted for the purpose of getting a link; but there are serious commentators who actually are making relevant comments about your post, as well. They either agree with you or don’t or have some doubts that they want solved.

So, you need to be able to filter the wheat from the chaff and reply to the comments that make sense.

If you don’t, you come out looking unprofessional. People might think that you are not really interested in either defending the assertions made on your blog post, or you don’t give much importance to allaying the doubts readers might have regarding your blog post. This is one of the ways that the blog’s reputation can spiral downwards. So, you must never ignore the power of comments to enhance blog reputation.

Email Connections are Important

Overtime you need to develop an email list of people who are most likely to read your blog. Send them emails regarding your blog and the latest posts that you have written. Very often, bloggers ignore the email as a channel, because they think that the email more often than not, will end up in the spam folder of the receiver or they might just delete it without giving it a second glance. The problem with this thinking is that it is founded on a negative assumption.

When it comes to the reputation building of your blog, you must understand that each and every avenue matters and there are plenty of people out there who will open your email. They are willing to give your blog a chance. So don’t miss out on such readers. This is a step towards reputation building because it will help you attract a loyal readership to your blog.

In conclusion

Some of the pointers given above might look like theyare more marketing centric rather than something that will help you build your blogs reputation. And you will be right in thinking along those lines, but the truth is that when you are building the online reputation of your blog, you are marketing it. You want to keep getting as many readers to your blog, so that you can help achieve your predetermined objectives with the help of your blog.

At the end of the day, you can even use the phrases ‘marketing your blog’ and ‘improving its online reputation’ interchangeably. The differences between the two blur if you keep working towards making your blog more popular.

Image © N-Media-Images – Fotolia.com

The Power of Social Media

After a month of vacation which I spent in Egypt, I came back more confident of the power of social media, but at the same time realizing how a serious two-edge sword it could be. It was very clear to me that in Egypt, social media with its embedded lack of governance became a tool of igniting people rather than mobilizing them.

The absolute positive role social media played during the 18 days of the 25^th of Jan, 2011 Revolution has been shattered and been transformed for the most part into a tool of creating chaos.

According to socialbakers.com (Egypt Facebook Statistics) and The Wall Street Journal (Facebook Sees Egypt Usage Spike), Facebook usage jumped 91% from Jan 2011 to Jan 2012. Among many other reasons, the massive growth and high penetration rate in social media usage in Egypt created a very healthy environment for gossip, rumors and a tremendously effective way of transporting a piece of information across almost the entire nation.

A single tweet or Facebook status update can go viral and create a lot of misconceptions among users and before you know it, media outlets with an unforeseen irresponsibility and lack of oversight, start exchanging that piece of information as if it were a fact with no or at best minimal effort to validate it.

A New Democracy

Democracy in Egypt is still a new concept to many, and unfortunately many Egyptians believe they fully understand how democracy works. Despite the successful elections Egypt witnessed, people do not realize that this is just the first step towards democracy, and instead of taking the next step, they use social and regular media to galvanize others towards extremely opposing directions creating immense political differences and forming huge gaps in difference of opinions.

So, what do you think happens when you have tens of different and extremely opposing sides calling for street demonstrations?

It is not all negative of course, the flip and positive side of all this is that the social media is still used by many as a powerful tool in building a high level of transparency and is still regarded as a preemptive and deterrence tool to most politicians to think twice before misusing their power.

Nevertheless, the definition of what’s right and what’s wrong has been diluted at best and I could claim that, to many, the definition doesn’t exist anymore. Most sociopolitical norms have been redefined within the Egyptian society; people are left confused not able to differentiate between what’s fact and what’s fiction, what could be a conspiracy and what could be just a series of misfortunate events.

A big portion of the Egyptian society nowadays sees a political figure and cannot tell whether s/he is the good, the bad or the ugly! And if they see it (or when they believe they see it), most of the time they jump to conclusions based on social media gossip or rumors.

Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth - George Washington

The Freedom of Speech

The concept of freedom of speech is very new to the Egyptian community; it is for sure a very effective weapon and a watchdog against the new government and other entities in Egypt for that matter. The people and media however, are still trying to grasp how serious such weapon is, and unfortunately, in the process some serious damage is inflicted in the society, a single rumor could go viral, could unintentionally (or even intentionally at times) mobilize opposing sides in the streets creating a recipe for a disaster.

We have seen that happening over and over in Egypt in the past year, and all these street gatherings need is one stone or a single angry person to turn into bloodshed.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am all for the freedom of speech, I am all for freedom of press and freedom of conventional and social media, but with such freedom comes responsibility, people will need to watch what they say and what they share; a single irresponsible YouTube video, word in the media, tweet or even a Facebook status update could easily create a massacre.

Image : CartoonADay.com

Once you’ve decided on those questions, then it is time for the big one. How will you get readers to your website?

Search Engine Optimization

For years search engine optimization (and perhaps pay per click ads) was the way to go. To be sure it still plays a significant role and will for a very long time. However, the one problem today with seo is that it is a one way street. You only have to please the search engine.

But things have changed. It is not the only game in town anymore. There are multiple ways to get visitors to your website, and the options seem limitless. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Even Google has gotten into the social media game with Google+. And, there are blog aggregators like technorati, and sharing sites like Stumbleupon and Reddit.

Recently, tech investor Roger McNamee gave a presentation at a TED event in California. In the presentation, McNamee said that index search (Google) peaked in 2008 with 90% of all websites being discovered through Google. Now it is down to 50%.

Why is that? I can find what I want quicker and easier in other places. If I want to learn about a car, I can go to cars.com. If I want a house, I can go to realtor.com. If I want a date I can go to match.com.

That doesn’t mean Google is disappearing. They are not. What it means is that they are not what they were in 2008 and more opportunities on the Internet are presenting themselves to publishers of great content.

Purpose of Your Blog or Website

So, I am back to purpose and audience.  In reality, the purpose of your blog is not to be the world’s #1 blog. Well, it may be, but suffice is to say there are very few of those.

The purpose of your business blog is not to sell something or promote yourself. Although it may do those things.

The real purpose of your blog ought to be to deepen customer relationships and increase referrals.

A search engine cannot do that for you. It can only connect a request with a need. Once the connection has been made with the site visitor, the game fundamentally changes.

Engaging with Your Audience

How will you engage and interact with your audience?

That’s the next big question, and that is really for you to determine. The way you engage your audience may be different to mine, and it may require a different strategy to deepen relationships.

The one commonality amongst all blogs and websites is that they must provide rich content that can help your audience solve their problems or meet their needs. And, it must be free.

In addition to great content, you may have a killer email newsletter. Do you have an easy way for them to subscribe to it?

Do you encourage your blog readers to leave comments by asking them engaging questions, including something like; “Please tell us how you feel by leaving a comment below.”

If you use social media, ask questions and learn what your followers are looking for. Every business has an entry point to helping your readers and social media followers. They followed you initially because they had a problem or need, and you had the answer or were able to help them.

You are in business because someone had a problem and you were able to help them solve it. Treat your blog and social media that way and it will prosper. Maybe not in a week or a month, but perhaps in 6-12 months you will be in a vastly different place.

Conclusion

SEO is a much needed and valuable tool. But by itself it is no longer enough. It is great for helping people get to your blog, but what happens afterwards?

If the purpose of your blog is to deepen customer relationships and increase referrals, then provide free value based content and ask questions that help solve their problems.

So is it seo or engagement? I say it’s both. You just have to know their purpose in what you are trying to accomplish.

Image © Red rockerz – Fotolia.com

You are about to read my honest review of Thesis Theme framework. This is something I always wanted to do, and I really blame myself having not reviewed Thesis before now since I have been using it heavily on my blog. I also depend on it to run several other projects, especially here at FamousBloggers.net and my other design project that relies on Thesis Themes  100%

So, prepare yourself, this won’t be a short review. I have tons of things to talk about as I will take it from my personal prospective and two years of experience with Thesis, mostly as a developer. I don’t have any intention to offend or annoy anyone, and I apologize if I do by accident!

I will tell you why I give it this sort of low rating, which could be shocking for all Thesis fans!

I am reviewing Thesis Theme as I see it today, time plays a big role here and reviews have to reflect the recent condition. I could give it a higher rating if I reviewed it two years ago, but today I am not so sure about that! However, my point of view may change any time, and you should see an update in the future.

Anyway, I worked hard enough with this theme to form an honest opinion, especially that there are a lot of crappy reviews on the web that have been published just to sell you Thesis and make commissions without even taking it for a test drive.

Before you continue reading, I will show you how much money I’ve earned in only one year of working and developing my Skins for Thesis Themes.  As  proof that I really don’t hate Thesis, I launched the ThesisAwesome.com site. I just feel  uncomfortable with the way people think of it, so I want to make it clear to help you with your decision!

Report generated by aMember membership software

As you can see in the image above, I’ve managed to make sales of $30,000 last year from developing and selling Thesis Skins at ThesisAwesome.com. That is almost 50% of my online business income, and it’s clear that I wouldn’t be profiting if Thesis Theme didn’t exist!

However, this doesn’t mean I should rate it 5 out 5 just because I am making good money out of it. There are a few things that I don’t like about Thesis, and I will mention them in my review below!

So, read on…

Thesis Theme is my own Teacher!

I’ve learned tons of useful tricks being a Thesis Theme user, it helped me to enter the WordPress development world in a sweet way. Probably no other WordPress theme or framework would teach me all that and help me establish a design business, but there is always an issue. I didn’t buy this theme to learn how to design cool things, I also never thought that I would be so involved in it working day and night to get the look and feel I wanted for my blog.

I didn’t want a white page! I wanted something that really works out of the box!

To be honest, Thesis Theme actually works out of the box, exactly the way it was explained, and that’s why I ran and quickly bought it, I was convinced!

But…

1. No one told me that I need to hire a designer!
2. No one told me that I need to get a developer
3. No one told me that I will have to spend nights and days working my butt off to get a unique design!

I didn’t buy Thesis Theme to learn cool stuff and be a professional web designer, or an avid developer!

So, if you need to learn, and you have time, then Buy Thesis Theme, it will simply teach you!

There is a always a catch, and a lot more to do. Thesis Theme’s trick was actually in its marketing message! And, that’s another reason for me to rate it lower!

Why Thesis Theme is not getting any updates!

This is one of the most annoying things for anyone who becomes part of a membership site. They promise you will get updates, but no time line. That’s fine and accepted, but one year with no critical upgrades, that’s not good at all! I mean the world is changing!

People keep asking Chris Pearson every day when he will release Thesis 2.0, and Chris keeps telling them “Thesis 2.0 is coming soon”, 2011 ended, but 2.0 has not been released.

I thought maybe he doesn’t want to release 2.0 for the public, and prefers to keep it for his Best Damn Blog on the Planet.

At the beginning I thought those people are just silly, why do they need an update? What’s the point of getting a new update for Thesis? Are they having a problem or they are just asking because they paid for future upgrades?!

I really didn’t understand their point the whole time! I also didn’t understand Chris‘s strategy!

I learned a lot of things while giving support to my ThesisAwesome.com members. I realized some interesting stuff that are maybe facts, or maybe I am just imagining these are facts!

People all the time ask me for updates…..do you know why? Simply because they want “new features”!

They think if they pay $100 for a design, they will keep getting new awesome features forever, and to the end of days! I must say this is impossible, I can’t give you new feature updates for ever. I prefer to focus more on enhancing what I have and make it work better. I add new features only when there is a big demand. Then I make time and work on it, but if I see it’s unnecessary, why should I bother?!

You know what?

I just think that… Chris sees Thesis Theme as a perfect creation, why should someone come up with a new update for something is already perfect?! You won’t get another update any time soon!

But then, I think again, and again, and I remember the Headway 3.0 launch that was considered a big fail for Headway Themes by many of their members. Everybody says it was released earlier than it should be. I really don’t want to see this happen to Thesis, and I hope that Chris knows what he is doing, or it will be a big problem for everyone who depends on Thesis!

Anyway, what do you expect from the Thesis Theme next update?

SEO features, should I use a plugin?

That’s how Thesis could be sold to over 40,000 people. Thesis Theme has solid SEO features, so you don’t need to use any SEO plugin if you are running Thesis Theme on your blog. However, you may want to empower your blog SEO with some plugin So let me tell you this… You simply don’t have the choice!

I’ve tried WordPress SEO by Yoast, and it’s a really awesome plugin, and I see good potential in using it, especially if this gives you more control over SEO. However, it didn’t work well for me as I am using Thesis. SEO features conflict and duplicate in some areas, and I was about to mess things up by editing some part of the framework or disable its SEO functionality so I can use the plugin instead, but I changed my mind, I really don’t need more headaches.

I still see some people using the SEO plugin with Thesis, this is just not right!

Joost says that SEO has to be controlled by a plugin, not a theme. or at least give users the option to enable/disable SEO options. Themes has to focus more on design and layout, I personally agree 100% with him.

Who won’t agree on that anyway?

Yes…

P.S. that’s an old tweet, but nothing has been changed since that time. Chris won’t lose the marketing key and refused to respond while other frameworks like Genesis and Headway have responded nicely to Joost and to their members who simply asked to have the choice to decide which SEO feature to use.

That being said, it has just added another reason for me to rate Thesis Theme lower!

Another Story About Respect!

Ok, while it’s hot and I got your full attention, let me tell you what happened with me when I first launched ThesisAwesome.com

Actually this happened before I launched the site. I tried to get in touch with Chris, the person who I thought I will be working with and needed his advice, as my idea was actually to develop for Thesis, and only Thesis! So, I asked him to DM his email so I can email him privately because I had a very important question for him. I really really needed some business advice atthat time, and simply he was the only person I thought could help me out!

I got a reply from him on Twitter, he told me to send my email via the DiyThemes support email.

And, guess what?

One year passed and I never got an answer to my question! I never heard from him!

No matter what I say, it won’t express my feelings at that time. I was really upset, I mean how can someone contact you and ask for  business advice, and you don’t reply to him? I am a Thesis Theme user, and I am part of your affiliate program, my idea should drive more sales. Any professional would reply to such an email!

There was no respect! And I won’t forget that!

Add everything to function.php file, what’s the problem?

You see, I put a lot of effort into this blog, I spent hours and hours coding for FamousBloggers.net. After two years of coding I ended up with a freaking scary and stupid file. I realized that not everything should be included in the theme’s function.php file, it’s not really the best practice. I have a lot of functions in that file and it became confusing. I didn’t know where to start, and where to go anymore, totally lost!

The best way to do this is to create your own functionality plugin.

I got this idea from Ryan Imel of WPCandy.com, and it makes a lot of sense. However, I haven’t had a chance to create my own functionality plugin yet, but at least I started with extracting my function.php file into a few small size file, and restructuring the Thesis Theme /custom/ folder to contain more files and folders that are simple to read, follow and understand.

Child Theme or Skin?

Call it whatever, but Thesis Skins are not Child Themes!

A WordPress child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, called the parent theme, and allows you to modify, or add to, the functionality of that parent theme.

I will stick with that because I trust what WordPress.org says!

Thesis Skins is far more than that, so I will stop calling it Child Themes.

Thesis Header Image

In my opinion, this is the worst Thesis option ever since 1.8, why? It says in the option page:

Based on your current layout settings, the optimal header image width is 949 pixels. If your image is wider than this, don’t worry—Thesis will automatically resize it for you!

It’s just silly to resize the header image and fix its width to 949px, and even worse, cropping a header image? Wow! This is amazing! But, what’s the point here?

P.S. don’t worry, I am the last person to worry about this feature because I will never have to use it!

The problem is this particular option gave me a lot of headaches. It forced me to code a new option to solve it for my best selling skin, the BlogSkin, simply because the page width I’ve chosen for the skin is 980px, which this amazing header option thing doesn’t support!

Theme Support

I really don’t have anything against the theme support, all people who are working at DiyThemes.com are cool and they respond quickly, and I appreciate all they do to solve problems and help members. I always appreciate support because it’s really a hard job, I am sure you will know what I mean if you have ever been supporting members in forums.

Let’s say they are doing their “job” perfectly!

DiyThemes Blog

If you are a Thesis member, then I am sure you’ve read some posts on their blog.

Maybe I am the only one, but I am sick of the same boring and repeated stuff that is published on the blog,  too much triggers!

I don’t recognize DiyThemes blog anymore, I don’t know whether it’s a design blog or just another blog of Derek Halpern.

Don’t get me wrong, I like strong opinions, and I like Derek‘s work and appreciate the good advice, but the blog needs to have more fresh design related articles and tutorials written by professionals, not only marketing and converting tips. Here is a couple of suggestions:

1.  Having another player will spice up the blog and make it more exciting!
2. Inviting more guests to write for the blog, add new blood!

I am sorry to say that, but this is by far the worst blog ever, I lost interest!

Seriously, Who Makes Thesis Theme Awesome

I think web designers and developers who work in Thesis Theme development are the ones who actually make it awesome, Thesis has never been awesome without their contributions.

You can see a post from the past where I got a few quotes from top niche web designers who develop for Thesis.

Final Thoughts about Thesis Theme

While Thesis Theme is very reliable, at least for me and my business, I make money by solving problems “Thesis problems”, and by developing skins that add additional functionality to Thesis, which makes it awesome, if Thesis was perfect, I wouldn’t be making $30,000 in only one year! Period!

My Thesis Skins are selling because I solve people’s problems.

Marketing Thesis Theme as the best SEO framework is an old idea, it’s not valid anymore, and it shouldn’t be your focus when buying a theme for WordPress.

I really want to see a huge change in 2.0, however I am not sure if there will be a 2.0!  I don’t want to jump off the train unless I really have to!

I don’t hate Thesis!

I’ve said what’s on my mind, and what I kept in my heart for a long time! And, as you can see, this review is quite different than any other review that has been published about Thesis Theme. I haven’t paid too much attention to the functionality or features, simply because Thesis Theme doesn’t offer something different than other frameworks in the market, so I won’t be talking about the same thing over and over. And, as I mentioned before, I will be updating this review if I see it’s necessary.

I hope this helps you to make a better decision for your business.

Now it’s back to you, I will be glad to discuss this with you even more in the comments section, really!

For a newly set-up blog, the reason for organizing blog contest is probably because of the want increase the exposure and interactions that are happening around the blog. And that’s why I launched my iPad 2 giveaway over my site – Kissing Crust.

While for an established blog like Famousbloggers.net, the reason may towards strengthening the branding of the blog.

Let’s take the contest that Hesham has just announced the winners.  I am pretty sure the objectives behind the contest is strengthen the content base of Famousbloggers.net especially in relation to internet marketing contents. With this contest, it will help to push this site to be source of great internet marketing contents and therefore, will boost this site traffic and user engagements.

And in case your new year resolution is to have a way better blog in 2012, organizing contest can be one of the ways. Unfortunately, the result that you want to see after organizing your contest may not meet your expectation or even worse, cost you more than you can earn.

These 7 must-follow tips will ensure the success of your blog contest.  Are you ready to organize successful blog contest this year?

1- Set Up Your Objectives

The first thing you must do before launching your blog contest is to set what you want to achieve from the contest. The most important element for this pointer is to keep the objectives as simple as possible.

Don’t create contest to achieve everything that you can think of. If you want the contest to create interactions within you blog through blog commenting, create the contest that will encourage people to leave comment and that’s the only way they will win the contest – not through who tweet most, who share most in Facebook or must create contest reviews.

My advise: Have only one objective for one blog contest. It will make it easy for your contest to be understood and joined. This will help you too in managing and monitoring the success of your contest.

Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t. (Peter Drucker)

2- Use Contest/Giveaway Tools

Give yourselves a break. Use contest/giveaway tools like CompResult and RaffleCopter to manage your blog contest. You may not find it handy at first but trust me; when your blog contest gone viralled and thousands of people joining your contest, this kind of tool will definitely save the day.

I have always use RaffleCopter to organize the contests over my site. The reasons why I love it are you can moderate the entries, it will help you choose the winners and most importantly, it keeps the record of who join your contest.

This can be handy when you want to launch another contest in future. With simple emails, these are the people who will help to push your contest to go viral and be a success.

My advise: Save your time and effort if you can. If you not planning to use any tool, make a simple contest and avoid using point-based system to select the winner. Use Random.org if you can.

3- Get A Prize Everybody Want

You do not need to offer lots of prizes. What you need is to offer a prize that will make everybody gone crazy. For me, offering a brand new iPad 2 is definitely better than a contest with prizes that worth more than $1000.

People do everything for iPad 2. If you offer such prize, people will do everything for your blog to win.

So, instead of wasting $1000 for prizes that you still not sure whether will it get people excited, why don’t you simply get an iPad 2 worth only $499 for the winner which will definitely create a lot of buzz over Twitter?

My advise: Less is definitely more. By offering limited prizes, it will create a better sense of competition to get the top prizes which will leads to more participations and site visits.

4- Keep Close Relationship With Blog Sponsors

The iPad contest that I’m having over my site is also being sponsored with various WordPress theme developers like ColorLabs & Company and ProThemeDesign. By keeping close relationship with them, whenever I plan to organize blog contest in future, the chance of them supporting me is pretty high.

Plus, if you are lucky, the sponsors who are highly influential will also help you to promote your contest to their followers.

My advise: Sometimes, it only requires simple email and honesty to get others’ help.

5- Be Firm To The Winners

Before you launched your blog contest, be firm on how will you announce the winners and give the prizes. My suggestion is to announce the winners through announcement page and the winners should response to you within certain period of times to claim the prizes they have won. If they miss it, the prizes will be given to others.

By doing this, it helps you to save your time and to ensure you can settle everything as soon as possible.

My advise: Even though you have set some terms & conditions, it doesn’t hurt to bend the rules once in a while. After all, the winners have helped to promote your blog

6- Complement The Blog Contest

After a while, you may able to see the direction where the blog contest is going. Sometimes, the buzz that it receives may not as huge as you hope for.

If you are confident the buzz can grow further if it gets more exposure, take necessary action to bring more attention to your blog contest. You can use Twitter, Facebook and ways that can bring new audience to your blog contest.

For me, besides Twitter, this blog contest is also my way to tap to new audience to my iPad 2 giveaway that will end in January 2012 . Don’t forget join it ok? Be quick. It is going to end soon.

My advise: Keep monitoring your blog contest. Always have this question with you: What I want with this contest, have I achieved and if not, will I achieve when the contest ends?

7- Element Of Surprise

After your blog contest has ended, I can assure your site will change in a good way even though the impact can be differ; either minimal or significant.

So, why not you give some surprises the participants as a sign of appreciation?

For example, there are probably few who actively promote your blog contest but do not won any prize. So, give token of appreciations to them. They will definitely love you more!

My advise: Besides use your own fund, you can get help from the sponsor. I am sure some of the sponsors have no issue to give something extra to those who have indirectly promote their products.

Conclusion

Well, how do you find about the 7 tips of creating your next successful blog contest? Do you think it will create a successful blog contest?

Based on my past experiences, it will. What about you?

Last word of advise: Keep your contest as simple as possible but make the prize as attractive it can be. People will floak your contest and you will smile all day long seeing your blog grows day by day.

Your blogs sucks! There I have said it!

Well not all blogs suck, but if you thought I was talking to you then maybe you really do think your blogs sucks?

I have been in this position, thinking my blog sucked, miserable, feeling like I was never going to get anywhere.

My precious blog didn’t suck, it was my attitude that was the problem.

It’s time to about-face

Before you decide that blogging is not right for you and go back to the 9 to 5 slog, give your blog one more month of undivided effort.

Turn your bad habits around and “pull your finger out”. (Ouch! Might be an Aussie saying only!)

Take the rose colored glasses off

Stop presuming you know what you are doing and open your eyes to the real story here! When people ask you if you are using search engine optimization on your blog, are you doing it your way, or the right way?

Stop interpreting blogging concepts upside down. Successful bloggers all over the Internet are sharing their secrets about how to make a successful blog, are you even listening?

If you’re wearing rose colored glasses, this is a hippie mentality. Stop smelling the roses and start planting them! Are you a smeller or a planter? (Don’t even imagine the weird image that comes to mind!)

Stop wasting time – Your blog sucks big time!

Stop stuffing around and write content, SEO it, and then promote it. Do that over and over until you realize that this is the only way to get success for your blog.

Spending too much time on other blogs, hanging out on social networking sites, chatting on Skype to potential JV partners, all can be massive time wasters! Get yourself disciplined and take note of these blog Time management tips. I would have to say that one of the hardest things about making a successful blog is actually sticking to your daily blogging routine. There are so many distractions on the Internet, you are going to need extra self discipline.

Stop whining – Excuses excuses!

Everyone is busy, everyone has a life, and everyone I know has the same amount of time available to them in a day. Wake up and realize that blogging is hard work and most people juggle family life, a full time job and blogging each and every day. Why are you so special?

Avoid writing or speaking these words:

• I am bored (OMG, really?)
• I can’t (Yep you should give up now! Just agreeing with you.)
• I didn’t have time (Well stop wasting it!)
• I don’t know how (I didn’t know how either!)
• I didn’t do this because…(You are full of it!)
• I wish I could do that! (You can if you take action and stop wishing!)
• I am not as smart as you! (No you are just lazy! You do not need to be smart!)

I guess you get the picture! Are you on a mission to blog or just fluffing around?

Path to success

Get rid of your doubts now because people that are successful do not have time to doubt themselves. Even when people tell them that they are not going to succeed, they never listen. This is the first step to success, believing in yourself and never doubting that you will succeed.

Now that you know you will be successful you need to ask yourself these questions:

• What is my goal for this blog? Money, love, fame?
• What do I enjoy about this blog? If you enjoy nothing, pick another topic!
• How can I improve my blog? Don’t ask anyone else, ask yourself! You know, but you are not looking properly.
• If your goal is earning money, what products can I sell in this niche?

Take time to think about your path and write down your goals!

Turn your blog around – take action!

1. Pretend this is your first day of blogging. Forget all the time you have wasted previously. Be happy that you have an already established blog to start with.
2. Check out other successful blogs in your niche. What are they doing to attract the traffic? What is their content like?
3. Go back and improve your content. Yes each and every piece. This is your best investment of time. See my tips to dominate Google search.
4. Research and find the best keywords for each page or post you create.
5. Build links to that content using the right keywords you have found. (this includes internal linking)
6. Post great content often. This gets the blood flowing in your blog. Keep the momentum going!
7. Follow one or two successful bloggers and stick to them. Not the ones spinning bull!

Are you still reading this article?

So now I know you do think your blog sucks and want to do something about it.

Okay so the truth about YOU is that your attitude is wrong. When you get your attitude in check, you will be able to focus and create a successful blog.

Did you think I was a bit harsh about the ugly truth about YOU and your precious blog?

Image credit

Our host Murray Newlands and David discuss the large demand for video content creation, as well as:

• How Works for Business
• Sharing Content
• Relationship Building
• Guest Blogging

For more information about Future Of Engagement, go to adrants.com.

To learn more about host Murray Newlands and his marketing agency, go to murraynewlands.com and influencepeople.com.

To learn more about Spark Media Solutions, go to sparkmediasolutions.com

If you don’t know the tricks on how to make money with a blog, then you only have to read some blogging tips articles which can be found in forums, article sites and blogs itself.

Blogosphere is not just about building blogs and making money, it’s all about building relationships with co-bloggers and creating a community which aims to share thoughts, points of view and other information that could be useful to others. These “thoughts” however can be confusing to most novices who wishes to learn every aspect of this endeavor.

Sure we have our own points of view when it comes to online business and some of these opinions even become the universal guidelines that people now follow. Let me give you some of these “people’s perspectives” and why I identified them as mere mythologies that you as a novice, should highly ignore.

Bloggers are Great Writers

It is true that most famous blog owners are exemplary writers, which you as a beginner should try to imitate as much as possible. But this doesn’t mean that you have to push yourself to the limit just to become a great writer yourself.

If your first language is not English, you only need to get your point across to your readers. After all, we are not perfect and are born to make mistakes. In short, all of us can build a blog and write anything and any way we want as long as it is informational, readable and useful. Being a good writer is all it takes and besides, practice makes perfect right?

Content is King

This is probably the most popular myth in the blogging world. You can extensively see this phrase all over the Internet. I myself consider content as the backbone of a blog, but it is not the only thing that you should focus on in your online business endeavor. Marketing is the other aspect of blogging that you should learn thoroughly.

With content and marketing combined, you are guaranteed to have a successful blogging career.

WordPress is a Lot Better than Blogger

WordPress vs Blogger – a battle of platforms! I bet you have already seen this type of topic in various forum posts and blog articles, which compares these two giant blogging platforms. And I am so sure that most of the time, Blogger ends up on the short end of the stick. Why? Because WordPress is indeed the more flexible platform.

But, you can’t erase the fact that Blogger has its own advantages like its usability and its 100% free. If you want to make money in blogging, both Blogger and WordPress can give you similar benefits which are entirely based on user preferences.

Traffic is the most Important Thing in Blogging

Traffic can be acquired through different channels and mediums. Heck, it can also be acquired through marketing off-line. It is true that constant marketing of your blog means traffic, traffic and traffic.

But traffic is just an initial step in blogging and in order to be successful, you need to attract loyal readers that will forever patronize your article posts or whatever you offer on your blog. You need to turn these visitors into subscribers and into paying customers.

How can you make your visitors become loyal readers or at least retain them for another visit? You can achieve this by building your subscribers list, email list, social media following, building a community with other blogs and many others. In summary, traffic can only be important if you can convert your traffic into sales or online income.

All of these myths are all over the Internet. While in general these myths are true in nature, you have to expand your knowledge more with regards to these myths. Once you learned and applied these techniques to your blog, only then you can say that you are an expert blogger!

If I missed anything important with regards to this topic that you wish to share with us, please don’t hesitate to leave your valued opinion below at the comment section.

Image: © julien tromeur – Fotolia.com

Another cool WordPress plugin called  IM Graphics Plugin by Andy Bailey the creator of CommentLuv, this plugin solve a huge problem that most of us are facing while building landing pages or sales pages, which is finding and adding graphics to pages.

We all know that internet marketers are not designers, however there could be few skilled people, but most of marketers do not have the time to learn design to be able to create their own web graphics, however this is possiable, but dosn’t make sense! I mean there are tons of great design elements made by professional designers, so why wasting your time learning something you will use only a few times, it would make more sense if you go for a ready made solution that saves you time.

What to expect from IM Graphics Plugin

let me ask you…

1. What about a plugin that has many pre-made graphics that is ready for your to use on your landing pages or sales pages?
2. Also, what about an extremely easy way to insert these graphics into your pages?
3. And, what about having the ability to even use your own graphics in simple way?

All this can be found and done by the  IM Graphics Plugin.

By the way,

Being a web designer didn’t stop me from buying and paying for web design elements made by others, sometimes because I don’t have the time and I want to get things done quickly, some other times because I like a graphic or a web element and I decide to just have for one of my projects.

A great place to buy cheap and professional looking web elements is GraphicRiver.net

Is IM Graphics Plugin for me?

IM Graphics Plugin is useful for any internet marketer.

Even bloggers need web graphics for their blogs posts, so if you do any sort of marketing online, check out IM Graphics Plugin, it could save you from facing one of the biggest things that always comes up when ever you build a new site!

This plugin worth easily worth hundreds of dollars in saved designer fees. it’s a $97 product, but you can get it now for only $27 , and it worth every single dollar!

Grab this awesome package right now for the low price.

The Dating Game

What if you woke up, looked at the calendar on the wall, and all the blocks were blank? Or you glanced at your smartphone, only to discover everything date-related had disappeared? You wouldn’t think that little handheld was so smart, would you?

We know why knowing the date is important: appointments, deadlines, doctor visits, payday . . . So why do we think hiding the date on articles and blog posts is such a great idea?

I think the reason most people leave the date off is so that their content won’t appear “dated.” Dated is synomymous with “old,” and who wants their content to appear old when someone arrives for the first time? ”Old” online is a faulty anachronism: it’s the difference between ancient and antique. An antique is a desirable form of something from another time. It might be old, but it’s valuable and considered priceless by some.

Keeping That Date

The choice is always yours. Let’s look at some reasons to keep the date and make sure it is readily visible when someone drops in.

Being Relevant

Imagine stumbling across a news story that said something like “breaking news!” … You read the story and don’t realize this was something that happened over 2 years ago. — DialMe

“DialMe” makes a solid point in Timestamping Articles and Posts. Since your About Me or Contact pages are more or less static content, they don’t necessarily need to show when they were published. But adding a date to blog posts and articles will give readers an opportunity to decide for themselves if your content is relevant to their needs. It could also be the deciding factor in whether your visitor leaves a comment or asks an important question.

Being A Standup Kinda Guy (or Gal)

Content that has been around for a while could be considered anchor, pillar, or evergreen content — the kind of content that stands up to the passing of time. It provides information that is as relevant to the current time as it was when it was first written. A first-timer who lands on your article will be grateful to you — if you provide the answer she was seeking — no matter when it was written.

Examples of evergreen content include articles on how to increase customer referrals, hurricane survival tips, or how to leave a positive blogging legacy. Because this type of content is timely (and priceless), showing the date is less important than adding a date to blog posts where timestamping matters more.

Being on Time

I recently did a roundup of the best blog monetizing strategies over the past year. What if none of the articles had dates? My research would be screwed and my results would have been skewed! In fact, one of the strategies is about traffic generating contests and contests always have a start date and finite ending — so if the date of the post is left off, it could confuse would-be contestants.

Hey, Where’s My Date?

Blame it on the theme

Some themes don’t make it easy to add the date. Either the complexity of navigating options or the sheer number of options could effectively hide the feature. At the time of writing, I’m using the comprehensive Suffusion Theme by Sayontan Sinha. When I first installed it, it took me forever to locate the “show date” feature! However, once found, I was delighted to see a number of options for both displaying the date and leaving it hidden.

Lots of places to stash your date …

Your theme might allow you the freedom of displaying the date in lots of different ways or it might constrain you to only one or two locations. Here are some possible locations:

• above the blog post
• directly under the article title
• a small icon on the left side
• a small icon on the right side

Are you the one looking for a date?

What if you’re doing research for a topic and find an article you’d like to reference but it doesn’t have a date in one of the usual places? If you don’t see the date at first glance, try peeking in these unusual places.

• in the sidebar
• at the very bottom of the post
• in the footer

Lastly, check the comments . . .

Why would you check the comments? They might have a clue! Check the date of the first comment as well as the last comment. The first one will give you an idea of when the post was written. The last one will give an idea of whether or not the content is still relevant.

This almost brings us to the end of our time together …

Ditching Your Date

Like most stories in life, there are two sides to this one, too. In the dating game, the case can also be made against showing the date or timestamp on your blog posts, articles, and tutorials.

Are you hiding something from me?

I already mentioned how certain pages don’t really need a date. That’s not so much about hiding the date as it is about making a practical decision. We also covered evergreen or pillar content, so you could turn the date off on those, too, if you want. But next up is a case in which these fellows really do have something to hide! Read on …

Uh, Google made me do it!

We decided that more often than not, we would want to hide the date . . . But . . . we wanted an option to keep the date on a post if we felt readers would benefit from knowing the date of publication. — Dan Johnson

Dan Johnson and his buddy Ben Hunt claimed that Google slapped them for having old content, until they realized their clickthrough rates were actually suffering because they had dates on the older articles. The gist of it is that Google now displays a date alongside search results (SERPs); thus, someone encountering your relevant (evergreen) article that is dated several years ago will be less inclined to visit your post if they assume your information is outdated.

Once they figured out why the SERPs were causing them pain, they created a tutorial on how to remove the dates from SERP Snippets.

Time to Pop the Question!

Adding dates to blog posts and articles assures visitors that your content is relevant to their needs. Yet, sometimes it might be appropriate to hide the dates.

Well, it’s time to say goodbye, but before you go, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this dating game . . . (and thanks for reading!)

• Do you include dates on your blog posts or do you leave them off? Why?
• Have you ever thought about it one way or the other?
• What are other reasons to add a date or skip including them?

Image: © Olivier Le Moal – Fotolia.com