10 Reasons Why I Will Not Visit or Subscribe To Your Blog

Despite posting consistently and doing your best to promote the blog, are you experiencing stagnant subscriber count with no growth in traffic? Are you worried about your low conversion rate? Well, here are some of the reasons that may repel the visitors leading to almost nil conversions.

Low Quality Content - It is one of the primary reasons why people won't pay a second visit to your blog. What's your primary goal? Just to get tons of traffic? Or to retain good percentage of visitors (high conversions) from whatever traffic you receive? It's not the volume of traffic but your conversion rate that decides how fast your blog will expand its reach. And the primary ingredient for high conversions is quality content. Give me some real stuff and I'll be more than happy to be a regular visitor.

Awful Sidebar - Once a reader finishes the article, he looks at the sidebar for more information. I've seen many sidebars littered with large number of fancy widgets to attract the visitors. Please remove those useless (countless) widgets and give me something useful (best content, latest posts, how-to's, tutorials) to click on.

Partial Feed - There's a lot of debate on providing partial RSS feed or full feed to blog subscribers. If we concentrate the juice of these debates, full feed option comes out as the clear winner. Partial feed is of the biggest reason why people may not consider subscribing. Majority of readers prefer full feed in their inbox. If you are distributing partial feed, I won't subscribe at all.

No Response - People come to your blog to gain some information. In the process, they share their views and ask questions. Unless you are not getting tons of comments, you must reply every single one of them. If it's one-sided conversation, your repeating visitors will dry up quickly.

Sluggish Navigation - Who doesn't love web sites and blogs with fast download time? In social media era, the traffic is very sensitive towards slow web sites. They're impatient and want quick access to information. Keep your blog code optimized for lowest possible download time. I won't stay on your blog if it makes me wait more than 15-20 seconds.

Poor Theme - Sometimes great content remain unnoticed due to extremely poor choice of theme. If you aren't a techie, hire a person to design a custom theme for you or DIY (do-it-yourself). A custom theme gives a unique voice to your blog and aids in attracting the first time visitors.

Ads, Ads and More Ads - I know you want to make money blogging, but where is the content? I can only see ads stuffed in almost every corner of your theme. Too much aggressive monetization will drive away all your visitors including me.

Too Much Self-Promotion - It's good to share your knowledge and expertise, but sometimes you may fall into trap of inadvertently over-selling yourself. The most successful bloggers are the most humble and down-to-earth people. Follow their footsteps and you will see more engagement of your readers.

Pop-Ups - Yet another annoying feature that prevents visitors to come to your blog. It's like twisting my wrist and asking me to subscribe. If your content is great, they'll subscribe automatically. Get rid of that pop-up and check your statistics after few weeks.

No Link-Outs - Yes, yes, I want links to some great resources whenever you pick any such topic, which has the scope of highlighting the best work on other blogs. Be generous and please do link to some extra-ordinary stuff of other bloggers. Trust me you won't lose me. In fact, I will be grateful to you for sharing relevant quality content with me.

Image Credit: Chesi - Fotos CC

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments

Micro-Blogging: 26 Twitter Desktop Clients For Mac

Since twitter has gone mainstream, the supporting applications and services are sprouting up like wildfire on Internet. Prominent among these applications are twitter desktop clients available for almost every platform. These handy applications help you manage your twitter activities in a much easier way than managing via web interface. Here's a list of select twitter clients for Mac platform.

Some of these clients have cross-platform compatibility and also works on Windows and Linux. The list is arranged in alphabetical order and in no way represent their popularity based on their position in the list.

Airmailr - A fully featured twitter client for OS X Dashboard. View different timelines (DM's , @replies, friends) and send tweets, replies and DM's. It also supports profile views with complete bio of the user within the widget window. You can also perform twitter search to watch selective tweets. The results are shown as a separate tab via scrollable list. Integrated URL shortening support (is.gd) and easy resizing option makes it quite flexible in usage. It has full growl integration and updates itself automatically. Airmailr uses the twitter's new OAuth standard for better timeline management with minimum delay in updates.

AlertThingy - This excellent application mashes up various social media services into a single application including twitter. Apart from twitter updates, you can also access Facebook, flickr, tumblr and many more such services. AlertThingy runs on Adobe AIR and is available for Mac, Windows and Linux. Business users can also access Yammer, Basecamp and Huddle from this desktop client. AlertThingy is light on system resources and has impressive interface. If you have multiple accounts on these services, AlertThingy can make your life easy with single point of access to keep you updated of all happenings across multiple social media accounts.

Blogo - As the name implies, Blogo is not just a twitter client but a full-fledged blogging and social media application. Blogo supports twitter and Ping.fm updates. Currently it's only available for Mac platform. Apart from twitter access, you can also post to Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, Drupal, and Expression Engine. It has a built-in rich text post editor. Not only this, you can set automatic updates to twitter and Ping.fm accounts whenever you post fresh content on any of the supported web publishing system. You can re-size it freely and can even switch it to full-screen mode as per your convenience.

Canary - It is one of the promising twitter clients with multiple timeline support. It suports multiple twitter accounts and also recognizes hashtags. Full growl support for immediate notifications. Full URL shortening (Adjix, Bit.ly, Cli.gs, is.gd, Snipurl, TinyURL, tr.im and urlBorg) support makes it an ideal client to share your favorite content. Filters support lets you view selective twitter streams in a separate tab. Canary also supports TwitPic for sharing your pictures and iTunes integration to let your followers know which track you are listening. You can also add, remove, block and unblock twitter users at your will.

Chirp - Currently, only available for Mac platform. It is very light on system resources and supports twitter, Jaiku, FriendFeed, Identi.ca. Chirp supports multiple twitter timelines (replies, DM's and public timeline). It also supports instant search for all services with caching feature for offline use of your search results. Chirp comes with 6 different themes to suit your taste. I particularly liked the tooltip feature. that will show you the followers count of any user on hovering the mouse on this name. Chrip updates itself automatically with a small size binary making the whole update procedure lightning fast.

EventBox - As the name suggests, it supports multiple social media services (twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Flickr, RSS, Reddit). Currently, this application is only available for Mac platform. EventBox has stunning interface that fully utilizes your graphic card capabilities making it one of the best looking twitter client. You can freely re-size its fluid interface. EventBox also supports instant notification of all new updates for each of the supported services. You can enable or disable notifications for selective services via settings option. EventBox future versions will also support del.icio.us, Last.fm and Orkut.

feedalizr - Yet another twitter client supporting multiple social media services. Apart from reguar twitter access, you can also update your Facebook status and send replies to your Facebook friends. feedalizr also has TwitPic support for sharing images with your followers. You can also access and update your Freindfeed account making it all-in-one solution for all your social media activities. The interface is quite impressive with multiple tab support for each stream. The hot topic bar lets you see whats currently hot on twitter. It is almost similar to twitscoop service. feedalizr is light on system resources and updates itself automatically.

Mac Lounge - This excellent twitter client is available both for Mac OS X and iPhone. The first thing that you will notice is the excellent interface which is very soothing to eyes. At present, this application is in public beta phase. It supports multiple twitter accounts and twitter search options. You can easily view different timelines (replies, DM's and public timeline) making things easy to manage and update. The search filtering option lets you create a separate section of selective tweets. This impressive client is not a resource hog and has promising future once it comes out of beta stage. The iPhone version is equally rich in features as its desktop version.

NatsuLion - It is only available for Mac platform (Leopard (10.5)). NatsuLion has different tabs for public timeline, replies, DM's, sent and unread messages. The interface is extremely good and the application is light on system resources. Growl notifications are tightly integrated with this twitter client. Your own tweets are highlighted with different color scheme to easily filter out remaining tweets. This application is ideal for light and casual tweeting giving you enough options to keep in touch with your followers. It is also available for iPhone covering all the features in the desktop version.

Nambu - It is one of the popular twitter clients for Mac platform. Nambu supports multiple twitter accounts and has a good interface. It also supports multi-column view for selective twitter streams. Apart from twitter is also supports FriendFeed and Identi.ca account updates. Groups, filters and twitter search makes it an ideal twitter client for novice as well as power users. It is light on system resources and updates itself automatically. You can open separate tab for every new search for all supported social media services. It shows you actual web site names of shared links via tweets. I'd highly recommend trying this twitter client.

P3:PeraperaPrv - Purely written in Java, this twitter client can run on Mac, Windows and Linux. It supports multiple tabs for viewing different timelines with auto-refresh for each stream. You can customize the appearance (color schemes) of different tweets (replies, DM's). Filtering support allows you to view selective tweets in a separate tab. It also supports URL shortening (tinyURL) to help you share your favorite links. You can also change the application and tweet font size making it ideal for people having vision problems. You can also search and favorite selective tweets from the timeline cache and can group them in a separate tab.

Pwytter - It's a light weight feature packed twitter client written in Python. You can switch to different timelines with a click of a button. Pwytter supports up to 14 different languages and has full unicode support. Timelines are cached for faster response in case of multiple search queries. Pwytter updates itself automatically and have the option of updating timelines either manually or automatically. It is one of the lightest and resource efficient twitter client ideal for low configuration systems. You can use it on Mac, Windows and Linux. It also supports viewing of separate lists of your followers and friends in a scrollable format.

Seesmic DESKTOP - I'm using this excellent twitter client. Still in private beta stage, it is destined to give Tweetdeck a run for its money. The interface is stunning giving Mac effect on every platform. Seesmic Desktop is not a resource hog at all even if several panes are opened at once. Multi-column views, search panes, custom groups makes it an ideal application for twitter power users. It also supports URL shortening, hashtags detection and automatic updates. It is freely re-sizable with option to switch to single or multi-column views. You can also hide and unhide selective panes at your will. I started with twhirl, then Tweetdeck and now I'm hooked to this wonderful twitter client.

Snitter - This twitter client works on both Mac and Windows. The Linux version is still in developmental alpha stage. It comprises all the features of a typical twitter desktop client. If you know CSS, you can easily customize the appearance (color, font size, avatars, shadow) of Snitter. You can also create a separate tab for favorite tweets. Snitter supports keyboard shortcuts to access each opened panel. Window resize, audible alerts and minimizing to system tray are some other features of this handy application. Snitter is light on system resources and is ideal for twitter users having limited following.

Spaz - It is available for OS X, Windows and Linux platform. Packed with powerful twitter search feature, it filters out selective twitter streams as per your needs. Spaz also has built-in support for URL shortening (is.gd, bit.ly, snurl.com) to share your favorite content with your twitter network. It has multiple themes and also gives you the flexibility to create your own theme via CSS overrides. Spaz is written in pure JavaScript , XHTML and CSS making it completely customizable by users. Audible alerts and separate listing of friends and followers makes it an ideal twitter client for every serious twitter user.

Syrinx - This twitter client is only available for Leopard (OS X 10.5+). Bookmarking (marking selective tweets) and integrated search feature are some important features on Syrinx. Growl notifications are tight integrated with this twitter client. It is light on system resources with neat and clean interface. Extensive keyboard shortcuts helps you manage your twitter updates fast and quick. Syrinx allows you to customize the colors as well as sound (audible alerts) that suits your taste. You can also customize the auto-updating frequency and scrolling behavior. You can also pause all the twitter updates and can resume it later with a click of a button.

Tweetr - This light weight twitter client is available for Mac and Windows. You can send files of size up to 10MB via tweetr. Just drag the files in tweetr window. It will automatically upload the file and will provide you a short URL to share it with your friends. tweetr has in-built URL shortening (hurl.ws) support. You can freely resize and drag the window to any part of the desktop. It also supports system tray integration on Windows platform. It also lets you share snaps from your webcam with your twitter followers. The file sending option and webcam support makes it stand apart from the rest. TweetIdeal for twitter users who regularly send and receive files from their twitter network.

TweetDeck - It is one of the most popular twitter clients with large user-base. Multi-column twitter timelines, powerful twitter search and custom groups makes it an ideal twitter client for power users. It has a rich URL shortening support. You can also update your Facebook account via Tweetdeck. You can also use the TwitScoop cloud to keep you updated about what's hot on twitter. Tweetdeck updates itself automatically and has various customization options including custom colors. The only issue that is frequently raised by users is the memory usage. TweetDeck is available for Mac, Windows and Linux platform.

Tototl - Currently, Tototl is only available for Mac platform. It supports 3 languages (English, Japanese and Spanish). It is one of the fastest and light weight twitter desktop client. Since it uses SSL for connection encryption, it keeps your twitter login credentials absolutely safe from hackers. The future versions may also support custom themes which will be highly customizable by users and native plugins support. Soon its Windows and Linux versions are also coming out. Tototl is ideal for casual twitter users who does not have large number of active followers. It also uses DSA signed updates for maximum security of your twitter conversation.

Twibble - This excellent twitter client is available for Mac and Windows. It supports multiple twitter accounts that can be managed as separate tabs. It has in-built location awareness support and can tell the exact location of any twitter follower via Google maps. It also understands GPS positioning sent via twibble mobile. Twibble updates itself automatically and supports keyboard shortcuts for fast and easy account management. On windows platform it can minimize to system tray. It's light weight and impressively fast with equally attractive interface. Tweets are highlighted in different colors depending on their type for easy readability. You can customize various options via its rich custom settings option.

Twidget - Currently, it is only available for Mac platform. This light weight twitter client is ideal for casual users who doesn't have large network of active followers. Some of the features include auto-updating timelines, alerts for new tweets, new version availability alert, links to DM's and twitter contacts and much more. You can also favorite selective tweets directly from within the refreshing timeline. Twidget also allows you to collapse and expand the timeline window at will. Future versions will have Growl notifications, audible notifications, URL shortening support, multiple language support and flexible resizing option.

twhirl - This was the first twitter client used by me. twhirl is the second most popular desktop client after Tweetdeck and offers tons of options for every serious twitter user. Custom themes, URL shortening (digg.com, bit.ly, snurl, twurl or is.gd), flexible resizing, audible alerts are some of the features of twhirl. You can do profile as well as keyword search with twhirl. It updates itself automatically and is available for Mac and Windows platform. It can also cross-post your tweets to Jaiku and Ping.fm. You can also tweak twitter API settings according to your activity. It supports multiple languages and several themes. Here's a basic twhirl guide for beginners.

Twitter Thingy - You can use Twitter Thingy on Mac, Windows and Linux. It supports custom groups and twitter search. You can type in your search queries is an expandable search bar at the bottom of the window. It is light on system resources and has quite attractive interface making it an ideal choice for an average twitter user. You can update your public timeline with a single click and can also favorite selective tweets. You can also delete your own tweets directly from within the timeline. Twitter Thingy caches your twitter timeline for fast response to search and updates. Automatic updates are not supported by Twitter Thingy.

Twitterrific - This twitter client has stunning interface and is light on system resources. It supports multiple twitter accounts and provides access to user profile pages with a single click. It supports audible alerts and keyboard shortcuts. You can also set custom hotkey for showing and hiding tweets. twitterrific also supports deletion of your own tweets and has customizable timeline auto-refresh intervals. Replies and direct messages are displayed inline highlighted with different colors for easy readability. Through custom settings you can also set window auto-hiding. There are two more variants of twitterrific for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Twitter Studio - It is only available for Mac platform. Growl notifications has been tightly integrated with this impressive twitter client. Twitter Studio updates itself automatically and supports profile lookups displaying user information within the application window. You can also set custom notification settings and custom twitter API settings. It also displays refresh rate limit indicator to help you set the optimum refresh rate. Future versions will support Twitpic integration, custom color schemes, tweet deletion support, custom groups, search functionality, menu bar quick access icon, iTunes plugin and much more. Twitter Studio comes with impressive interface and is not a resource hog.

Twittia - This light weight twitter client is only available for Mac platform. Growl notifications are integrated with this excellent and simple-to-use twitter client. You can view your public timeline, DM's and replies in different tabs. Twittia also allows you to set custom refresh intervals with desired volume of audible alerts. It also supports Twitpic to share pictures with your twitter network. The interface is clean and attractive making it an ideal choice for an average twitter user. It also supports twitter search for displaying selective tweets containing the keywords you are looking for. You can open multiple search tabs at a given time giving you custom twitter streams containing the keywords that are under your watch.

Image Credit: bertop

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StumbleUpon Guide For Bloggers: Building Traffic - The Right Way

Social media has completely changed the way traffic was pulled to blogs and websites. The core long-term traffic building concepts still remain the same (organic traffic from SE's), which are now supplemented by social media marketing to get the desired results at a much faster pace. StumbleUpon is one of the most popular social media services that have the capability to bring loads of traffic to your blog. Let's see how to use it correctly to its full potential.

Preparing For The Avalanche

Pulling traffic from StumbleUpon and leveraging the incoming traffic effectively are two different things. Before we dive into stumbling, we must prepare our blog to increase the conversions.

Decent theme and clean navigation - StumbleUpon traffic tends to exhibit impatient behavior and high bounce rate in certain conditions. They are known to immediately leave the poorly designed sites topped with cluttered navigation. So the first step is to fix these two things.

Don't make them wait - It's not just about the appearance and clean navigation. A sluggish theme is the best way to repel StumbleUpon visitors. Tweak your theme and practice speed optimization techniques to make your blog a flyer.

Give some meat to stay - Since SU traffic is volatile in nature, you must have a healthy archive to give them a reason to stay. Highlight your best work close to the main content to increase the probability of a highly engaged visit.

Call for action - Place subscription box and freebie offerings at targeted places. Make them loud to attract the attention of the visitor.

Stumbling All The Way

To get the maximum benefit from StumbleUpon you need to avoid certain mistakes that you may do inadvertently.

When we submit a web page to SU, it goes into main database and may or may not get queued to spread across StumbleUpon community. I'll explain later in a section when your content may not get queued and may get buried forever.

Knit a large net (Tag Wisely) - Generally, we concentrate more on the number of votes a submission may get. Our main concern is to get maximum number of reviews and votes for a submission. Have you ever experienced a submission getting almost no traffic despite getting decent votes? One of the reasons that may dry up the traffic can be - wrong way of tagging. Let's take an example to understand it clearly. Suppose you have written a post about designing a blog header. You happily got it submitted via your friend who tagged it with the following tag (header-deign).

The more you narrow down your tags, the more you limit its reach. Every StumbleUpon user has a set of preferences that suggests the type of content he/she may prefer to receive. Tagging with more broader and generic terms opens the possibility of capturing a larger audience. While delivering the web page, SU algorithm examines the tags a submission has received. Once your submission starts getting reviews and votes, generic tags helps in disseminating your content to larger user-base. Here are some guidelines to tag your submissions properly.

1. Use generic tags.
2. Use multiple tags separated by comma.
3. Do not use more than 2 words in a single tag.
4. Do not give more than 5 tags.
5. Keep them short, clear and unambiguous.

How to make your submission dead - Here's how you can make your submission dead even before it gets its second vote. Open the web page that has not been discovered yet. Now without discovering/stumbling it, use the 'Send to' feature on SU toolbar and ask your friend to discover it. As soon as he obeys you - Boom! This submission will remain in the main database but may not go into queue at all. So the rule of the thumb is - Never ever send any web page using the 'Send to' feature that has not been discovered. Try it once and see the results.

StumbleUpon authority - Needless to say, a stumble from a power-user can bring tons of traffic. Interestingly, if he is not the part of your network and stumble your submission organically, you will receive much more traffic than the other way round. How to build your StumbleUpon authority and how to identify a power user on SU? That's very simple. Look for a profile getting large number of testimonials (Good meaningful testimonials). Now look for his stumbling activity and his reviews. A power user writes descriptive reviews and doesn't limit himself to few chosen topics.

SU Power User = (Large Number of Testimonials + Descriptive Reviews)

Ready to network with some top stumblers? Here's a list of most active stumblers that have earned the status of a power user.

Avoid closed user groups - It is common for people to form a voting group and then vote for each other. When web pages from a domain receive stumbles (first few stumbles) from a group of users over long period of time, gradually the traffic subsides down with each new submission and such voting activity. A time comes when votes from this group has no effect on the submission. SU algorithm is smart enough to detect this phenomenon and to track any such activity.

Reviews are like blog comments - As I mentioned before, writing meaningful and descriptive reviews does help in making the submission go viral. If you are helping your friend then take some pain to write an original descriptive review instead of copy pasting the text from the post.

Timing matters - And last but not the least is the time of submission. This applies to almost any social bookmarking activity. Choose the peak hours to get your post submitted on StumbleUpon. The morning hours of mid-week is the best time to submit content to various social bookmarking sites.

I generally try to avoid stumbling my own content and would advice the same to you. Be an active stumbler, generously submit others' content and give meaningful reviews. They will eventually RECIPROCATE giving you the required spikes in traffic.

Image Credit: kitakitt

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Interview With Cindy King: Cross-Cultural Communication Expert and International Sales Specialist

Recently, I got the chance to interact with Cindy King, one of the famous international sales specialists with over 25 years of experience. She helps businesses grow in multi-cultural environments and posses exceptional networking and communication skills. Despite her busy schedule, I managed to get her interview. Here are the questions.


Rajeev: Cindy, tell us about yourself and what do you?

Cindy: I’m originally from the Bahamas, but I moved to Europe when I was 18. First to Berne, then Paris and London, and back to France again. I now live in France, just south of Paris, where the Parisian suburbs meet the French countryside, next to the forest of Fontainebleau.

Up until January 2008 I worked in international sales and marketing of various companies: from large multi-nationals to start-ups. Last year, I started my own international marketing company to help mid-sized businesses identify the best way to enter new foreign markets. My company offers 3 types of services:

1. Coaching mid-sized companies: starting from the process of creating their international development strategy through to creating international sales guides to get international clients.
2. Coaching small companies to help them define the international strategy they need.
3. International English copywriting for lead generation marketing materials targeting wide international audiences.

For the international web marketing of my business, I write 2 blogs:

www.CindyKing.biz – This blog is about international skills – to get more international clients through better cross-cultural communication.

www.GetInternationalClients.com – This blog is about international tactics. It gives small to mid-sized businesses an easy 8-step process for international business development.

And I also micro-blog - on Twitter @CindyKing - with an average of about 80-100 tweets a week, mainly tips and links on cultural and international topics.

Rajeev: How has blogging helped your business?

Cindy: Without blogging I would not have an online business. My local market was not ready for my services. So I needed to look for clients in other countries.

I had to put my international web marketing skills into practice for my own business: I published one blog post on both blogs every day in 2008 and also did extensive article marketing. With this blogging strategy:

1. In 3 months I gained enough online visibility to have prospects in foreign countries start contacting me.
2. As I learned more about my international clients and what they needed my online business became better defined – I even discovered some business opportunities I had not thought of.
3. After 6 months I developed my own coaching process based on my own field experience and expertise. This became the backbone for all of my services.

Rajeev: How do you improve your blogging?

Cindy: Blogging is an ongoing process of improving your relationship with your readers. This means that I regularly review my blogging strategy. I don’t have a strict schedule, but at least every 3 months I take an afternoon and review my blogging strategy. I look at what other people are doing and try to implement a new tactic or two to improve my own blogs.

During my last session I read the ProBlogger book. My schedule was busy, so I only decided to follow one of the easy tips in the book. I chose to do a blog post series. My series lasted the month of March. I had a huge surprise. At the end of March the number of visitors to my blog had increased by 92% compared to the previous month.

The result was so great I just had to do something. So I decided to run a little contest. I am asking readers to suggest other series for www.CindyKing.biz. I will send a free copy of the ProBlogger book to the people who send in the 6 best suggestions. The contest is still running.

Rajeev : What is your most important advice for people starting an online business?

Cindy: It’s funny, but I would give the exact same advice as I do for people who want to develop their business internationally.

1. Just do it. One step at a time. Get started. Get curious about creating relationships online.

If you want an online business you need to get involved in the social media platforms:

2. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the others if they are relevant.

Your clients are people. Social media is how you learn how to communicate with people online. You need to get your communication right if you want to get online clients.

In my experience, people need to actively participate in social media for a couple of months before they can say they know what it is. So, just get started. Get active. Stick with it. Learn how to communicate and build relationships online. Then, with your social media communication skills, think strategically about how to build your business online.

Rajeev: What are your plans for the future?

Cindy: There are so many things…

Use my tweets to develop the Useful Resource pages on my personal blog even more.

Upgrade the Get International Clients blog with a change of theme and a membership portion to give small businesses more assistance in developing their international business.

Continue to network offline with the people I meet on Twitter. It is a great way to develop professional networks for online businesses.

More blog post series… and another glance through the ProBlogger book to see what else I should give a try. :)


Thanks Cindy, for sharing all your views . You can also follow her on twitter @CinkyKing.

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Is Perfectionism Killing Your Blog?

Productivity is inversely related to perfectionism. The more you try to achieve perfectionism, the more your productivity decreases. Professional blogging requires consistency in content creation supported by aggressive marketing and promotion campaigns. You have exceptional writing skills and sound technical knowledge about blogging, but still struggle to produce regular content. Are you putting lot of effort to produce a gem every time you write a post?

If you can relate yourself with these symptoms, most probably you are trying to achieve perfection in everything you do. The end result is missed deadlines, irregular posting schedule and mental stress.

I faced the same situation, but thanks to famous 'Blogging and New Media Consultant' - Chris Garrett who helped me in coming out of this situation. Interestingly, in his early days he experienced the same situation but soon recovered from it. In his words - 'Curb the perfectionism - Just Do It'. If you are trying hard to be a perfectionist, your blog is destined to die prematurely. Here's what Jack Kirby has to say about perfectionism.

Perfectionists are their own devils - Jack Kirby

Let's see what are the effects and end-results when you try to be perfect in everything (blogging routine).

Perfectionism: Effects and Results

Procrastination - This is the most common behavior found in perfectionists. Procrastination is associated with deferring of a task/job in hand to cope with stress and anxiety associated with completion of that task. You are in constant search for a better way to complete that task and thus decide to defer it again and again.

Missed deadlines - Deferring of tasks leads to time mismanagement with more pressure to complete old tasks along with the new ones. As more and more pending tasks are accumulated, things go beyond your control.

Low productivity - Since you are not delivering in time, the overall productivity decreases. This creates distrust among your readers who have subscribed to get regular content. Things become worse when you take long breaks with no status updates for your readers.

Stress and anxiety - All this leads to constant stress on your mind. The fear of criticism triggers the endless cycle of repeating and rinsing the task elevating the level of stress and anxiety.

Health problems - A healthy mind leads to a healthy body. Your habit of trying to achieve utmost excellence in everything pushes you to work for long or at odd hours. This will deteriorate your health making the situation more worse.

Poor social network - According to psychologists, perfectionists tend to have low self-esteem, are pessimist and undermine their potential when socializing with people around them. The end result is no strong network that is so important to market and promote your blog.

Remedy To The Problem

Come out of denial mode - The very first step is identifying the problem and accepting it. Unless you are not ready to accept this negative phenomenon that is affecting your productivity, things can't change.

Ask and listen to the advice - Do not hesitate to discuss your problem with an expert. You can write a mail asking for advice to get out of this situation. Rest assured, 9 out of 10 times you'll get the answer. If you don't get any response from one place, try another.

Guard yourself - Create a blogging plan and follow it strictly. Audit yourself from time to time to assess your progress. Socialize with people (online/offline). This greatly helps in coming out of the shell and in kick starting the things.

Highly Recommended Related Reading:

1. How To Be a More Productive Blogger
2. How To Reduce Blogging Stress
3. Blogging Techniques For Part-Time Bloggers

Image Credit: DailyPic

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5 Tips To Make Your Twitter Profile More Visible

Twitter has gone mainstream with massive increase in its user base. Now it's not merely a micro-blogging service, but has transformed into an effective marketing tool. Creating a twitter profile and making it visible to maximum eyeballs are two different things. Here are some simple tips to increase the visibility and reach of your twitter profile.

Use Twitter Signature

Include your twitter profile link in your email and forums signature. Nowadays it is common to include link of blog RSS feed and links to various social media profiles in the email signature. You can use an excellent free email signature creating service WiseStamp to create a custom signature for all your email correspondence. This service works well with all popular email services and email desktop clients.

Include Twitter Link in Guest Post Author Box

Whenever you guest blog, make sure you include your twitter profile in the author box beside your blog link. It is one of the best ways to drive people to your twitter profile to get decent number of followers in quick time.

Normally, people tend to follow more easily on twitter then subscribing to feed. If the blog on which your guest post is going to appear has huge following, your twitter followers' count will inflate much quickly.

Use Twitter Widgets and Badges

Instead of displaying a plain text link in your sidebar, use twitter widgets and badges to grab attention of the visitors. Various social media sites allow the use of custom HTML to enrich the user profile. Take advantage of any such option and use twitter widgets in your various social media accounts to drive people to your twitter profile.

Here are some cool twitter widgets, buttons and badges:

1. TwitterSALT
2. TweetRoll
3. SayTweet Twitter Badge
4. 181 Free Twitter Buttons, Badges, Widget and Counters
5. Twitter Wordpress Sidebar Widget
6. TwitterCard

Use Hashtags

Sometimes new twitter users do not understand the use of hastags well. They are just like tags in blog used to logically bind the content of a specific topic. Hashtags are tracked by people, and this crowd constantly look for relevant tweets associated with their hashtags. By using inline hashtags for relevant keywords, the reach of your tweet increases dramatically.

Hastags are used by prefixing the '#' symbol against the desired keyword.

@mintblogger 10 Best #SEO plugins for #Wordpress http://.....

In the example shown above, I have prefixed '#' symbol in front of 2 words (SEO, Wordpress). Apart from your followers, people tracking these two hashtags are more likely to pick your tweet and may reach your twitter profile. You can look for most popular hashtags on hashtags.org. If you want, you can also create your own hashtags through this site. Overuse or unnecessary use of hastags can sometimes annoy the followers and may result in mass unfollowing.

Treat Your Twitter Profile Like a Website

Maki talks about treating your twitter profile like a website or blog to increase its reach and visibility. In his words,

The first step is to understand that your Twitter profile is like any other website. You should treat it no differently from your own blog or a free opt-in newsletter. With this in mind, you can play around with a myriad number of marketing strategies, just like how you would promote a website.

Once you have this in mind, you can aggressively use all the common traffic pulling strategies you normally use for your blog or website.

Related Reading:

1. 8 Tips To Use Twitter More Effectively
2. MicroBlogging: Twhirl Guide For Beginners
3. How To Lose Your Twitter Followers
4. Twitter: Building Your E-Brand

Image Credit: futileboy

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Written by Rajeev Edmonds | | View Comments