Blogging
Constructing A Press Release That Gets Attention
Press releases have always been a great way to get not only visitors to your web properties but also backlinks. The problem is, most people have no idea how to write one. It’s not that difficult at all and I will give you an outline and some of the things you should do and shouldn’t do.
Firstly, ask yourself whether your news is actually newsworthy? If you think it’s not don’t worry, it doesn’t take much to make it look newsworthy. Here is the biggest no-no of a press release. Don’t use it simply to make a sale or sell something.
A press release needs to be toned down. It needs to answer the who, what, where, when and why of whatever it is you’re promoting.
Here are a list of DO NOTs:
- Don’t make your press release sound like an advertisement. If it does then go back and tone it down and remember the four “Ws.”
- Never write a press release just to mention an opening or a launch. They are a dime a dozen and these type of press releases will usually get turfed.
- Always avoid hype and don’t fill it with fluff. It needs to be direct and straight to the point.
- Avoid exaggerations and over the top claims. The Journalism profession is one of skepticism. I know because I’ve spent my career working in news rooms around the world.
- Avoid too many exclamation marks. This is definitely a no-no…!!!!! I would not include them at all.
WordPress 2.7 Released Finally
Next Generation of Wordpress is finally here. WordPress 2.7 is finally released.
The first thing you’ll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, we’ve listened to your feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress that’s just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it did in a previous version.
Next you’ll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.
How To Bring Interactivity To Your Blog
This post was guest blogged by Jamie Harrop, a blogger of five years who at Jamie Harrop Dot Com writes about blogging, life as a young entrepreneur, self improvement and travel.
Blogs can often be two dimensional. The author writes a post. The reader writes a comment.
That’s all well and good, but it’s now very cliche and old.
Over the last six months the blogosphere has seen a huge influx of new media interactivity. Video and audio has been at the forefront of that effort.
Going Beyond Video and Audio
Everyone had spoken at length about the ever growing importance of video and audio in blogs and Web sites in general, so today I want to go beyond that. Today, I want to find new ways to bring interactivity to your blog. New ways to entertain your readers. New ways to ensure your readers feel an integral part of the community you are building. Here are four Ways to make your blog more interactive
Using Technorati API On Your Blog
In my effort to remove all badges from my front page and decrease the load time, I have now moved to using the Technorati API to display Technorati info. It looks like this:
The code is almost as easy as the code to display your FeedBurner subscribers. You’ll need to create an account with Technorati and then get your API key. That page will also tell you how much queries you’ve made that day, and what your daily allowance is.
This is the code, including caching:
$technorati = get_option("technorati"); if ($technorati['lastcheck'] < ( mktime() - 600 ) ) { $apikey = "apikey"; $endpoint = "http://api.technorati.com/cosmos?key=".$apikey; $request = $endpoint."&url=yoast.com&limit=10"; $snoopy = new Snoopy; $result = $snoopy->fetch($request); if ($result) { $pattern1 = '/([0-9]+)<\/inboundblogs>/'; $pattern2 = '/([0-9]+)<\/inboundlinks>/'; $pattern3 = '/([0-9]+)<\/rank>/'; preg_match($pattern1, $snoopy->results, $matches); preg_match($pattern2, $snoopy->results, $matches2); preg_match($pattern3, $snoopy->results, $matches3); $technorati['inboundblogs'] = number_format($matches[1]); $technorati['inboundlinks'] = number_format($matches2[1]); $technorati['rank'] = number_format($matches3[1]); $technorati['lastcheck']= mktime(); update_option("technorati",$technorati); } } echo "<h3>Technorati</h3>"; echo "<p>".$technorati['inboundblogs']." blogs linked ".$technorati['inboundlinks']." times in the last 6 months, ranking it as ".$technorati['rank']." among all blogs.</p>"; ";
That’s it ! Let me know if you’ve got any questions !
BlogRush’s John Reese Still Living Large
John Reese sunk a reported $500,000 to create and develop BlogRush. He believed in it and thought it was going to be a great tool to help bloggers drive traffic to their sites. Unfortunately, things didn’t worked out as John hoped and BlogRush shut down last week.
While $500,000 is lot of money to flush down the drain, don’t feel too bad for John. As the below photos of his house and car shows, he’s still living pretty large. John Reese is a pretty normal guy. He’s also a great example of just how big one can get on the Internet. He tried and failed with BlogRush, but that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about. Better to try and fail then not try at all.
Blogrush is Dead
Just a quick note to let you know that the often controversial “BlogRush” is having its life support pulled and as always, the legend John Reese has a few words of wisdom to add about it.
Check out John’s blog post about it at…
http://www.income.com/blog/2008/10/29/the-death-of-blogrush/
I am very impressed when someone is open about something like this and critics beware…. unless you are successful like John then keep your negative comments to yourself. I too have had many failures and each one is a huge lesson learned and made me that much better for the next project.
Make Your Blog Digg Proof with WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. The plugin in an improvement to WP-Cache, which delivers pages without accessing the database. However, WP-Cache still loads the PHP engine to serve the cached files.
WP Super Cache gets around that. When it is installed, html files are generated and they are served without ever invoking a single line of PHP. How fast can your site serve graphic files? That’s (almost) as fast it will be able to serve these cached files. If your site is struggling to cope with the daily number of visitors, or if your site appears on Digg.com, Slashdot or any other popular site then this plugin is for you.
Cracking Google’s Servers and Finding Search Keywords
Researching keywords for your next blog post, article or site?
I’m going to show you a way to get a peek behind the scenes of the Google search engine and see actual “search keyword” trends. Using these techniques you can discover keywords that you will want to use now!
Sure Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) can help you find the top 100 hot topics but unless you are into top news stories or celebrities it doesn’t always help.
Google has finally let us pull back the curtain and see into the mounds of data that they have been collecting for years using their Google Insights for Search Tool. (http://www.google.com/insights/search/)
This is a keyword researchers dream. Four years of actual search data that you can comb through.
Using the Google Insights tool:
The first thing you should do is to sign in to your Google account at the top of the Insights. This will provide you with a little more detail in the results.
Top Rated Bloggers Make $25 Per Post Only
According to a survey by Read Write Web, top-tier tech bloggers make an average of $25 per blog post. The survey was hardly scientific. Read Write Web sent the survey to 20 top-tier tech bloggers and social media consultants to find out how much money they make online. Half of the bloggers surveyed gave an answer. The result was interesting to say the least.
Most people who are paid to blog are paid per post. What kinds of rates are our respondents seeing? The low end of the scale was $10 per post for very short posts. Almost everyone else said they were paid $25 per post. One person said they were paid $80 per post!
Let’s say these people are half-time pro-bloggers making $25 per post, writing 3 posts per day. That’s $75 per half-day, a little less than $20 per hour, about $1500 to $1750 per month for half time work. Take two of those jobs at once, do it for a year, and you’ll make about $40k.
The survey was limited to bloggers who write for other blogs and not blog owners, which explain why Read Write Web never contacted me. I guess that a good thing. With a survey sample of only ten, I would have pushed the average pay per post to an unrealistic level. Read Write Web goes on to say that the biggest reward isn’t the money but the thrill of writing and the ability to dedicate time to the subject you love.
13 Reasons Why I Like Windows Live Writer
Writing a post while connected to the Internet has the chance of you being tempted to check for new mails or to check your earnings or being disturbed by someone wanting to chat with you. To focus on writing a better post, I would suggest disconnecting from the Internet and to use a desktop blog editor instead of the writer provided by the blog platform you use.
Many bloggers still don’t use a desktop blog editor and don’t realize that they are wasting a lot of their precious time waiting for their blog platform’s writer to load when a desktop blog editor will let them write, preview, save and publish a post very fast.
There are many desktop blog editors available like Windows Live Writer (WLW), Ecto, w.bloggar and Qumana. Being a Windows lover, I use Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer. Below are the reasons why I like it.
