Why do I blog?

I personally blog because I love helping people and writing things online.  I love to know that I’m writing about topics that I enjoy and topics that are helping people. Blogging helps people to learn.  The more people learn from you the more people trust you.

When people trust you they will buy anything you put in-front of them.  Don’t try and sell something if you don’t have the trust of every reader that’s reading your blog.  You have to gain the trust of your readers.  You will gain their trust by putting up valuable posts across the whole internet.  The more post that you put up, the more comments you will receive.  The more Google will find you valuable.  The more Google finds you valuable the more people will find your blog while they are searching on Google.  People will be searching for what you have to offer.

Why shouldn’t you blog?

You really shouldn’t blog because you suck.  You will never earn any money. You will never become anything.  Are you sick of hearing this?  It sucked for me to even write them.  You are amazing, you are reading this blog post right now.  You are trying to become something more then you are currently.  Make comments, blog more, enjoy what you do.  You really shouldn’t blog unless you are passionate about what you’re doing.  If you don’t enjoy blogging, you won’t be happy during the hard times.  I personally write around four to five different blog post a day.  If I got bored doing what I’m doing, I would quite after a week or two.  You have to enjoy everything that you’re doing.

Bottom line, enjoy what you do.  If you don’t enjoy what you do, it will show to all your reader.  They will see right through your writing and blogging.  Not to mention that you’ll quit after a couple weeks.  Don’t be that person that blogs for three weeks then quits.

The Very First Things That You Must Know about Blogging  

There are a few essential things that you must understand about creating and running a blog. It is fundamental to know that you can create a blog within 15 minutes. This is possible as most services that ensure webhosting also deliver different tools that can help you to create your blog. Due to these tools, the entire process of designing a new blog is very easy. Furthermore, there are different free templates, which can help you to create a blog with a truly professional look.  Best of all, most of them are 100% FREE.

The Most Important Blogging Tips That Can Help You to Run Your Blog Professionally

After creating your blog, there are a few essential things that you must do. In order to help you with these, the following paragraphs present several blogging tips that can literally guide you towards the professional way to blog.

• Use Widgets: You are able to find numerous free widgets which you can add to your blog. You can use these tools to permit your visitors to post comments with regard to your blog posts. This thing will keep your blog very busy, which is auspicious for your search engine ranking.

• Monetize Your Blog: It is also very important to monetize your blog. You can spot a few monetization programs that you can find online, such as Google AdSense. In addition, you can also get affiliate marketing programs and add them to your blog. However, while doing all these, make sure that you concentrate on a specific niche so that your blog is really going to have a professional look.

• Add Feed Burner: The Feed Burner is an auto responder that sends your posts to subscribers. However, if you can afford a paid auto responder, you should definitely get such a tool. The reason for this is mainly because the free tools are not as good.

• Sell Space: If you have a decent number of visitors, you can try to sell advert spaces. In addition, different companies are willing to pay you money to post different articles, which recommend their businesses. You can find such requests as pay-per-post programs.

• Massive Traffic: In order to direct massive traffic towards you blog, you have to post some good quality content on your blog. Additionally, you should submit different articles to directories, while using social media websites and forums to present your blog. Another thing that you can do is to post comments and add links on different blogs with high traffic. In return, you can do the same thing for the correspondent blogs. This way, you can increase your ranking on different search engines.

These days, you can find many other blogging tips that can help you to run your blog in a professional way. The most important thing that relates to this post is the fact that you CAN make some nice money by simply running a blog within your favorite niche.  If you have questions or need some advice, leave your comment below and I’ll try and follow up to every blogging tips questions you put up!

How to Set Up a Successful PPC Program

A PPC campaign is an easy way to bring targeted customers to your website. But it takes a lot of time to make the campaign a success. There is a lot of trial and error method involved in the process. It is important to optimize your content of the advertisement so that users click on it. The optimization of PPC campaign works in three distinct steps

• Keywords: Firstly, you need to come up with the keywords which suit your website well and sign up for a PPC cost program. Only then your advertisements will crop up in the first page of the search engine result page. You need to keep analyzing and find out which keywords work best for you.
• Ad content: Each advertisement will have a unique message stated below the website name. Optimize the content well so that users get the information they need. You should try and minimize the number of words as much a possible because users do not have much time to read through lengthy content. They might be side tracked by other websites content. You only have two seconds to catch the user’s attention. So minimize the content length and explain about your website. If you are not good with content editing, you may need to recruit professionals to come up with this particular piece of information to have a successful PPC campaign.
• Landing page: Landing page is nothing but the web page the user lands on when they click on the advertisements. Many advertisers give their home page as landing page but creating a separate landing page is important to have a successful PPC campaign. When a user lands in the homepage, they are lost and have no clue what to do next, they may leave. It will unnecessarily increase your bounce rate. Create a landing page that gives the user some information about the website in a short and precise manner. Then give a link of your home page. This will help in reducing your bounce rate and help you in converting visitors to your customers.

How Important is PPC in Online Marketing

I believe that only 30% of your website visitors should be brought to your site through your PPC campaigns.  That being said, you shouldn’t let this deter you if you’re getting 60% of your website visitors through PPC cause it can be one of the best ways to get targeted traffic while you work on other things like SEO. PPC shouldn’t be ignored because it gives a head start in your marketing campaign. When you start a website, the ranking gained through other online marketing techniques are not enough to have decent amount of traffic. A PPC campaign will bring in target users to your website that are searching for what you have.

I’m giving away a $100 coupon to start your own campaign with Google Adwords.  Best comment below gets it!  I’d love to hear what your experience is with PPC.  If you have any questions about PPC please visit our PPC Tips page or leave a comment below.

Grammarly is a web-based editor that describes itself as the “world’s most accurate grammar checker.” It automatically proofreads as you type and checks your spelling, grammar, style, and punctuation on the fly. It can also check for plagiarism and automatically generate references/citations.

While you can use the service without signing up, creating a login allows you to do more advanced things like:

• View detailed error descriptions
• See citation suggestions (in the event of plagiarism)
• Enhance your vocabulary with built in tools
• Integrate with Microsoft Office

There is a 7-day free trial so that you can test out the advanced features. After that the subscription price is: $19.95/month, $39.95/quarter, or $95.45/year. You will need to enter your credit card information for the trial, but you can cancel before the trial is up so that you will not be charged.

Without a subscription, all you really get to do is use of the editor and view a basic error report. You can either paste your text into the online editor or type directly into it. If the content is too short, Grammarly will ask you add more text; so make sure you have at least one full paragraph of text.

When you hover your mouse over the “Start Review” button, you can enable/disable other options or simply click on the button to start checking for errors.

Once checked you’ll get a brief report of your errors along with a score. Grammarly will let you know whether your content needs revision or not.

As mentioned above, Grammarly won’t tell you how to actually fix your errors, you’ll need a subscription for that, but you’ll get a good idea of how weak or strong your content is. Best of all, there are downloads needed. You can use Grammarly from any browser and it scans through your content rather quickly.

A few alternatives to Grammarly that you may find useful are:

• GrammarCheck.me
• Ginger
• PaperRater
• SpellChecker.net
• WhiteSmoke

In comparison to the other options out there, do you think Grammarly stands above the rest?

CloudMe

“The easiest way to get your files online with automatic backup.” You get 3 GB of free online storage that you can use to access your files from the Web desktop or mobile devices (iPhone, Android). Functions as a Cloud OS with a user-friendly interface and integrated instant messenger. Works in Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox on the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Box.net

“Share, manage and access all your business content online.” A free plans come with 5 GB of storage. You can sync files from your computer and also collaborate on shared folders right from your desktop. You can also connect Box.net with Google Apps and Salesforce for flawless content management. Access your files from your mobile device in your mobile browser or via apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. While Box.net has been around awhile, they recently gave their interface a refreshing makeover.

GoAruna

“Send, access, store, manage and share your files fast.” Share and send large files securely via the Web, desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux), widgets, tablets (iPad, Android, Archos) or mobile phones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm). You can upload and download multiple files or even whole folders at a time. Free plans come with 2 GB of storage and other monthly plans come with a free trial if interested.

ZumoDrive

“Enjoy your media and documents from every device.” Upload your files and access them from your computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) or mobile device (iPhone, Android, Palm). Integrates with iTunes for easy importing and exporting of music and playlists. Integrates with iPhoto and Picasa so that you can easy import and export photos. Comes with 2 GB of free storage space and you can have as much as 500 GB of storage (for $79.99/month).

TeamDrive

“Synchronizes your data quickly and securely.” Free accounts come with 2 GB of storage. Works with Windows, Mac and Linux for easy yet advanced collaboration, syncing, backup and automatic encryption – great for working with teams. The only downside is that they don’t appear to have any mobile apps for access files on your mobile device.

Put.io

“A storage service that fetches media files and lets you stream them immediately.” Put.io can fetch torrents, audio, documents, videos and images for streaming and sharing. Put.io can even watch your RSS feeds for you and download new content automatically. While they do not offer any free storage, you can get a 3-day free trial on all plans. The lowest plan for $4.90/month comes with 10 GB of storage. With all of the features available, the price is definitely worth it.

ADrive

“Centralized storage for all file types: movies, documents, photos, music.” ADrive definitely offers the largest amount of online storage for free with a whopping 50 GB of space. The are a few limitations like not being able to use the desktop app for Windows, Mac or Linux; it’s perfect if you’re just needing online storage with Web access. You can upload, store and share files as well as edit documents via Zoho Editor.

Syncplicity

“Delivers powerful, easy to use file management in the cloud.” Includes automatic file syncing, data backup, file sharing and collaboration features.  Free accounts come with 2 GB of storage. Currently works on Windows (Vista, XP) and Mac. Offers Google Docs integration and file servers with the Business Edition plan.

Honorable Mentions

iDrive – Free 5 GB for online storage and backup on Windows, Mac and iOS devices. You can also access your documents from the Web and manage multiple accounts.

iDriveSync – Free 5 GB for online syncing and sharing “with better security.” Available for Windows and Mac. Share your files securely via military grade encryption.

SkyDrive – A file hosting service from Microsoft that lets you upload files to a cloud storage and access them from the Web. Comes with 25 GB of free storage.

Ubuntu One – “The personal cloud that brings your digital life together” with 2 GB of free storage. Can also be used to stream music to your iPhone and Android devices.

Pricing

Before getting started with BackTweets, it’s important to know that to get the most out of it, you’ll have to spend quite a bit of money. While they do offer a free basic account, you’ll get more features and better results with a Pro account. Unfortunately, the Pro account is $100/month, but if you’re a company or someone who really wants to measure and optimize their reach, it’s the way to go. While they are offering a 7-day free trial for the Pro account, they do require you to enter a credit card. For now, I’ve tested out the free version.

Features

As you can see from the features listed above, it is pretty limited with a free account. The three features offered are:

• Link Search – This lets you search Twitter for any links that you’re interested in. You can just enter the URL in the search box and BackTweets will find all of the tweets containing that link. Even if the link has been shortened or is pointing to a subdomain (even though you entered the index), you’ll still get results. This is great for seeing who is tweeting about your blog or website. You can then set up email alerts for specific search queries if desired.

  Just remember that with a free account, BackTweets will only do a search for tweets from the past 2-4 weeks.

  

• Email Alerts – BackTweets lets you receive an email whenever the link you specify is tweeted. So if you want to monitor who is tweeting about your blog or website, you can set up an alert with your email address and desired frequency (once a day, as they arrive, once a week). This is a great way to keep up with people who enjoy your content and thank them for tweeting about it. You can then manage your alerts on the BackTweets homepage.

  

• Influence Profiles – “Identify influencers that link to a URL and learn more about them.” Basically, you can click on an @username to see more about the person that tweeted about you or the URL specified. You actually get to see quite a bit of information like their ranking, score, influencers, most shared sites and more. There’s not any explanation on how these scores and ranks are calculated, but the numbers and percentages do look pretty impressive none-the-less.

Final Verdict

So, can I honestly say that BackTweets is worth $100/month? No I cannot. While it would be nice to see more results and use all of the features, I just feel that the price is too expensive for regular users. Not only that, but there are so many other tools out there that can do the same thing as BackTweets and for free. So why pay? You may have to use more than one tool to accomplish everything that BackTweets can do in a single location, but in the end you will be saving $100 each month.

While the alerts feature is pretty useful, I really don’t see myself using BackTweets in any other kind of way. How about you?

We all have something we are passion about in our lives. Whether its family or some type of talent you like to show off at times. We all have something that keeps up from going in sane and on the right path of making our dreams come true.

Sometime back I wrote about the motivational saying that sparked my success and how for not going through the things I did, then I will have just ended up as another marketer who is trying to make money online.

You have to ask yourself some key question if you can’t figure out what drives you to get up each day and do your daily activities. You must reach deep down and grab on to what makes you the best at what you do.

Your Drive

Even though we want to be successful and live a comfortable like the Jones’s, we still sometimes lack the motivation to go after our goals. We must see results everyday to keep pushing our marketing efforts.

If you don’t see growth in your traffic each day, then most of you will stop whatever marketing your doing and try your luck with something else. This is normal and all people have this sort of trait.

So we must find something that will not only keep us motivated but also keep up on task. You know when I tell people to introduce yourself on my blog..I’m looking to see will they talk about what motivates them versus saying..Hi my name is Antonio Coleman and I love seo.

This is not the answer I’m looking..I want you let me know what your passion about and what are the things your doing to make your passion become center stage.

Key 2 Success

Motivation is the key thing you need in your life if you want to compete with people who already have it. You see if those other top ten people are more motivated then you, then you will not be able to out rank them.

Basically because if your not doing any type of link building because your not motivated enough to start the process, then you will fail because those other top ten guys in your niche will continue to out do you in the search engines.

You must find what gets you going and learn how to use it to your advantage. Once you learn how to out work people in your niche, then you will see growth in your site and your lifestyle.

What Motivates You?

Photo Credit

Scrim

With Scrim you enter your email address and can optionally customize your URL. You’ll then have a short URL to share in place of your email address. When people click on your link, they’ll have to pass a creative captcha test before being given the privilege to see your email address. So not only is your email address not posted online for all to see, but those who click on your link have to prove that they’re human in order to get your email address.

EmailCover

With EmailCover you’ll receive your email address as an image. It is ideal for sharing your email address on your blog or any other website that allows HTML. You can view how many times the image has been viewed, but there is no added security like Scrim with the captcha test. This works great because text inside images cannot be copied and pasted or read by spam bots.

Contactify

Lastly there is Contactify (my personal favorite); it’s a little different from the other 2 because instead of showing people your email address, it takes them to a contact form. All you have to do is enter your email address and create a password. That’s it. Your contact form will then be complete and you’ll get a link to share with the world. When people click on your link, they’ll seed the form below. So, if you need to create a contact form in under 10 seconds, Contactify is the way to go.

How do you share your contact information on the Web? Do you have another method that you prefer?

What Is KnowEm?

“KnowEm allows you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 470 popular and emerging social media websites. Grab your name and secure your brand before someone else does.”

How Does It Work?

With a few quick steps, you can have KnowEm searching for your specified username across the Web. You then have the option to create an account on the sites where your username is not secured on. If that’s too time consuming for you, for a hefty fee you can have KnowEm do all of the work for you.

Getting Started

Enter the username that you want to search for, right at the top of the homepage. Then click on the “Check It” button.

At first, KnowEm will search through the most popular social networks only. If you want to check more, then you’ll have to click on the “Check More Social Sietes (400+)” link at the bottom of your results.

KnowEm will also show you the most common available domain names for your username. Again, you can check more domains by clicking on the “Check More Domains (40+)” link.

Searching All Sites

You obviously want to check more than just the most popular sites and click on the “Check More” link. KnowEm then takes you to a page where the sites are broken up into categories and you then must check each section individually.

The categories are: blogging, bookmarking, business, community, design, entertainment, health, information, microblogging, music, news, photo, tech, travel and video.

Click on the “Check This Category” button and give it a minute or two. Sites where your username is registered will be grayed out, while open sites will have a clickable “Available” link next to them. Clicking on the “Available” link will take you to that site’s registration page in a new tab.

Take The Easy Way Out

If you don’t have the time or really just don’t want to sit there, check each site and then register on all of them, you don’t have to. Personally I think you should just choose the categories most important to your niche and makes sure you at least have those areas covered, but you can also pay KnowEm to do the job.

They offer 4 different subscription plans ranging from $99 to $599. The $99 Individual Plan will start the initiation process for 150 sites. This means that they do not setup actual profiles for you (you have to get the $249, $349 or $599 plan for that). What they do is complete the initial registration process (usually where you enter your desired username, password and email) and that’s it. From there you have to confirm your registration via email and then fill out all of the profiles yourself.

That’s quite a price to pay for something you can definitely do yourself, yet that may be the only option for people who just don’t have the time. Whichever you decide, it is important to at least check and see where your brand is established and expand your coverage as much as you can. Try doing just one category at a time and you’ll see that it’s really not much work at all!

Get started at KnowEm now.

Mitchell Allen

When I started blogging, Mitch was the person who was always on the blogging site sorting out technical errors and helping to make it better. More importantly, he posted frequently on the value of building strong, mutually supportive networks where the people involved helped each other and gained more than they had expected. Mitch practices what he preaches and at various times has helped me sort out hosting problems, while I’ve done a bit of writing for him. Mitch writes code and designs games, and is also an excellent writer. Check out some of the posts on his Morpho Designs blog (best described as eclectic) and you’ll see what a knack he has for getting to the heart of an issue, often in an amusing way.

Rebecca Leaman

I’d known Rebecca for a couple of years before I knew her first name. On this same site, she was the person you went to if you wanted to know how to do anything with blogging. If you ask any of us from that time where we found out about Feedburner, RSS, blog networks, online tools and the like, they would say that she told them. Rebecca’s an interesting person (writer, editor, beekeeper, non-profit online guru) and she’s still the first person I think of if I want good tech tool recommendations or sound advice on an online issue. Rebecca’s most often found hanging around at the Wild Apricot blog and on Twitter.

Dana Prince

Dana’s another friend from way back then and I really respect her accomplishments. We’ve interacted in many ways over the years. I was a sort of unofficial mentor for a while, then we worked together for the same client, started writing teams together and are still in regular communication today. Dana is a prolific blogger, so I can’t even list all the places to find her online, but two worth noting are her writing blog and her HealthNiche blog, both good reads.

Others

Mitch, Rebecca and Dana aren’t the only people I’m still in touch with from those days. From time to time I catch up with Malcolm Campbell, an author who has a range of blogs, including the Writer’s Notebook, as well as Merry Monteleone and Shelly Bryant – and I mustn’t forget Suzanne James of Inspired Author, who helped me learn SEO.

Have you got any long time blogging friends and inspirations to introduce? Let us know who they are.

When you sign up you’ll be asked to enter your name. The name that you enter will also be used for your personal URL. So, your URL will look like this: www.doyoubuzz.com/firstname-lastname. This is not something that can be customized unless you decide to get a premium account. You’ll also enter some basic info such as your desired position, professional status and availability. Lastly it will give you the option to import information from LinkedIn and/or Viadeo.

If you choose to import from LinkedIn or Viadeo, you can choose the info you want to import. Options for this are: about me, professional experience, education, interests and/or skills. This only takes a few seconds. After it’s done imported, all of your information will be available on the home tab of your resume. This information can be moved around, edited or deleted.

Even though your resume home page shows everything at a single glance, each section is actually broken up into tabs and can be viewed separately. The tabs on your resume will depend on which modules you decide to use. There are many modules to choose from such as contact information, links, your blog RSS, photos, videos, doc & pdf documents and even presentations. This really gives you a chance to showcase what you have to offer.

You also get to choose a design for your resume. Live previewing is available, so you can see how each one will look before making a final decision. There is also an export section that lets you share your resume on your Facebook profile. The DoYouBuzz Facebook applications allows you to add a tab to your profile displaying your resume. There are also badges available that can be used on other profiles to let people know about your resume.

Under settings you can add a description that will be displayed in search engine results. If you don’t want your resume to be displayed in search engines, you can easily turn this option to “no”. If you’d rather protect your resume with a password, you can do that as well.

If you are looking for even more options, DoYouBuzz Premium lets you have your own domain (www.firstname-lastname.com or www.firstnamelastname.com). If you don’t like either of those you can choose your own custom domain. You’ll also be able to create your resume in multiple languages, access premium designs and get unlimited portfolio storage. This is all for $49.00/year.

I think DoYouBuzz is great for those really wanting to make an impression on employers. You really have nothing to lose with the easy to use interface, numerous modules & settings and social integration. Plus it helps to give you a boost in search engines. In my opinion, DoYouBuzz is definitely a win-win resume creation tool.

The first social media conference I ever attended was Blog World Expo in 2007. I was there primarily for PostieCon, an IZEA event. However, attending Blog World Expo really changed things for me and made me even more excited to attend these kinds of events. The experience of being with a group of people who were as excited about blogging and Social Media (Web 2.0 back then) was infectious. I was hooked.

After Blog World Expo 2007 I attended BWE ’08 and ’09 and I plan on going to BWE ’10. I also attended IZEAFest ’08 and ’09 (What PostieCon became) as well as Affiliate Summit East ’09 and West ’10. So, I’ve been to a few of these events. Each event has provided me with not only great education but great contacts, memories and experiences.

Is the Value Received Worth the Expense?

Conferences can be expensive. Not only the cost to attend but additional expenses like transportation, lodging and not to mention food and entertainment. The expenses completely add up, even if you find a sponsor who’d send you to the event and pay much of the expense. You might be thinking that saving the money and watching the twitter feed or the live streaming sessions is a better option. For some it might be, but for me nothing replaces being there in the thick of it.

For the first few conferences I just attended and watched and learned. I spoke to many people, but it wasn’t until I attended a few conferences that I was comfortable to really get into it and speak with everyone. Then as I attended more conferences I began to meet people who would recognize me and who would be interested in spending time talking with me. Eventually I was even asked to speak. Would that have happened if I had stayed home and participated only through chat rooms and Twitter. Maybe, but I highly doubt it.

People do business with those they know, like and trust.

I’ve heard this over and over again and sort of just let it go, but it is the absolute truth. I’m all for Social Networking online and building relationships that certainly is beneficial and has its place. However, you just can’t duplicate sharing a meal together, suffering through a bad speaker together, singing karaoke to bad 80′s music together or slamming your face into a perfectly good cake together. Being there is worth so much more than just learning the latest techniques to make money. Being there is a chance to make a real connection with some fantastic people.

Putting my money where my mouth is.

As the conference season begins in earnest I’m gearing up to be flying all across the country. I can be found either attending or speaking at these conferences. (At this time I am not being sponsored for any trip and the only thing being comped would be conference tickets only if I am speaking.)

The Evolution of Women in Social Media – Speaking on a Daddy Blogger Panel

Affiliate Summit East 2010 – Speaking on a panel “How Bloggers Can Successfully Connect with Audiences”.

Modern Media Man Conference – I submitted a session to speak, waiting to hear.

Blog World and New Media Expo 2010 – I submitted a session to speak, waiting to hear.

If you are attending any of these events let me know, I’d love to meet you. And if you know of other conferences I should attend please let me know.

Like many of you I have a full-time job in addition to working on my blog. In my job I’ve taken on the role of the media guy. This is not my actual job title or even in my job description. Because I am skilled with HTML, photography, and video production I get to do some extra things at work. Sometimes this can be really fun. Other times however, it is not. The times when it sucks is when I have to work with a micro-manager on my back.

How do you deal with the micro-manager?

Micro-managers want to control you. They want things that they do not understand to be done their way. The worst micro-managers are those people who do not have any real authority over you, but perceive that they do. They make little petty changes to your work and demand to see finished projects over and over. They make a change and want to see that change right away. They could ask you a question directly but instead e-mail you and CC your boss on the exchange making you look like someone who does not cooperate. They always have some change to make seemingly to justify their position and exert control. When you are finally done you are so sick of the micro-managing mentality, distraction, nuisance that you may even miss something that is actually a big mistake.

Is Constant Change a Good Thing?

Imagine going to your local bar. One week it is a karaoke place, the next a biker bar and the week after a coffee shop. This sort of brand multiple personality disorder only serves to drive customers away from the venue. How long do you think that this brand’s identity crisis will retain customers? Not Very.

Do you Micro-Manage your Blog?

Spending hours and hours tweaking your theme is a form of self-micro-managing. Changing themes 2, 3 4+ times a year, a month, even a week is not unheard of. You might think that these changes will attract more followers with all the new pretty, shiny changes. The constant changes actually hurts your blog and can alienate your audience.

I was guilty of doing this early on when I was finding my brand as well as my blog’s voice. I’d just change my theme on a whim. I’d micro-manage the theme because I didn’t really know how to make a theme of my own. I could make the blog pretty but I was essentially rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It wasn’t until I let go of the theme tweaks and focused on producing content that things really got moving on my blog. Later, I was blessed with a gift of a new blog theme from a good friend who was an actual designer. I didn’t then decide that I knew more than him and go back to tweaking the design. I focused on what my strengths were and produced good content with photography, video and writing.

There is no need to control everything if you trust the people that you are working with. Micro-managers do not trust those around them and so those people become more stunted the more interaction they have with the micro-manager. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Avoid the Micro-Management Trap. Focus on what you do Well

A micro-manager tries to do everything including those things that they are ignorant of. A micro-manager cannot give up control to people who actually know how to do things. A micro-manager doesn’t understand things but will do them anyway. Or they will bug people who know how to do things and offer their own spin on things they know nothing about. Don’t be that guy.

If you do not understand something then don’t add it to your blog. Learn all you can before you tackle something new. There is a prevailing sense of urgency and the desire to be first that is found on the Internet. The perception is that if you aren’t first you will be left behind. That is so not true. People who study and learn as much as they can before acting often excel even if they enter a space later than the crowd. This overwhelming urge of immediacy and the need to say something before understanding completely is what leads to mistakes and misunderstandings. Micro-managers act before they think and do so with a false authority, one they did not earn.

A Few Steps to Avoid Being an Online Micro-Manager

• Reflect on your strengths.
• If you don’t understand something… learn it.
• If you can’t learn something or don’t have the time to do so then… don’t. Focus on your actual strengths and find someone who can help.
• If you don’t have the aptitude to design… don’t. Find someone who can help.
• If you can’t write… don’t. Hire writers who can help.
• If you can’t promote… don’t. Find people who can and who can help you.
• Define your strengths… cultivate them.
• Understand your weaknesses… identify them.
• Find trusted advisors who can bolster your weaknesses.
• Listen to those Advisors… trust them.

  Above all Don’t Micro-Manage Them

Do you see areas where you can give up a bit of control and find help? What would that free you to accomplish?

I get a ton of e-mail from many different people. Keeping everyone straight can be difficult and those are just the people I know personally. I have a contact form on my blog and occasionally get people contacting me and asking me to try things, blog about things and for help. I don’t know these folks most of the time. However, I’ve discovered a great tool to help me identify people who are contacting me. The tool is called Rapportive.

When you install Rapportive (available for Chrome and Firefox) you gain some cool insight into the people that e-mail your Gmail account. When Rapportive installs it does a few great things right off the bat. It removes the ads that are on the sidebar of Gmail and replaces them with information about the sender of the e-mail. This is very useful in identifying exactly who you are interacting with.

I looked even closer at this and saw how it can really work well for you as you build up your blog and your personal brand. I installed Rapportive to see what sort of social information has been collected on me and where the information was coming from. Rapportive gets the information from Rapleaf.com and what Rapleaf calls the Online Footprint. Rapleaf looks at your e-mail and then pulls in the information associated with that e-mail address.

So I installed Rapportive and looked at my profile. I simply mouse over my e-mail address and up pops the profile in the right sidebar. Major information that gets pulled is from Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Hi5 and Flickr among others. This immediately gives you links to those profiles. There is also a personal note section where you can write notes to help you remember important things about each person. These notes are personal and private and just for you. It is sort of like writing info on the back of business cards to help you remember details about people that you have met.

If you want to make sure that your contacts are seeing the best information about you then sign up with Rapleaf and update your Online Footprint and link your multiple e-mail addresses to each other. By doing this you make sure that all of your social media info gets to the right people.

I did notice that when I updated the info it didn’t completely take. Each time I set my sex it went back to blank. I also tried changing a few other basic bits of info and they didn’t take either. So, I think that Rapleaf has some more work to do but Rapportive is still pretty decent. It is free and it removes the ads from your sidebar and replaces it with relevant information. That is very useful.

• searched Google, Twitter and Friendfeed a couple of times a week for the latest WordPress theme news
• downloaded about five themes although I have no idea where I’m going to use them
• changed themes on my two main WordPress blogs twice

I know that the minute something new comes out, like the BloggingTips Personal WordPress Theme, I’ll start getting twitchy about installing it. There are advantages and disadvantages to this constant theme switching.

Disadvantages Of Changing Themes Too Often

One of the main disadvantages applies if you are running a professional site. Switching themes too often makes it difficult for you to brand your site consistently. Depending on the layout of the particular theme, it may also make it difficult for readers to know exactly where they are and to find the information they need on your site. In this case, constant theme switching can lose you traffic and subscribers.

That also applies if you choose a theme that’s not well optimized for search engines. You may suddenly see a drop in traffic or searches for particular keywords or notice that your pages have dropped in SERPs. Some themes take care of the SEO for you, some don’t.

Third, every time you change the theme, you have to spend a lot of time in the admin interface tweaking to make sure that all your favorite widgets are in the right place and that all your plugins still work. Just one bracket or semi-colon out of place in the theme files can cause you untold headaches.

Advantages Of Giving Your Blog A Facelift

For every disadvantage, there is an advantage. Changing to a well coded, well optimized theme can help improve your blog’s search engine position and can make it easier for you to tweak individual elements. Switching to a theme framework such as Thesis, Headway or any other means that once your theme is set up, you can get a new look without having to make major changes.

Just as we like to get a new haircut or update our style, it’s good to do that occasionally with our blogs. We wouldn’t want our readers to get bored, would we? Themes that offer you the option to change content without too much work, such as featured posts, photo galleries and so on, can be a real boon.

Getting a new theme can also enhance the image of your site with readers. It can signal that your blog has moved to the next level and is ready to be taken seriously as a reader resource. It can enhance your professional image, too.

How Often Is Too Often?

So while I’ll willingly admit that perhaps I change themes a bit too often, I don’t think that’s likely to change any time soon. I’m always on the lookout for the perfect theme – and in four years of blogging, I haven’t found one that ticks all the boxes (though there are a few that come close).

What do you think? How often is too often when it comes to changing your blog theme?

(Photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nbachiyski/)