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Does social media make us dumb?

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You might have read the study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the general reaction to it (the consensus was that social media sites make you stupid and uninformed). While the conclusions are incorrect, the study is incredibly telling about the social media audience and how to write for it.

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For example, according to the study, social media users care less about mainstream news and hard-hitting journalism (even though both are present) and prefer content from disparate, sometimes unverified, and sometimes extreme (even conspiracy-theorist) sources that generally appeal to their baser instincts or guilty pleasures (i.e. Paris Hilton).

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What does this mean for my writing?

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This doesn’t mean that you begin writing about Paris Hilton, but this does help you comprehend what your audience is looking to get from an information outlet and model your content for the social media everyman. The social media everyman is looking for an pleasing diversion, while being receptive to learning something new if presented in an “edutainment” format that ties the lesson into popular culture.

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What do I mean by this? Have a look at the following CopyBlogger articles:

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• Did Alanis Morissette Get Irony Right?

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• The David Lee Roth Guide to Legendary Marketing

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• What Owen Wilson’s Pursed Lips Mean to Your Blog

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• Don’t Be Cameron Diaz

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• What Prince Can Teach You About Effective Blogging

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I know many of you thought that Brian was just watching too much E! (and he probably does) but there’s much more to it than that. The hooks used in these articles are celebrities that your average person (however educated or uneducated) knows of or has heard something about and can on some level relate to.

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So how do I appeal to the social media everyman?

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1. Begin with the familiar: Introduce your article by drawing from a source that you think the social media audience will relate to and is interested in. Pop culture will often provide the perfect hook.

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2. Introduce the unfamiliar: Once you’ve established a relationship with the reader by finding common ground, you can introduce your topic (i.e. the analysis or educational aspect of your article).

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3. Connect the two: Once you have established common ground and introduced your insight, you need to connect the two. This makes your content easy to understand and digest for the readers, but also easy to remember, comment on and apply to their own lives.

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While I don’t recommend you dumb down your content for social media, I do recommend that if you’re writing specifically with the social media audience in mind, understand the mentality and what they’re looking to get from Digg, Netscape, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc, and appeal to that desire.

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Note: Copyblogger has also featured equally successful posts (as a credit to both Brian and the readers) referencing Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Aristotle, Plato and Ernest Hemingway. The success of these posts may explain why the History Channel is so popular. 🙂

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Get more social media analysis from Mu over at his blog.\n

Sponsored By: Publishers, Get Paid With TLA! Offer Text Link Ads on your site and start making more money this day.

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Want to convince your readers to do something or concur with your point of view?

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OK, that was a silly question. Of course you do.

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Persuasion is generally an exercise in creating a win-win situation. You present a case that others find beneficial to concur with. You make them an offer they can’t refuse, but not in the manipulative Godfather sense.

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It’s simply a good deal or a position that makes sense to that particular person.

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But there are techniques that can make your job easier and your case more compelling. While this list is in no way comprehensive, these 10 strategies are used quite a bit because they work.

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Repetition

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Talk to anyone well versed in learning psychology, and they’ll tell you repetition is crucial. It’s also critical in persuasive writing, since a person can’t agree with you if they don’t truly get what you’re saying.

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Of course, there’s good repetition and bad. To stay on the good side, make your point in several different ways, such as directly, using an example, in a story, via a quote from a famous person, and once more in your summary.

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Reasons Why

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Remember the power of the word because. Psychological studies have shown that people are more likely to comply with a request if you simply give them a reason why… even if that reason makes no sense.

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The strategy itself does make sense if you think about it. We don’t like to be told things or asked to take action without a reasonable explanation. When you need people to be receptive to your line of thinking, always give reasons why.

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Consistency

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It’s been called the “hobgoblin of tiny minds,” but consistency in our thoughts and actions is a valued social trait. We don’t want to appear inconsistent, since, whether fair or not, that characteristic is associated with instability and flightiness, while consistency is associated with integrity and rational behavior.

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Use this in your writing by getting the reader to concur with something up front that most people would have a hard time disagreeing with. Then rigorously make your case, with plenty of supporting evidence, all while relating your ultimate point back to the opening scenario that’s already been accepted.

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Social Proof

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Looking for guidance from others as to what to do and what to accept is one of the most powerful psychological forces in our lives. It can determine whether we deliver aid to a person in need, and it can determine whether we muster the courage to kill ourselves.

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Obvious examples of social proof can be found in testimonials and outside referrals, and it’s the driving force behind social media. But you can also casually integrate elements of social proof in your writing, ranging from skillful alignment with outside authorities to blatant name dropping.

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Comparisons

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Metaphors, similes and analogies are the persuasive writer’s ideal friends. When you can relate your scenario to something that the reader already accepts as true, you’re well on your way to convincing someone to see things your way.

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But comparisons work in other ways too. Sometimes you can be more persuasive by comparing apples to oranges (to use a tired but effective metaphor). Don’t compare the price of your home study course to the price of a similar course—compare it to the price of a live seminar or your hourly consulting rate.

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Agitate and Solve

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This is a persuasion theme that works as an overall approach to making your case. First, you identify the problem and qualify your audience. Then you agitate the reader’s pain before offering your solution as the answer that will make it all superior.

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The agitation phase is not about being sadistic; it’s about empathy. You want the reader to know unequivocally that you understand his problem because you’ve dealt with it and/or are experienced at eliminating it. The credibility of your solution goes way up if you demonstrate that you truly feel the prospect’s pain.

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Prognosticate

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Another persuasion theme involves providing your readers with a glimpse into the future. If you can convincingly present an extrapolation of current events into likely future outcomes, you might as well have a license to print money.

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This entire strategy is built on credibility. If you have no idea what you’re talking about, you’ll end up looking foolish. But if you can back up your claims with your credentials or your obvious grasp of the subject matter, this is an extremely persuasive technique.

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Go Tribal

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Despite our attempts to be sophisticated, evolved beings, we humans are exclusionary by nature. Give someone a chance to be a part of a group that they want to be in—whether that be wealthy, or hip, or green, or even contrarian—and they’ll hop on board whatever train you’re driving.

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This is the technique used in the greatest sales letter ever written. Find out what group people want to be in, and offer them an invitation to join while seemingly excluding others.

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Address Objections

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If you present your case and someone is left thinking “yeah, but…”, well, you’ve lost. This is why direct marketers use long copy—it’s not that they want you to read it all, it’s that they want you to read enough until you buy.

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Addressing all the potential objections of at least the majority of your readers can be tough, but if you really know your subject the arguments against you should be fairly obvious. If you think there are no reasonable objections to your position, you’re in for a shock if you have comments enabled.

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Storytelling

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Storytelling is really a catch-all technique—you can and should use it in combination with any and all of the previous nine strategies. But the reason why storytelling works so well lies at the heart of what persuasion really is.

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Stories grant people to persuade themselves, and that’s what it’s really all about. You might state that we never convince anyone of anything—we simply help others independently decide that we’re right. Do everything you can to tell better stories, and you’ll find that you are a terribly persuasive person.

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As I mentioned, this is in no way a complete list. What other persuasive writing strategies work for you?

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Enjoy this post? Vote for it at Digg. Thanks!

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Sponsored By: Blog World Conference and Tradeshow November 8-9, 2007, in Las Vegas!

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Even though I’ve generally confined myself to reviewing individual landing pages, I thought it might be interesting to take an overall look at a book publisher’s site, with specific focus on the homepage. Carrie Kitze is the publisher behind EMK Press. EMK Press is a niche publisher specializing in books about adoption. I’ve known Carrie for several years as my on the internet store, AdoptShoppe, carries several of her company’s titles. Carrie has asked me to review/critique her site to help her generate more newsletter subscriptions, more book sales, and more effective information distribution.

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Here’s the background:

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• The Goal
  \nNo real metrics, but just a lot more of everything.

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• The Problem
  \nCurrent homepage not performing to expectation.

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• The Current Landing Page
  \nhttp://www.emkpress.com/index.html

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• Page/Ad that Generates the Click-Through
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The Maven’s 10-Point Critique

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Click image for more massive view

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#1 – Flip the banner elements. Make the logo clickable to the homepage at www.emkpress.com not the index.html page.

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Web visitors will tend to view a page in a rough “F” pattern which means the upper left corner is a power position where you want to have a strong branding element. Put the EMK logo in this spot with the tag line adjacent and you’ve immediately oriented your visitor a bit superior and strengthened the brand recognition process. Want more internal links for SEO purposes? Have your logo click to the primary domain, not the index page. (Yes, it makes a difference :=) Make sure it’s linked on every page.

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#2 – Consider a stronger, more relevant tag line.

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The “Toolbox” Press could be anybody. Since you don’t use “adoption” in your logo or your name, you need to get adoption into the main part of your tag line. You do expand the toolbox concept with the secondary tag – Supplying Tools for Children and Adults in Families Formed by Adoption – but 1/tag lines need to be short, concise and punchy. There shouldn’t be any reason for further explanation. If you need it, your tag needs reworking. 2/I find the phrase clunky and cludgy. I think toolbox, I’m thinking building, creating, fixing, making. I bet there’s a way better tag lurking somewhere in content you’ve already written. Also, the secondary line is simply too small and barely readable as it now stands.

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#3 – Pick one font and use it consistently.

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You’re using several fonts here – that’s usually a dead-giveaway for a homegrown, amateur site. Not the image you want to project as a professional publisher of quality resources. Verdana is a super-clean, web-friendly7 font that works well even in small point sizes. Georgia is a good choice, too, if you like a serif font. Calibri is also nice but newer and older browsers may not resolve it properly. Do steer away from Times Roman which is a terrific font for print but, to my eyes anyway, works lousy on the internet.

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#4 – Dump the toolbox image, add your new titles with bigger, more prominent images.

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You don’t sell toolboxes so why would you use a toolbox image that is significantly more massive than the product you actually sell? Also the charm image gets absolutely lost. Introduce the jewelry in its own tiny box or inset to highlight you’re now carrying a line of adoption charm jewelry.

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Click image for larger view

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#5 – Think about moving to a 3 column format.

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I don’t think the 2-column format really serves you well, especially in the liquid screen you’re apparently using. You can try a 3-column, narrow-wide-narrow format – going static or full-screen – which will allow you to get a lot more content “above the fold” and in front of your visitor in the first pass. You have way too much important content out of view with no hint that’s there more if someone scrolls down.

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#6 – Tell me the product images are clickable. One page per product.

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Don’t assume your visitor knows what to do – or what you want them to do – when they get to your page. Tell them, guide them, and help them along. They’ll appreciate the time you save them. Don’t mix product on a single page unless your visitor can quickly get the joke. (When I clicked on the charm pic, I went to your order form. When I didn’t see the charm my first thought was I was on the wrong page. Someone else? Sale lost.) Add product titles underneath and make them clickable too.

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#7 – Divide up your navigation structure into primary, secondary, even tertiary levels.

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Not all site section are of equal importance. So think in terms of information/purpose hierarchy. So, for example, if information distribution and book sales are your site’s main function give those primary status, even expand them a tiny. Secondary status is About Us, Contact Us, Media, Links, Site Map, etc. (I didn’t see a site map. Get one.) Don’t mix your media section with About Us, make it a separate section. Add photos to your staff bios as they always warm up a company nicely when folks can see the folks behind the site.

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#8 – Keep your search function in one place across all pages. Ditto for your newsletter sign-up.

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Visitors are lazy and want what they want when they want it so make sure your search box is prominent and always in the same place. Also, give folks the opportunity to “leave something behind” like their name and email address on every possible page. Why not for your newsletter?

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#9 – Highlight all the benefits of ordering from you in a fast-read, bulleted format. Spice up with a graphic or two.

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Since you know folks come to you with a sense of “crisis”, address their need for quick, in-your-face information right on the homepage. You ship fast? Tell ‘em. You ship internationally? Tell ‘em. Organize your material by the kind of crisis or other organizational schemes that would make sense to your visitor who’s got a problem and is coming to you for a solution.

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Click image for larger view

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#10 – You have free stuff to share? Don’t hide it, highlight it!

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Change your navigation bar to read, Free Parent Guides and highlight the subjects you cover, both on the homepage AND the section page. You want to add prospective customers to your internal database? Ask folks for a name and email and let them download as much or as tiny as they want. Offer to add them to the newsletter list (you get another opt-in shot) or another sort of new title announcement list. But organize the material for your visitors, make it easy for them to review. By topic, author, even freshness (if it’s a brand-new download, for example.) Also, don’t underline titles (or any text for that matter

) that isn’t linked.

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Bonus Suggestion

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SEO, SEO, SEO. Your site needs a big-time SEO makeover to help your ideal prospective customers find you via organic (free) search on Google, Yahoo, etc. But that’s a different sort of makeover for a different time 🙂

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My thanks to Carrie Kitze for her support of Heifer International.

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Here’s your chance to be the Copywriting Maven’s next landing page makeover!

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Got a landing page that’s more poop than pop? Willing to share with Copyblogger readers? Prepared to put a tiny of your own “skin in the game” for a Maven Makeover? Then follow your click to Maven’s Landing Page Makeover page for all the details. (Please note that I’m booked for new gratis critiques until 11/1. If you’re interested in a private critique/makeover, please email me directly. Spaces are limited.)

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Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc.

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Sponsored By: Add Copyblogger to your Technorati Favorites today!

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I had the pleasure of attending An Event Apart in Chicago a few weeks ago, for work. AEA is organized by the wonderful people at A List Apart which, if you make or manage websites, should be an essential on your list. It was a great experience, and I couldn’t be happier with how well the trip went. Chicago is an amazing city, and the speakers were all excellent and worthy of their places as industry leaders.

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One speaker stood out to me as particularly worthwhile. Jim Coudal’s closing speech was not only hysterical, but also poignant. There’s one piece in particular I’d like to deal with:

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Rip off designs. You have to be your own professor. When you remake something, you are in a very real way speaking to the person who made it. All of a sudden you have another skill…We (at Coudal Partners) value taste above all else. The capability to look at two things and know which one is better is the most important thing.

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Jim was talking about design here, but I believe it can be easily related to copy. Keep in mind that design and copy are, in many ways, inexorably connected to one another.

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Let me attempt to flesh out this idea a bit more, because I can foresee some backlash in the form of comments if I left it at this point. I don’t think Jim’s suggesting you publish work that isn’t your own. I think what he’s suggesting you do is use the work of others to improve your own work. And this can be helpful with writing just as much as it helps with design.

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When it comes to design, I’ll often scour over a few different sources to find colors I like. Sometimes I’ll find those colors in other design work, maybe in CSS galleries, or (as Dan Cederholm recommended at AEA) even in a picture of the outdoors. Color palettes, designers will tell you, can make or break a layout. You just can’t create beautiful things without the right colors.

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In the same way, you can’t write well without transitions. Honestly, the transition is the killer component of any literature. I’m reminded of television’s Lost, the creative masterpiece of J.J. Abrams, and how well it tidies up the transitions between flashbacks and the present day. Each one is very special and connects the two stories perfectly, all the while maintaining consistency by using the same whooshing for each in and out.

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Did you ever think you could learn to write well by watching television? Call your mom and tell her, right now.

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Begin by compiling a list of great writing talent that you can refer back to when you are creatively dry. CopyBlogger should be way up on the list, plus great advertisements, and apparently even great network TV. I would also encourage you to try out some fiction writers, as different styles can really help diversify your writing. One of my favorites, and a very creative guy, is Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and Choke.

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Try out Jim’s advice and steal some copy (techniques). Find what works for you and use the hell out of it.

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WordPress users, get more great stuff from Ryan Imel over at Theme Playground.

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Sponsored By: Publishers, Get Paid With TLA! Offer Text Link Ads on your site and start making more money today.

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• How can we write more magnetic copy?

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• Why do even skilled writers occasionally miss the target?

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• What is one leading cause of copy that fails to persuade?

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I would argue that this one trait separates compelling writers from so-so writers, and it has less to do with words and grammar than you might think.

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What is this magical thing?

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Empathy.

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Understanding your reader has to be the most important part of any writer’s job, but it’s especially true when writing persuasive copy. Knowing what a reader is likely to be thinking helps you to anticipate and mirror those thoughts, offer clarification where it is needed, and build trust.

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Seth Godin nailed the way we lack empathy when it comes to blogs and books recently, and it’s the same with sales copy—we fail when what we write is about the seller (writer), not the buyer (reader). When you’re more concerned about your own needs, or how you appear, or your own personal preferences for style and format instead of finding out what your prospective customers really like, you are setting yourself up to fail.

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Think about these things when you are trying to persuade:

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• What objections might they raise?

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• Which are their most important motivations?

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• Are there particular benefits or features they are looking for?

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• Why do our competitors lose trust or interest?

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• How would the prospect like to receive this information?

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Getting these insights can be as easy as speaking to prospective customers. Ask open questions with surveys, rather than leading them to the answer you’re looking for. If you cannot find likely suspects then build customer profiles based on existing data. Study actual behavioral test results from other marketers to see if you can glean any insights.

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Reading your prospective customer’s mind could be the most valuable thing you do for the effectiveness of your persuasive writing. Focusing on your own preferences and desires is likely the worst.

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Subscribe to Chris Garrett’s blog to get more blogging, copywriting and marketing advice plus a free ebook on creating flagship content.\n

Sponsored By: More massive Payouts with LinkWorth Size Does Matter!

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If most of us managed our money like we managed our blogs we’d either be bankrupt or deep in debt. We certainly wouldn’t have any savings!

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A scenario: you boot up the ‘compose’ screen of your blogging software, fidget a little while waiting for inspiration to strike, get a post idea, write it, format it, and hit publish, all in one go. Does this sound like your daily blogging routine?

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There will be days, unfortunately, when this routine is interrupted: when inspiration doesn’t come, when words feel like they’re being scraped from the bottom of your skull, when the computer restarts itself and you lose everything, or when there’s a show on TV you just can’t tear yourself away from… That’s life, and it’s important to develop a blogging style that isn’t derailed by these tiny hiccups.

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In this post I want to outline six steps to a blogging habit that will have you churning out posts consistently and stress-free.

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1. Budget your time

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It’s important to limit the time you spend reading feeds, checking stats, moderating comments, and so on. If you set a time-limit for such tasks you’ll find yourself completing them faster and more efficiently. It will help ensure you don’t spend 3/4 of your evening on superfluous tasks, and 1/4 actually blogging.

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2. Perform certain tasks on certain days

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This is not for every blogger, but you might find that it suits you. This could mean writing certain types of posts, or covering certain topics, on specific days of the week, for example. Each day you’ll be clear on what type of blogging you need to do. You might also allocate one day a week to process your inbox to zero, another to work on your layout, and so on.

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3. Develop many more ideas than you actually use

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One of the most useful things any blogger can have is a bank of ideas they can turn to whenever it’s time to write a post. A well-developed idea means you need to do less work later, but even a headline can be enough to kick-start a post. A good collection of ideas will ensure you’re never kept from posting by a lack of inspiration again.

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4. Write more than you publish

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Like the easy but true ’spend less that you earn’ principle of saving, you can develop a surplus of blog posts by writing more than you publish.

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Let’s say you wrote one extra blog post a week for one year. At the end of the year, you’d have 52 surplus posts: enough to put your blog on autopilot for nearly two months! You can also dip into these surplus posts when you don’t feel like writing, or experience some other kind of blogging emergency.

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5. Set your posts for timed release

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Rather than writing and publishing in one go you can use a simple WordPress feature to establish a posting time-table.

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Open the ‘Post Timestamp‘ panel in the sidebar of the post compose screen and choose the ‘Edit timestamp‘ box (this is important!). Set the timestamp to the date and time you’d like the post to go public, double-check everything is correct, and hit publish. Your post will appear on your blog at the time you’ve selected. (Tip: make sure you’ve set your WordPress account’s time setting to match your local time via the ‘Options‘ panel.)

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You can make sure your posts are set to auto-post on the correct date and in proper order by viewing them in the Manage > Posts panel.

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Readers like consistency. It will be better for you and them if you make a commitment to post at certain times, on certain days.

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6. Write each week’s posts in one or two batches

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One thing you might notice is that writing one post can loosen up your writing muscles and help the words come easier. Most of us make the mistake of stopping at this point, rather than capitalizing on our warmed-up say.

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Writing posts in batches means you can set them to future-post and take a few days off worrying about creating content for your blog. Most bloggers, for example, don’t post (or post less) on the weekends. You could use this time to write your posts for the week.\n

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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It is time for more Blogging Questions & Answers. You can ask your questions either through the comments on this post or via the Contact Form.

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Remember that all questions will be answered, so if your question is not here it will probably be featured next Wednesday.

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Blogstheme.com asks:

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How can I get more links to a blog about making money on the web? This seems to be the hardest part when you are starting off a new blog.

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Getting links to a new blog is hard regardless of your niche. It was simple some years ago when some niches were unexplored, but today you have blogs covering virtually any possible topic on earth.

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If your blog is in the “make money online” niche it might be even harder, because this is one of the most crowded niches. Darren has an interesting video post on this subject titled “Make Money Onlike Blogs – Should You Start One and How to Choose a Profitable Niche.”

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Now if you are looking for some practical advice I would need to list the basics: write some pillar articles, use blog carnivals, leave comments on blogs that “dofollow,” use social bookmarking sites, email bloggers on your niche letting them know about your blog and so on. These are what most people use on the beginning, and it works pretty well if the content is there.

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Lincoln asks:

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Are tags really worth the time needed to invest in them? Now that WP has native support for them I’m beginning to wonder now if this isn’t really an overhyped feature that has tiny to no SEO benefit.

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Tags can be used to complement your categories and to offer another navigation option for readers. In that respect I believe they can be useful, depending on your layout and theme.

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Using tags for the SEO benefits, however, is not that straight forward. Some people argue that they can be used to increase keyword density since you are able to hand pick the tags and place them hyperlinked at the bottom of every article. Personally I think that the SEO benefits from such practice are minimal.

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Very few authority and popular SEO blogs use tags. I also tested it on my blogs, including and removing the tags for a period of time and tracking the rankings and organic traffic for related keywords. The overall impact of tags on such factors was not noticeable. SEO is not an exact science though, so the best thing would be to test it on your blog and track the results.

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TechZilo asks:

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I’d like to know how you get high-profile sponsors….coz of your content, or bargaining? Also, do you think guest blogging is a good idea to drive traffic to my blog? In relevant, 80k PView blogs? Which give a link at the end?

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In order to get high profile sponsors you need to have several things in place: good traffic and exposure on your niche (which is related to the content), a professional looking theme, a focused audience and so on. I wrote an extensive article on the topic titled “How to Find Advertisers for Your Website.” There you will find pretty much all the tips I gathered on this subject.

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Regarding your second question, yes I think guest blogging is a very good way to drive traffic and gain more readers. Relevant blogs with around 100,000 monthly page views sound like an excellent place to begin. Try different blogs, different articles and different strategies and see what works ideal on your case.

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Vijay asks:

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I am writing educational blog on Software Testing. But last week I saw one web site under my niche that is posting many of my full posts as it is. What I can do in this case. The web site owner is giving link back to each of my post but I am concerned about the SEO. What should be the action plan in such cases?

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I had similar problems in the past (in fact I have a related post coming soon). The ideal way to approach this situation is to contact the person who is ripping your content privately, and ask him politely to remove your content.

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If there is no contact information on the site, perform a whois on the domain name and try to contact the registrant. If that does not work either you will need to contact the hosting company directly (you can discover that by taking a look at the name servers that appear on the whois information).

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Honestly, you will notice that as your blog grows it will be difficult to track and remove all the scrapped material. I am still trying to figure it myself. You can also read an article we published sometime ago titled “Blog Plagiarism Questions & Answers.”

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Adnan asks:

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Have you ever thought about selling out? Do you think that it’s likely that DailyBlogTips will be changing hands in the next year or 2? If you were selling your blog, how much would you value it at currently?

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While I am not looking to sell the blog, I had a couple of people coming to me with offers. The offers were pretty low though, so it was not even a negotiation. Personally I do not think that DBT will change hands in the near future.

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If I was to sell the blog today I would set the minimum bid at $50,000. Some time ago NetBusinessBlog.com was sold for $13,000 if I am not wrong. The blog had 1,500 RSS subscribers and traffic was not close to mine as well, so I figure four times that price could be reasonable. DBT is also making around $2500 monthly with a very subtle monetization strategy, meaning that the buyer should be able to recover the investment within one year or so.

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Anyway this is just speculation. The blog is not for sale since I have a really good time writing here and interacting with the community we managed to build.

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Jorge Camoes asks:

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So, the question is, do you think that bloggers from Portuguese or Spanish speaking countries should have at least a secondary blog written in their native language?

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Interesting question, especially because I asked that to myself already. I am fluent in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English, and I always wonder if I am limiting my potential by writing in English exclusively.

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I think we must consider the two sides of the coin here. Blogging in English enables you to reach a larger audience, and it also gives you the opportunity to reach top social bookmarking sites like Digg or Reddit. The English-speaking Internet is the most advanced one, though, so you will have a lot more competition as well.

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Blogging in your native language might limit the traffic potential, but it will also be easier to affirm yourself as a leader in your niche and to attract attention from local companies and press.

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So yeah, it is a dilemma. Personally I think that if you have fluency in English that is the language you should go with. The monetization part plays a huge role as well. It is much easier to find advertisers if you have a blog in English, and I like to have my AdSense clicks in US dollars….

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Cindy asks:

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Is it

better to keep the same tagline for a long time, or to change it occasionally (e.g., each few months)?
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If you have a very good tagline I would keep it for a long time. After all you want that tagline to stick in people’s mind. When I think Slashdot I think “News for Nerds.” I doubt I would if they had frequently changed the tagline, though.

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Matt asks:

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Does commenting on other blogs really increase traffic to your blog?

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Yes, and apart from getting some new visitors it is also a good way to interact with bloggers on your niche. Obviously do not expect hundreds of visitors coming from your comments (I remember one time I got 400 visitors from a first comment on TechCrunch, but that was a single event and I never managed to repeat this success).

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If your blog is new I would set a goal to comment on at least 5 new blogs every day. Make sure to add value with your comments also and not just post one-liner stuff promoting your blog.

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Kim asks:

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With all of the different ways to monetize your sight nowadays, what are your top 3 recommendations or services (ie. is Google Adsense really the way to go for starters?) for a website to use to make money?

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For a new blog I would recommend as few ads as you can have. There are opposite views on this issue, but I believe that you should build credibility and a loyal readership before monetizing it.

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That being said I would begin with AdSense and see how it performs on your niche (i.e., track CTR and cost per click). Over the time (after six months or so) I would consider moving towards direct advertising deals.

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Depending on your niche and topic you could also explore product related ad networks like Chitika and affiliate programs.

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Karthik asks:

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What were the 5 most important steps you took to popularize this blog?

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1. Original and useful content
\n2. Networking with other bloggers
\n3. Proactive promotion strategy (i.e. I tried pretty much everything available, tracked results and adapted accordingly)
\n4. Consistency
\n5. Patience\n

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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Ever wonder how Google sees your site? Ever wish you could click a button and correct all of your site’s search engine woes? As it turns out, you can, at least to a certain extent. Webmaster Tools is a free product from Google that grants you to interact with the world’s most (in)famous search engine spider and indicate how your site should be indexed.

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\n Getting Started \n Head over to Google Webmaster Tools (you’ll need a Google account to log in) and type your URL into the text input box. Make sure that you precede it with “www” if you intend to set that as your preference later on, because Google won’t grant you to upload a sitemap if your domain here doesn’t match your preferred domain later. Click the “Add Site” button once you’re sure. \n That’s enough to get you in. Before you can really use the console, though, you’ll need to verify your site. This is a very simple process if you have FTP access. Click the “Verify your site” link. On the next page, choose “Upload an HTML file” from the “Choose verification method…” drop-down (you can use a Meta tag if you want, but I find the file method to be less of a hassle). You’ll be given a file name like “google#.html”, where the hash mark is a string of alphanumeric characters. Just open your favorite text editor, save a blank file by that name, and upload it to your site’s base directory. Click the “Verify” button and you should be ready to dig in.

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\n Overview \n Once you’re in, you’ll immediately see when your site was last crawled and whether or not it is included in the index. Like a lot of Google’s Webmaster Tools, these are good indicators of possible problems. Obviously, a recent crawl date and proper inclusion are preferable. If you’re not included, Google will give you clues as to why.

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\n Diagnostics \n Here you’ll see any problems Googlebot has had trying to crawl your site. This includes pages that couldn’t be accessed for one reason or another, why they were inaccessible, and what sort of crawl (web or mobile) was attempted. Ideally, you don’t want anything to show up here, so be sure to review and, if possible, resolve each error that you see.

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\n Statistics \n Everything under Statistics is potentially interesting but not necessarily vital. You can see the top queries your site shows up for, which ones bring the clicks, what words are used in links to your site, what your PageRank distribution looks like, and how many subscribers you have. As Darren Rowse has pointed out, the subscription counts only include Google feed readers, and the numbers don’t often match up with FeedBurner, so be ready for some disparity. If you’re interested in more of this sort of data, I recommend checking out Google Analytics.

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\n Links \n The Links tab shows you where your pages are linked, both externally and internally. It’s a far cry from Google’s “link:” operator, providing a breakdown of almost every page that links to your site. The important thing here is not to get overly excited about a large link count. For starters, link juice is about quality, not quantity. Secondly, Webmaster Tools doesn’t distinguish between followed and nofollowed links. So, by all means, scope out the pages that are linking to yours; just don’t anticipate all of them to be valuable.

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\n Sitemaps \n Obviously, you won’t see much here until after you’ve added a sitemap. If you’ve got a WordPress blog, the sitemap generator plugin is a quick way to automate the process. Once you’ve added your sitemap, you can see when it was submitted, when it was downloaded, and whether or not there were any errors reading it. Don’t forget to add a sitemaps autodiscovery line to your robots.txt to make sure other search engines can find it also.

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\n Tools \n The Tools section deserves its own special attention because it provides most of the features you can use to communicate with Google. \n \n Examine robots.txt. This tool will show you the contents of your robots.txt file and allow you to make sure it isn’t blocking anything it shouldn’t. \n Manage site verification. If you followed the steps above, you’ll never need to use this. Just be sure the file you uploaded stays right where it is to keep your site verified. \n Set crawl rate. If Googlebot seems to visit too often for your liking, you can tell it not to come around as frequently. If your site is large and important enough, you may also be offered the option of faster crawling. Of course, a faster crawl rate doesn’t influence your rankings any; it just lets Google index your newest content that much faster. \n Set preferred domain. I mentioned earlier that the domain you entered into the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard and your preferred domain had to match. This is where to make that selection. As above, be sure they’re the same or you won’t be able to submit a sitemap. \n Enable enhanced image search. Opt in and Google will more thoroughly index the images on your site. Honestly, I can’t think of a good reason why anybody would state no to superior search relevancy. Tick the check box, hit “OK”, and move on. \n Remove URLs. Believe it or not, there are times when you want a page removed from the index. It’s rare, especially for bloggers, but it does happen. When the need arises, this is the tool you use to get the offending page delisted. \n \n

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\n Dashboard Tools \n You may have thought that was all there was, and you’d be partly correct. That’s all Google gives you on a site-specific level. If you click back out to the dashboard, however, you’ll notice several other menu options to the right of your site list. \n \n Message Center. This is a new feature Google added to contact webmasters directly. If they’ve got anything to state about sites you’ve verified, it will show up here. \n Download data for all sites. Most of us only have a handful of sites, but some power users might manage dozens or even hundreds. This tool allows you to generate aggregate reports for all the websites linked to your account. \n Report spam in our index. The infamous spam report lets anyone report spammy websites in the Google index. Note that you don’t need to be a Webmaster Tools user to report spam to Google. Exactly what effect it has on the reported website is anyone’s guess, but it might be useful if you’re dealing with a scraper. \n Report paid links. I doubt that Google thinks about spam and paid links to be separate issues. However, they do offer separate forms for each. Considering how many bloggers use paid links as a source of revenue, using this tool might amount to bad netiquette. \n Request reconsideration. If you’ve been bad and gotten your site thrown out of index, here’s where you beg and plead for Google to let you back in. Be sure to read the fine print and make sure your site adheres to Google’s webmaster guidelines, or else your chances of reinclusion are slim to nil. \n \n

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More to Come…

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Google’s way ahead of the game with Webmaster Tools, giving us the unprecedented capability to monitor how Googlebot interacts with our site. More importantly, they seem to come out with new Webmaster Tools on a regular basis. Learn it, love it, and check out the Google Webmaster Central Blog for regular updates.\n

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© Daily Blog Tips – visit the site for more blog tips!

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