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Headlines are everywhere in our life; in the newspapers, on the front page of magazines, on websites, on blogs, on social media sites, and so on. In fact, headlines help us getting a really good idea about the content of articles. Thus, headlines are critical because they will determine if an article is read or not!

For example, social media sites are handling and broadcasting tons of content each days. The only way for anyone to discriminate about all those stories is to look at the headlines. In fact, there is a natural selection - just like Darwin would say - that is done. The best headlines will be read and the weaker ones will just dies silently! If we apply Pareto, 20% of the stories - with the best headlines - will be read by 80% of the site users.

This is only a simple example to illustrate how crucial the headlines are. In order to help you improving your headlines, I made a list of 15 excellent resources related to headlines creation. Hope this will be useful for you.

Here it is:

1. The Sexy Art of Writing Headlines that Kill - freelanceswitch.com

2. Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog - lorelle.wordpress.com

3. How to Write Magnetic Headlines - copyblogger.com

4. How To Write Great Headlines - modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk

5. How To Write Eye-Popping Headlines While Exhausted - instigatorblog.com

6. Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines - google.com

7. 25 Headline Formulas That Have Plagued and Blessed Web 2.0 - skelliewag.org

8. 54 Proven Headlines Templates That Sell - seoblackhat.com

9. Headline writing: How to write web headlines that catch search engine spiders - newmediabytes.com

10. Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media - copyblogger.com

11. 7 Easy Ways to Create Eye catching Titles - netwriting.co.uk

12. Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Headlines - world-copywriting-institute.typepad.com

13. How To Write Web Headlines That Beg To Be Read - lockergnome.com

14. Five Keys to Writing Killer Web Page Headlines - wordsmithbob.com

15. The Best Headlines Are Not Just Written For Google or Digg - instigatorblog.com

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As a blogger, you contribute to the global knowledge of your audience. Depending of your niche and your blog scheme, the informationmay be broadcast using different tactics. For example, news blogs might not use the same tactic as photos blogs or personal blogs.

I think that the main school of thoughts says that the role of a blogger is mostly to be a teacher or, at least, to be an informational channel that would help the online community to be better informed. However, is it really the fundamental role of the blogger?

I’ll let you read 2 posts related to this subject. I have to say that I particularly enjoy the post of Jonathan Morrow, an author on Copyblogger. In this post, Jonathan is saying that the teacher role in more a secondary role. The main one would rather be related to the class clowns rule! I won’t go too far, because I think this post worth to be read carefully.

1. How to Stop Being Invisible – Jonathan Morrow
2. The Role of the Blogger - Bridget McNulty

The week the question is the following:

What do you think is your fundamental role as a blogger?

I would really appreciate to have your opinion on this topic. Any feedback or life experiences would be very valuable for everyone!

Thanks for sharing with all of us!

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As an active user of social media sites, I’m always looking to create new relationships to share valuable contents, ideas and tips. Those new relationships may be started because I added new people to my list, but it could also be started from people who befriended me.

Today, I would like to share with you 3 strategies to make your social media profile clean and dynamic. Why? Simply because you have only few seconds to make a good impression! Adding new friends is all under your control, but being added is not. The best you can do is to influence people by communicating an original and positive description of yourself and by creating a favorable environment.

1. Keep your Profile Dynamic and Up-to-date.

The first goal of your profile is to properly identify and describe who you are. It is a great opportunity to tell everyone about your interests and your passions. It may also be an excellent place to inform about your social media goals or anything special you may have to communicate.

This being said, most of the time, people signup with a social media site, fill up their profile and then just forget about it! Personally, I really think there are lots of benefits to make the profile more active, more dynamic. The fact is that I change, you change and everybody change! Thus, I believe that the social media profile should be modified and updated to follow the personal evolution of the user.

Maybe your social media goals are changing… or maybe you just discovered a new passion or new interests. I really don’t think that your 2 years old profile still describe you perfectly. Every person is changing every day; just make sure that people looking at your profile is reading about the actual you and not about an old you!

Keeping your profile dynamic and active is a proof about your social activity. Of course, this proof is not the only one, but I really consider it as one of the most important.

2. Periodically Clean up your Friend List.

What are you doing when you are about to receive new people at home? Most likely, you run in your house to cleanup everywhere, isn’t it? And why are you doing that? Simply because you want those people to have a good perception about you!

Everyone wants to be perceived as a great and respectful person. So why not doing the same within your social media home? Presumably, you added some friends in the past and you just continue to add more on a constant basis. Do all your friends active? Do you add people some months or years ago that never reciprocates or never talks to you at all? Does your friends list properly reflect your real friends, i.e. people that support you when you need it?

In fact, most of the time, people add friends but they never remove anyone. Unless you are a very lucky person, you befriended some people that seem to be inactive or, at least, never demonstrate any sign of activity. Social Media is all about sharing and being active. There are many reasons that may explain why you never heard about those people, but the fact is that it cluttered your friend list!

The goal behind the friend concept is precisely to share and to support each other. So the real challenge in adding friends is to choose people that will really share the same friendship values as you.

Just as an example, I’m an active user in the Digg network. I read many user profiles each day and I must admit that I really enjoy it; it is very interesting and educative! Based on some profile I saw, here is a small test for you:

Which of these users would you add on your friend list?

Just let me know your personal perception about this!

3. Promote your Profile like a Blog/Website.

Seeing your social media profile like a micro-website is a funny and powerful way to perceive it. In fact, just like a website, you are free to put whatever you want on it. Fundamentally, this means that you are fully responsible about your profile popularity. Of course, there are many variables that may impact this popularity, but at the baseline you have the total control over its originality and its promotion.

Promoting your media social profile may be a very efficient branding strategy. Just like a website you may promote it by adding it to your signature, by leaving your profile link on every comment you submit on blogs, etc. Of course, these are just few examples; there are millions other ways to promote it.

The essential is to understand that your profile is a web page like any other one, which means that distribution and promotion should be applied mostly the same way.

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WordPress is a wonderful blogging platform. It contains plenty of great functionality that ease the work of every blogger. One of the most valuable one is the ability to extend the system functionality with plugins.

The possibilities are endless and this is why, actually, there are zillions of plugin available. In fact, this is a real and a big problem when you are an inexperienced blogger. Just figure out… you just finished your WordPress installation, you are proud of yourself and you are ready to add more, but what? What are the plugins you should add as a starting point? Which ones are really essential?

Of course, everyone may have a different answer to this question. It would mainly depend on the value you give to each functionality. I try to make the exercise and I made a list of 8 WordPress plugins I would recommend as a startup kit!

Here it is:

1. Askimet

In few words, Askimet catch every comment that look like SPAM and will put them on a list to be validate - just like your email spam filter. Thus, this plugin let you do what you really enjoy: creating fresh and valuable content!

2. FeedSmith

This plugin detects all ways to access your feed, and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

3. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin creates a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is automatically updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo, are notified about the update.

4. Maintenance Mode

Every website or blog need maintenance. Someday you may want to update your blog design, create new sections, upgrading some components or scripts, etc. In fact, there are tons of reasons why you may want to put your blog in maintenance mode. This plugin allows you to do that by adding a splash page to your blog to let your visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators still have full access to the blog including the front-end.

5. Share This

Social media sites are excellent platform to distribute content and create a strong brand. The first rule to help your content being distribute is to make this distribution process simple and easy for your readers. The Share This plugin provides a quick, simple to use, and unobtrusive way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send your post link via email, AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more.

6. WP-Cache

Are you expecting tons of traffic to reach your blog? Are you expecting to hit the Digg front page? Of course, if this is the case and you really hit the front page, you better be prepared to receive the wave! Just as an example, the first time Skellie hit the front page of Digg, the server that were hosting her blog became overloaded and her blog wasn’t reachable anymore – at least temporary! Now, if you don’t want to live the same story, you better be prepared.

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive. It works by caching WordPress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and the building the page from the database. WP-Cache allows to serve hundred of times more pages per second, and to reduce the response time from several tenths of seconds to less than a millisecond.

7. WP-DBManager

Another possible nightmare is a server crash. Do you make a backup of your blog recently? What would be your reaction if I tell you that you may potentially loose your blog content at any time? Of course, if you made a backup of your whole blog recently, you are reading these lines just relax. However, if you never made any backup or if you just can’t remember because it’s too far away in your memory, then you may be more anxious.

This plugin allows you to backup your database automatically according to a configured schedule. Every backup may be sent to your inbox. You may also consider some other alternatives for this plugin if you want to backup your whole blog.

8. WP Contact Form III

Blogging is all about relationship! Once again I say it. I really think that focusing on efficient communications is essential. Of course, your readers may leave you some comments or feedback on the comment section of your posts, but what about if they want to send you private message? Developing an easy way to contact you is a must! Thus, your contact page should include a contact form to help your readers to get in touch with you easily. This plugin allows you to include a friendly contact form easily.

I would really enjoy hearing you on this point. Since it is pretty subjective, I would appreciate if you could recommend some others plugins you consider as a MUST.

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This is a guest post from Hendry Lee. Hendry helps bloggers overcome technology challenges in starting and growing their blogs. Get daily tips, techniques and strategies by visiting his blog at blogbuildingu.com.

Articles are the building blocks of every blog and most web sites. In fact, they are one of the most important factors that will make or break your blog. People visit your site for the first time expecting to get good quality information.

If they find your content interesting, they may subscribe to get updates from your blog via RSS feed or email. As a blogger, you need to keep delivering fresh articles and meet the readers’ expectation. Otherwise, they may lose interest and unsubscribe.

The Importance of Content Creation

I always recommend that everyone who wants to start an online business to begin with a blog. That puts content creation at the highest priority. And content is a great business asset that can be leveraged for a wide variety of purposes later.

Just as an example, most bloggers miss the fact that they can re-purpose their content into articles and tap into article marketing to drive qualified traffic to their site.

No matter what you do, content production should account for 40-50 percent of the time you spend to build your online business. Blogging helps you get better in this critical business and marketing activity.

Note: We’ll avoid getting into audio and video content production. That is certainly an option for people who prefer talking rather than writing.

The Challenges

Blogging requires that you update your blog with fresh content regularly. For many people, this can be daunting, especially if they haven’t been writing an article for years.

When I first got started with blogging and article marketing, I couldn’t imagine myself doing this for the long haul. It took a few days to write a 500-word article, not to mention the hours I spent to make the article perfect.

Ideas were also hard to come by. It was so frustrating to stare at a blank screen for 15 minutes.

Even after I was finally able to finish my writing faster, still it was almost impossible to do that regularly because I was struggling all over it.

I am certainly not the only one.

7 Blogging Tips for Faster Content Production

The good news is, you don’t have to be a perfect writer before you can start publishing to your blog. If you can get across your message well to the other party, you have more skills than necessary to blog. Writing conversationally can help convey personality better than if you adopt academic writing style.

With that said, here are a few blog writing tips that I’ve learned over the years:

1. Write a clear and compelling title. Don’t be afraid to make bold statements to grab the reader’s attention and make them read the rest of the blog post. Title is the first and perhaps the only thing the readers will see if you don’t give a reason to your blog visitors why they should stop and read.
2. Make your content valuable and worthwhile. It is worth repeating that people visit your blog the first time to get information. They seldom come with credit card in hand. If they like what you have to offer, still it is content that makes them come back or subscribe to your content feed / e-newsletter.
3. Research your keywords. If you are able to get traffic from organic search just by integrating your primary keyword in the right location and including secondary keywords, synonyms and other thematically related keywords, there is no reason why you should leave the strategy unused.
4. Provide content structure. Subheadings, bulleted and numbered lists, and text formatting are there to help readers to go through your content easily. Most people are scanners. It helps if you make your content easy to scan. With this list, for instance, you don’t need to read the whole thing to understand what’s in it. The bold statements already give you the big picture.
5. Link to internal and external pages. Links are the currency of the Web. Pointing to external resources builds your credibility and positions you as an expert in your topic. With trackbacks and pingbacks, other bloggers will notice those links. Those can often be a start of a profitable relationship.
6. Know your audience. While long articles have higher perceived value, they are not always appropriate. Some people prefer concise and to the point articles. If you can deliver the same message within 3 minutes, don’t waste more of the readers’ time. They will appreciate it.
7. Proofread to ensure professionalism. Spell check your blog post before you hit the publish button. Make your content clean and professional. You will never do business with people who wear dirty jeans and a checked shirt. It gives a bad impression. That doesn’t mean you have to write in perfect grammar. Starting a title with a number is not proper grammar, but it is effective and bloggers use it. What’s not optional is the impression you make with the content.

Last but not all, keep in mind that the readers always tune in the WIIFM frequency (What’s In It For Me). You will build your credibility by providing great information instead of talking about yourself and your business. Broadcast with a signal that matches the receiver helps get the message across effectively.

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There are lots of benefits to be popular on social media sites: more visibility, more friends, strong branding, more influence, and so on. However, being a social media power user is not something easy. Many people tried and just give up because they didn’t reach their social media goals.

I personally think that we should consider becoming a social media power user as an art. Mastering an art involves some techniques, but, more than anything, it requires lots of practice and lots of perseverance. This is not a matter of days. Developing a strong and popular social media profile takes time and continuous work.

In that context, I made a list of 5 habits you may want to put into practice to develop and increase your social media popularity.

1. Being very active and showing your presence.

Social media power users are people that get our attention because they are still present when we logged in. Moreover, we usually can see their names almost everywhere on the site. Just as an example, this morning I can see 3 submissions of Maki on the Digg front page (and I can see more of them on every page of the “Popular” pane). If you look at the stats, Maki dugg 34,856 times and submitted 1,996 new contents to Digg. Note that Maki joined Digg on March 2007. You can make the maths yourself; this makes a lot of activity on the site.

So I think that we can define the social media activity as the investment of time and effort on contributing to help the community to achieve its goal. In fact, for almost every social media sites, there are two types of activity; you may be active by submitting/distributing new content and by voting for new content. Focusing on those contributions is essential to develop a popular and strong social media profile. Showing up your name is branding it! People always remember things they see on a constant basis. Thus, being present and very active is the first step to create a powerful brand and become a social media power user.

2. Reading/Browsing a lot.

Social media sites are all about sharing. You may share articles, news, videos, pictures, etc. Whatever it is, the goal is always the same: share quality contents with your friends/followers. In order to do that, you may need to invest lots of time reading news and blog articles, watching cool videos and observing new pictures. The social media power user is curious and wants to find the coolest content before anyone do; he or she is a golden hunter!

One of the best things to do to develop this habit is to construct your own websites/blogs database. Observe and try to find websites that perform well on your favorite social media sites. Take the time to create an efficient system that will allow you to easily add new websites and to browse them on a regular basis. There are a lot of software applications to do that, but you may want to consider Morning Coffee which is a Firefox add-on. I would highly recommend giving it a try. Moreover, you may want to try some update detector application for websites. I would recommend Update Scanner which is also a Firefox add-on.

3. Being generous with others.

You may already have noticed that the most effective action to create and build new relationship is based on generosity. Everyone is receptive to generosity because it touches the very basic need to be accepted and appreciated by others (see Maslow’s hierarchy of need). Thus, offering something valuable without expecting something in return is very powerful. Note that I’m referring here to a pure and sincere act of generosity.

There are countless ways to be generous. As a social media user, you may give some votes or some advices. You may create a post or give a link to his/her blog or website. These are common ways, but you may think about something more personalize like creating a new logo or and new 125×125 ads. Of course, it may depend on your own abilities, but creating something personalize is always greatly appreciated!

4. Making new friends and invest on friendship.

Developing a loyal audience and a strong community is something that requires time. This powerful ingredient – the time – is essential to develop relationships based on trust and respect. However, time must be conjugate with the investment of both parties. Friendship is something that must be maintained on a regular basis. Of course, the goal is not to maintain every social friendship. It wouldn’t be realist to maintain a close relationship with 200, 500 or even 1000 users. However, I think it is essential to communicate regularly with some parties that share your passions and your social media interests. This type of relationship begins naturally by the creation of mutual exchanges.

In order to ease the creation of this type of relations, you may want to add some instant messaging contact wherever you publish contents. It could be on every social media profiles, your blog and/or website, forum signature, etc. Live communications are the catalysts and the preferred channels to exchange about each other. This type of communications increases the proximity of both parties and makes it less virtual. In addition, the live channel allows communicating easily and faster than any other communication platform.

5. Experimenting and learning.

I’m saying it again: real learning is all about experimenting! If you read it, you know. But when you experiment it, you understand! This is, to my own opinion, the basement of the human knowledge. Mastering social media is the result of experimenting social media. A priori, social media is a black box that creates results from user submissions. Every social media is in constant mutation; it changes every day. Learning the whole system is something essential that could be made by everybody – and this is crucial to be successful. However, learning and developing a social media sense to predict/influence the results is an art. As for any kind of art, practice and perseverance are the keys!

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Social Media sites are actually part of our life. No matter if you are a blogger, an online marketer or a professional journalist, social media is an essential source of information as well as a critical element to build an efficient network development strategy.

The fact is that signing up on a social media sites is quite easy. However, from this point, there are a lot to do – and lots of fun to have! Here are, in my own opinion, the 5 must-dos before submitting content. I think it may help you to have a good experience of social media sites. In addition, I think it may also help you to build up a wide network and a strong brand.

1. Complete Your Profile.

I frequently receive notifications because somebody befriended me on a social media site. Naturally, my first reaction is to look at the user profile, but several times I’m facing a blank and empty page! What am I doing? Nothing! When I’m adding somebody, I better like to see a complete profile in front of me. Of course, nobody could tell me if this profile is real or not, but why would I have to doubt?

Now, let take a look at some essential part of any profile:

Add an avatar.

This may be a picture of you or any other image; the essential is to include an image that best represent who you are. In fact, this will be your trademark. Thus, I highly recommend using the same avatar on every social media site. This way, people may recognize you and add you on these sites too. Note that leaving your picture space blank is rejecting an efficient branding opportunity and putting you on the same bucket than any other “blank picture” users. Take this opportunity to differentiate yourself!

Write a short text.

The goal here is not to write an article. This is another opportunity to write the essential about who you are. You think you are unique? Write it down! What are your passions? What are your goals in this social media site? What should I know to give me an idea of who you are? Don’t hesitate to point your profile reader to your own realizations! It could be your personal blog, your website, etc. Of course, be careful to not include sensitive information. The best text is precise and concise! Just tell me who you are!

Include ways to contact you.

In some social media sites, you will have the opportunity to add your contact information in specific fields. Include few ways to contact you. It could be your AIM ID, Google Talk ID, email, etc. Just publish the ways you are best comfortable with. This type of information offers great possibilities to increase your network. In fact, adding someone on you friend list is quite easy and need generally no communication at all. However, building your network with a one on one conversation will help you to make your network stronger and based on real communications!

Include links to other profiles.

Again, some social media will let you enter links to other social media profiles. Don’t miss that opportunity! This will give the chance to any people who add you on this social media site to add you in other sites. Please, make sure you didn’t put the same exact (copy/paste) profile text for every social site you subscribed on. If so, change them to fit the social media it serves. Make it original and unique!

2. Make Sure You Understand The Whole System.

One of the most popular reason why people fail using social media sites is because they don’t properly understand the whole system. How could you be successful with something you just don’t really understand? In fact, no body would! So take care to read a lot about the system. Here are some key points:

- How do the voting system works?
- How do I add friends/followers?
- What are the privileges of people I befriended?
- What are the communication channels available within the system?
- How does befriending somebody affect these communication channels?
- What are the exact criteria to make my content popular?

And so on…

Don’t hesitate to ask people that are familiar with that site to give you some information. This may help you avoiding big headaches!

3. Watch and Learn.

Another reason why people may fail using social media sites is because they don’t observe enough! Life is short so take it easy… give you the time to properly observe the whole behavior of the system. You better sharpen you axe for 10 minutes and cut the tree within an hours than starting immediately and take 3 hours to cut it! Here are some elements you may want to observe first:

Observe which type of stories works and which don’t.

I hope this is not a surprise for anyone: each social media site have some topic preference. For example, Digg works great for news, Linux, Apple topics and some others. However, it would be very hard to make your blogging story hit the font page. Understanding that each social media sites have its own function is critical. If you submit the right content on the right sites, you may get terrific results! But the only way to get there is to watch and learn.

Observe the headlines that work better.

Headlines are decisive for social media sites. There are so much content submitted; the only way to get through all that stuff is to scan the headlines. So if you make your headline attractive and catchy, you will most likely get a massive number of readers. Note that there are some headline patterns. Depending of the social media site, you’ll notice that some perform pretty well.

4. Add Friends Smartly.

I don’t want to treat this topic very deeply here, because I think that befriending is part of a good network development strategy. I would like to develop this topic as an individual post or maybe a series. The only thing I want to say here is that befriending shall be done smartly in opposition to mechanically. There are a smart ways and some kind of spammy ways. I don’t want to be moralist here, but my opinion is that befriending is a critical process that may have significant impact on your distribution strategy. Thus, I think it worth to do it with cares. As a first step, I would recommend to browse through the content and to befriend people that submit and vote for content that you really enjoy. Please don’t add 500 people at the same time! This would look like spam; and it is! You better add few on a regular basis than adding a big bunch once in a while.

5. Experiment.

There is no better way to learn! You will inevitably generate unexpected outcomes when you’ll be experimenting something new. However, the essential is to understand what happened and to learn from it! Try submitting different type of content and different headlines. Make your own experiences and build your social media plan based on your results. Experimenting is the foundation of human knowledge. Try something new, something original and be audacious! Knocking at the door of audacity can make the wind turn on your side!

In Summary…

Developing social communications and built a mass critical network to distribute content efficiently takes a lot of time and effort. However, when done properly, it could bring you benefits you even never think of. Don’t sign up on a social media site to distribute your own content; sign up because you want to build a strong and an efficient network. Relational and social media marketing will inevitably give you back what you gave to others!

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As a blogger, your blog may be seen as the product you want to sell. As an example, it could be seen as an online magazine you are creating and offering for free. Unfortunately, most of blogs like yours are offering contents for free, which means that this is not something that may differentiate your product from others. Differentiating your product is critical to gain visibility and brand your name. No matter your niche or what your blog is about, adding-value is the best tactic to build an efficient marketing strategy.

Traditional marketing defined 5 added-value levels related to a product: the central advantage, the generic product, the expected product, the augmented product and the potential product. What I suggest is to take a look at these when we apply those different levels to your own product: your blog.

Let’s move on…

1. Central Advantage.

The central advantage level is the core of your blog. In fact, it is precisely related to your niche and your targeted topic. What are the needs you want to fill? This is the first thing you shall define. Of course, choosing to start your blog on a very crowded niche will reduce your central advantage because it will be quite harder to really add value at the starting point. However, my own opinion is that you always should blog about something for which you really have developed a passion. The most essential is to understand that the needs you may choose to fill defines your audience and the level of difficulty to add value. Thus, your first goal should be to properly identify your audience to create the proper content.

2. Generic Product.

This level may be seen as the central advantage supportive level. In other words, this level is your basic product. In fact, it represented your blog with nothing more than the content, the blogging platform – WordPress for example – and the brand, which includes the domain name. It only contains the essential elements to satisfy your readers’ needs.

3. Expected Product.

Your readers inevitably have some expectations about your blog. In fact, being aware of what readers expect within your niche is essential. For example, they may expect quality content, basic blog functionalities like comments and search, original and regular posts, answers to requested questions or related to comments, etc. These are generic expectations, but your niche may have some specific ones. This may seem very obvious, but understanding your audience’s expectations shall be the basement and the core of your marketing strategy. This added-value level is critical, because it demonstrate your understanding of your audience and of your overall niche. If you properly answer to your audience’s expectations, you are in a good way to develop a loyal audience and to increase your readership.

4. Augmented Product.

This level initiates your blog differentiation. How do your blog stand out from the crowd? Once your readers got answers to their expectations, they may want to look at your differentiators. What makes your blog so different than any other blogs on your niche? This level defines every supplementary advantages and added-value you may include to your blog. As an example, you may offer some free services, consultation or mentoring. Of course, the more creative, the better it is. This level is, to my own opinion, the most challenging one. It shall definitively be part of any strategies. You may want to be very careful about what any other blogs on your niche is offering. What makes them different from other blogs? Being aware on how other blogs on your niche differentiate themselves is fundamental. This information is require to build an efficient marketing tactic.

5. Potential Product.

What is the innovation potential of your blog? Thinking about the evolution of your blog is crucial. Any growth must be manageable and, thus it must be properly planned. Are you aware of the evolution of the web? The age of Web 2.0 is currently ongoing. It bring us tremendous platforms to build communities and work through intuitive front ends like blogs and social media sites. But what’s next? Semantic web? Of course, this may not happen before few years from now; it is something to consider in a long-term view. However, it is my opinion that it worth to stay tune on any web innovations. On a short-term view, the innovation of your product shall be something to keep in mind very seriously. What could you do to be one or two steps ahead on your niche? Innovations and creative actions may give you the keys to reach new markets on your niche. Always remember that the world is built by audacious and creative minds!

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The Blogging Idol contest is live! There are more than 100 participants that joined the contest and I would like to begin by wishing them good luck. In fact, developing a successful blog is not something easy. It requires lots of time and effort. Thus, I’m very glad to see that many bloggers demonstrate audacity by participating to this contest. I hope them all to increase their readership significantly!

An Admirable Cause

This said, I’m personally ready to face this challenge but I’m not facing it alone. I would like to communicate that I decided to make this challenge a way to serve a more admirable cause. In fact, I’m actually in contact with the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation. The mission of this foundation is to raise funds to contribute to the advancement of teaching and research as well as financing the acquisition of cutting-edge medical equipment. But the most important, to my own opinion, is that all this knowledge and equipment then benefit to sick children.

On my side, I would like to help them by sharing the prize of the contest if I win. Since the money part of the prize is 800$, my goal would be to give them the whole 800$! However, note that I will highly consider selling other parts of the prize if more than 800 readers subscribe to my blog.

I particularly care about this foundation because it is related to sick children. As the father of 2 healthy children, I believe that giving donation to this foundation is just something natural. We are generally not thinking about these children when ours are healthy, but I think we should. I don’t want to be moralist here; everyone is living with their own values, and mines goes to children.

The Rules

You may be aware that the winner of the Blogging Idol contest will be the blog that will accumulate the highest number of subscriber in one month. The challenge started July 1st and will end July 31th. If you want more information about this contest, take a look at the original post.

Obviously, if I want to give this money I have no other choice than winning! However, I would require your help to achieve this goal. So I make the rule quite simple:

I will donate 1$ to the Children Foundation for every new subscriber on my blog.

Note that in the case I win, I won’t be looking who subscribed and then unsubscribed after the contest. I commit myself to give this money if I win, period! Also, concerning this commitment, I have to say that I’m still in discussion with the Children Foundation to obtain a letter or something to certify that my commitment is real and concrete. I’ll let you know as soon as I get it.

The Benefits to Subscribe to my Blog

Of course, subscribing to my blog will worth 1$ for the Children Foundation if I win, but there are also other benefits to subscribe. First, you’ll get quality and free tips to improve your blog directly to your inbox. Second, you’ll get the chance to win a free 125×125 ad spot above the fold every month. Get more details about this last item here.

In Summary…

For sure, the Blogging Idol contest is a great opportunity for me to increase my readership, but I thought that it would be much more honorable to share the prize with a greater social cause. From now, you’ll be the only one to know if you will subscribe or not. However, if you still hesitate, one suggestion would be to subscribe to take a look at the future posts and simply unsubscribe if you don’t like them. Easy, isn’t it?

You Want to Help me?

Here are some actions you may consider if you want to help me:

1. Subscribe to my blog. Your tips could be delivered either on your inbox or on your feedreader.
2. Writing a post about this story.
3. Submitting this story on social media sites.
4. Creating a link back to my blog or to this story.
5. Sending this story to your friends.
6. Writing a supportive comment!

To everyone that help me in any way, I will do something for you. Of course, I won’t be able to give you 800$ – even if I would like to – but I’ll do something worthy for you. Note that you will have to contact me and tell me what you’ve done. As a fast suggestion, I’m thinking to make a special page that will list everyone with a link back to your blog or website. In fact, it would be something like a “Thanks” page for all the contributors. I’ll give me some time to think about other possibilities.

To get more information about the Children Foundation, please visit their website.

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Friendship is the foundation of social relationship. In fact, everybody is linked to someone else through friends or contacts. This concept is the basement of every social media network sites. The goal behind those sites is simple: build social networks/communities to communicate, collaborate or entertain.

We are all part of one or several social media sites. Depending of our goals, we may be developing some type of networks more than others. To do so, we have to add friends or followers. The simple action to add a new friend on your list may be done very mechanically. However, it is essential to understand that social development isn’t something that shall be done mechanically or without any valuable reason. In fact, there are several effets resulting from this action. Being conscious of these seems to me like the starting point of a successful social media network development. Here is a list of these effects:

1. Accessibility to suggested contents.

Depending of the social media site, the suggested contents may vary from posts and articles to pictures and videos. It may even be some kind of live content just like Twitter. Most commonly, friendship is based on sharing experiences, thoughts and recommendations. Content distribution is one of the biggest benefits resulting from social media activity. It is also essential to understand that adding friends is all about creating your own community. Thus, adding friends essentially means to share the interests of every individuals. You community will then be defined as the aggregation of every piece of content.

2. Greater communication facilities.

In several social media sites, befriending someone means to open up the door to more communication facilities. Let’s talk about Twitter with the “Direct Messages” channel or StumbleUpon with the “Send to” functionality. Of course, more communication channels sounds like something positive – and it is – but again it depends of your goals. More channels mean more time and more management.

3. Accessibility to extra data.

Befriending someone also means to open up a door for others to access to some extra data. It could be more data about your profile or any other data like your “Shouts” in Digg. Many social media sites allow configuring your profile to manage your preferred level of privacy, but most of the time befriending means more visibility on who you are, what you do and how to reach you.

4. Expansion of your social network.

Of course, this is precisely the goal for adding friends and this is what you want. However, I think it is interesting to look further than just looking at the first level. This first level is the specifically the friend you want to add. In fact, you may additionally want to look at the second level, which refers to the friends of this particular potential friend (Got it? :grin:). You may understand here that adding someone is, indirectly, adding another social network. Is that network corresponds to what you want? Will it properly serve your goals? Depending of your goals and your strategy, you may take into account this type of information.

5. Potential to increase your blog readership.

Every Internet user is a potential loyal reader, right? Befriending someone seems to me like a great opportunity to introduce your blog or your website. This first contact may be very positive if you don’t just mechanically adding friends. Relationships may be initiated by this type of action. Of course, this will require personalizing each and every addition. However, the benefits may be significant. Remember that true relationships are priceless.

In summary, social network development needs to be well understood and strategically plan to properly serve your goals. Moreover, it is also essential to understand that friendship significance differ from a social media site to another. Thus, your social development strategy may also differ accordingly!

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Also, if you like what you read, I’ll really appreciate if you could share it on Delicious, StumbleUpon or Digg using the links below. Thanks!