Jerry West Asks 10 Important Blogging Questions

  I provide honest feedback to a good friend, Jerry West (www.WebMarketingNow.com), who asks 10 important blogging questions, compiled by his members and himself.

Listen to this interview now to discover all the answers to these questions:

• What is your choice of blogging software?

• In your opinion, what are the most important features for blogs?

• Can the average person conduct an upgrade for WordPress without losing their entire blog, ie. accidentally overwriting the files on the server?

• Besides having the XML subscribe button posted, what are the other ways to get a blog noticed? What are your "must have" subscribe chicklets?

• What are some great marketing tips on getting a new blog in front of the right audience?

• What are your favorite resources for blogging information?

• Which blog directories are best to submit to? Are there good country specific blog directories? Or is it best to just concentrate on US-based blog directories if your blog is outside of the US?

• Does blog and ping still work? What is the best method of getting Google back to your site? (I did a test and found that if you blog at least three times a week and don’t go more than three days of no postings, Google will come back at least a week to reindex the blog. If you blog everyday, Google comes everyday. Your thoughts?)

• If a site like Feedburner distributes my content to all the other blog sites, do I really need to submit the content to all the blog directories?

• What is the "Sherman Method" to obtaining "greatness in blogging" ?

Transcription

Voice Over: ShermanLive.com. Simplifying and demystifying technology so you can profit from it. Welcome to ShermanLive.com presenting time saving tips, short-cuts, how tos, leading edge techniques and money generating strategies. Here’s Sherman Hu…

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Sherman Hu: Hey, hey, hey, Sherman Hu here. I just wanted to let you know that a good friend of mine, Jerry West from WebMarketingNow.com, asked me 10 questions about blogging and here are my answers. I believe they’ll be of tremendous value to you. Enjoy.

What is your choice of blogging software?

As a creator of WordPressTutorials.com, I’m definitely biased with using WordPress as my choice of blogging software, and I have nine different benefits that I want to share with you about why to use WordPress.

Number one is the “cost”. It’s free because it’s open source and you can definitely use it right away today without ever having to pay anything to use it.

Number two is “control” because once you download it from WordPress.org, you own it. So the control is there. You’re not being held hostage by a blogging service that will host your blog with them, but then you’re held hostage with all your content that you’ve published on their platform.

Three, there is an incredible “community” of developers and users of WordPress. So with the developer’s side, there are many people that will develop themes – or if you think of themes as design skins, that’s also another way to think of themes – they will develop themes and plug-ins. Plug-ins are functionalities or features that you can add to your blog almost like an a la carte basis. So you have developers of themes and plug-ins which really help to extend your blog.

Then you have this large community of users that will use it and they will report bugs. If things break, then the core team of developers of WordPress will take that and build patches to make sure that WordPress is solid and stable. So that’s definitely a good reason to use WordPress.

Point four is “customizable”. You can customize your themes, your creative, colors, the features, the plug-ins. If you are not code-friendly and you don’t want to wade in code, then you can definitely find developers out there that will help you tweak the code or customize it to your liking because WordPress is developed with a language called PHP. So if there are developers out there that know PHP, they can help you with that.

Of course, we covered cost, control, community, customizable.

Number five is “comments and collaboration” because a blog like WordPress offers a feature where your audience, your visitors can comment on your blog. You can then collaborate and interact and dialogue with your visitors and your audience. In this new phase of Web 2.0, it’s all not about who you are and what you do with your website. It’s all about extending yourself to the community out there, letting your visitors have a voice to connect with you and that is a wonderful feature to have.

Then, of course, one, two, three, four, five, six. Point six is you can keep “current and cool” with WordPress being that you can push fresh content to it very, very easily. They have a "what you see is what you get" type of editor when you go backstage to your WordPress Admin section, your dashboard, and it’s easy to publish content very fast. You can be very current with your blog because everything sort of looks like you’re publishing something on a Word document.

Now, you also have another benefit which is the ability to “connect” to different social media sites, for example, Facebook and MySpace. You can extend your blog to connect to those places and even to Twitter, which is a micro-blogging tool.

And, of course, you can combine your blog to videos and podcasts and making your blog into a podcast blog or a video blog which is incredible because you really then engage multiple senses of your audience to beyond just text. And that’s a wonderful way to engage your audience and have them understand who you are, look in your eyes, hear your voice, like you, trust you, respect you and really embrace your personality.

Of course, last but not least, you have the ability to “pre-schedule or postdate” your entries. Let’s say, you spent a weekend and you create 52 different tips that will address the market’s needs and your topic on niche market. You go ahead and publish these tips once a week, every Monday, let’s say.

While with 52 tips, you can pre-schedule one entry to publish automatically on its own into the right category, associate it with the appropriate category every Monday so that for the rest of the year, you’ll have a tip coming out every Monday. That will not only help your audience come back for new content from your blog but also train their engines to come back to your blog to index your content on a regular basis.

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What are the most important features for blogs in your view?

Well, I believe there are two: One is “comments” where you can allow your audience to collaborate, to dialogue, to interact with you. I find this to be a very, very important feature that, of course, websites don’t offer.

This dialogue has really offered me an insight into what my readers or my listeners or viewers want to see, find gaps in the marketplace, for them to get to know me better which, of course, is translated into them partaking of my product and service offerings. So that’s a very important feature.

The other important feature really has to do with you as the blogger because I believe that as a blogger-owner, you want to publish fresh, and not only just fresh content but fresh and “value-added content” so that you can speak to your audience’s needs, you can build your subject-matter expertise. Then you can attract your audience to like you, trust you, respect you. That is time. That takes time to build that relationship, but you’ll be shocked at how fast you can build that.

And so, I believe that having the ability to have the audience dialogue with you through commenting on your blog, and for you to publish fresh and value-added content will be a wonderful way for you to extend yourself and your business using blogs.

Can the average person conduct an upgrade for WordPress without losing their entire blog? That is, accidentally overwriting the files on the server.

The short answer is yes. The data is actually on the database on the host server, so what you see on the front end of the blog is just the creative. And so, you can upgrade it by uploading the core set of WordPress files, the updated version to the appropriate folder on your whole server. For example, if you are having your blog installed on the root domain, meaning the root folder, meaning that if you go to your blog at domain.com, you see a blog there. Then your blog is installed in the root folder.

If your blog is installed in a subfolder, then that would mean you would upload it to domain.com/blog, where the blog, of course, is located in the blog subfolder.

Now, if you upgrade your blog, and let’s say your blog is on a subfolder, then you upload the core set of files to the blog subfolder, and then what you want to do is execute the upgrade by going to domain.com, or whatever your domain is, /wp-admin/upgrade.php and that will execute the upgrade and you’ll be set to go with an upgraded version of WordPress.

Besides having the XML Subscribe button posted, what are other ways to get a blog noticed? What are your most have subscribe chicklets?

That’s a great question. Some of the ideas I’m going to share with you right now have to do with extending yourself beyond just what’s happening on your blog. But here goes.

The first feature that I really enjoy is a "Share This" plug-in by Alex King. If you just Google for "Share This Alex King" you’ll find his blog that has a download of this plug-in that you can upload to your blog. It will provide a simple icon that will show up below your blog entry, where somebody can click on that and basically share your entry in a variety of different places. That’s one.

The other thing to get your blog noticed is to promote your blog. And so, I would look for third party bloggers out there, other bloggers in them, in your space that have a lot of authority, and then participating in a conversation there. So, I would go to someplace like Technorati.com, specifically Search.Technorati.com. I would type in your topic, or where you think your audience will congregate. Type it in.

Let’s say you’re dealing with red apples. So, you type in red apples in the search box at Search.Technorati.com and you’ll also be given a drop down table option for authority, and I would select a lot of authority, and hit enter. There you’ll be delivered a set of results where you can see bloggers that have authority in your space.

Then you can jump in there, really kind of read what they’re talking about, participate in a conversation, and add value to those blogs. That way you’ll build relationships and their audience will get to know you as somebody who’s a subject matter expert in that same topic, and they’ll flow over to your blog and hopefully become a follower of your blog, too.

The other way to do it is trackbacking. Trackbacking allows you the ability to comment on somebody else’s blog, but do it from within your blog. So there’s typically a trackback website address, or blog address, or URL that you can copy and paste from the other person’s blog, and as you write a new entry referencing what you want to comment, there is an entry. You scroll down in the page that you are writing on. You scroll down, you’ll be able to see this entry where you can paste that trackback URL.

So, when you publish it, the blog owner will be notified of your trackback, approve it, and it will show up in their comments. This way serves both parties. It serves the blog owner because you’re adding to the conversation. You’re adding value. You’re adding content. Their audience will, of course, read your comments, and if they find what you’ve shared to be a great value, then they’ll flow over to your blog and follow what you’re talking about.

In addition, your audience on your end will know about this conversation going on, and will appreciate you for opening up their sites to somebody else who is also talking about this topic, which actually builds your credibility as somebody who is at the hub of what’s cool and what’s hot and what’s going on. OK?

Now, there’s another way that you can get your blog noticed, which is through social media. Whether it’s Facebook or MySpace, I would put on your party hat, jump in there, and search out groups that are relevant to your topic, or where your audience hangs out, and just join the conversation there. Build your subject matter expertise. Attract them to you by adding value.

So, they like you, they trust you, they respect you, and then they’ll partake of your offerings. That is one of the ways to get your blog noticed, because if you are on Facebook, and you are in a particular group, and you’re adding value, they’ll flow through to your profile, and from your profile they can click over to your blog to find out more about what’s going on with you.

Now, the other two ways to get your blog noticed are through video and audio. If you use video, then you can broadcast your videos to different video sharing sites and video directory sites, which will, of course, if you title it or describe it accurately or effectively, you can have your viewers or new audiences click on the link to come back to your blog to find out more about you.

The same thing with audio. If you’re promoting your podcast, you can submit it to podcast directory sites which will also link back to your blog. The good news is: the video sharing sites and the podcast directory sites will also rank well on all search engines for, however, you’re titling it and that will also boost the number of listings you have in the search engines for what you’re trying to publish. OK? So, those are some of the ways in which you can get your blog noticed.

"What are some great marketing tips on getting a new blog in front of the right audience?"

First, you have to know your audience. I would research your market. I would go to different groups and social media sites like Facebook groups or MySpace groups, discussion boards, even research keywords maybe in WordTracker. Get to know your audience; put yourself in their shoes and discover what their wants are, their needs, their desires, what they’re hungering for. Keep that in mind because that’s the way you would create your content, basically answering questions that they are looking for.

Secondly, I would then create your blog.

Third, I would publish fresh value-added content to your blog. Of course, this is going to be easy because you have the answers to the questions you’ve researched from your marketplace. You can publish this content, whether in text or audio or video and then push the free line and when folks are participating in your content that you offered, and they realize that it’s really good, juicy content, then they’ll want more of what you have to offer whether it’s services or whether it’s additional products.

And fourth, I would put on your party hat, go hang out where your marketplace hangs out and join in the conversation. Don’t be a dork, enjoy the party like you would at a cocktail party, right? So, at a cocktail party you’d be respectful, you’d be relevant, you’d be helpful, you’d add value and you wouldn’t pitch like a dork when you first arrive at the party, because it’s easy to get booted out of the party and not be invited back again.

So, that’s what I would recommend: I would recommend you establish your brand, your subject-matter expertise, so that people like you, they trust you, they respect you, and then they’ll check out your profile and your blog and potentially partake of your offerings.

"Which blog directories are best to submit to? Are there good country-specific blog directories, or is it best just to concentrate on US-based blog directories if your blog is outside of the US?"

Honestly, I can’t answer this intelligently. I don’t pay much attention to this but in your "Options" tab, "Writing" sub-tab in your WordPress dashboard, you’ll scroll down and find a link that reads "Update services". Now, click on it, it’ll bring you to the "Codex" at WordPress.org in the "Update services" section and you’ll find that you can copy and paste a comprehensive list of English blog-ping services that you can then paste into your "Update services" box.

Then of course, you’ll save it and now when you publish a blog entry it’ll automatically ping all those directories on the fly without you having to do any additional work.

"Does blogging ping still work? What is the best method of getting Google back to your site? I did a test and found out that if you blog at least three times a week and don’t go more than three days of no postings, Google will come back at least once a week to re-index your blog. If you blog every day, Google comes every day. Your thoughts."

If you subscribe to the process of copying and pasting a comprehensive list of English blog pinging services to your "Options" tab, "Writing" sub-tab section of your dashboard in the "Update services" box, then that’s all you have to do. When you write a blog entry it’ll ping all the engines automatically. In addition, sometimes I’ll only use onlywire.com and pingoat.com to broadcast my entries.

Now the main point here is to publish content that’s not only fresh but that’s value-added and that comes back to knowing your market and their wants. Of course, publishing regularly takes time and practice but also if you would do a batch of entries on a weekend you can then pre-schedule your entries to show up maybe once every two days, once every three days and that will work well for you to do that so that you can work smart and not hard.

"If a site like FeedBurner distributes my content to all the other blog sites, why do I really need to submit the content to all the blog directories?"

No, you don’t. Aside from the initial ping and FeedBurner picking up your new content you don’t have to do much more with that. Just start connecting with other bloggers and your marketplace via joining conversations in social media sites and services. That’s all you really need to do.

Now one other thing you could do is to participate in other social media sites where you re-purpose your content and push the good value out there. That will help to give you additional exposure to new audiences, giving you additional reach to new audiences. Then they will, of course, come back to your blog.

And the final question which I think is really funny is:

"What is the Sherman method to obtaining greatness in blogging?"

I would say, first of all keep it real. You know, be who you are and have fun with it. You want to build your brand. You want to build your expertise, your credibility, by putting on your party hat, joining in the conversation and adding value to others. Push the free line. Don’t be afraid to share good information out there with your audience.

I would also say that you might want to, and I highly recommend, that you start looking to podcasting and videocasting because you can engage your audiences in multiple ways that you can’t with text. And extend your "-ness", like in the movie "You, Me and Dupree" when Owen Wilson like in Anthony Robin’s style shouts out to the crowd to embrace their "-ness". If your name is Joe, then your Joe-ness, or your Michelle-ness.

So, really kind of extend who you are and your personality and keep it real. And I believe that that will pay dividends for you in having people like you, trust you, respect you, embrace your offerings, whether it’s a service offering or a product offering, and you’ll be on your way!

Announcer: Keep it tuned in to Sherman, on ShermanLive.com. Want to call Sherman, or send him some love? Go to ShermanLive.com today!

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