05.27.08

Free SEO Ranking Tool

Posted in SEO at 12:26 pm by Mosey

Mosey Interactive has launched a new, free SEO tool. Tired of self-crawling the search engines we wrote this little program that does it for me. Since it is nifty, and pretty useful we released it into the wild to see what happens.

The program takes a keyword (or phrase) and a URL to search for. The application then crawls the first 10 pages of each of the three major US search engines and returns a grid of where that URL is being shown.

The tool isn’t 100% accurate but it is a hell of a lot easier than going to 30 pages of search results before you realize you are invisible.  As a little bonus we also have it looking at the Google map results for local searches.

This handy search engine listing tool is free to use for the near future. If it starts getting abused I may have to make changes. Any questions, hit me in the comments.

Technorati Tags: SEO, search engine tool

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05.16.08

What is a Facebook Application - 10 things to know

Posted in Best Practices, Social Media, Social Tools, Web Business at 9:22 am by Mosey

Recently every time I am pitching a social project the word “Facebook” comes up. Not surprising it is the social media tool of the year, until the next one comes along, and that site which is capturing the exact demographic most companies are looking for. It is “fun” or at least “more fun than Linkedin” as I am told.

The bonus is anyone with a budget can get a piece of the Facebook pie. In the genius of Facebook
they don’t have to do all the work and people still flock. I know people who showed up just to be on a certain app that they like to play. Cost to Facebook $0. Profit to Facebook, lots.

Of course not only can you promote your product through some widget, you can also make some cash if you have the right game set-up. It’s not easy and I haven’t seen any that are terribly profitable, but it can happen.

With that, here are 10 things about Facebook everyone should know:

1. A Facebook Application is not magical, it is like any other web application.

For that matter, web applications are not magical either. They are no different from a shopping cart or a filter on a datagrid. There is data, logic and display. The difference is in a Facebook Page, the display is fancy and the logic is something you would not normally do on a web page. You could easily take just about any mini-tool on your website and reconfigure it.

The main point of a Facebook app though is engagement in a vacuum, where on your website they are hunting and pecking for YOUR information. Your product catalog isn’t going to get anyone excited even though it is the same technology as “find a new friend based on 4 random letters.”

2. Facebook Applications can be programmed in any language

PHP is what Facebook’s own site is programmed, so the library you get as a developer comes in PHP. What this means is the script kiddies have a development advantage. However, as long as you use the FB API properly (and there is a library available for most any language) you can use whatever language you want. I do my Facebook apps in Coldfusion. I have seen them in .net, perl, even straight HTML/Javascript. If you can program you can probably program a Facebook App, it is just more syntax to learn. Which brings me to.

3. A Facebook application doesn’t need to “do” anything

A Facebook “Application” can be a single page. I have seen them as “I support” type pages, or an invite. Because when you add an application it tells your friends this can still be viral. It can still get word out to small circles well. No, it won’t be the next hot thing like Dogbook, but if you have a small local audience people will at least click and see what this application is. There is practically free advertising for hooking into the API. Really, there doesn’t have to be any “interaction” at all.

4. A Facebook Application can be as big or as small as you like.

You can create an entire virtual world in a Facebook application. It is hosted on your server, maintained by your people, so do with it what you want. Facebook development is as complicated as you make it. Most are three to five actions (buy, sell, invite, fight/compare, purchase) because those are small, addictive and easy to use. But you can create 70 action sites with their own sub-menus, economies, logins, etc. As much as you want to spend time and money you can make it that.

5. When Open Social gets rolling that Facebook Application can work other places with some tweaking

Google, of course, is leading the way and created Open Social. So far it hasn’t caught on, but it will. There are still some questions on security and so on but the idea is this, the App you created in Facebook will also use the Open Social API.

To un-tech that down a bit, if you are on Friendster and your buddy loves Hi5, you can still play the same game, and see their updates because OpenSocial talks to both networks at the same time. Now, Facebook has yet to sign onto Open Social because they have the lion’s share of the market, why should they? But the Open Social API will work a lot like the FBML language for Facebook, it won’t be a complete re-write to take that FB app and make it a myspace AND friendster AND Yahoo application.

6. Yes, you can display your logo on a Facebook Application

There is this rumor going around that you can’t brand your Facebook Application or have it link off Facebook. This is crap. What you can’t do on Facebook is use it as an adwords server, sell advertising to other companies, automatically link people to new pages, require downloads or “force” invite friends on install.

What you can do is, link to your site as an option, plaster your logo everywhere, suggest (and reward) invites of friends, say pretty much whatever you want and design it how you feel. Sure you can use it simply as a sales tool but that isn’t going to be popular. There should still be a fun “catch” some place.

7. Facebook Apps tell people’s friends when they are installed and used

This is really the biggest advantage of a Facebook Application. Jane Popular has 200 friends. When she installs your Application it gets listed as an update for her. The next time her 200 friends log on they see Jane installed your new toy. They get curious and some of them install it too, then their friends see the same message and so on.

Even better if Jane Popular likes your game, tracker, whatever, you can put an update on her newsfeed that a new level was reached, a trivia contest was passed a survey was taken, whatever (you can update a person’s profile 5 times a day as they use your product), that also is an alert friends see.

Plus, you get your own little ad space on their profile of their current rank, setting, whatever. Your application advertises itself in a big way.

8. Facebook shares user information with you

When someone installs a Facebook application they essentially login. Now, some information you don’t get, like direct email addresses, but some you do, like their city, zip code, political preference, and very important groups they are in and their friends list.

Whatever information they filled in you can get (and save to your own database!) Now, they get to choose if you ever get to send them email, or update their home page but most people let you do as you want and leave all the boxes checked when they install. You can base your logic off this, pre-set information for them or just horde it for yourself.

You can email them using the Facebook language so you don’t get direct emails but can still communicate to their inbox outside of Facebook. This is great for “remind me” applications.

Touching on that friends list a bit, you know how whenever you sell something you say “tell your friends” Well, that is a built in function to Facebook apps. You can highly encourage it. i.e. see advanced results after you invite 10 friends” or “double your play cash with each friend that signs up.” It is like networking gold!

9. Facebook Applications are at a premium but they shouldn’t be

On freelance job boards now I see e-commerce sites and web design going for half or less what it should on the open market. Yet, Facebook applications are “at price” which means they are a bit of a premium. I could sell a 5 page Facebook application for twice, or more what I sell an equally hard five page website for.

This premium is artificial because, remember all a Facebook application contains is the same programming your website can have (it is even on YOUR website). When that programmer says scary things like “FBML” and “Facebook talk-back” scoff and say if they have that hard a time learning it they might not be right for you anyway.

The premium is there because most people don’t realize how easy and simple some of these smaller applications are, and because they aren’t templated like a blog or a three column home page layout. There is still an illusion of expertise because Facebook applications are less than a year old and most marketing and PR firms are just now looking into how to use them.

10. Having a Facebook Application is not unlike any other “viral” tool

Most important, just like any other “viral ” tool, having a Facebook Application does not mean it will be successful. It can still suck, and no one will use it. Now, it can get a little help, and there is networking automatically in place, but really, if it is just your business card it won’t get talked about and spread. There should be a good idea behind it, there should be a cause, reason or fun item to do, otherwise, start a group Those are also advertised on update and profile pages, and FAR easier to do).

It is no different than putting a video on Youtube, it doesn’t mean anyone will see it unless it is entertaining in some way.
Hopefully this took some of the mystery and wonder out of Facebook Applications. Now, go think of that cool idea, diagram it and go make yourself popular.

Technorati Tags: facebook, Open Social, social networking

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05.09.08

Social Media is a Girl’s World

Posted in Best Practices, Social Media, Web Business at 7:59 am by Mosey

Long, long ago in the annals of time, like, oh 2004 or so, the female was a rare thing on the internet. Chat rooms, forums, blogs, probably had a 4:1 ratio of men to women. It came from the industry itself, the geekette was rare in the server room, and web staffs were usually sausage parties. Boys did tech, girls did marketing, that is just how it was.

And so, an entire generation of websites grew up catered more to men than women. Fark.com, collegehumor.com, homestarrunner.com, most of the popular share and watch sites were very male orientated. Oxygen.com went kaput fast, iVillage.com pretty much a bust.

It isn’t that people weren’t trying, there was a line back in the day for “women based sites.” But when the most popular non-mainstream news site is slashdot, which is around 80% male, it is an uphill battle. WebMd survived its softer side approach, and they were the exception.

Behold! The days of real social networking, friendly and easy to use, where you can chat real time, and alert friends. Dare I say it, virtually gossip about photos and relationships. Yes, it is a stereotype, but so is fart jokes and car crashes which the last generation was built on.

Milissa Rick of Spark Effect quotes a couple of demographic studies showing that when it comes to social media, it is a girl’s world. Back in March the London Times (by way of Mashable) reported that girls have larger social network numbers than boys. Across the board, age group to age group women are on the social networks, blogging, chatting more than men, about 10% more. This was confirmed again in the adage article on social media personality types. 10-12, 13-15, 20-30, 40-50… all the same gap, About 10% more women than men on social media sites, blogging, sharing.

I’ll let you create your own stereotype on “why” for now, what I want to focus on is “so?”

That “so what” is what drives any good site or idea when they hear a statistic. If there are more women than men, pretty much regardless of age, on the social media train, then you probably should gear your content to match that. Now maybe men are still on the above mentioned sites (none of which are going broke) and social media is just the new realm of women, but I think it is more. Yes, there are bored housewives and teenage girls looking to connect, why would there be fewer of them than men? But why more?

If you own a social networking platform, figure it out because it is going to be the key to your success. I am not saying pink layouts and flowers on every Bebo-clone home page but that the old mindset of men-on-the-net-because-they-are-geeks is dead.

You design and develop for your demographic and that is slanting 10% more female now than male these days (and growing). There certainly is a different usability, language tone, palette, application when you put things under that light. Stereotype or not there is a reason the same damn razor is marketed to women different than men (black background, really?). You have to keep in mind that if you have a social product, without an inherent gender bias (i.e. motor oil social blog) the majority of your users will be female.

That said, if there is one thing that has been true since the dawn of time, proven at every ale house, coffee shop, home economics class and dating site of all time is that where there are more women than men, men will show up. Usually drunk and being loud and rude. There, my stereotypes are even.

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05.08.08

Social media: dead before it started?

Posted in Social Media, Social Tools, Web Business at 5:05 pm by Mosey

I keep reading about the death of Facebook. How people are sick of it, how people are tired of it, how people aren’t going to use it for applications. And yet, every company I know is looking to make an app, people who weren’t on Facebook a week ago are addicted now. Hell, Myspace is already not meeting projections and may be considered a drag on News Corp.

It is hard to remember that as social media early adapters we are onto the next big thing while the real big thing may still be getting hot. I am sure in six months we will be reading about how Twitter is all player out and some new gizmo is so much the rage. And then all my friends will finally get Twitter accounts, and four years after that my mom will want to know how you direct message.

I am not at all worried since the real power of social media is never going away now that we have it. Because social media is about friends, social networking is about talking to people.We are social, this is just a new medium. We always want to tell people what we think, I get twitter reviews of a restaurant during dinner, updates on shows in message boards as the live broadcast happens, you think that is going away? The tools may change just as we went from horse to car to plane, but we are still always on the move.

And if you are planning a new social media launch, David Alston, by way of Lee Odden talks about ten things to watch when launching a site. I think some of the tips are a bit… well if you are getting so much traffic you can watch that many people talk about that many items, then things are pretty good.

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05.06.08

Slow Down and Smell the Marketing

Posted in Best Practices, Social Media at 9:59 am by Mosey

Sometimes marketing smells great, like fresh flowers, or bacon, or other good-smelly things. Sometimes it smells like, well you know what bad things smell like, pick one.

In this rash world of Web 2.0 where we decide and Twitter on something within minutes of learning about it, sometimes it is nice to see that sometimes things move slow when we aren’t paying attention.

For example, iPhone is being launched in Australia and 10 other nations, bot quite yet but it is planned. That is right, a phone so hip it has been copied by three other companies in various formats is finally making it to the small, island nation of Australia.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that commercials for the 2009 Super Bowl (early prediction: Falcons and Raiders) will cost three million dollars each 30 second spot. That is right, in the time it took for you to figure out if I was serious on my Super Bowl prediction some dot com your mom never heard of will have dropped 3 million dollars, plus production, plus planning to make a semi-funny ad.

I always look at that number and think “do you know what i could do with a 3 million dollar budget.” Really, that is some amazing stuff to build there. World class, with a two year budget. Sometimes it feels like companies move slow because they always moved slow. I am sure what-ever-it-is.com with a 3 million dollar two year budget could bring in 100 million visitors in that time.

What this leads me to is that sometimes, even if you specialize in social media and what that hot new whatnot is, you need to slow down and let people catch up. An article in Ad Age recently broke down nine types of user personalities and how each of them uses new technology. There are some surprising results.

Key quote:

While marketers may not be spending huge marketing dollars on social media yet, they know they should be using it to reach consumers. Coremetrics’ “Face of the New Marketer” study found that 78% of marketers see social media as a way to gain a competitive edge, but fewer than 8% have budgets devoted to it.

Oh but it is coming… that 8% will be 40% this time next year. You may want to be on the Mayflower and not the 100th ship after. Much like the movie Armageddon things are sometimes only cool the first time you see them.  If you start now, even a small project, even a taste of what you want you can gain experience and learning you will need. It is a lot cheaper now than when the market is saturated and glossy and shiny.

And by the way I gave you the team, I am not giving you the Super Bowl winner, that is just silly guessing.

Technorati Tags: online marketing, social media

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05.05.08

SEO wrap up

Posted in SEO at 7:51 am by Mosey

My first post was on SEO, since then I have let the entire category languish. Sure, the del.icio.us links piled up but, they never made it here. With that I present, my SEO round up.

First off, this comprehensive tool and stats guide What is a #1 Google ranking worth. Great read, really stops being fluffy and provides some hard facts (even if some of it is a bit dated).

If you don’t get searchengineguide.com and their weekly newsletter, do it. It is fantastic. This article (and the next) come from their newsletter. The fantastic Jennifer Laycock wrote about how to re-write your content based on evolving SEO. It came out a simple and effective article.

Also by Jennifer Laycock, Targeting Conversions and Traffic with Long Tail Writing, which actually made me go back and edit a recently “finished” page based on one sentence she wrote.

SEOcracy gets a bit more technical but, has a good idea as far as scraping social chat and microblogging site summize.com and then posting that content on your site. Not a great trick. but it will get you keywords. If you do Ruby then he provides the code, easily adapted if you know any other language.

Danny Dover over at SEOmoz.com made a sweet little SEO cheatsheet. Being, as I am, a huge fan of “get the simple things right and 80% of your Search Engine Optimization is done for you.” Just following these SEO tips will do wonders for most sites. The conversation in the comments is also recommended.

Technorati Tags: SEO

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05.01.08

Anatomy of a Failed Launch

Posted in Best Practices, Social Tools, Web Business at 10:51 am by Mosey

A few days ago I had an idea, a brilliant, can’t fail, idea no one has tried before… ok, maybe not, but it seemed like a good idea. Using the @zappos genius of twitter-marketing as a reference, I thought I saw a market opportunity.

Create a site that sells tweets. I know, sounds unethical but stick with me. People buy tweets, the followers can get deals. Offers of discount codes for 45 minutes or free things, etc. It is a micro-economy to a specialized group, but what it a few more tweets. When I don’t have people buying I’ll even donate or do good for non-profits based on replies or new follows.

There are rules, all sign ups are voluntary, no information (not even a sign up) is required to follow, and a limited number of tweets a day. On top of that, hold daily drawings for cash. You follow, you can win a few bucks. Simple enough.

For buyers, you get a captive, technology saavy audience who follows and recognizes good products who you can ask to take surveys, give things away to, promote discounts to, etc.

Simple model, I built the website. Welcome www.tweetbag.com Or I should say, 24 hours ago welcome tweetbag.com

Now, I knew that there is no way advertisers will pay to talk to 10 people, not at the prices I am asking for. I need people to follow, literally thousands of people. I figured that is tough, but not impossible at all. I am on some nice mailing lists, have friends, have twitter addicts following me, just tell them. I did a little social seeding on “deals” sites, and started a couple topics on twitter forums.

And.. sit back and wait for people to follow and tell others… still waiting…. still waiting…. damnit.

This launch was a failure. An utter and complete failure that fell down so hard I think I may need to take it to the emergency room.

Luckily I did this site as more of an experiment than a venture. Worst case it fails I am out a couple hundred bucks and some of my time.

It’s not dead yet! Since I am sure I am not the first person to fail on a site launch (people told me it is an “interesting idea”) let’s look what went wrong. Something obviously went wrong. Hopefully this will help you do things better.

Viral is needed:I know, it isn’t exactly a good business model something needs to become viral among thousands to work, however, if there is any place that could happen with some sort of relative success is a good idea on Twitter. It’s not just for twittervision you know. Twitters are obsessive, addictive and love new things. They recognize a good idea and don’t mind a little “noise” to learn or get something new. Still, making that your business model, not recommended.

No one uses Twitter: I use it, my friends use it, but more of my friends don’t. I am working in a medium which is used by a minority (last I heard about 10% of regular internet user are on Twitter). Everyone has email and a browser, so the deals site work well. But even when I get into those areas, I am still fighting that 90% of the readers say “what is Twitter?” with my social seeding to an audience that should have high interest.

Twitters didn’t notice: When I told people I got a few personal responses, but even friends didn’t really sign up. I bet with a little pressure they would since people sign up to things like @amazondeals and whatnot. Maybe it isn’t trendy, maybe it doesn’t seem real… not sure yet. This is the “mystery” to me, why are people who do know not following?

Takes money to make money: When uber-social guy and twitter’r @jowyang got back from vacation he got more hits and comments on his vacation photos than I get in, well maybe ever. My network isn’t nearly as big. Unless one of the super users of Twitter picks me up, I can only do so much. I can say it, say it again and if it fails, well that is it.

You can’t buy a jump start: You can’t buy twitter follows. There isn’t a mailing list that gets people to follow you. It has to be spam free, free will and on purpose. As far as I know there isn’t an auto script to get people to follow you (wouldn’t use it anyway). It isn’t a product launch that, for example, I can buy ads and hope traffic shows up. That isn’t the market, it isn’t the strategy.

Maybe the idea sucks: Possible. Not sure. Amazon only has a couple hundred people following. This is amazon.com, yeesh! Not that 3000, or 5000 users is impossible, it just needs to get out there. But, what if it gets out there and still no one cares? For the record I don’t think this is a cause but I have to consider it.

Can things still turn around? Sure, there can still be a viral bump some place (lend a bother a follow?) a little press a blog here and there and it could go big… but it will take some help, assuming the idea doesn’t suck.

Oh yeah, did I mention I am giving away $10 in cash every day to someone just for following

Technorati Tags: twitter, marketing, social strategy

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04.26.08

Banned from Google for being too good

Posted in Best Practices, Social Tools at 9:13 am by Mosey

Someone sent me a story last week or so on a guy who was banned from google. I know, people get banned every day so this had better be good.

Well, it is.

This particular gentleman had a great use of Facebook applications to drive traffic to his site (and improve his SEO). Make an app (I think it was a horoscope) and have a link to his site (it was a dating site). People add the app, Google picks up all these links back with good key phrases “best dating for free” and whatnot. Pretty smart cookie.

Here is the banned part. He started expanding the message and changed the link to a second business of his. Goggle got upset that he wasn’t linking to the serving site and was just “advertising.” Thus,they banned him for link-farming.

Now, we all know what a Google ban does for you. It is like having yourself blacklisted from using your thumbs every day. You can still survive but a lot of things get a lot harder.

Even when this guy changed the link back, Google said no. He even moved his apps to a new link and it is moving slowly, but he is being careful because he is on double-secret-probation from Google.

I found it interesting as a study in something really smart getting on the bad side of Google for changing the equation a bit. I am glad Google is watching but this guy sounds like he made amends and after his (admitted) mistake tried to make things better. But the Google god is a vengeful one and smite him good.

Be careful with your one-off brilliant ideas on your already established site. You don’t want to lose your thumbs.

For the life of me I can’t find this story any more. I remember the details but my google-fu is weak today and I can not find the story. If you have it, please link to it in the comments.

Technorati Tags: google banned, facebook applications, social media

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Social Media: a market demand mini-study

Posted in Public Relations, Social Media, Web Business, usability at 7:49 am by Mosey

More and more I am having conversations with people, usually agency managers on how they are thinking about ramping up social media. Sure, the agenngies do a fair amount of SEO (which has somehow now become part of the Web 2.0 experience?!?!) but, most companies haven’t taken a serious look at social media.

Even marketing groups, branding agencies haven’t made this leap. Most are still on”old web” and interactive. “Let us re-do your site” and “we can re-do your e-commerce.” As far as getting viral (the real kind, not the kind where you put something on Youtube and hope people find it) almost everyone is ignoring social media.

What I am hearing from agencies are two things. First, that they aren’t equipped for social media strategy. They don’t know Twitter from a hole and they don’t know what else there is besides “buy ads on myspace” (not a social strategy BTW).

Secondly, and this is most important, the agencies don’t think their clients are asking for it. This stuck me as odd because in my part of the world everyone is launching or asking to launch social something. It is seen as a minimal investment with big upside. Drop 40 grand, and if it doesn’t work, eh, not a huge deal, you got to say you did something cool. If it does work, you are the genius of the market department who found a new way to save the world.

I wasn’t sure if I was just talking to companies who had a leading edge bend to them, or if the market really was asking for more than agencies think they are.

The best way for me to tell what the online free market is doing is to look at the demand on Google. I spent some time playing with keyword estimators and traffic projections. What I found was consistent so I will only show one set of results. You can see what type of phrases I used.

As you can see, there isn’t incredible demand, but there is some key demand from people looking for social media ideas. I’ll point out in the cases where there is data, more people are searching than there are people advertising for it. Sure, the searching in just March was weak enough Google couldn’t put whatever ranking on it (not entirely sure what that threshold is) but within the year people have been searching for these phrases.

The two terms that surprise me most are “social media press release” and “social media agency.” These two terms are obviously client/company driven, looking for social media experts. They aren’t finding them in the person-to-person networking world so they are actually searching online for those social media strategy experts.

Based on this quick set of results, the companies probably still aren’t finding the social media specialists they are looking for. No one is advertising themselves (using adwords at least) as a social media agency.

Ladies and Gentleman, when companies are looking for an expertise and no one is offering that expertise you have a market opportunity. Right now you can get in a bit of a ground floor doing just social media interactive work, after you convince you know your game, and have a market more-or-less to yourself. I can’t say it is the “next big thing” but there is certainly a itch market. Focusing on Twitter, facebook application, profile development, social SEO, Open Social, etc… you have something.

Yes, there are lots of tools, and programmers who kind of dabble. There are houses who will take a shot, but not a lot of places advertising “this is what we do and all we do” when it comes to social media.

And yet, there are obviously companies, potential clients, looking for that expertise. Anyone want to open a shop? Recent layoffs and disgruntled workers in Milwaukee means I can have an entire department starting Monday. So, if you have a six figure slush fund laying around, lemme know (how is that for a pitch? Think it will work?)

Technorati Tags: social media, social media agency, social media experts

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04.21.08

Reminded how to ruin a blog

Posted in Best Practices at 11:54 am by Mosey

I have been spending my freetime screwing around with facebook applications, including an application builder. Problem is in that time, the last week or so, I haven’t posted here at all.

I was quickly reminded of the first rule of blogging, content is king; consistency is queen. Going from one or two posts a day to non for a week made my visitors log look like a downhill ski slope.

Sure, I got a few random hits from the long-tail of whitegold.com and a couple other posts. Sure, some message boards gave old reffers, but realy traffic died.

There are three things I tell people when they start blogging and I broke all three.

1. Have a message.

Don’t just blog about anything, if it is a personal blog, keep it personal, if it is on ice cream don’t post randomly on shoes. Get a theme and keep it. If you really want a random blog, that is your theme, but you will still have one because even you have a theme, you just don’t know it yet.

2. Make a schedule, keep a schedule.

Just because you can’t blog every hour on the hour doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a blog. If you are weekly, then stay weekly (but never expect huge numbers unless you are really special). I check most of my blogs daily. I check them if they have been crappy for a while or if they don’t post. When they don’t post I get grumpy, like it is owed to me…. and I know better.

3. Warn me when you are going to do that.

If you are planning on not posting, tell people. I guess you can say why. If anyone cares, have a guest blogger. Guest blogging can give you huge traffic, and makes everyone happy.

Follow those three things and the rest will come. Your readers will appreciate the consistency and courtesy.

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