Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

What is the purpose of an RSS feed? That is one of many questions I get from people on a daily basis. I decided I would share. First, you have to understand what it is before I go onto explaining how you can use your RSS feed to your advantage.

According to Wikipedia, an RSS feed is:

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

The format is really simple (exactly part of its definition.) In fact, you can view my own rss feed here at Blondish.net and see for yourself. You will be able to subscribe to these feeds too. One way you can subscribe is to plug the feeds you into your Google Reader. You can simply click on the title of the feed on one side and it appears in a window for your to reading convenience.

However, here are a few things to help you with your blog when harnessing the power of RSS feeds:

• You can use your social networking places and spread the news about your blog and ask those who like your blog to subscribe to your feed. The feed is something that your reader can choose to come back and not forget about after some time.
• You can make money with your RSS feed. There are programs out there that will allow you to add text links or advertisements to your feed so you can make a little money.
• You can hold subscription drives. RSS feeds are free to subscribe to. In fact, Chris Brogan holds them on occasion, and encourages others to hold them too. These subscription drives could pull in more readers who are curious about your content. You can also take this time to ask your audience on what they would like to see on your site so they may come back again and again.
• You can encourage your readers to make comments on your blog through your feed too! This is a great way to keep your blog’s conversation rolling!

The great thing about the feeds are that all you have to do is blog and it will be published not just to your website, but your feed page too. It can drive traffic to your site on days you did not do much to promote your blog, and possibly bring back old viewers you have not seen in some time.

Do you have an RSS feed? If so, what do you do to harness its power? If not, have you ever considered putting one on your site?

I have heard a lot on the verdict about anti-spam plugins for WordPress and even after trying a lot of different plugins, I still come to the conclusion – you will see spam get through. Some plugins less than others, but still… there is always a factor that there will be spammers. It does not matter if you put captcha, a math question, or even a check mark, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SPAM.

It is sad, but really, it keeps every blogger on their toes. Even with the best email spam blockers, spam DOES get through eventually.

Personally, I think it is annoying when spam comments on my blog comes in the hundreds. It is without a doubt that unfortunately Askimet for WordPress is not always doing a good job. I hate to say it, but I am not even sure if I can trust how much better paying for Askimet per month can help any blogger, even some of the top pro bloggers out there!

The problem is that there are people out there, just like everyday hackers devious and thinking on how they can reach you. Whether it is your email account, Instant messenger, social network account, or even your blog comments, they try it.

It could be different keywords, or even typing words a certain way. People still get Viagra and Cialis comments like crazy and it is because they are typed differently: spelled incorrectly, typed in l33t spee (upper case, lower case alternating letters), and even grouped with other keywords.

Bloggers literally have to make it part of their routine to block spammers in any sort of manner.

So far, I have heard that the GASP Plugin for WordPress is great for bloggers. Even though it is a plugin that requires your blog commenters to checkmark a box basically asking if they are a real person instead of a spammer, I have heard that a lot of bloggers have given feedback that their moderation queues have greatly reduced.

What is it about spam that is annoying to you? What kind of spam do you often moderate on your blog? What plugin or plugins do you use to try to reduce spam on your blog?

Dlvr.it, allows you to connect your site’s RSS feed to social network sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

It also allows you to put in multiple feeds and if you manage several Twitter accounts, you can have multiple routes set up. Other options are replacing text, scheduling, filtering, and it even gives you some stats on how many times your links have been clicked. Pretty nifty, huh?

I think the site is fairly user friendly and just a great third party tool for bloggers. I had no problem adding feeds or taking advantage of the options for each feed I inserted.

FYI: For those who love to share the wealth of knowledge or like to give your trusted circle of blog friends a leg up, inserting their site’s RSS is great!

Another nice tidbit – as a mentioned above, you can replace text. For example, change blog to #blog or even blogging to #blogging. This will help boost your social network streams searchability, especially on Twitter.

Here is a video screencast on a intro walk through Dlvr.it. I will be following up with a more detailed screencast to help those who are not as Internet savvy.

By the way, with using Dlvr.it, those using WordPress, you can get rid of 1 more plugin – Twitter Tools. I hate to remove it, but with this service, but because of my belief in building a WordPress site with few plugins, this actually saves a little of your own site load.

Have you used Dlvr.it?

For anyone who does not know what KeywordLuv is, it is a plug created by Stephen Cronin that has promised blog owners that their reader’s comments on their DoFollow blogs can be rewarded by using a keyword, rather than the person’s name.

While this is great and there are plugins like GASP that have helped to reduce comment spam and false positives, KeywordLuv really does nothing more than encourage spammers. There are too many people jumping on the bandwagon that using a keyword instead of a name is great. For transparency and social media, this is not ideal.

Even back in March 2009, the very developer of KeywordLuv, a big DoFollow supporter removed KeywordLuv because of the spam.

The idea of KeywordLuv was great, but with CommentLuv already out there for years, rewards the visitors. While it is acceptable to see ‘Your Name @ Such And Such Company’, the keyword signoff, is seen as spam. It is not surprising to see even an accepted type of sign off be lopped in with the spam too.

While I know a lot of people would not agree with me, it really does not give much oomph for backlinks. Even if you make 100 approved comments on Google Page Rank 4 and above websites, you are not going to get much juice. Most of the meat and potatoes in getting link juice is within the article itself and not the comments. And unless I put the exact URL jump to a comment, or if someone else does, that will not matter much.

The comments should matter more for engagement, rather than SEO. This is where all the fake blog comment opportunities out there in the freelance world have gone wrong. The ones who get it, encourage real and substantial comments that can add to the blog post’s conversation, not look like spam.

Think about it.

• How many people are utilizing KeywordLuv when commenting on your site?
• Out of those who use KeywordLuv- how many of them are actually using it properly?
• Are their comments (on blogs using KeywordLuv) more substantial, or are you clicking delete on their comment because it seems like spam?
• Is it really necessary to add that extra plugin to your comment features that really do not do much rewarding in the end, especially when there are better alternatives like CommentLuv?

The main selling point when it comes to Posterous is the ease at which you can do everything. Nearly all actions on the site can be completed using a simple email. To get started all you have to do is email your first post to post@posterous.com and an account will be instantly setup for you.

Lowering the boundaries to blogging is what Posterous is all about and encourages those would be bloggers who have found the process tedious to easily be able to add images and content via an email. On top of this Posterous also connects to many other social networks and blogging platforms to aid the distribution and visibility of the content you create.

There are also some more advanced features to this blogging platform. For instance you have the ability to select the additional social networks you want your content posted to by changing the Posterous address you send your email to.

The ease of content creation and simplicity by which you can post content to your very own blog has seen Posterous expand at a rapid rate. However there has been another step in the direction of simplicity recently when Posterous launched their iPhone app.

The iPhone app allows anyone, with an iPhone of course, to share images, video, text or voice memo’s directly from their phone. The really is the next step towards blogging on the go and whilst I doubt many of you will be typing up feature length articles from your mobile this is a very interesting addition for those who post a lot of media content. The simplicity of being able to take a picture from your phone and have it live on your blog in a matter of seconds is surely something that a lot of people will find enjoyable.

If there was any doubt previously that Posterous was not the simplest and easiest to use blogging platform with the addition of the iPhone app there really is no arguing.

Have you tried Posterous yet? Do you think being able to blog directly from your phone is a good or a bad thing?

I know, I know – I love WordPress enough that I am really hardcore about persuading people to using WordPress.org self-hosting, especially for those investing in a domain and hosting. I even recommend it for the free hosting on WordPress.com.

I want to ask those using Blogger – why are you still using it?

Once you get a your own domain, it would be much easier to maintain your website. Matt Cutts even uses WordPress. Yeah, blogger is free, but for business owners, you always want more control over your site.

What? More control?

Yep, that is the number one thing I hear from business owners. While a business owner might not use everything on the site’s backend, they still like that luxury of freedom. WordPress offers that freedom to do what you want. That is the beauty of Open Source software.

WordPress is a CMS (content management system), not blog software alone like it was notoriously known for in its early days. While it might seem intimidating, it really is not. This just means that you can do a lot more things than just having a blog.

Coding a theme is not difficult. WordPress.org provides detailed documentation and the community itself has loads of resource sites fill with tutorials and code snippet tricks.

I have even worked with clients who have used other CMS like Joomla and Drupal, and it was hands down, far more user-friendly and easier to run a WordPress powered site. WordPress even allows Blogger users to import their posts when they want to convert. How nifty, right?

What I want do is open the floor and allow Blogger users to ask questions or place their concerns on why they have not taken that step to choose WordPress for self-hosting? What is it that you think WordPress cannot do for you? Are you afraid of losing SEO value or even traffic? Are you uncertain about learning WordPress, which in the long run will save you time? Why are you still using Blogger?

Social networking sites have brought webmasters to seeking ways to entice their visitors to follow. Other than normal linking, social network icon sets can be a nice visual touch.

It is a good thing that there are generous web and graphic designers out there willing to take the time to make social icons for the hundred of social networks out there. Below are 13 places I think that have the best social network icon sets that bloggers, business owners, and well, any type of site owner can download and use.

Simple Circular Social Media Icon Set

Set of Social icons no. 2 by Tydlinka

Social Media Mini Icon Pack

Set of social icons

SocioLEGO, a free Social Icon Set

Heart v2: Free Social Iconset in Heart Shape

21 free social vintage icons

Socialize Part 3 Icons

Social Media Stars Icon Set

Web2 Icons

Social Media Balloons

Woodgrain: A Free Social Media Icon Set

Page Peel – A Free Social Media Icon set

I have just some good ways to give your blog more exposure and make it more popular, so let us begin without wasting time.

1. Do not start if your aim is for publicity
   During these past 4 years I have always defended those who decided to put advertising on their blogs, but it is very different if that someone started this activity with publicity as a sole ambition. First, it could be considered as work and second, unless you experience the results, they will be poor and mediocre.
2. You set the rules
   Never let anyone tell you what you can or can not do on your site. Written rules about what you have to do to have a good blog become obsolete every time someone comes to do things better and have their own ideas of how to do this. Occasionally you’ll get recommendations, but again, you decide what is best for your site. That process is educational and interesting.
3. Forget statistics
   Wherever possible, avoid the use of statistical control tools. Being aware of them tends to be more negative than positive because you will focus on that rather than what you should be doing -having fun and writing on your blog. Today there who dedicated efforts not to keep a blog but to feed its statistical system with more and more page views. Can not have fun in that.
4. Look after the appearance of your site
   Caring for the appearance of your site is very important, and not just because of what others may say – but for yourself too. Use templates if you consider it necessary, but in that case, try giving a personal touch.
5. Try to pace yourself
   Sometimes it’s important to read the daily update, but again, these tips are for your happiness and not to improve your stats. Therefore, seek a frequency that suits your available time and tries to keep pace. That will get you up to date and above all not to leave your blog stale. One more recommendation: Please avoid MiniPosts which are not useful for your readers and meaningless.

How do you keep yourself happy with your blog?