Tag Archives | Social Networking Sites

Social Networking on Twitter

By Randy Roedl on February 17, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

Social Networking on Twitter

Social networking is the way you meet and great friends online. It’s a hot topic in most locations. Social networking sites are popping up all over the place, so you will need to be careful which you choose to post on, and where you should avoid. One place that you need to sign up though is Twitter.

Twitter is a fantastic social networking location. Find old friends, or invite some of your friends by sending them an e-mail. Is Twitter the newest and best social networking places? Well not being an expert about social networking, it still seems that this site has so many cool things. You really should check it out and get online with others.

Checking a topic that you may enjoy, say “cooking” and pull up others. Trade some recipes and get some fantastic ideas of what you can cook for that special get together. Or you may like a certain sport, pull it up and look at who else is interested in that. Meet people from all over the world, and lifelong friends. Heck some people could possibly find their knight in shining armor. With a social networking site you really can never tell what may happen.

Although Twitters choices on themes is a bit short compared to other sites, you are able to make the theme more unique by picking your own background colors. Make something that will make a person eyes ache, or go with the good old normal looking profile. Whichever you pick you can always change it later.

Twitter has some big name celebrities that are on their site too. How do you know it’s not a fake? Well most of them are legitimate, but there still may be a few that slip in there acting like they are someone they are not. This however, happens all over the place. It does seem like most of the big names on Twitter are themselves. What a blast to add your favorite celebrities to your following page. Even if you never talk to them, you will still get updates when they change their status.

What you make of Twitter is how much you go there. It’s hard when your busy working all day, when you come home you don’t always feel like going on the computer. And at times even if you get on the computer you may not check all those sites you belong too. If you don’t go often though, how will you meet people? Set aside a bit of time that you can go find a few people to follow and others will follow you too. It can create a great friendship.

Twitter is a quick sign up, maybe 10 minutes at the most, and you don’t need to pay anything to join this site. You will find the process of getting on Twitter is so easy that even a younger kid could join. Twitter does seem like a very clean site, not all those naked pictures, or bad things going on. There might be a few words here and there though, but really compared to some other places this place is fantastic.

WordPress Marketing

By Randy R on December 13, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Wordpress Marketing

Blogging nowadays is a lot more then just jotting down your opinions and feelings onto a webpage in hopes of people finding it. Now you can take your blogs fate and rest it in your marketing skills and tactics. Every month there are new social networks being opened up for bloggers to interact with each other and to help each other with traffic. Many networks offer traffic trading programs for bloggers which can benefit your blog tremendously depending on which you choose. Sites like EntreCard and MyBlogLog are top picks for these types of programs. Besides traffic trading you can also market your blog using social bookmarking sites or social networking sites. Websites like Digg and Propeller allow you to submit each blog post to there website to receive a backlink and also traffic. People can vote for your post on whether they like it or not and you can receive very nice amounts of traffic from these sites if you have good content. Youtube is becoming huge lately to and many bloggers are using the Youtube platform to voice there opinions on topics relating to their blog topic. This helps them generate traffic to the blog and with millions of people using Youtube each day bloggers are beginning to adapt to marketing through video.

As you can see there are almost unlimited options when thinking of how to market your blog. Forums can be a great place to interact with people and the signature line can house your blog URL which will over time attract clicks and traffic. When you’re marketing your WordPress blog you should make sure that you try utilizing all the possible options that you can and make sure to get your link out there. Becoming active on other blogs is one way to do this and you should comment on the blogs in your niche that have traffic to get your name and blog out there. Often after you comment for a week or two straight the blog owner will take notice to you and may even offer you a link exchange. The more you get yourself and your blog out into the market the better chance you’ll have at obtaining traffic.

Article submissions are popular also when marketing your blog and especially in the beginning stages of your blog. Submitting to websites like EzineArticles can not only boost your traffic but it can help to get your blog indexed in the search engines. When you utilize article marketing make sure you include deep links into your articles and not just the homepage. Deeplinks are actually more important then homepage links and the more deeplinks you can get the more search engine traffic you’ll receive. It takes months to rank in the search engines but once you do the traffic will be worth it. Once you obtain the rankings in the search engines that you wanted you’ll need to continue marketing to keep those rankings.

Blogs have been known to help people get search engine traffic due to the many plug-ins available, and frankly it’s simple for anyone to do. Longtail keywords are easily attainable using WordPress and you shouldn’t have problems getting traffic from your longtail keywords. The most important part of your marketing when using WordPress is your keyword selection. You want to make sure that you’re targeting highly searched terms but with the least amount of competition. Using programs like Wordtracker will help you find keywords and keyword phrases for you to optimize on your blog.

Make sure you also use all the great plug-ins that will help you with the SEO of your blog and overall help your marketing efforts. There is plug-ins for choosing your search engine title, keywords and description which is a mandatory plug-in in my opinion and will help you rank for the terms you want to rank for. There is many more plug-ins you can utilize but I won’t go into great detail about them right now.

Twitter Try it

By Randy Roedl on October 28, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

Twitter: Try it

Twitter, a new way that you can talk to millions plus people. A sleek looking alternative to the other social networking sites out there. You may not have as many theme choices as some other sites, but you can change up the background colors that will fit your wishes better.

As a Twitterer you can do just about anything. Have fun looking up different subjects from Wicca to Shoes. Meet people from all over the world. Write a blog to vent those daily issues you can’t stand. Others will follow you, which means they are interested in what you do, and want to be a friend. You of course can choose who you follow, and believe it or not, there are a lot of famous people here too. Shaq is on Twitter and to a big basketball fan they can click and follow what he posts and talks about. It’s just a really neat thing for people to be able to learn things about others.

Maybe you have a project that you need to write about another country. Go and see if you can find some Twitter people who live there. What a way to make that report even better than normal. You will wow your teacher or professor and have information that others will not find in books. Why not take advantage of something that will only help you score a higher grade.

You are able to add widgets or design your own. Some people can come up with some really excellent ideas for widgets; it’s always nice to check out the new ones that have been made. Add them to your page and have something that will make your page a bit different.

Perhaps you have a product or a website that you would like to promote put that up on Twitter and your followers will see it and check it out. Plus those people who are doing a search and hit on a keyword you may have. Well you can see the possibility of having a bunch of people come and check out what you have on your site.

There are many reasons to use Twitter, a fun way to connect with others in the world. Your own unique look on your profile by changes the colors if you want too. Plus just meeting some nice people, or a mate, you never know where you might meet your Mr. or Mrs. Right! Twitter could be the place that it may happen at.

Be sure to check out the Twitter page and see what all the hype is about. Don’t worry if you don’t post a lot, looking at what others has posted is fun too. There are so many advantages to meeting people online. Heck it’s a great way for a person who hates going out to have friends too. You may even meet one day or just talk through years and become really close with someone. All this can happen by just going to Twitter and getting signed up. Check it out now and make some new social connections.

10 WordPress Plugins For Your Tech Blog

By Randy R on October 25, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

10 WordPress Plugins For Your Tech Blog

As a general rule of thumb most errors you’ll encounter with your WordPress blog are the result of excessive or incompatible plugins. While many find the selection of essential plugins a conundrum I believe in testing each plugin one-by-one with the latest version of WordPress so I can isolate the problem to determine the cause of the slow load times, call function errors or php memory limit warnings. The most valuable tool I can tell you when it comes to plugins is that when possible look for existing code that can accomplish the same result.

Of course there are certain plugins that even I use in my WordPress Blogs. I’ve compiled a list below of the top 10 plugins that I use on a daily basis that I believe will help any tech blog:

* AdSense Now – There are many ad insertion plugins for WordPress, but if your tech blog is using AdSense – this is the plugin I recommend. It allows you to insert your ad blocks aligned left, center or middle in 3 sections of a post. It also gives you the option to suppress ads on pages, category pages, tag pages, archives and more.

* Audio Player – Being able to insert mp3 clips or podcasts into your blog can be a problem. Audio Player is a plugin that makes this process simple – simply create a music folder on your site via FTP and then upload mp3 tracks to the directory. You can insert the built-in audio player into any of your posts or pages with a simple line of code – painless, simple and easy.

* Facebook Sharecount – It’s no secret that social networking sites like Facebook are effective ways to create a fanbase, but being able to harness that power relies on an easy way to share your great content. Facebook Sharecount will make it easy for visitors share your posts and monitor your content.

* Foliopress Descriptions – Once your tech blog has hundreds or even thousands of posts you will need a way to mass edit your descriptions. While the importance of meta descriptions is debated, I still believe that a hand written summary should be written for each post. Foliopress Descriptions supports post excerpt, These and All In One Seo meta description fields.

* Google XML Sitemaps – If you’ve read my previous post on how to get indexed by Google and Yahoo you know that having a sitemap is essential. This plugin auto generates your sitemap in a nice and neat XML file and let’s search engines understand the content on your tech blog. After installing and activating the plugin Google XML Sitemaps will take care of the rest.

* NextGEN Gallery – Managing your images and photo galleries can be a pain, but NextGen Gallery makes this simple. With features like auto resizing, watermarks, thumbnail creation as well as gallery effects – NextGEN Gallery is a must have plugin.

* Star Rating for Reviews – When you run a tech blog sooner or later you will start receiving products for review. Creating a solid review is as much about content as it is about presentation. Star Rating for Reviews allows you to create ratings for the products you review or even rate different aspects of the product and averages the ratings to determine a final score. The possibilities are limitless with the plugin – a must have for anyone looking to review tech.

* TweetMeme Retween Button – If you look at the posts on TechBlogStartup you’ll notice a yellow Retweet button aligned to the right. The power of Twitter is growing by the day so making it easy for your reader to ReTweet great content can prove very valuable. If you’ve installed Google Analytics like I explained in my previous post here, then you will be able to monitor just how many visitors enter your post through Twitter. If you are wondering why I haven’t included ShareThis it’s because I manually insert the code instead of using a WordPress Plugin.

* WP Super Cache – If you’ve heard of Digg then odds are you’ve heard of the Digg Effect where an article on a website becomes so popular so quickly that the flood of traffic to the website causes the server to crash. Since WordPress blogs are built on SQL Databases they are highly susceptible to this condition, but installing WP Super Cache can almost eliminate this threat. The plugin builds a cache of your posts and creates a static html page so that the server load is reduced and your site can handle more visitors. If your tech blog is brand spanking new I would install the plugin but not activate it until I started to see spikes in traffic or one of my articles was picked up by a major tech blog like Engadget or Gizmodo.

* All in One SEO – Search Engine Optimization is a key ingredient to driving organic traffic to your tech blog. Writting great content is key, but after you have created that content you need to make sure that it targets keywords and includes some basic optimization to ensure it is search engine friendly. All in One SEO does this job very well. If you are using the WordPress theme I use (Thesis) then you will not need this plugin, but for pretty much every other WordPressTheme I recommend installing it right away so that you can start writing your custom meta descriptions

All of the plugins I’ve mentioned above can be downloaded manually and then uploaded via FTP to your blog or you can add them from within your WordPress Dashboard – personally I prefer the latter. If you are wondering why certain plugins are not listed on my top 10 list – I just don’t find them essential to a tech blog. You will notice that I do somethings with TechBlogStartup that many people use Plugins or Widgets to do – eg. the top 6 articles aligned horizontally at the top of the site or the Recent Posts section in the side bar. For tech blogs that receive a large volume of traffic, limiting the plugins helps reduce the SQL memory load and if you’ve ever had a website crash you know just how important this is. Do you have some WordPress plugins on your tech blog that you think we should know about? Go ahead and drop your own list or links to the plugins in the comments section below so we can check them out.

Methods-get-tons-of-backlinks

By Randy R on August 9, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Methods to get tons of backlinks

Getting backlinks has become much easier these days with the advent of social networking and social bookmarking sites. Social networking sites will be giving you a profile page and in that page you may add details about yourself like your name, hobbies, interests, and also your website. And this is something that makes webmasters attracted towards these sites – yup, I’m talking about the “website url” thing. This is an easy way to get free backlinks. Social networking sites are generally of high authority and getting a link (even if it’s from an inner page), is still of great importance.

On the other hand, a social bookmarking site will allow you to create a profile page and also to bookmark your favorite sites.This way, creating a single account, you can get backlinks to unlimited sites of yours. Not just that, if you stay active at these sites, then you’ll be getting free traffic as well. Members who are active will get a lot of hits to their profile. And this will prompt others to visit their bookmarks. This way, it will be providing you double benefit.

There are thousands of social bookmarking and social networking sites at the moment. If you go on creating accounts in all these sites, then you’ll never reach the finish line for sure. That’s because new ones are born every day. It’ll only waste your time. So, just concentrate on sites that is with good pagerank and traffic. A link from a high authority site is worth more than – even tens or hundreds of links from a low authority site. So, create accounts in high authority, high traffic sites, this way, your sites will be benefiting in two ways :- they’ll be getting a quality backlink and also free targeted traffic.

Making Money Online

By Randy R on July 25, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Making Money Online

There are countless methods and techniques that one can utilize to earn either a part-time or full-time income, and there are more people everyday striking riches on the internet. Like any other method of making money it definitely doesn’t come easy and you need to work hard in the first initial couple years to ensure you’re set-up for the future. Some of the ways you earn online are short-term quick means of cash and although these are great you should focus on the long-term sustainable income if you plan on working online full-time. Below are some of the methods you can use to earn an online income.

– Paid Surveys
– Selling Products/Services
– Affiliate Sales
– Advertising Sales

Generally these are the most common sought after methods of earning money online and cover basically any topic you could imagine. Paid surveys can be great for new webmasters looking to begin earning online, with surveys the money is slow but you’ll be able to get some income going and you’ll learn more about how the internet runs and how you can make money. I suggest you join a few survey networks as with only joining one you might not make sufficient funds. The more surveys you place yourself in front of the more chance you have of earning income. All surveys will pay you money, but there is definitely the need for doing a nice number of them to earn any substantial money.

For longer term income you can sell your own product or service, this can be done through your own website or through forums and social networking sites. There are countless amounts of people hiring freelancers from forums and social networking sites. If you want to earn an income through selling services and products then you’ll need to ensure you allow proper time to do so. It wouldn’t be honest to tell you that you can expect to earn hundreds of dollars a day from the get-go and generally this will never happen. With a product you need to set-up a website and then work on advertising it to your target audience and then hope you start triggering sales, which usually will happen in time but there are some products that never sell. If you’re offering a webmaster service then money can begin right away through forums, because there are always people looking for freelance webmasters to complete jobs.

If you don’t have your own product and you don’t think you could offer a service then you can do affiliate sales which is basically you selling someone else’s product for a commission. If you think you have sales talent and just are missing the product to sell then affiliate sales might work for you. You can also earn money through leads which is where you send people from your website to another website to sign-up for something free. Leads don’t pay nearly as well as sales but you can get your foot in the door with your affiliate network by setting up a few good lead offers on your site. You need to make sure that your product or lead that you offer on your site is targeted towards your audience or else don’t expect many sales.

The last method to earn money that we’ll be discussing in this article is advertising sales. There are different ways to earn through advertising sales which consist of either joining an ad network like Adsense and using their ads to earn money, or you can find people to advertise your site by yourself. You’ll obviously make more money by selling your own ads on your site but this can be time consuming and often you’ll end up making less due to open spots. I find a good medium is too use Adsense and then sell the odd link or banner on the site for some extra income. This is the best way to utilize advertising income, you just need to make sure that you don’t place too many sold links on your site because your site can be harmed by this, which isn’t what you’re trying to do.

All of these great methods that I’ve walked through with you above are wonderful ways to earn money and you should try them all out. Once you begin to get comfortable you’ll be able to utilize more then one of the methods above on everyone of your sites that you make. You’ll want to focus on one site in the beginning but once you feel you have conquered some of the techniques you need to know then you can begin branching out and making new sites. Millions of people earn money online everyday and it can be done by anyone at any age from any country. If you’re serious about making money online there are tons of resources on the internet that you can use to become more knowledgeable in the area. You should remember to start slow and not expect to even earn a dollar in the first few months. You need to establish your sites and methods of earning before the real money starts coming in, those with the patience will notice success before those who throw away all their projects.

Check out Twitter

By Randy Roedl on March 26, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

Check out Twitter

Twitter is one of the newer social networking pages out there. It’s free to sign up for and you should never be charged for anything on this site either. With a few different themes available you can make your own unique page, all you need to do is change those background colors to something that you like.

There are a few different ways to search for people on Twitter. You can put in the name of a friend and see if they are already registered on Twitter. Or you can look by pulling up your mailbox contacts. Invite people who you think would love Twitter, and have more followers. That’s what Twitter calls friends by the way!

You can also find people by looking at the tab that has “suggested matches”. These are the people that Twitter thinks you may enjoy following. With these types of choices you may soon be following tons of people, and they may follow you too. Not every one you choose to follow is going to follow you so don’t feel bad if it’s doesn’t happen.

Do you like to blog? Keep a blog on Twitter to keep people up to date on your daily or weekly happenings. Maybe you had something great happen to you and you feel that others on Twitter may enjoy that news put it up and post it. Or you may just like writing poetry; this is another thing that you will be able to post up on Twitter. You never know who might come to your page and see what you’ve written.

Look up a topic that you love, like “Stephen King”. Twitter will pull up others who are also interested in that topic. You can look up anything and see if there might be another who finds what you think is great to be interesting to them too. Follow them, send a message you may create a long term friendship that will last your whole life.

Also you don’t have as many flashy options as some other social networking places; it’s really not that big of a deal. In fact social networking sites are to talk to each other, not to see how many flashes and etcetera that doesn’t have anything to do with much.

Check out possibly one of the hottest social networking sites out there. Come to Twitter and see if you can find some new friends. Write blogs that will make others laugh, or just cry, depending on what you wrote. Twitter is a fantastic way to connect with other people all over the world.

You may check for those friends you lost touch with, they might be on Twitter, a nice way to reconnect with others. Another really excellent thing about Twitter is you go to a person’s page, and you can click on their followers. It’s excellent to see what other people have on their site, and you might be blown away by who you can find on Twitter.

Become an Active Member in the Blogosphere

By Randy R on February 19, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Become an Active Member in the Blogosphere

You’d actually probably be surprised but if you’re an active member in the blogosphere then it will bring you countless amounts of free traffic, and can make your blog more mainstream. There are tons of blogs created and many more created on a daily basis and you need to make sure that if you plan on blogging that you make yourself stand out from the crowd. There are tons of social networking sites for bloggers that can help create a name for yourself and your blog, and the more time you spend on working on networking the better results you’ll see.

Don’t expect to get thousands of visitors overnight from a couple conversations, but over time if you consistently use the social networking sites for bloggers then you can gain a following of people, especially if your blog is half-decent. Twitter is probably the most popular network for bloggers right now and it allows bloggers to follow the daily internet lives of other bloggers. Anyone can use the site though and you don’t need to be a blogger which means that many blog readers also use the site to follow the popular bloggers. If you make yourself noticeable on Twitter then chances are more and more people will begin to follow you which simply means they can see whenever you post something new to Twitter.

This means you can post a new blog post and then notify everyone on your Twitter about it within seconds which will help gain you a readership. If your knowledge is useful and not just regurgitated nonsense then you will stand a much better shot at retaining the readers that come from the social networking sites.

Another way to become active in the blogosphere to benefit your blog is by commenting regularly on different blogs. I always make sure I comment on certain blogs, as then you begin to gain a friendship with the other blogger which can be great for your blog. This can lead into link exchanges, blog post exchanges and even traffic exchanges through numerous methods. The possibilities are endless and the fact is most bloggers like networking with other bloggers to help each other out. All you need to do is make yourself noticeable by commenting on blogs, and obviously you might not be noticed on a blog with hundreds of comments a day but if you comment on semi popular blogs you can become noticed quickly.

You can also link to other blogs in your blog posts and they will then notice that they’ve been linked to from your blog. This could end up getting you a link in return and depending on which blog links you back it could bring in huge amounts of traffic.

Your best friends are other bloggers when you’re a blogger yourself so make sure you remember that and always be network with other bloggers. Also if you’re asked for help from a fellow blogger you should help them out because you never know what it could lead too. You may end up getting a link from them or even a review from them and it could lead to more traffic. If it’s a service you offer on your blog then you may even get more business from it. Sometimes doing free work leads to higher paying jobs which mean you should always consider doing freebies for some people. If it gets you advertising out of the deal then it’s not working for free anyways, so you need to think of it like this.

There is nothing more important I find then becoming friends with other bloggers in your niche, because although there sort of your competition you can still benefit from helping them out. Blog commenting also builds your backlinks so this is the most important thing to do, because even if it leads nowhere you’ll at least be getting some backlinks. The do-follow backlinks help your search engine placements as well, but most bloggers don’t use do-follow. If you find a do-follow blog then you should bookmark it and comment there at least once a day because then you’re guaranteed to be increasing your backlinks everyday which is something that Google and the other search engines love to see.