My recent post on “Why Dont You Leave a Comment“, was to help show readers how to leave comments on blogs.

In conversations I had with my 3D friends, they felt uncomfortable leaving comments because they didn’t know how, and because they thought nobody wanted to hear what they had to say anyway.

There was quite a mixed reaction to the post by way of comments with readers explaining why they do or do not leave comments. It’s an interesting read. One of the comments left by “Mini” was asking for more information:

I dont leave comments cuz I feel it is unfamiliar territory - I am not blog wise - so if you are trying to educate since you explained how to comment, please educate me also as to RSS, Shin, Plug and Zoom - or are those areas only for the blogger-knowledgeable folks ?? You see, if I am confused about all the terms, commenting does not come easy.. thanks for the education

That’s really a two part question. The first is dealing with RSS, and the second is dealing with the social site buttons being displayed on a blog.

In this post, let’s talk about the buttons that are displayed on the posts. There are so many different buttons that any blogger can choose to display on a post, some cater to Internet Marketing, and Blogging while others cater to different “niche” topics.

The purpose of displaying the buttons is for the blogger to get your “vote” on the article. The more votes an article receives, the higher it advances in that particular social site, and the more publicity it gets.

The buttons are on display for all readers to use, though admittedly they are mostly only used by other bloggers who know what they are for. Some networking sites require that you become a member before you can use the buttons, others allow any reader to click them.

The 3 buttons that Mini asked about are on my posts.

This button to a social networking site called PlugIM. “PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Submit content, share articles, comment on projects and promote your favorites to the front page”. With Plug IM, you do not need an account to promote an article that you like. All you have to do is click the plug button, and the counter will increase.

Sphinn.com is a newer social site that is all about Internet Marketing News. “It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others” In order to use this button, you must have an account with Sphinn.

Blogging Zoom is a newer social site dedicated to bloggers, and at present is my favorite of the three. “We are here to give every blogger, popular or not, a chance to showcase their content and talents. BZ was created by bloggers for bloggers, and we are dedicated to providing people with the tools and knowledge they need to increase their blogs’ popularity”. With Blogging Zoom, you do need to set up a profile in order to be able to zoom articles, but you dont need a blog to be part of the community. You can join just as a way of finding great info, and then start zooming it.

There are hundreds of social networking sites like these and many of them have buttons that will displayed on a blog. The submission process should be relatively the same for all of them. The questions of course would be whether or not you have to be a member of the site in order to click on a button and vote for that article. The way to find out would be to try. It certainly won’t hurt anything, and you may find a community that provides great information that you want to be a part of.

Look for upcoming posts to where I will be showcasing certain social sites. I also will spend more time on RSS and how it can be used to save you time, and keep you up to date on your favorite blogs.

BTW - If you like an article on Home with Heather, go ahead and click on the buttons. It would be greatly appreciated.

Expect the Best,

Blogging, blogging zoom, bz, comments, plugim, reader questions, Social Networking, social sites, sphinn, su

This is just a really quick post to say “Don’t Do This…”

I’m finding that I really quite like Blogging Zoom as a place to display my content. Also I’ve found many great articles there from other bloggers. One bad thing about Blogging Zoom is that I’m finding myself spending a fair bit of time on it. I think I’m gonna have to start setting the egg timer.

Of course, I haven’t had any content to submit up until the last few days. Being in a hurry, I didn’t follow “the rules” and could have got myself banned for it.

When you submit new content to BZ, it has bolded, in caps, with a red font (basically you can’t miss it) [ DO NOT COPY PASTE ] I thought, not a big deal. I’ll take the time next post… Turns out it was a big deal.

You can read the full post here, but basically what you’re doing when you copy and paste is really hurting yourself.

Every time you copy and paste your content in a submission let it be here at Blogging Zoom or any other social voting site you are giving yourself and Blogging Zoom a duplicate content filter penalty with Google.

I never really thought of it like that before. Needless to say, I’ve gone back and corrected the error. And all is good again.

In an upcoming post, I will be doing a review of all of the social networking sites that I have been using, and tell you what is working for me and what isn’t. In fact, after that post, I will be adding/removing networking buttons on my blog to reflect more accurately what I use.

Until then…

Expect the Best,

blog, blogging zoom, bz, copy and paste, Social Networking, zoom, zooming

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been having issues with my MBL account and widget. It wasn’t showing any updated traffic in my widget, and I wasn’t able to log into MyBlogLog the way I always have. I was also not being seen in other widgets on blogs that I visit on a daily basis.

It was making me a little crazy.

I like MyBlogLog. I think it’s a great community, and it has brought traffic to Home with Heather as well as my other blog Our Kids Are Special. But I wasn’t going to keep the widget if it didn’t work right, and I wasn’t going to keep my account if it wasn’t providing me with any value.

So this morning I set out to get it fixed.

Turns out all I had to do was merge my MBL and Yahoo accounts together. Something I likely should have done earlier, but never had any problem with it until just recently.

The other thing that MBL is suggesting you do is verify your blog with them. You can do this a couple of different ways. One way is by publishing a post with a bit of code in it, then going back to MBL and verifying the post. After this is done, you can delete the post.

The other option is to add a META tag to your site.

Either method is quick and easy.

So why is MBL doing this? The MBL blog says this:

We wanted to give people an indicator that the page that they are looking at has a relationship with the website it features and has been “blessed” by its owner.

So basically if you’re featuring a blog on your profile, this will verify that you are the owner of that blog.

OK Done. Should be smooth sailing again. I’m off to verify my other blogs now.

Expect the Best,

MBL, mybloglog, mybloglog verification, mybloglog yahoo merge, Social Networking

This site is only a few days old, but it’s already getting some major buzz. And it’s already helping drive traffic to your site.

Blogging Zoom is a brand new social networking site that has been created by Courtney Tuttle and Vic Frankqui.

This site has been specifically designed for blogs. The purpose of Blogging Zoom is to have a place that allows you to display content that you have written. It only accepts content from blogs.

I found this site through Grizzly at How to Make Money Online for Beginners. He has only had an account for a few days and is already seeing traffic from it. Another of my blogging friends Alex said in a post that it’s sucking more traffic than BlogRush.

I played around with it a bit yesterday and signed up for my free account. It looks like a great way to network with other bloggers and get your content read.

Just from reading the information on the site, I’ll give a few tid-bits of information that will help you get started.

1. You can register for your free account here
   
2. Add the wordpress plugin to your blog to display the Blogging Zoom Button here. This will help you get more zooms.
3. As with any social network, you want to make friends and help others by zooming there blog posts.
4. Play around and have fun.

I haven’t actually zoomed any of my own posts yet. This will be the first. It will be interesting to see how blog zooming compares to the other sites like plugim, sphinn, digg, and bumpzee. A true test and only time will tell.

Thanks guys for creating such a great tool.

Expect the Best,

blog promotion, Blogging, blogging zoom, free traffic, making friends, social media, Social Networking, traffic, web promotion

If you use it properly it sure can be!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post “Are You Harnessing the Awesome Power of Facebook”. In that post, I talked about the many different applications that can be used in Facebook to drive traffic to your website or blog, as well as other cool ways to be able to use Facebook as a central hub when you’re on the run.

I’ve been working on a project with Ian Fernando to bring you a quick guide to the powerful ways you can use Facebook as part of your daily Social Networking.

This is a no frill 20 page report explaining how to use Facebook to get noticed.

The ebook is called “Facebook Advances: All About Getting Noticed” and it was just released yesterday.

The book is written by Ian Fernando with contributions from Carl of TypeCarl.com and Me

Facebook is different than many other social networking sites going. It allows you to do things like:

• Incorporate applications such as “Blog Friends”. This application allows you to add your blog feed to profile so that all your friends can keep up with your blogs easily.
• Application like Twitter and Stumble Upon also make it very easy and useful in creating links.
• Facebook actually allows you to make money just by setting up some of the “make money” application. This was my part of the book, so be sure to check that out.

Facebook Advances will also teach you things like:

• How to set up your profile to get noticed.
• How sometimes it IS about “who” you know. Adding popular friends will gain you more exposure.
• Learn the Facebook markup language FBML.
• Learn how to use the marketplace to your advantage when selling ebooks, or other affiliate products.

As Facebook continues to grow at an exponential rate, you really do need to catch the wave and get in on this powerful tool.

In this new world of Web 2.0, it’s all about staying current with the latest in social networking. Customers and web surfers will no longer allow us to simply get away with putting up a sales page and raking in the cash.

They want to know more…

They want to know about you, they want to know why you are trying to sell this product or service. What makes you the expert? Clients want to be able to talk to you, get answers to questions. In today’s online market place, it’s all about making yourself available.

Using Facebook is a really great way to accomplish this.

Grab a copy of this report while it’s still hot off the presses so to speak. You can download it anytime day or night. Then start building your profile, and making this powerful yet free tool work for you. Remember, it’s kind of like the wind farm analogy I did on my previous post. You have to harness that power…

To grab your copy of this new report: Facebook Advances … Click Here

Expect the Best,

facebook, facebook advances, FBML, Ian Fernando, make money applications, marketing, networking, Social Networking, Web 2.0

I was doing some reading this morning on some of my favorite blogs.

Darren Rowse had posed what I thought to be a great question…

“How many social networking sites are you actively involved in?”

Darren says that he sometimes feels quite overwhelmed by social media sites.  I really think this is a common feeling amongst bloggers.

I like participating in social networking sites, but must admit I don’t have enough time in a day to contribute as much as I’d like.  The other thing that I use to really enjoy participating in were a few of my favorite forums.  I haven’t logged into a forum of any kind for months it seems.

Being active on the different social networking sites can indeed bring traffic to your blog.  I also personally find it a way to just chat and keep current with friends that I’ve met both online and off.  What I find though is that if I don’t set a time limit, before I know it the whole afternoon can be gone, and I have done nothing more than send some messages and have some fun.

In answer to Darren’s question…

• Facebook -  (Friend Me)
• MySpace -  (Friend Me)
• MyBlogLog - (Friend Me)
• BlogCatalog - (FriendMe)
• StumbleUpon -  (Friend Me)

These are the five that I would say I participate in most often and try to keep current, however the list of sites that I have an account with is much more involved than that.  For a more complete list, you can check out this post.  If I’m on a social networking site it will generally always be under the name “wahmbuddy”.

It is good to be active in the social networking arena and to help build your name and brand.  I do totally agree with Darren though in that it can be quite overwhelming to keep up.

The second part of Darren’s question was about Twitter, and I’m going to save that for a whole other entry.

Now it’s your turn to fess up.  What social media sites are you most active on? Do you find that it brings traffic, builds relationships, what exactly is it that you are looking to gain from it?

Expect the Best,

blog catalogue, facebook, mybloglog, myspace, networking, social media, Social Networking, twitter

BlogRush has been live for four days now, and although it’s still to early to really make up your mind, what have you noticed so far?

First, have you noticed a change in your own clicking patterns? Are you seeing interesting posts in the Blog Rush Widget and clicking on them to get further information? I have to say I clicked a few, but not all that many.

I think the problem is training the readers/surfers that the information is there and available to them. One of the comments I had on a previous post was:

“first i need to know about the rush. and how ir is beneificial; ?” talkingdynamics

I think the benefits of Blog Rush will really be seen in the coming days. But with anything new. It will take time to gather data, and form opinion. This was my response to the comment:

“Good Question Talking Dynamics.

I guess nobody really knows the answer to that today… it’s kind of a time will tell thing.

What I do know is that when a reader is interested in a topic, one article generally isn’t enough.. they want more. For example, I have installed the “related posts” plugin. Before that I think my readers would look at around 3 pages… now when that info is available the average number of pages/visit is over 8 for HWH. And so if they look on that widget and see an article that they like, they will click it.

It will take a while to ‘train’ readers that the info is there and available to them thru the widget…”

It’s not that we don’t know about BlogRush. If you’ve missed hearing about it, you must have totally been out in the woods for the last week, with no connection. The viral explosion regarding Blog Rush has been bigger than any other that I’ve witnessed.

I know the widget is there. I just need to train myself to watch it and click on things that interest me.

I did see a great article this morning that may really help you in getting noticed on the widget. It helped me, with some interesting food for thought. “Do You Make These Blog Rush Mistakes?”

I also have noticed that stats are starting to come in on the Dashboard now… I’ll be posting on the tomorrow…

In the meantime, if you’ve just got back from your adventure in the woods , and this is the first time you’re hearing about “The Great BlogRush” Check out my previous post here and here .

I’d then be honored if you’d take a minute and sign up by clicking here

I’ll talk to you more tomorrow on it. Have a great day

Expect the Best,

blog promotion, Blog Rush, Blog Rush Mistakes, Blogging, blogrush, free traffic, income.com, john reese, leverage, Social Networking, Syndication, traffic, Web 2.0