Instigator Blog

Over the last week I came across 4 great blog-related resources that I wanted to share:

1. 66 Ways To Build Links in 2007 - Brandon Hopkins has a huge list of ways to build links. It’s one of those blog posts you should bookmark and keep re-visiting every so often. Marketing and promoting your blog should be a never ending process, and a good chunk of that work is in link building.
2. WordPress Plugin Directory - WordPress has finally put together a comprehensive plugin list and organized it neatly and properly. Already I’ve found a few plugins I wasn’t aware of, including some very popular ones that warrant more investigation. This will very quickly become the de facto resource for all WordPress users when looking for plugins.
3. MultiSubmit - A neat little tool that lets you submit a blog post to multiple social bookmarking type sites all at once. You can pick which ones you want to be setup for, and it’s an incredibly easy process. It doesn’t work for StumbleUpon though, which is too bad because StumbleUpon is a great service. Still, it’s a very fast way to get a blog post put into the most popular social bookmarking sites including digg, reddit, Netscape and del.icio.us.
4. Blogged Out - Darren Cronian is starting almost from the beginning, introducing people to ways they can promote and improve their blogs. The information to-date is basic, but it’s always smart to start at the basics and learn along with others. Darren’s goal is to run Blogged Out for 3 months, earn $1,900 and donate 40% to charity.

Hope you enjoy these resources!

Finally. After 3 days of hassles with my previous hosting company to get a simple nameserver change it looks like it’s done.

Instigator Blog is now hosted at a new company. I’m testing things out as quickly as possible. If you see something wrong or something that looks broken please let me know via email or via a comment.

Much appreciated!

When people leave a comment on your blog (or generate a trackback by linking to a blog post), your blogging software is most likely adding the “nofollow” microformat extension. The result is that search engines like Google don’t follow those links off your site, and therefore the sites linking to you don’t gain any Google Juice from your blog.

The links work - people can click on them - but the links don’t provide any search engine value to the originating site/blog.

Why NoFollow?
The reason blog software like WordPress adds NoFollow is to minimize the benefit you’re giving any spammers who might sneak a comment or trackback in. If spammers’ links added search engine value back to their sites it would be quite beneficial for them - so NoFollow combats that.

Let’s Remove NoFollow Anyway
Recently there’s been a growing disenchantment with the NoFollow concept. If people provide legitimate, quality comments or links back to your blog, what’s the harm in giving them a little value in return? And with spam plugins like Akismet available (which do a very good job of stopping spam comments and trackbacks) it makes sense to open things up a bit and give your community some link love.

Andy Beard has a definitive list of DoFollow plugins available on his site.

Try The Link Love Plugin
I decided to implement one of the plugins called Link Love. It’s a newer plugin so I don’t know how well it works or how stable it is, but the idea is that it only removes NoFollow after a certain number of comments have been left by someone. You can set the determining value to whatever you want. I’ve set it to 3. So after you leave 3 comments, all of your links back to your site will have NoFollow removed.

I like this idea because it benefits my real community; people who frequent Instigator Blog regularly and participate. Those are the people I want to give some added value to.

DoFollow For Your True Community
NoFollow’s intention is worthy. But even with NoFollow being automatically done on blog software like WordPress you’ll still receive tons and tons of spam. So it’s not as if NoFollow by itself has stopped spammers. By removing it you’re telling your community that you care, and you’re willing to give ‘em a little link love.

Incidentally, I also enjoyed Dawud Miracle’s post about branding yourself through blog comments which added fuel to the fire for me to remove NoFollow.

Most people subscribe to blogs via RSS feeds. But there are a number that also subscribe via email.

I always recommend that you offer both — RSS feed and email. With FeedBurner it’s a snap.

But recently one of my email readers, Carole Lane from The San Diego Beat, informed me that the font size was insanely small on the emails, making it very hard to read.

It’s not something I ever thought to check.

She sent me a version of one of the emails she received and the font size was definitely too small. So I logged into FeedBurner to see if I could fix the problem. Sure enough, it was possible and easy - but I had never noticed it before.

1. Once you’re logged into FeedBurner click on Publicize.
2. Then click Email Subscriptions in the left-hand navigation.
3. Click on the small link titled Email Branding which you see below:

   

4. This will give you a bunch of options including the ability to increase the font size. I changed the headline size to 13 and the body text size to 11. You can also upload a logo, change font types and colors. Make your changes and click Save at the bottom.

Maybe I’m the last person to know about these options but they’re fairly hidden inside FeedBurner, and since email subscription isn’t the biggest priority for bloggers this is the kind of thing that might fall to the wayside for many.

Hopefully these changes makes emails from Instigator Blog more readable and enjoyable for subscribers. And if you use FeedBurner for RSS I would recommend enabling their email subscription option as well - and then fixing the font size.

I get asked that question a lot. Friends and other bloggers ask because they’re curious about how much time I spend blogging. Clients and prospects ask because they’re nervous about the time commitment.

I usually reply with a question of my own, “Are you talking about the time I’m thinking about blogging and the content I want to produce, or just the time it physically takes to type stuff out?”

Typing up a blog post takes anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. It rarely takes longer than that, although occasionally it does when I’m hunting around for a great image. Ultimately, it’s not the writing (and editing) time that’s significant - it’s the thinking time.

Blogging successfully means adopting a new mindset.

That’s really the challenge. When you get neck-deep into blogging you realize that the physical act of writing is nothing more than getting pre-written blog posts out of your head. They’re pre-written because you’ve been thinking about them already, sometimes for days or even weeks.

The Blogger Mindset has a few elements:

1. You become much more observant. Bloggers are observant people. They have to be. They need something to put into their blog tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. The Blogger Mindset means that you’re always looking around for something interesting to spur on a post. It might be a funny anecdote, an experience you’re having in life, or a song you’re listening to that triggers an idea. You’re always asking, “How can I turn that into a blog post?”
2. You become more focused. Bloggers need to focus. Whether it’s on one idea for a blog post or on the news in their industry / subject of choice, the Blogger Mindset means more focus. It is easy to get distracted when you start tracking hundreds of blogs and feeds, but successful bloggers know the importance of focus and they’re mastering it daily.
3. You become more of a salesperson. Bloggers need to be salespeople. Why? Because you’re selling your blog and its content. You’re selling it as important, meaningful, entertaining, worthwhile…and the more you blog and get into the Blogger Mindset the more you want to grow your audience and community. The result of that is becoming a better salesperson. In blog terms, selling means writing great headlines & copy and networking online.
4. You become more social. Blogging isn’t a one-way form of communication. There’s plenty of interaction involved. You want people commenting on your blog. As a result of blogging and developing the Blogger Mindset you’ll find yourself being more open and accessible, wanting to socialize and interact with people all the time. This is key component of blogging and part of why it takes commitment and time.
5. You become more strategic. Bloggers are strategic in a number of ways. As your blog gains popularity you’ll start looking for ways of leveraging that opportunity. Heck, opportunities will just come to you, but you have to be in the Blogger Mindset to recognize them and pounce on them. The Blogger Mindset means being strategic about what you post, how, when, why…you’re no longer just writing whatever comes to you, whenever you want.

   It also means being strategic in terms of planning the development of your blog and using it as a springboard to other things. Your blog becomes part and parcel of everything you do. It’s strategically placed at the core of all other activities, things you’re doing, and how you think.

So, how much time does it take to blog?

How many hours are you awake in the day?

Welcome to the Blogger Mindset.