Who Will Do a Better Job of Capturing the Right Tone and Feel of Your Blog Business?

While press release writing is specialized work, there are many cases of businesses wanting to write their own press releases instead of outsourcing the work.

It might be that you are a new startup with a limited marketing budget (and thus want to avoid the costs), or maybe you feel that yourself or an in-house employee will do a better job of capturing the right tone and feel of your company.

Whatever the motivation, there are pros and cons to both approaches. This content will discuss the advantages of both options, and then (hopefully) help you make the right decision for your company.

Writing Press Releases Yourself

After reading through this blog post, you should have a clear idea of what is required to write a press release. In short, you need:

• A good story.

• Good writing skills (specific to press releases).

There are distinct advantages of writing your own press releases, and I would fully encourage you to do so if you can consistently write well (or have an employee to write for you). If you are unwilling to invest in an employee, or unsure of how eschewing a professional PR service can help you, read through the following reasons:

Cost

A professionally written press release can cost you anywhere from $200 to $500. Considering that this is just a 1-page document, which will eventually contain information that you will provide, this seems an exorbitant price.

Personalized

While press release writing services make every effort to personalize every press release, there is a distinct style for each writer and for each company as well. Personalized ‘style’ of press or media releases. A powerful example of this is Google – check Google Press for a sample of effective personalized press releases can be.

Be warned though. This is not something easy to accomplish. As press releases are terse, 1-page news items with a very big emphasis on content, it is difficult to establish a style.

Practice will help you improve, and if you feel that the identity and image of your company will be better served by writing the press release yourself rather than outsourcing it, then make sure you read many different press releases from other companies to get a feel of how to build your unique style.

Other Benefits

Being directly involved with your industry, you are in the best position to highlight the advantages of your ‘news’ to your potential consumers and competitors.

You will be able to provide relevant, current information and your insight into your industry will also help you to pinpoint which news hook will be most successful.

Verdict

Matching the expertise of a professional press release writer is a difficult task. On the other hand, in-house press release writing, especially if done by an employee, can be ‘good enough’ if due attention is paid to getting the details right.

Professional Press Release Writing

Despite the obvious advantages of writing your own press release, a professional press release service gives you specific, money-valuable benefits:

Experience

Professional press release services have the advantage of having working in this field for a lot longer than you – they have written (hopefully) dozens of press releases, and know the industry inside out.

As such, they are well placed to avoid mistakes that beginning press release writers might make and are likely to produce good, reliable press releases.

Of course, there is also a chance that the press release might not be what you are looking for – maybe the writer gets the tone wrong, or underplays certain features that you wanted to give prominence to.

The added experience will also ensure that the writer will be able to judge better whether the information you’ve given him is enough, not enough or too much. In addition, there is the value of having an ‘outside’ perspective. Outsourcing your press release to an independent PR service will:

• Allow them to present the news in a more realistic light.

• Discourage you from making a press release without having effective content.

Be careful about putting too much faith in the press release service to tell you what is right or wrong, however. The responsibility of ensuring that there is enough ‘newsworthy’ information in your press release is yours, not of the service.

Time

A press release can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a day to write, revise and get just right. If you are part of a fast-paced company where you measure your time in hundreds of dollars, then spending that much time on a press release might seem expensive especially since you can get better results by outsourcing the press release.

Do not underestimate the time required to write a press release – for your news to be a full-blown success, every little detail has to be just right.

Verdict

It’s just a 1-page document. Why does it cost so much?

I’m faced with that question every day. Considering that you will still have to provide a lot of the information to the press release service, it seems ridiculous to pay over $200 (and up to $500) for a press release. But in the end, it’s the results that justify the costs.

A professionally written press release will always have a better chance of being accepted for distribution, and the experience of a professional PR service will serve you will in making your press release successful.

Another factor working in the favor of professional press release services is their ‘package deals’ – a promise to distribute your press release at a discounted rate if you have your press release written by them.

Costs vs. Expertise

I’ve been saying this throughout the content, and I say it again:

Your press release is (almost) worthless without newsworthy information. Keep this point in your mind as you make the choice between writing the press release yourself (using the advice in thisblog post) and outsourcing it to a professional press release service. Where will that newsworthy information come from? From you.

In fact, even if you outsource the press release, the bulk of the information put in the press release will come from you, either as part of the original specifications presented, or from the questions that the writer will ask you to help him write the press release.

So what are you really paying them for?

Their experience – press release writers have considerable, battle-field knowledge of writing press releases – the kind that only comes through time. You are also paying for their language and marketing skills, as writing a press release requires a specific writing style that does not fit into traditional sales copy.

Don’t hire a sales letter writer to write your press release until you are sure they have experience in writing successful press releases.

However, if you are willing to learn and apply the knowledge from this content (or have an employee as a suitable candidate), in-house press releases can be just as successful as those from a PR service. The key is to do two things repeatedly:

• Ensure that you are fully prepared.

• Differentiate between traditional sales copy and press release writing and make the effort to write ‘in a reporting, unbiased style’.

Choosing the Right Service

While this content goes a long way towards helping you write your own press releases, the primary aim is to guide you into preparing the best press release for your company, each and every time.

And sometimes, a company does not have the time, or the technical skills, to dedicate resources towards in-house press release writing.

In such cases, outsourcing your press release requirements becomes necessary. This section, although concise, will help you in picking the right service for your company.

Hiring a PR service

If you are looking to hire a professional press release service, make sure that you complete the following checklist.

• Does the service have a portfolio or a client’s list? Make sure that you can see visible results, and don’t be afraid to ask for proof.

• Compare costs and services between different PR companies to make sure you get the best deal.

• Understand the fine print. Some PR firms may not allow for more than 1 revision, and some also don’t allow for free consultations – which essentially means that if the PR firm decides that your ‘story’ is not newsworthy, you would have ended up paying for nothing.

• Don’t automatically jump for combined packages (press release writing and distribution). Make sure the investment is worth it, and that you see a list of the media contacts (at least their names, if not their contact information) that your press release will be distributed to.

• Themed distributions are very different in impact to generic distributions, so don’t fall into the trap of paying less and actually getting something that is worth nothing to your company.

• If you like the company’s portfolio, try to negotiate a discounted package in return for bringing all your press release business to them. PR firms would normally not refuse long-term business relationships, and the promise of continued business can possibly lower your long-term costs as well.

Hiring a freelance writer

Of course, if the cost is a really serious issue, and you cannot have the press release written in-house (for various reasons) then you may be better served by outsourcing to a freelance writer.

There are several online freelance websites from where you can hire good writers – Elance and RentACoder are the most popular, and most effective.

With freelance writers, there is the advantage of saving on money – a good press release can be written for $100 or less. On the other hand, there is a risk of not getting what you really want.

I’ll not go into the details of how to ensure that you don’t get your money’s worth as there are many ”freelance hiring”guides on the Internet (some good, some bad, and some bad copies of good guides).

Just make sure that you follow the same pattern as you would when hiring a PR service – check their portfolio, and do your best to provide them with complete information.

RentACoder has many safeguards that prevent buyers (like you) from projects that go bad, so trust the system and follow their advice.

However, one bad apple does not make everyone else incompetent. Freelance websites are full of hard-working individuals wanting to earn good money – make sure that you find someone who is capable of doing the job, and then enjoy the benefits of a well-written press release for a fraction of the price.

What is your opinion on DIY vs Professional writers?

How to Use WordPress to Communicate in Every Language

Designing a website is all about driving traffic to that website—a website can have the greatest information in the world, but it means nothing if no one is reading. You want to catch a reader’s attention through infographics and cool typography, and then the reading will begin. In a sense, you as the designer are the first piece to the puzzle. Once the reading begins, it is out of the designers hands and into the hands of the writers, right? In many cases yes, a writer has to provide quality, clear information to make a website worthwhile. What many designers don’t realize, however, is that they too can improve the actual content of a website (beyond making it look nice).

Many companies are starting to see the potential in translating their websites into different languages. According to the Internet World Stats, English is the most used language on the Internet at 536.6 million users. For this reason, having a website in English is extremely important; however, the benefits to translating a website into different languages are a little less well-known. A few of these benefits include:

• Wider Audience – This is probably the most obvious reasons a company would want to translate a website. You will be opening up information to people around the world.
• Loyal Readers -Although many people speak English, many speak it as their second language. If you offer information in their native language, you will likely capture those readers time and time again.
• Improved SEO – You will be able to rank highly on search engines in other languages because there is less competition. You website may also do well if someone was to type in a different language on an English search engine. Either way, it can’t hurt.
• New Perspectives – Most company websites have an option to give feedback or comment on a blog. With other languages able to read the website, you will have a variety of opinions to help you improve your website.
• Duplicate Content – This does not count across languages, so if you are managing a blog you will not need to worry about writing separate articles for each language you’re targeting.

Most Popular Types of Translation Services

Once you and/or your company have decided to offer content in another language, it is the job of the web designer to install a WordPress plugin. At first glance it seems a bit confusing because there are so many plugins available, but consider a few that are the most popular:

1. Google Translate – This is one of the quickest and most inexpensive ways to translate your blog into different languages. This is considered the best if you expect that most of your readers speak English, but you want to offer the option of different languages. Download the plugin here at Google Translate and then copy the code into WordPress just as you would with any plugin. If you need a refresher course, the Google Translate website will walk you through step by step. You will be surprised just how easy it is!

2. Global Translator – This is one of the best WordPress plugins if you expect your website to be read in a language other than English. If you decide to take this route, it will create subdirectories for all of the translated content. Although this causes extra pages on a website, some prefer this for organization. Download it here and get started.

3. WP Translate – You can’t get much simpler than WP translate. Your readers will be able to select the language they need from a drop down menu. The plugin works as a widget on your WordPress site and you can select the title of this widget. You can download this plugin and learn more information here.

Getting Started with Translation Step by Step

Once you decide which plugin is right for you, it’s time to put the plugin into WordPress. All three services are extremely similar when it comes to downloading and uploading. The below steps take you through how to set up Google Translate onto WordPress:

Step #1: Download – You can download Google Translate here. This widget will bring Google Translate to your sidebar. All your readers have to do is choose from a dropdown menu which language they’d like to read.

Step #2: Select Type of Translation Element – You will have one of two choices: You can either add translation to the entire webpage or add translation to a section of the webpage.

Step #3: Select Language of Your Webpage – This will most likely be “English” for those reading this article.

Step #4: Translation Language and Display Mode – Here you decide which languages you want available to readers and how you want the dropdown menu to look (vertical, horizontal, etc.). You can click specific languages or select all languages available.

Step #5: Copy the Code – This is the most important step. You will need to copy this code into the body section of the web page that you want to be available in other languages.

Once finished, be sure to preview your webpage and make sure everything looks the way you had envisioned. Both of the services will take you through the steps as you begin the process, so few people have any problems. It’s as easy as that!

Quick Tips about Translation Services

• Just as with any language translation services, no computer can translate a piece of content absolutely perfect. Some slang terms or formalities may change, but the general message will remain intact. Even if the language is not perfect, readers will understand that you are using a translation service. They will still get the overall message.

• Many business owners get nervous that they will not be able to answer a comment if it is in a different language. However, it is possible to use Google Translate to translate your responses. Copy and paste the comment into Google Translate that you can find online, see what it says, type your comment, translate it, and then paste it as a response to the comment. It’s extremely easy! I will also add that although many people may read your blog in another language, most will actually answer in English!

In the end, translating a website into several languages will be worthwhile for just about every company. For this reason, knowing how to set-up these WordPress plugins will be a necessity in the future. If you are a web designer who knows how to make this happen, you will be all the more marketable to companies hoping to optimize their website in 2012.

Photo Credit: webtechpoint.com

Why I Chose the Plain Jane WordPress Comment System Over Others

There are a lot of options when it comes choosing a comment system for your self-hosted WordPress blog. So when people ask me what I suggest, I always say that I go for the basic WordPress comment system that comes with your blog upon installation. Here are some questions I always ask people to consider before choosing a third-party comment system.

1. How will your site speed be affected?

Pingdom did a great study on the WordPress comment system’s load time vs. four popular third-party systems: Livefyre, IntenseDebate, Disqus, and Facebook. Here are their results.

Is the time difference significant? In most cases, not really. But what you have to consider is that if you want a speedy site, you need to optimize everything possible. 1,000 milliseconds here and there can add up to a lot when you consider all of your other plugins, banners, widgets, and images.

2. Who will own your comment author’s data?

When you comment on the basic WordPress comment system, you enter your name, email address, and a comment. That information goes into the WordPress database which the blog owner can backup and export at will. Most third-party comment systems will put the same comment data into your WordPress database. Before you install a third-party comment system, you should be sure that you will still be able to get this information into your database so you can retain ownership of your comments if you decide to remove the comment system at a later date. Speaking of which…

3. What will happen to your comments if you switch systems?

For most people, migrating from a third-party comment system back to WordPress is pretty simple. For others, I have seen some “interesting” things happen. Things like the comments from one post somehow duplicated themselves onto other posts and had to be manually deleted. Also, I saw a customized WordPress theme that was built around the third-party comment system. When the blog owner removed it, they lost the formatting and threading of all of their comments. So along with the question of who owns your comment data, you have find out what will happen to your blog if you choose a third-party comment system and change your mind.

4. How easy will it be for your visitors to comment?

As a tech savvy person, you might forget about how people who are new to the blogosphere will feel about comment systems that require logins. Anyone can understand name, email, website (optional), and comment. Some might get lost in the signup process for a third-party comment system and never get around to actually leaving a comment on your blog.

5. Is it spam you are worried about?

Third-party comment systems boast about spam control and advanced community management features. Registration supposedly cuts down on spammers, right? Not necessarily. Comment spammers can figure their way around any system. Allowing them to register for a comment system means that they get the green light on blogs that allow registered users’ comments to post automatically.

Need more reasons?

If these aren’t good enough arguments to keep you on the base WordPress comment system, then there are two more things to consider.

• CommentLuv Plugin – A great way to encourage comments and get to know comment authors by seeing their latest blog posts. You can even encourage social sharing with CommentLuv premium!
• Aweber Plugin – If you use Aweber as your mailing list program, you can install this plugin which will add a simple checkbox to your comment form. This makes it easy for comment authors to also subscribe to your mailing list.

If you own a self-hosted WordPress blog, what comment system do you use and why? How do you feel about the others?

Why You Need Your Own Platform

As the club leader of the Social Media Examiner Blogging Club, I see the occasional post or comment about whether people should skip having a blog and post their content to Facebook, Google+, or Twitter instead. Or I see photographers saying they don’t need a website, they’ll just use Flickr instead. While you should be active on these networks, it doesn’t mean you should depend on them 100%. Let’s look at the reasons…

You Are Subject to the Network’s Rules

This goes for any social network and hosted blog platform including WordPress.com, Blogger, Posterous, Tumblr, and so forth. When you post your content on one of these networks, you are subject to their terms of service. If you violate any of their rules, you could have a ton of content and comments one day, and nothing the next.

This means that you actually do need to read these networks’ terms of service carefully to make sure things like your content’s topic, affiliate links, and other things you are interested in posting are not going to be in violation of the network. Otherwise, you can say goodbye to your content.

Hosting companies, on the other hand, are usually pretty lenient on content so long as you aren’t doing posting anything illegal, adult in nature, violent, or otherwise against basic moral code. Topics like SEO and affiliate marketing won’t get you banned, and they probably won’t have any problem with you uploading a large image advertisement for your own website.

You Are Subject to the Network’s Changes

Does it frustrate you when Facebook or Google+ revamps their design, and your only choice is whether you will spend the time (and possibly dollars) to get your profiles and pages fixed? When you own your own website or blog, you don’t have to worry about someone else forcing you to change your design. You can pretty much abandon it for a year, come back, and see that it is still intact. Redesigns happen only with your consent.

You Are Subject to the Network’s Backup System

One of my chief concerns about anything I have online is what would happen if a server should crash. When it comes to my own WordPress sites, I have the ability to go in, backup my database & files, store them on a hard drive, and protect them in a bank vault if I so choose. Networks like WordPress.com probably have a pretty tight backup system in place, but you can’t guarantee that every network will. And if your profile or blog is removed due to terms of service violations, then they don’t have to give you a backup so you can move your content elsewhere.

You Are Subject to the Network’s Ownership of Your Content

Pinterest isn’t the first or last network to claim some ownership of content once it is uploaded to their network. What if you decide that you want to take a piece of content down? Are you sure that it won’t be archived somewhere on that network’s database, with their right to use it already covered in the TOS you agreed to when you signed up?

You Are Subject to the Network’s Success or Failure

Last, but not least, if you don’t own your own domain, then you are subject to whatever might happen to your network. Facebook is not likely to be bought out any time soon, but what about Instagram? You thought your photos there were safe in their small, fuzzy network, and now they will be owned by Facebook. Or worse, think about when a network is bought out by a larger company and then closed. Unless you forget to renew your domain or pay your hosting fees, you won’t have to worry about any of those things when you own your own website.

Those are just a few reasons to really look at keeping your content on your own blog or website, and not just on another hosted blog network or social network. What other reasons can you think of?

The Role of Colors in Your Blog’s Success

Every color is associated with a specific quality or emotion. They have the power to impact shopping habits of consumers. They can make readers happy or sad. They can fill visitors with excitement or depress them. Bad or unmatched colors can also drive users away. Today, bloggers are more concerned about creating top quality content and using social media to increase shareability. That’s fine. But you can never ignore the value of colors when it comes to building a blog your target audience will love coming back to over and over again.

Before we delve deep into how colors can make a difference to your blog, let’s have a look at different specific qualities of different colors (according to the North American mainstream culture).

Major corporations spend thousand of dollars to identify colors that work best with their target audiences. Whether it’s about developing a product or packaging it attractively, colors have a vital role to play. It’s because different colors have different meanings for people of different cultures and backgrounds.

Significance of Blog Color Scheme
If you understand the meaning of different colors and know how they can affect visitors’ behavior, you’ll be able to choose the right colors for your blog. Use of appropriate colors in designing can increase the time spent on your blog by readers. It can also compel readers to return again.

According to a study, 52% of visitors didn’t come back to a blog only because they didn’t like its color and design. That means any mistake in choosing the colors for your blog can make a huge difference. Whether you want to build a brand, gain the trust of your blog readers, enhance readability on your site or make visitors feel at home, you should pay careful attention to choosing the most suited color scheme for your blog.

Choose appropriate colors for each of these blog sections –

The Header
The Content Body
The Sidebar
The Footer

Colors can increase blog readership by around 40%. They also ease the process of learning and comprehension. The color of images you add to your blog posts also plays an important role in holding readers’ attention.

The size of the blogosphere continues to swell. If you don’t choose the right color scheme, it might be tough to stand out in the crowd.

Think of Your Readers (the Target Audience)
Colors for a blog should be chosen according to the specific requirements of its target audience. To achieve success, you should first try to gather as much information about your readers or the target audiences as possible. Elements like cultural differences, class differences, gender differences and geographical locations are important considerations for selecting colors that your target audience would be comfortable with.

People belonging to the working class prefer colors like blue, red and green while those with high educational backgrounds like obscurer colors. Likewise, most of the women prefer red and orange colors. People from different geographical locations also respond differently to different colors.

Don’t Forget Your Brand
Colors have the potential to increase brand recognition by as much as 80%. That’s why the color scheme selection must always be done in the light of the brand value that you desire to create. If you have a blog attached to your website, you should never ignore the known brand colors.

Does your blog use the right colors? Please feel free to talk back in comments.

Checklist For Editing Guest Posts

When you own a blog, a great deal of the content is most likely going to come from you. Occasionally, you might start one and hire people to fill it for you while you run the day to day. Whatever the case, you have to know how to properly edit a guest post to make sure it properly reflects the tone of what you are trying to create.

That isn’t to say your guest blogger isn’t a fantastic writer; they probably are. The problem is formatting, usually. They will have a certain way of writing, and though they might follow by things based on what they see on your blog as far as content, they might miss a couple of steps that are glaringly obvious to you, even if it isn’t to them.

Before we go into the actual guest post proof-reading process, here are a few helpful resources for you to make it easier:

• The cheatsheet to give away to your contributors to make sure their articles are well-formatted;
• Here’s a detailed on creating guest post guidelines for your blog.

In order to make the process of editing this posts more simple, you can try using this easy checklist, or creating one of your own.

Put Together A Welcome Sheet

This has been an endless help to bloggers for years. You simply create a welcome sheet with all relevant information about writing for your site. This includes how you wish them to format, tag and proof read their posts. One way that makes it easy is to copy/paste a post already on the site and write notes to break down each part. This shows them exactly what you want and will reduce your editing work. They will still probably get a thing or two wrong, but that is better than having to reformat each post to your specifications each time. If there is anything on there you want them to steer clear of, such as a certain topic, language or tone, let them know in this sheet.

Check For Copied Content

While we hope the posters we hire will be honest, not all will be. Some are looking for a quick buck and will do anything to get it. This includes copying or barely rewriting other peoples work. There are many programs out there for checking for plagiarism, but the most well know is Copyscape. For just a few cents you can check a post for copied content online. Keep in mind that if they used a credited quote, it will show the source. Google is another fantastic resource for a quick look into potential content problems.

Check The Facts

I can’t tell you how often a blog has been burned because a guest poster, usually not well known, has mistaken a fact. It might not be a lie but a misunderstanding, or an unreliable source. If they are making a claim or offering anything that is based on facts or statistics, or even quotes, double check it before you publish. It isn’t enough to tell people that you didn’t know. You are the blog owner, and so their protection in cases such as this. But you don’t have that luxury, so make sure you are covered. If they are making a claim that seems extreme, hard to believe or controversial, ask them to explain sources and what led to the conclusion so you are prepared in case anyone asks questions.

Decide If You Like It

It is your blog, so you have to enjoy what is being written on it. Especially when you are planning on having the writer back. Be honest with yourself about whether or not you like a post. If you don’t like it, take some time to pick out reasons why. Then, approach the writer with suggestions on how they might change it to better reflect the tone of the site. If you don’t like any of it, ask for a rewrite or just don’t use it.

Check Web Vs Print Writing

Bloggers generally known how to write for the web. This means headers, subheaders, lists and short paragraphs. It is second nature for most writers of the Internet generation to do this. But some aren’t aware and write it like a long essay. A block of text is never good for the web, so check the formatting and do any addition breakdown if you have to.

Be Careful Of Links

Too many links will always equal spam to a reader. Especially for those who have grown up with the web and know how to spot a filler post. Two links per post is usually enough, with a possible link or two in a byline. Make sure they aren’t overdoing it, unless it is a review post that needs to go to specific products.

Watch Out For Licensing

Make sure you pay attention to the licensing when using any image, as some might only be royalty free with credit. Here’s a quick guide into CC-attributed images and how to credit them.

Something that might be useful for you in reviewing posts for your site is using tineye.com or the reverse image search with Google Images. I use it to see if there is already a similar article (or an exact copy of that article) on the web that uses that same image. You can spin text, but it’s much harder to spin an image!

Similarly, it’s a great way to see if someone is submitting a copyright image in a guest post.

Conclusion

This is a simple checklist that will help you enure quality posts every time you hire a guest blogger to cover your site. You can easily create your own to establish a more customized method of checking up on content.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Why Every Blogger Should Create Resource Pages (Plus 5 Good Examples of the Same)

A resource page gives your blog readers one more reason to come back. But do you know what a resource page is? A resource page is actually a blog post that contains links to several other posts around a specific topic. Creating resource pages has become a habit with professional bloggers. First, they try to write posts on every useful aspect of an issue (or problem). Once they have written several blog posts addressing a similar topic, they go on to create a resource page that their readers can return to over and over again.

A resource page brings several benefits to bloggers –

It increases time spent for a single visitor.
It compels readers to visit a blog again and again.
It establishes a blogger’s expertise on a specific topic.
It works as an excellent link-bait.

Whether you want to get lots of organic backlinks or earn the trust of your blog readers (so you can convert them quickly), creating multiple resource pages on your blog is just the perfect way to go.

Think of ‘Resource Pages’ as Your ‘Biggest Hits’
Readers love to bookmark and share resource pages. Though you may have a lot of other top quality articles on your blog, packaging multiple top quality articles into a single post can prove to be the biggest hit. Such blog posts have the capability of going viral within a short span of time, attracting lots of traffic and generating lots of unsolicited (natural) backlinks for your blog.

How to Create a ‘Resource Page’
The best part about writing resource pages is that it doesn’t take as much time as writing a full blog post does. If you have multiple best posts around a similar topic, you can have a resource page up and running on your blog within minutes.

Here are the basic steps that you need to follow –

Browse all the categories on your blog
Pick those categories that have a lot of top quality posts
Select the best posts under those categories
Create the resource page(s)
Give the resource page a keyword-optimized heading
Write a brief but compelling introduction for the same
Add the titles of all selected posts to the resource page
Link the titles to their corresponding pages
Publish the resource page

It’s really important to package your resource page well. Make sure you optimize the resource page for the keywords you want it to rank for. Also you should remember to arrange all the posts in proper order, so that the resource pages looks like a useful guide or tutorial.

5 Good Examples
Since examples can quickly give you an idea on what a good resource page should look like, I gathered five of them you can have a look at.

How to Blog: Blogging Tips for Beginners (Problogger.net)
How to Write Magnetic Headlines (Copyblogger.com)
Growing a Blog (About.com)
How to Build an Email List 101 (TrafficGenerationCafe.com)
Search Engine Land’s Guide to SEO (SearchEngineLand.com)

So, are you going to create resource pages on your blog now? Please let me know in the comments section below.

How Do You See Blog Comments: ‘Bullshit’ or ‘Democratic’?

I’ve written several articles on the benefits of blog commenting. And I couldn’t resist writing one more. Recently, a lot of debate has been going on as to whether it’s worthwhile to allow commenting on one’s blog.

There are some who think of comments as mere ‘bullshit’. There are others who support commenting as a ‘form of democracy’. Let’s have a look at what MG Siegler (a columnist for TechCrunch) has to say.

“Here’s the thing: while some try to paint comments as a form of democracy, that’s bullshit. 99.9% of comments are bile. I’ve heard the counter arguments about how you need to curate and manage your comments — okay, I’m doing that by not allowing any.”

From the readers’ point of view, commenting provides them with a great feeling of participation. It also creates a sense of belonging, around which the entire concept of blogosphere revolves. On the other hand, listening to people’s views via comments motivates the blogger to work even harder so as to deliver what the former are actually looking for. That’s exactly the reason blog comments are seen as a ‘form of democracy’.

Still, many people would call blog commenting to be nothing more than a waste of time. Let them have their own opinions. Supporters, however, don’t see comments as something worthless or vile. Though, at times, commenting tends to get noisy, you will certainly miss out on a rich experience by turning off comments or not allowing people to share those ‘little tendrils of thought’.

I think permitting readers to comment on your blog is as much democratic as it is for you to freely share your own views by publishing posts.

If Commenting is a ‘Form of Democracy’, It can be Misused
It’s obvious. ‘Power to People’ can be misused. But that’s what rules and policies are made for. Instead of shutting out people from commenting, a serious blogger should find ways to optimize the discourse so that it adds value to the conversation (which is the soul of a blog) that strikes up after a post is published.

It’s simply unacceptable or immoral to deny democratic freedom to others while you’re enjoying it yourself. If you’ve got the freedom to express your opinions publicly by publishing blog posts, you have no right to prevent others from sharing what they think about a particular topic. Not giving people the right to comment is like ‘ruling as a dictator’.

Not Allowing People to Comment is Highly ‘Unsocial’
How can you afford to be unsocial when the entire world is fast turning into a global village? Video chats are creating global classrooms. A new era of interactive advertising is about to begin. Searches are getting social. Regardless of their size, businesses are focusing more on the ‘listening’ part of the customer acquisition process. A blog is one of the best social media tools that you can use. You can never imagine to use a social media tool without being social yourself, can you?

Do you support or detest blog comments? Let us know by casting your vote in the tweet poll below and commenting.

Why Bad Writers Don’t Necessarily Make Bad Bloggers (and Vice Versa)

Thinking about getting into the blogging game but afraid that since your college professor always gave you D’s on papers that you won’t cut the mustard? Here’s a little secret for you: there’s little connection between how good you were at writing papers in school and how successful of a blogger you can become.

The fact is, you don’t have to be a good writer, technically speaking, to be good at blogging. Here’s why:

• You can get away with sloppy mechanics—You’re English teacher isn’t going to be reading your blog posts with a red pen in hand. In fact, chances are almost no one will be checking out your mechanics. And in some cases, grammar errors can actually enhance your writing. Unless your mechanics are so poor that they take away from the meaning of your posts, you’re probably going to be okay. Sure there may be a few commenters who give you a hard time (see: grammar Nazis). But you can just tell them to go to hell.
• You don’t have to have an SAT vocabulary—Back in school, it was all about flexing your vocabulary muscles. The bigger words you used it seemed, the better grades you received. However, when it comes to blogging, the rule of thumb is to keep the vocabulary to a junior high level. That way you can keep things conversational and make sure people of all reading levels can join the conversation.
• Complex sentences are frowned upon—Again, when you write online, the idea is to keep things simple. You should only do things to enhance readability, not detract from it. One way to go about it is to keep your sentence structure relatively simple. That means weaving together 3 line long sentences with subordinate clauses and conjunctions and blah blah blah simply is not necessary.
• It’s more about voice than anything else—What it comes down to is does your personality come out in your writing? Furthermore, do people like this personality? Is it witty? Knowledgeable? Approachable? If you can answer yes to these questions, then you’re going to do just fine.

What might be more surprising here is that often people who were “good writers” before will attempt to enter the blogosphere and go on to suck it up. Why? Because they’re style is too stiff. A good blogger needs to be able to bend and not break. He needs to be able to make the words work for him—not the other way around.

What about you? Have I planted a seed of faith inside of a would-be blogger?

Who Wants to Win $1,000 in Cash?

Regular readers probably know the following two things about me:

First, I’m a big fan of guest blogging contests. Not only do I like the fact that they give participants an opportunity to win cash and all kinds of great prizes, but I also think they’re a great opportunity for a writer to be exposed to a new audience. Whether a writer is an active blogger or someone who owns a business, a guest blogging contest can connect them with readers that may have otherwise never known about them.

Second, I recently launched MySEOCommunity.com. Because it brings together everything that I’ve been working on for the past few years, I view it as “my baby.” Although I’m well aware that it’s not the Internet’s first SEO community, I think that it has several features that set it apart from the rest. You can read about the community’s unique features on its About page.

As a result of my love of guest blogging contests and the launch of MySEOCommunity, it’s only logical that we’re celebrating the launch of the site with a new guest blogging contest:

The Mad SEO Scientist Guest Blogging Contest – Grand Prize $1000. Cash!

Since a great SEO guest blogging contest has to feature a great 1st prize, the maddest SEO scientist in this contest gets $1,000 in cash and a lifetime premium membership to MyBlogGuest.

If you check out the official announcement, you will see that the prizes for the contest’s other winners aren’t too shabby. In fact, this contest has over $2,000 in total cash prizes, as well as some other awesome goodies from all of our sponsors!

If you’ve participated in any of our other guest blogging contests, you know there are two parts to the recipe for success:

-Write a killer post
-Promote the heck out of it and interact with the post’s audience

Since the new site is all about community, we’re really emphasizing the social aspect of this contest. So, not only will you want to Tweet your post out once it’s published, but you will want to engage with everyone who leaves a comment on it. Additionally, if readers start discussing it on channels like Google +, be sure to interact with them there as well.

The deadline for this contest is March 5th, so it’s time for you to head to your lab and start cooking up an amazing post!

And a huge thanks to all of the sponsors who made this contest possible:

$1000. Sponsors

Next Digital is Asia/Pacific’s largest full-service digital agency. They specialise in creative, marketing, strategy and technology, leading the new digital age to discover what’s next! Digital Marketing

$150. Sponsors

WordStream, provider of ppc software and a better Google Keyword tool

Search Engine Marketing Group SEO Link Building services

$100. Sponsors

Julie Joyce www.LinkFishMedia.com

Doc Sheldon The Clinic

Create amazing blog using our Awesome Thesis Child Themes

A professional website design copmany Helping you create a unique brand image

ShellShock UK Content Strategy Link Building aka Content Marketing

Ash Buckles www.SEO.com

$50. Sponsors

Brian Waraksa Houston Internet marketing

Jacob Share Group Writing Projects

Ajeet Khurana About the Web

The people at Top Web Design Schools, a directory of web related college programs

Customer Paradigm Magento Developers

BestGardenGifts.com Best Garden Gifts

HotTubVariety.com Hot Tub Reviews

EarthCareGreenhouses.com Wholesale Greenhouses

GoGardenGuides.com Home & Garden Social Bookmarking

USA Greenhouse Store Greenhouses

Bob Jones Perth SEO

NewsPuff.com News Puff

MiniGreenhouseKits.com Commercial Greenhouses Supplies

OurCrazyDeals.com Our Crazy Deals

www.Zoomit.com Canadian News

David Leonhardt SEO Ottawa

John McElborough SEO Agency

Contest Media Partners

www.Blokube.com

www.famousbloggers.net

Free Blogengage Account $29.95 Value blogengage.com

Ana Hoffman www.TrafficGenerationCafe.com/

Non-cash SEO Prizes

David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo

Lifetime membership to: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) SEO tools

SEMrush.com – the best tool to spy on your competitors ($210 value) www.semrush.com

WebSEOAnalytics.com 1 Year subscription to their Professonal SEO tools

www.Hostgator.com 1 Year Business web hosting