2 Important Google+ Metrics To Assess Your Reach And Visibility

Now that Google+ is growing by leaps and bounds, power users are focusing on methods to leverage this platform to the maximum. For specialists, devising a powerful social media strategy that primarily focuses on engagement and networking is not that hard. What's even more important is formulating a method to correctly asses the return-on-investment (ROI) at both macro and micro level. This method may differ depending on the platform and requires accurate as well as timely data collection. So, are you planning to invest your time on Google+?

If so, have you devised an effective methodology to measure your reach and visibility? Engagement level and sentiment analysis are two primary attributes that are closely associated with the measurement of reach and visibility. So let's get started and see two very important Google+ metrics that helps you in analyzing how well you're engaging with people on this excellent social media platform.

Posts' Amplification (Visibility)

A basic criterion for measuring your reach on any social network is the extent to which your content (post updates, shared links and uploaded multimedia content) is shared within and beyond your existing network. It can be compared with a pebble creating ripples in the pond. Whenever you post an update on Google+, your friends or your Google+ page followers can share it in three simple ways.

• Public sharing - This is pretty simple. Shares visible to anyone on the web are public in nature. Their visibility is not just limited to Google+, but is actively indexed by search engines as well. This essentially means that all these public shares may appear in SERPs as well.
• Limited sharing - If you're sharing a piece of content with a group of individuals or selective circles, its scope is 'Limited'. Such updates are not visible to search engines.
• Private sharing - You can compare it with email messaging. In such cases, you're sharing the content with a single individual within or beyond your network. If a user has enabled direct messaging in his profile, regardless of whether he is in your network or not, you can still share content privately with him.

This content amplification is one of the primary metrics to calculate the visibility of your update. Fortunately, Google+ provides you with enough data in different formats to give you a fair idea about how far and deeper your post has been shared. The first straightforward way to know about the number of shares is the count of reshares right below the original post. I'm not sure whether private shares are counted in this figure or not.

The second way to know about the reshares is the graphical representation of ripples across the Google+ ecosystem as shown in the image above. You can access this interactive graphic by selecting the 'View Ripples' option from within the post. Remember, this graphic doesn't show private and old reshares. We can well understand the exclusion of private reshares. If they are reflected in this interactive graphic, the whole purpose of sharing a piece of content privately is defeated. Old reshares are possibly excluded to reduce the complexity of the graphic, especially in cases where a post becomes viral and is shared consistently for a long period of time. Ripples visualization only shows last 53 days data.

The third type of posts' amplification data provided by Google+ includes three important metrics. This gives you new insights about the content being shared within the social network. You can access this data right below the interactive graphic that shows ripple visualization for a given post.

• Key influencers - This data tells you about the top 5 users with wider reach and authority triggering large number of reshares. Do not confuse these users with top leaders in their domain, because it simply picks the top 5 users with maximum reshares. They can either be big names in their domain or simply your peers having active friends list.
• Rate and extent of sharing - This one is my favorite and is extremely useful for those posts that really go viral. You can find out three important trends through this data. Shares/Hour gives you an average of reshares per hour for last 53 days. This trend may deviate sharply in the first 24 hours and may decline in a liner fashion as time passes by. Average chain length depicts the longest reshares done in a linear fashion where each subsequent reshare falls in an extended circle. Longest chain simply tells the longest ripple across extended circles.
• Language-based segregation - Knowing about this trend is very useful for Google+ business pages targeting multilingual followers. You get a nice pie chart showing each section of users divided on the basis of their language.

Annotated References (Search Impact)

Tagging is one of the most common activities on almost every popular social media network. Although an annotated reference is automatically included in every reshare on Google+, it doesn't truly reflect the engagement level since the tagging is implicit in nature. What we're really looking for is explicit tagging activity triggering direct engagement with us.

Tracking each such explicit tag does gives you a measurement of your reach and direct engagement level. Generally, it is used to cite, quote or credit you in different contexts. Fortunately, Google+'s internal search engine is extremely powerful supporting site-wide search for tags and hashtags. This makes these annotated references extremely valuable as they directly impact the internal Google+ search.

Over To You

I've not discussed about +1's in this post, which is a popular way to add weightage to the content being shared on Google+. In future, it may affect the rankings of +1'd content appearing in SERPs. I would like to know your thoughts on using +1's as a concrete metric for assessing the reach and visibility on Google+. If you're using any other metrics, please do share with us in the comments below.

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments

3 Niche Blogging Secrets Pros Never Told You

Niche blogging is one of the most popular blogging formats prevalent today. Thousands and thousands of enthusiasts starts their niche blogging journey everyday. Only a handful of them succeed in making decent money out of it, while majority of them give up in a short period of time. Although there are tons of articles talking about making money out of blogging, very less focus on some of the hard facts about niche blogging. And that's what we are going to discuss here.

Failure Is Imminent

As I said before, only a handful succeeds in churning out decent money from their blogging efforts. Majority of newbies give up very soon. You certainly never want to be in the latter group. Interestingly, those who succeed also taste failure at least once while climbing the ladder. What are the pitfalls that bring failure for a budding niche blogger? How you can ensure that you'll survive through this phase? Here are the three main reasons that make you pack your bags much before you get your first 1000 visitors/day.

• Picking wrong niche - It's like a footballer trying to play lawn tennis. Choosing a profitable niche is the very first step in winning the niche blogging race. Instead of wasting your time and money on an unknown domain, go with your strength to maximize your probability of building a successful blogging career.
• Posting crap - This is one of the primary reasons your niche blog crawls like a snail. In computer terminology it's called GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle. If you're feeding dull content to your readers, you're going to perish very quickly.
• Flooding adverts - This is the least you can do to hammer the last nail in your blog's coffin. Even if you create awesome content, plastering it with tons of ads is certainly not a wise strategy to achieve success in niche blogging.

Organic Traffic Is Your Bread And Butter

Undoubtedly, social media has become one of the primary traffic sources for any web site. But, when it comes to making money (through advertisements) from niche blogging, organic traffic is the key. I'm not undermining the importance of social media. In fact, it can accelerate your blog's growth to an unimaginable extent. But, various studies and researches have clearly suggested that organic traffic coming from popular search engines yields the best results for monetized niche blogs. I've experienced the same after analyzing data through Google analytics.

And there's only one recipe to pull massive amount of organic traffic consistently over a longer period of time. Creating evergreen content for the audience not only makes them glued to your blog feed, but also keeps the search engines happy. End result - Good presence in SERPs (search engine result pages) and consistent targeted traffic for your blog. In a nutshell, if you want to achieve success in niche blogging, focus on getting majority of traffic from search engines.

Self-explore or Die

And last but not the least is your thirst to learn by yourself. Learning these unwritten rules and untold methods require lots of preemptive research and experimentation. They key here is to continuously strive for inventing new ways to optimize your each blogging activity. These activities can be writing blog posts, designing and tweaking theme, moderating comments, creating newsletters, implementing social media strategy, using web analytics, monetizing and so on. Think out of the box and create unique and efficient methods to get most out of your blog. In this context, the pinnacle of self-exploration is inventing your own way to get things done more effectively than all the present methods.

A simple example can be use of custom web analytics report to optimize your subscribers' newsletter. Nobody is going to tell you how to do that. That's where self-exploration comes into place. Take the initiative and explore. You may fail sometimes, but the rewards are much higher as they easily outweigh occasional failures.

Bonus Tip: Make a list of top 10 blogs in your niche. Start consuming (reading and applying) their archives in chronological order 1 hour per day.

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How To Implement Personalization And Behavioral Targeting On Your Blog

Giving a unique experience to every visitor ensures maximum engagement that convincingly inflates the conversion rate beyond your expectations. Generally, blog visitors' get the same content irrespective from where they're coming from and what's their intent. This leaves big holes in your lead generation and subscriber acquisition strategies. To overcome this, bloggers employ different methodologies with varying complexity. Two most popular methods to spawn engaging sessions from visitors are personalization and behavioral targeting.

In simple words, personalization and behavioral targeting involves serving of custom (relevant) content to the visitors on the basis of geographical and various demographical attributes. This can be done in 3 different ways.

• Implicit personalization - In this technique, custom content is served automatically on the basis of predefined parameters. Visitor himself doesn't have any idea that his visit has altered the default content of the landing page. Content alteration is dynamic and instant through a chain of rules that are triggered automatically as soon as visitor's geographical or demographical data is collected by the personalization engine.
• Explicit personalization - As the name suggests, this methodology involves direct interaction with the visitors by letting them choose the type of content they want to consume. This strategy is widely used on e-Commerce web sites and portals. To make it understand better in the context of a typical blog visitor, you can compare it with a custom message appearing on top of blog posts through WP Greet Box plugin asking social media visitors' to share, like, stumble or tweet the post.
• Hybrid personalization - Combine the two strategies discussed above and you'll get a hybrid solution that not only serves custom content automatically but also lets the visitor fine-tune the selection through various on-page controls. This is generally implemented on high-traffic e-Commerce web sites.

In whatever way you implement behavioral targeting, you must define the scope and purpose of implementing personalization. It can be broadly divided into three categories, viz., content targeting, ad targeting and business funnel optimization. In this context, what does these three terms mean and how do they differ from each other?

• Content targeting - It is the simplest and widely used form of personalization. A typical example is a multilingual blog serving same content in different languages to visitors' coming from different countries. The language-based alteration is just one of the infinite possibilities of content targeting. A more complex example can alter the content of sidebars on the basis of visitor's IP address or gender.
• Ad targeting - High-traffic blogs generally use this technique to serve targeted ads to the visitors. Don't get confused by comparing it with PPC ads served by ad-networks like Adsense. Firstly, their ad-serving logic (rules) is not controlled by the blog owner, and secondly they are primarily served on the basis of post content and visitor's geographical and demographical data plays the secondary role just for picking local ads from the inventory. In a true sense, personalizing ads involves serving of select ads (generally direct advertisements) to the traffic on the basis of demographical and geographical data. And this whole ad-targeting campaign is under direct control of the blog owner.
• Business funnel optimization - And last but not the least is applying personalization to get better results from your sales funnel. This is primarily done as re-targeting campaigns and is generally applied on returning visitors. For that, you need to retain the visitors' data and need to apply 'rinse and repeat' strategy till you get the desired results.

Pros and Cons of Behavioral Targeting

While implementing such techniques, there's always a positive outcome accompanied with some grey areas that may land you in trouble if not taken care of. We are going to discuss about both facets to see whether the positive side outweighs the grey one. Whenever you're implementing personalization, you're doing two primary things. You're collecting visitors' data and delivering custom content on the basis of that data. An average visitor almost always welcomes the latter, but the former may raise doubt in the minds of the visitors. Here are the pros and cons of applying behavioral targeting.

• Pros - Better conversions (more revenue) - The more relevant content a visitor gets, the more engaged is the visit. This automatically increases the chances of conversions (e.g feed subscription, newsletter sign up, affiliate product sale), which essentially means inflation in revenue. And that's what a typical niche or a business blog strives to achieve.
• Cons - Privacy issues - Implications of collecting visitors' data online has always been fiercely debated on different forums across the world. It's a sensitive issue and if not taken care of, it can ruin your online business within days. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has drafted a framework for web masters about privacy issues while implementing behavioral targeting. The crux of this report stresses on self-regulation and more importantly discusses about prohibition of collecting personally identifiable information (PII) under any circumstances. Data accuracy and data retention (duration and type of data) also comes into play especially if you're going to implement re-targeting campaigns for returning visitors. Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) has devised a handy online tool for users to opt out from behavioral advertising implemented by several popular advertising networks.

Implementing Personalization and Behavioral Targeting

Enough of theory, and now is the time to see how to actually implement personalization on your blog. You don't need to be a programmer or a coding ninja to do it. However, a working knowledge of HTML and basic PHP/CSS can make things easier for you. We can use the combination of BTBuckets, SiteApps and Google Analytics to power our behavioral targeting engine. So let's get started and see how we can create a pretty robust and reliable personalization engine for our blog.

Define goals - The very first step involves tabulation of clearly defined, achievable and feasible goals. Unless you don't know what you want to achieve from your personalization exercise, you'll never be able to move on to the next step. Create success metrics and give each one of them a unique name that will appear in the analytics reports. This way you set the foundation for measuring the success rate and return-on-investment (ROI) for any personalization campaign. Goal creation process is not easy as you may think initially. You must do extensive testing for a decent duration to get enough data to decide what to look for and what can be achieved. Use can use Google website optimizer to do MultiVariate or A/B testing. Simply creating these tests alone doesn't do the job. You need a large volume of data to achieve statistical confidence level for creating right success metrics. This Split and A/B Testing Confidence Calculator is an excellent tool to crunch your test data obtained from Google website optimizer.

Create segments/buckets - Once you've clearly defined your goals, sign up for a free BTBuckets account and move onto the next step of segregating users on this basis of success metrics defined in the previous step. In simple words, you define the type of visitors you'll be targeting against each respective goal. For example, social media visitors, French visitors, visitors landing on a specific post, visitors on XP machine and so on. Possibilities are infinite and I've just presented some of the simplest cases.

While creating a bucket of visitors through BTBuckets, you'll be presented with lots of options as shown in the image above. The available segregating criteria is broadly divided into 3 parts, viz ., behavior, IP intelligence and technical. You can combine all the available options in a single rule forming large number of criteria to filter out the exact match you want. For example, you can create a bucket of French visitors landing on a specific post and having Windows Vista on their machine. Carefully create all the buckets segregating your blog traffic to test all of them against one or more goals.

Apply targeting logic - Now the next important step is the core of this implementation. Here you'll define the actual logic that will be applied against each bucket to achieve your goals. For each bucket, you'll define a unique chain of actions that will govern what to do when a visitor falling in that bucket lands on your blog. For example, if a visitor from France lands on your blog, you may define an action of serving the French version of your web page (through redirect) or a French version of an advertisement.

As shown in the image above, you can trigger the logic by inserting a custom code on your web page. This can be done in two ways. If the related actions have nothing to do with change of appearance and content of the web page (e.g page redirect), you can opt for auto-insertion. In case you want to change the appearance or content of the web page at a specific location you can use the manual insertion mode that allows you to execute your custom code exactly at the location where you want it to appear. This custom code can be a simple HTML snippet or a complex JavaScript call. You can bind each action to a specific bucket for maximum flexibility giving you the desired results. You can also use dozens of pre-made and free applications from SiteApps to easily deploy these custom actions for each bucket.

Rinse and repeat - Fortunately, both BTBuckets and SiteApps provides tight integration with Google Analytics to better analyze your results. BTBuckets handy Google Analytics Segmentation procedure and SiteApps free and robust Google Analytics on Steroids application gives you two ways to analyze and optimize your personalization results. Whenever it comes to analyzing such type of data, I always suggest taking a long duration data set to get a clearer picture of the trends. Same thing applies here while you're crunching imported data from BTBuckets and SiteApps in your Google Analytics dashboard.

Miscellaneous Guidelines

So finally we have seen a way to implement behavioral targeting on a web site. But things don't end here. There are several important pointers and suggestions that can significantly improve your personalization campaigns. Here's a list of some of the guidelines.

• Unless you don't receive decent traffic on your blog, there's no point wasting your time and money in implementing behavioral targeting.
• Since privacy is a very sensitive issue related to personalization, make sure you have a privacy policy page that categorically discloses the information you're collecting from each visitor and how you're using it for personalization.
• You can also use commercial behavioral targeting solutions like SageMetrics and Criteo to power your personalization engine.
• Make sure your targeting logic (custom code) doesn't slow down your blog. It can have adverse effect instead of yielding any positive results.

Now Your Turn

I'd like to know if you're using personalization on your blog. If yes, how you've implemented it and what challenges you've faced while deploying the whole system. If you know more ways to implement behavioral targeting, we'd love to know about it.

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments

How To Generate Leads From Your Business Blog

Often my clients (mostly small businesses/individuals) ask two common questions. Those who've already integrated a blog with their primary web site sulk about not getting any concrete results from it and those who've not yet started, question the necessity of having a business blog. In both cases, they do have general awareness about using blogging as a potent weapon to rope in customers, but they lack the know-how of effectively leveraging business blog's real estate.

It is either used as a news outpost or merely resembles a collection of posts hard-selling products. These are just the two mistakes at the macro-level which are blended with dozens other to make sure your business blog serves no purpose. As a result, the team maintaining the blog finds it very difficult to convince the management to keep it running in the absence of any credible data showing leads or sales. Your business blog is not just for announcing policies and products. So, for what it's made for?

• It's there to make a connection with your existing customers.
• It's there to turn prospects into loyal customers.
• It's there to push potential buyers into your sales funnel.
• It's there to get feedback about your existing products and services.
• And last but not the least, it's there to give your company a face.

One of the primary purposes of a business blog is to generate leads and that's what we are going to discuss here. This whole process can be divided into three parts - acquisition, channeling and baiting. In a nutshell, it's all about attracting potential customers who are looking for solutions, and then pushing them to the honey pots embedded in your blog or web site and finally alluring them to subscribe for your sales funnel.

Acquisition - Getting Qualified Traffic

Over the years, different case-studies and analysis have clearly suggested that organic traffic from search engines yields much better results as compared to the traffic spikes coming from social media sites like StumbleUpon. Moreover, it's not the quantity but the quality of traffic that makes the difference.

What does 'Qualified Traffic' mean? It's as simple as pulling selective traffic from popular search engines where people are querying about exactly those problems for which you've affordable and easy-to-implement solutions. To pull this targeted audience, you need a thoroughly researched and refined content creation strategy. This strategy can be divided into 3 simple steps.

• Identifying relevant keywords (long tail as well as highly competitive) people are using on search engines.
• Creating an archive of relevant and useful content based on popular visitors' queries.
• Refining and applying the above two steps in a loop.

Social media does help in getting quick and relevant traffic, but in the long run, a massive archive of quality content is the silver bullet to get continuous stream of qualified traffic from organic sources.

Channeling - Diverting Visitors To Honey Pots

Once you've managed to attract potential customers coming from search engines, your next step is to channelize them towards professionally written persuasive text/video/audio content that's going to be a foundation for sign-ups for your sales funnel.

These landing pages can be separate pages on your business blog or they can a part (static pages) of your primary business web site. I'll strongly suggest you to avoid the latter approach unless your blog's look 'n' feel matches with your web site. The most common and easy approach for creating diversions within a blog post is context-sensitive links with an alluring anchor text.

You can experiment with different anchor texts by tagging and analyzing them through your favorite web analytics system over a period of time. In fact, every link involved in the lead-generation process should be properly tagged for better analysis such that you get enough data to optimize and refine the whole process. Apart from text links, custom hyper-linked banners within or around the post are an effective method to divert incoming traffic. While embedding these banners, you must ensure they're not too loud; else you'll end up experiencing high bounce rates from these posts.

Baiting - Converting Prospects Into Leads

Successful completion of acquisition and channeling phase presents the next challenge of alluring an individual to sign up for your sales funnel via landing pages (honey pots). These pages consist of premium content surrounded by at least 2 or more email sign-up forms. The design and placement of these email sign-up forms should be actively researched and analyzed. A wrong placement or a too loud design not only kills the conversions, but may also trigger negative feedback on various public platforms. When it comes to premium content that's used as bait, there are several forms used by expert marketers over the years. Here's a list of diverse content formats served on such type of pages.

• Videos - It is the most effective medium to persuade an individual. Video has the power to instantly make a connection with the viewer. With some clever tactics that uses human psychology, you can achieve very high conversion rates through videos.
• Product comparisons - This is yet another popular method to allure a visitor. Carefully choose the rival products/solutions to compare with and created a table or an infographic highlighting what's unique about your product.
• Q & A list - It is something like a FAQ section present on a typical web site. The only difference is that this list can be much longer and one question may lead to another question in the list. Tip: You may leave the most important question unanswered just above the email sign-up form.
• Case studies/reports - If you have a data set from credible sources that convincingly displays the qualities of your products, nothing can be better than that. The real challenge is packaging this information into a persuasive copy that converts well.

Refining Lead Generation Process

No lead generation system is perfect and requires continuous monitoring and optimization. You need lots of data (visitors' behavior) and people smart enough to extract trends from that data that paves the way to replenish the existing system with new improved methodologies. Here are some general guidelines that will help you in creating a solid lead generation system through your business blog.

• Extensively split test your landing pages using Google Website Optimizer. Employ both A/B and multivariate testing.
• Get your email sign-up forms designed from a professional. It is one of the critical factors that decide the course of your lead generation campaign.
• If your targeted landing pages are on the primary web site, make sure the design of your blog matches with the web site. That's where blog design fundamentals come handy.
• Keep your business blog absolutely free of any sidebar widgets, adverts or any other distracting stuff that may hurt your conversions.

Image Credit: Wysz

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments

How To Build A Thriving Personal Blog

Niche blogs are the dominant species in the blogosphere. About a decade back, things were quite different, when it all started with personal diaries. Even today, personal blogs are abundant throwing light on people's day-to-day life. In recent years, a lot has been said about creating profitable niche blogs, but comparatively, you'll find very little about creating an awesome personal blog. There are some striking differences between a niche and a personal blog, and both of them require a different approach to get things done.

So let's get started and see what it takes to build a popular personal blog that people actually want to read. Some people say that personal blogs are dead with almost no readership. Well, if you're churning out remarkable content, no matter where it appears, people are going to flock around it. The only difference will be the type of audience and the way they interact and connect. A personal blog has the power to build or ruin your brand, especially if you're already into some kind of online business (running niche blogs/websites). In such cases, content created on your personal blog can directly affect your online business. A typical personal blog talks about a person's life, events and happenings. Some of them are more like a portfolio that is generally updated few times a year. Here are some pointers and guidelines that may help you in creating a thriving personal blog.

Define the scope

While creating a personal blog, you may opt to blog anonymously to avert any inadvertent damage to your business brand, or to comply with the restrictions/censorship imposed in your geographical area, or simply you just don't want to reveal your identity as you've decided to post about some controversial topics.

Blogging anonymously - If you've decided to blog anonymously, never use someone else's photograph. It may land you in trouble. Matter can become worse if you receive a notice from his/her attorney about impersonating an individual and damaging their reputation. Here are some guidelines for blogging anonymously.

• Avoid using a name of a celebrity or brand.
• DO NOT use someone else's photograph as your own.
• If you're living in a sensitive geographical area, avoid revealing your location.
• Always double check your posts, before you press the publish button.

Blogging as the 'REAL' you - In case, you've decided to blog without hiding your identity, things can become trickier if you're already running a successful online business. No matter how much you try to keep your personal blog activities separate from your business web sites, people almost always tend to mix 'em up and co-relate making judgments.

You can choose to talk about your business web sites on your personal blog and vice-versa cross-linking each other in the process. But, I'll advise you to avoid mixing the two. This doesn't mean that you should never talk about your business life on your personal blog, but doing it sparingly (within context) makes things much better.

Extent of sharing - This is yet another important attribute to take into consideration. How much of your personal life are you willing to share? Are you going to talk about very intimate things? What about posting photographs of you and your family members? Are you going to share real names of your spouse and kids? These are some important questions that need to be answered before your personal blog is up and running.

• As I said before, if you're living in a geographically sensitive area, avoid your real names and photographs.
• Do not post solo front close-up shots of your spouse. It can be misused by anybody.
• Beware: Never discuss your family problems on your personal blog.
• Clearly outline the boundary of information you're going to share with your readers.

Content creation strategy

Generally, personal blogs are updated at irregular intervals. The type of content can vary with each post, yet you have the challenge to keep your readers waiting for more. How to do that magic? It's very simple. Read on...

Use humor - Nothing can beat the use of humor in your blog posts. Since you're writing for a personal blog, you can liberally use it to make your post - a magnet. While writing such post, there's only one thing that need to be taken care of. Do not hurt any individual's sentiments that may result in public embarrassment. Cracking jokes on yourself is the best policy to avoid any controversies and at the same time it paves the way to win hearts of your readers.

Use Anecdotes (tell stories) - Now this is an art that you can refine with passage of time. If applied correctly, you can keep the readers glued to the screen till they've not finished your post. Add some spice to an interesting incident that you may face in your daily life and craft an alluring opening paragraph supported by a relevant image. Some personal blogs are able to attract large audience solely on the basis of such type of posts.

Give tips and life hacks - This is yet another way to make your readers coming back for more. Regularly sharing your useful productivity tips that actually provides an implementable solution making home and office management much easier, can make your personal blog a big hit in no time. These life hacks can be a simple kitchen tip or can be as complex as making your own useful gadget from the junk in your storeroom. Whatever is the case, you're guaranteed to get positive comments and applause, once you start posting such 'Everyday Solutions'.

Image-only posts - A personal blog is lifeless unless you post image-only posts. Share images from your overseas trip, a get-together on a festive season or a hilarious moment within the family. People tend to connect more easily with the blogger, if he/she shares images with the audience. In the number of image-only blog posts is large, make sure you optimize these images before upload else you may end up consuming all your hosting bandwidth.

Experimenting with visual appearance

Unlike niche or a business blog, a personal blog has more freedom to make changes in the layout and design. You don't have to stick around with a brand logo and similar visual elements.

A personal blog's header is one of the most important elements that can be used effectively to give returning visitors a refreshing browsing session. One of the best ways to get this done is to create a large header with rotating images. I'll suggest you to change your personal blog's theme at least once a year. These changes are more intended towards your loyal fans who expect something new and refreshing apart from the regular content they're fed with.

Bare essentials

And last but not the least, here are some of the technical/non-technical aspects that need to be taken care of to get the best out of your personal blog.

• If possible, get your own name domain name for your personal blog. If your name has already been taken, try a shorter version.
• One of the most visited pages on a personal blog is 'About' page. Spend some time in creating a rocking 'About Me' page and make sure it is updated regularly (whenever required).
• Make a separate Gravatar profile for your personal blog.
• Use you full name for the WordPress author profile.
• Create a strong comment policy and prominently highlight (link) it near comment form. Personal blogs are more prone to trolls and you must have a strategy to deal with them.
• If you're hibernating for a long period, announce the same through a sticky post.

So now it's your turn to share your experiences you had with your personal blog. I'd love to get more on this through your comments.

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments

6 Reasons Google+ Will Redefine Social Networking

After the decline of MySpace, Facebook has dominated social networking domain with a staggering growth rate in last few years. Absence of any strong rival boosted Facebook's hold and made it unchallenged player in the market. Google's two attempts to enter social networking domain with Google Wave and Google Buzz was turned down by the people. But wait, we learn from our mistakes, and that's what Google has shown this time.

On 28th June 2011, Google has launched a new social networking service called Google+. There's a clear indication that all the valuable feedback they've got through Wave and Buzz users has served as a road map to create Google+. I'm pretty much impressed by the way they have handled the concerns of people that popped up in Buzz. So, the big question is - "Is it going to be a big hit?" or "Can it dethrone Facebook?". Well, the trends and positive feedback suggests that it will gain wide user acceptance. Facebook is a social networking giant and dethroning it is a herculean task. If Google+ manages to secure mass adoption consistently, still it may take few years before it can give a real tough fight to its arch-rival. I'm active both on Facebook and Google+, but I must admit that some of the features (editable comments, photo-tagging permissions), which I always wanted in Facebook are there in Google+. There are strong reasons that make Google+ a unique and innovative way to connect and share with people.

Strong privacy controls

One of the reasons Google Buzz didn't cut the ice was imperfect privacy settings. Thankfully, well-knitted privacy settings make Google+ a more acceptable and secure platform. Whether it's profile visibility, status updates, photo sharing/tagging or network/friends management, Google+ team has taken care of the most essential privacy concerns that directly addresses leakage of individual's personal information and his online activities. Here's a glimpse of the most essential privacy settings for Google+.

• Your circles (friends group) always remain private, i.e., your friend doesn't know that you've just added him to a circle named 'Bunch of Idiots'.
• By default, all uploaded images are private.
• During a 'Hang Out' session, your video stream isn't shared with participants, unless you explicitly give permission for the same.
• Almost every part of your Google+ profile can be customized for visibility. This includes an option to exclude your profile from appearing in search results altogether. Note: Enabling this setting doesn't hide your profile from your internal friends network.
• Needless to say, your status updates visibility can be fine-tuned too.

You own your data

Web sites running primarily on user generated content have different policies when it comes to ownership of content. Google+ has a clear-cut policy about ownership of your content. They call it 'Data Liberation'. Every single bit of information generated by you on Google+ can be exported without any hassle via Google Takeout.

Unlike some other data export systems, that bundle all the information in a single archive, Google Takeout lets you choose the service whose data need to be exported. This significantly reduces the archive size and facilitates easy exportation.

All the contacts on your Google Talk list (irrespective of whether you've blocked them in the past) can be exported along with their email addresses, provided they've enabled chat in Google+. This certainly makes it stand apart and induces trust and confidence among the users. Complete content ownership will be one of the primary attributes that need to be supported by future social networking services. You can delay it, but you cannot hide from it.

Deeply integrated with Google services

Google Buzz was tightly integrated with GMail, but failed to get the user base for two simple reasons. First, the information flow was overwhelming and hindered the regular mailing activities of users, and secondly, it was just limited to GMail. With Google+, the story is quite different. Google has cleverly created a notification bar that is integrated with all popular Google services. It has solved both problems existent in the previous attempts. First, it does not hinder your regular activities, and secondly, you can have quick access to your Google+ events irrespective of the Google service you're using currently.

It's not just the notifications in any of the Google service, but the intelligent use of related services like Picasa web (poised to be renamed as Google photos), and the use of search engine database for giving life to 'Sparks' has made it a win-win situation for both Google+ and it's users. This ensures that existing Picasa web users don't need to separately upload their collection to Google+. Secondly, users don't need to leave Google+ to search for content they want to share with their network. Simply create a collection of 'Sparks' of your interests powered by Google search engine database and get going.

Gorgeous Interface

Web site usability greatly depends on fascinating interface that is easy to use, isn't sluggish and is soothing to eyes. That's what Google+'s minimalistic, yet attractive interface brings to the users. The good thing about Google+'s interface is that it is not densely packed and the navigation is clean and obvious. And the icing on the cake is the speed at which it renders. Probably, it's due to the absence of extra features/services that makes the code heavy, since it's still in private beta stage.

Another striking feature of Google+'s interface is the minimal use of flash and relying heavily on CSS and JavaScript. Overall, you'll never be disappointed when it comes to usability and navigation on Google+. I'm sure a more dense and compact version is coming ahead to accommodate new features that will be rolled out in coming months.

Innovative ways to connect and share

With the launch of Google+, various articles on prominent web sites criticized Google+'s approach of managing friends network. Interestingly, comment threads beneath these articles told a completely different story. Despite initial criticism, Google+ circles have become a cornerstone of this project. People are loving this intuitive and unique way to manage their friends network. Apart from the default circles provided by Google+, users have learned to create more meaningful and necessary circles as per their needs.

The drag-n-drop feature makes the whole process of segregating users less boring and more of a fun. This doesn't end here. People have already started suggesting a more refined and optimized way to use this feature, i.e., inclusion of circle-in-circle (parent-child circles), overlapping circles (cross-posting with minimum hassle) and much more. Let's accept it, no other social network has managed to come out with such a different and unique approach to manage friends network.

Rocking feedback mechanism

This is yet another feature that makes Google+ stand apart from the rest. I don't remember any other social network giving me the liberty to provide direct feedback through such mechanism. It's not just plain email address or a contact page. As I said before, this time Google is damn serious about user feedback so that no stone is leave unturned to introduce necessary changes in time. In fact, its not just about getting feedback for changes in existing system, but it also serves as a medium to get valuable data to invent and introduce exactly those features that current user base is demanding.

This is a very smart move from Google+ team. The feedback submitting process itself is very interesting. You can highlight the problem area, or you can blackout sensitive information that makes things much easier to elaborate. And make no mistake about it - this feedback system really works. Suggestions that require major changes may take some time, but relatively smaller problems (like a navigation pitfall) are addressed immediately.

So, is Google+ poised to become a major player in the social networking domain? Well, that nobody can predict at this point of time, but one thing is absolutely clear. Google+ is completely different from Wave and Buzz, and the current user base is loving the way it works, i.e., users are definitely pouring in with ideas and suggestions, but by and large, I've not seen a user reporting any privacy breach (Buzz killer), or a major malfunction.

So that's my view of this new social networking service, what about you? Are you active on Google+? If yes, how do you find it different from MySpace and Facebook?

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments

A Handy Guide To Twitter Automation

When it comes to social media, automation is not welcomed by everyone, and rightly so. Having said that, one cannot ignore the fact that the sheer volume of new media applications and services is overwhelming us. One cannot actively manage multiple social media accounts and some level of automation is a must. But, doing it in a wrong way can land you in trouble resulting in suspended/terminated accounts. Let's try to understand automation principles for a popular social media service - Twitter.

Like any other social media service, twitter has set guidelines and best practices for automation. Adhering to these guidelines ensures you're playing safe without any worry of account suspension. Sometimes, twitter filters out spammy accounts from search results before suspension process is initiated. If bulk of your tweets is automated, it is advisable to check them in twitter search results everyday. Absence from twitter search is a clear indication your account has been pinned down by twitter and its time to rethink your tweet strategy.

So let's get started, and try to understand the type and degree of automation a twitter account can withhold without violating any rule.

Account creation - An individual or a business/organization can have multiple twitter accounts. However, creating mass twitter accounts in an automated way with overlapping use is not permitted. That doesn't mean charities; non-profits and similar entities can't have multiple accounts that broadly post similar content for social cause or general community service. But for that, make sure you take prior permission from twitter by submitting a request for the same.

Streaming external content - Apart from general conversations posted manually, twitter users love to stream content from external sources (feeds, multi-media updates - video or snap upload). Twitter encourages you to stream content owned by you, but that's not a strict requirement. Automating other feeds should be supported by proper attribution giving due credit to it's owner. Stuffing your tweet stream by countless automated external feed updates and that too without any attribution can lead to account suspension.

Streaming dodgy feeds - If you auto-post a feed containing links that go through a redirection leading to a landing/advertisement page before user can see the actual content, you're at risk of getting your account terminated. Avoid automating such feeds and make sure the links in every automated feed are free from any kind of redirection.

Trending topics and automation - A large chunk of tweets comprises of trending topics on twitter. Some applications have the (facility!) of automated tweeting on the basis of keywords within trending topics. This greatly reduces the quality of tweets within the trending topics stream. Twitter generally filters out such streams, but in case, your automated application is tweeting unrelated references associated with a trending topic, your account can be suspended for indefinite period.

Streaming ads and affiliate links - Automated tweets for which you're paid (per-click, per-tweet, per-sale) are strictly prohibited on twitter. This is a surefire way to get your account terminated. However, you can post sponsored or paid tweets manually (or approved manually) making sure they do not reappear in your stream. Needless to say, flooding such tweets can only bring your account under scanner and can also help you in losing your followers in no time. In a nutshell, paid tweets should never be automated or scheduled.

Streaming @replies and mentions - Certain so-called smart twitter tools send automated @replies to bunch of users based on keywords in their tweet stream. If you're using such tool, be assured that soon your account will be suspended. This is clearly a clever way to send unsolicited messages to unknown users (SPAM). Another kind of spam is automated retweets based on keyword searches. Do not try to automate such kind of updates else you'll risk your account being terminated.

Follow and unfollow - This is one of the most popular method through which large number of twitter accounts are terminated. Automated following and unfollowing based on keywords or in random order is not allowed on twitter. Only auto-follow-back (following a user after they have followed you) can be automated. Some twitter tools claim to get you thousands of followers overnight by indulging in mass automated following and unfollowing. I strong advice you to do this process manually and that too within the limits.

As a general rule of thumb, if your tweeting behavior results in large number spam and block reports to twitter, your account will be suspended or terminated. A simple example can be - sending automated direct messages to new followers containing affiliate links. It's up to you how you leverage this excellent social media platform in a right way. Keep yourself updated with the general set of rules and guidelines and if you're in dilemma about a certain automation process, ask any expert and head over to official twitter help. Happy automated tweeting!

Image Credit: Rosaura Ochoa

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments

Understanding WordPress Roles And Capabilities

Every content management system (CMS) inherently supports a strong access system for its users. WordPress is no different and have a very powerful and flexible access control system. An average WordPress user never bothers about different levels of access controls applicable to different types of users. Normally, we install WordPress, use the default account and blog on! But in multi-user environment, we have to choose different access level (account) for each user.

Note: To keep things simple, we're not going to discuss about Super Admin applicable only in case of multi-site installation for a blog network.

If you're running a multi-author blog or run a subscription-based membership site, you must understand different roles and capabilities WordPress has to offer. For each task certain privileges are required, and assigning more than what is required can prove fatal. A user with added privilege can inadvertently modify or edit those settings or content for which he/she has no authorization. To avert this catastrophic situation, the best method is to assign role-based accounts to each user. So let's get started and quickly take a look on different types of accounts WordPress has to offer.

• Administrator - As the name implies, this role has complete access to all the rights and have complete control over the blog. Whether it's creating and editing content, tweaking theme, doing various system-wide settings or managing users, an administrator enjoys all the rights without any restriction.
• Editor - Apart from core administrative tasks, an editor enjoys full control over content management and related tasks. An editor not only manages his own content but also have complete control over posts and pages created by all other accounts. He can edit, delete, schedule and publish posts created by any user.
• Author - This role restricts a user to manage his own content. An author has complete control over the content created by him, but he cannot make any changes to the content created by other accounts. Generally, members of a typical multi-author blog are assigned this role.
• Contributor - There is a striking difference between an author and a contributor. Both have complete control over their content when it comes to creating and editing the posts and pages, but a contributor cannot publish the post. Generally, new members of a multi-author blog are assigned this role, whose post submissions are reviewed by the editor before pressing the publish button.
• Subscriber - If you offer premium content or run a coaching program with exclusive content accessible only to members, this role is the best candidate for the members. A subscriber have read-only access to blog's content which is hidden from general visitors.

If you run a multi-user blog, make sure you understand each role and carefully assign these roles to appropriate users. One mistake can lead to disaster that may cost you money and more importantly may lead to long-term repercussions that can hurt your online business. A rule of thumb is to start with least privileged account and to gradually promote the user. To avoid any confusion, you can create an access control matrix where each role capabilities are clearly visible to assist you in taking the right decision.

Image Credit: sbluerock

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How To Keep Your Blog Alive During Long Vacation

Planning to go on a long vacation with family? Have you ensured your blog won't go on vacation with you? Sometimes, we tend to procrastinate (haven't you ever?) even in the most favorable conditions and a long vacation can really trigger this deadly virus within you, unless you do the preparation in advance. Careful planning can keep your blog alive even during considerably long vacations. All you need is a meticulous plan to place everything in the right place.

Schedule beforehand - Unless you explicitly declare your non-availability during vacations, you can't afford post-less weeks without intimating the same to your subscriber base. The larger your subscriber base, greater is the risk of losing your credibility if you keep your blog starved for a long time. It's better to write some posts in advance and schedule it for the vacation time. You can reduce of the size of the posts as well as the frequency to speed up the scheduling process.

Invite guest posts - This is the second best option to fill your editorial calendar with content from your peers and readers. Gently push a message through popular social media platforms (Facebook, twitter) asking for guest posts. You can send direct message or email to some of the close blogging peers asking to contribute during your vacation.

Repurpose old content - This is an art that comes handy in such situations. It's like packing the old wine in a new bottle. Pick some of the least performing posts from your archive and create a fresh one improving on the old version adding some more spice to it. It's like adding bells and whistles to the old car and presenting it with new looks to the buyers. Needless to say, this method speeds up the post writing process and helps you in filling your editorial calendar at a much faster pace.

Interview peers - Who doesn't like to get interviewed and featured in front of qualified traffic? Quickly jot down a set of questions and create 4-5 different sets. Mail them to your network (selective peers), sit back and relax. In a day or two, you'll receive completed questionnaires ready to be scheduled. Just be careful not to post them in quick succession.

Miscellaneous tips for blogging on the go

Here are some essentials guidelines to make your routine blogging tasks as smooth as if you're doing them from your usual blogging workplace.

• Don't forget to pack your blogging gadgets (laptop, smartphone and tablet) loaded with all the essential software.
• Make sure you've turned off automatic software updates; else you may get a hefty bill (in case of metered broadband) from your hotel.
• Blog about your entire day spent with the local people/culture and co-relate it with your blogging activities.
• Switch-off comment notifications while you're on the move. Don't forget to enable them when you're back in your hotel room.
• Avoid geo-tagging your social networks updates during vacations.
• Nothing's better than editing and posting the drafts while sipping coffee in a local cafe.
• Visit a local bookstore and you're guaranteed come out with dozens of new ideas to post during your long vacation.

What other tips you'd like to share with us for painless blogging during travel? Has it ever happened that you've canceled your trip merely because you couldn't keep up with your blogging routine? Share your thoughts and comments below!

Image Credit: Thom Watson

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6 Easy Steps To Make A Successful List Post

If you're filling your archive with different types of posts (e.g - how-to's, link roundups, news, informational, lists), you truly are doing justice with your subscribers. No one likes monotonous content that forces a subscriber to click the 'unsubscribe' link. Among these different types of posts, list posts are known to bring tons of traffic consistently. Lets walk-through list post creation process and see how to convert these gems into a perpetual fountain of traffic.

Choose a massively popular topic

This sounds very obvious, but sometimes we ignore simple things and pay the price. The moment you choose a trending topic (which can be controversial too), half of the battle has already been won. You may ask the question - Why the hell should I write about a topic already popping out on every corner of the web? Am I not creating a second copy?

No, you'll not create a copy provided you know the principles of creating remarkable content. Even if there are lists on similar topic, you can beat all of them by identifying their weakness and shortcomings. Selection of popular topic ensures that in case your list is elevated in search engine result pages, it can receive good amount of traffic.

Note: If you decide to choose a controversial topic, make sure you're not hurting the sentiments of a certain community at large.

Write a magnetic headline

Once you have a hot topic in your hand, move on to the next step of creating an eye-popping headline (post title). Creating a good post title is like hanging a carrot on the end of the stick. It should be irresistible enough to induce a click from a visitor.

Spice up with illustrations/pictures

No list post can be regarded as complete without pictures. Some lists require multiple small images, while others may require medium to big size images for each item/entry. Some of the most popular list posts are entirely made up of images. A very long list post without any image may not receive that much attention as you may have anticipated. While adding images to your list post, make sure you follow these simple yet very effective image optimization guidelines.

Say a big NO to long paragraphs

There's very little scope of large text paragraphs in list posts. Generally, an ideal list post is made up of images with little text sprinkled around them with a link (if required) for each entry. However, you may include a medium-sized opening paragraph to summarize the list content. Some lists that are devoid of any images do have the scope of very short paragraphs for each entry in the list.

Resist the temptation to create a very long list

Creating a very long list containing large number of hyperlinks can backfire. Same thing is applicable to image list posts. The larger the number of images, the more time it takes to open. This not only increases the bounce rate, but also unnecessarily consumes your server's bandwidth. If the number of images is very large, divide your list post into multiple parts.

Segregate related items into sections

If your list post is long, 9 out of 10 times you're filling enough items in it that can be easily subdivided to make the post less confusing and more readable. Group all related items in one section and order them logically for making it more useful and informative.

What Else?

Now it's your turn to add to this list. If you've been experimenting with list posts, what else you'll like to add to this post?

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments