This is a guest post by Srinivas Rao, the editor in Chief of Flightser. He writes about personal development at The Skool of Life and is the host of BlogcastFM, a podcast to help you take your blog to the next level.

Two months ago the CEO of our company asked me to take the lead on launching and growing a brand new travel blog. Flightster, is currently functioning only as a blog and will eventually become a fully functional flight booking engine within the next several months. Starting solely as a blog has shown us the tremendous power that a blog can have in building brand awareness.

Objectives:

• Build Brand awareness
• Leverage social media to Connect with the Online Travel Community

Building the Blog

#1  Budget

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen companies make is to assume that the social media is “free.” Social media should be treated just as other marketing channels are. It should have a budget allocated for it. Our industry is heavily driven by extremely high PPC costs that can get up to 6 figures a month. My boss allocated $2500 a month for me to run the Flighster blog, which is an extremely small percentage of the overall marketing budget. However, $2500.00 is a substantial budget to run a blog if you know how to stretch it.

#2  Writers

Putting together a team of writers was my first order of business once I was put in charge of starting the blog. Initially, I reached out to writers from other well established travel blogs in the hopes of getting them to write for Flightster. I got no responses except one letting me know that the writer had been locked into an exclusive with another popular travel blog. After that I decided to tap into my personal network. This is where the power of having my own blog became very apparent. If the person in charge of your corporate blog has his or her own blog and it has a following, put that person in charge of your company blog. The greatest asset that person brings to the table is a network of contacts with an established online presence.

My boss gave me the go ahead to allocate $75-100 per post for contributions, so I reached out to the best writers I could find in my network. I looked at people who I had interviewed for my podcast and those whose blogs I read on a daily basis. Below are the main criteria I looked for in a team of writers:

• Good writers with established audiences who loved them
• Blogs with Roughly 1000 Subscribers
• Bloggers who were very active on Twitter

I reached out to a popular location independent blogger as my first step and I recruited the remaining writers based on his referrals, with only one exception who I hand picked after reading his blog. One simple way to look at this was “If I wouldn’t subscribe to their blog myself, then I wouldn’t hire them as a writer.”

#3  Editorial Policy

Prior to the launch of Flighster, I spent several months looking at many corporate blogs. When I compared them to the individual blogs I read on almost a daily basis, I noticed a major difference. Individual blogs had an interesting voice and sounded human. They were filled with comments and they kept readers coming back for more. Most company blogs sounded like a marketing brochure and they were incredibly boring. My solution was simple, a very loose editorial policy. If what made my writers popular on their own blogs was their writing, then I saw no reason to place many restrictions on them. I knew this would allow them to write the most interesting content possible.

#4  Timeless Content

I was given only one restriction from our CEO and that was to produce content that was timeless. You’ve heard this phrase “content is king” over and over again. By producing content that is “timeless” we could significantly increase the amount of time people spent on the site looking at our content. Timeless content is what gets shared over and over again. For many bloggers it’s not uncommon to have something popular they wrote over a year ago shared on twitter or Facebook, so I recommend companies take this same approach to content.

Marketing the Blog

After assembling the writing team, I started to think about the most efficient ways to market a blog. Growing my personal blog had taken over a year before it was really on anybody’s radar. With Flightster, I was determined to do this much faster so I decided to narrow my efforts down to 3 channels.

Channel 1 : The Audiences of the Writers

When I started the blog, I assumed that the audience that the writers brought with them would my greatest source of traffic. Part of my thought process in hiring them was that the marketing was already built into the content since I assumed their audience would follow them. As a result, we decided to sponsor the Way Below Status Quo Tour, a road trip across America where 3 bloggers were going to meet all of their readers in person. In exchange for the sponsorship, we asked for 3 posts a week on the Flightster Blog about the various destinations they were visiting. The cost was $100 per post. Given that their readers that they were meeting were also bloggers and people with an active online presence it provided yet another way for our message to spread. While it did give us a, nice initial kickstart, I knew that it was going to take a bit more to make the blog grow.

Channel 2: Facebook

With a budget of $2500 a month, the cost of a Facebook ad would go up very quickly and I wasn’t convinced that it would provide the most effective ROI. But I knew that a Facebook fan page would be essential at some point. So, I set up the fan page and allowed it to grow somewhat organically. The Facebook page is still a bit of a work in progress.

Channel 3: Twitter/My Personal Network

Given the budget I would require to get the most out of Facebook I decided to focus my efforts on Twitter. As a blogger, I noticed something about the audiences of Twitter and Facebook. They didn’t seem to have much overlap when it came to the everyday internet user. However, anybody who was a blogger seemed to be extremely active on Twitter. This was the group of people who could make a message spread. Additionally, I had my personal network of bloggers on Twitter who I have interacted with almost daily over the past several months.

A Campaign to Hire a New Writer

After staffing the blog with 4 writers, I decided to hire another writer. Rather than ask for writing samples and picking the one I liked best, I wanted to use the hiring process as a viral marketing tool. I asked the potential writers to do the following:

• Write a Blog Post About Anything Travel Related on their own blog: I asked them to write on their own blogs because I knew it was something they would already be doing at least a few times a week. The thought process was to make it as as easy as possible for people to participate.
• Link to Flighster in the Post: The goal behind this was simply to generate relevant inbound links from other travel blogs. My SEO knowledge is pretty limited to what I’ve read on various blogs, but I felt that this would also help get the word out about Fligtster among other travel bloggers.
• Tweet the blog Post with the hashtag #FLIGHTSTER and follow us on Twitter: This allowed me to not only build a following amongst travel bloggers, but also stay engaged with all the participants throughout the course of the competition. Additionally, it proved to be a great tool for building awareness of the Flightster brand.
• Get our Attention: In an effort to keep the engagement level with participants up, I gave them freedom to get our attention in any way they felt they could. The result was video submissions and a consistent sharing of their own content with the hashtag #Flightster.
• Voting for the Next Fligthster: After allowing the contest to run for two weeks, we narrowed it down to 10 finalists. We then setup a poll enabling the readers to vote on their favorite writer, and encouraged the contest participants to promote their participation in the contest in order to get as many votes as possible. The result was a signficant jump in traffic.

The thought process behind the campaign had a few components. First I wanted to kill as many birds with one stone as possible. That is why I made connecting with us in all of our channels a component of the contest. Another thing that we wanted to do was to give the participants a sense of control over their participation in the contest. Many of the various contests have winners that are chose at random, thus reducing the incentive for people to participate. The result of this kind of contest is a “what are my chances” mind set. By allowing people to gather votes to become our next writer, we put them in control. Another interesting byproduct of the contest was that we facilitated an ongoing conversation between participants. Contestants commented on each other’s blogs and followed each other on twitter. We served as a connector.

The Results:

Bloggers Who Participated: 24

Finalists in the Contest: 8

Traffic During the Contest

Traffic During the First 2 Months of Flightster

As you’ll see above, the results were decent for a brand new blog that nobody had heard of prior to its launch in early July. Without a doubt the campaign to hire a writer was the most effective tool we had in our arsenal which is what caused the biggest spike in traffic. The cost of running this campaign: ZERO DOLLARS.

Lessons Learned:

Engagement vs. Numbers:

One of the things that might surprise some people is that this was all done with roughly 300 followers on twitter and only 130 Facebook fans. If you have thousands of followers who don’t interact with your brand, then you are really missing the point of being on Twitter. Out of the 300 followers, our engagement was focused primarily on the participants in our contest. You need followers who are actually engaged and interacting with your brand. Otherwise it’s like standing on top of a table in a crowded restaurant, wearing a ridiculous outfit and hoping people will want to talk to you. This might seem the like the slower way to grow on twitter, but it’s just slower when you start out. In the long run this approach will make you grow much, much faster. Just ask Scott Stratten, a guy who nobody knew last year and is now this years keynote speaker for Blogworld.

The Power is in a Network:

I can’t underscore how much my personal network played a role in this. Given that I have my own blog and a personal network, getting the word out about this contest was simply a matter of emailing all the bloggers who I had relationships with and asking them to share our post about our contest with their followers. Given that the post was about getting paid to write for a blog, it made complete sense for them to share it with their networks and I got no resistance at all. So, my advice is find out who in your company already has a network in place.

The Tipping Point and The Rule of 150:

A few weeks back I was listening to Malcom Gladwell’s book, the Tipping point for the second time and I came across a concept known as “The Rule of 150.” The basic idea behind this rule is simple. The highest number of social relationships we can effectively manage is 150 and it takes roughly 150 people to make an idea spread. This was the driver behind how I decided to approach building the Flightster following on Twitter and in my own personal brand. With my personal brand I have seen a significant jump in traffic and subscribers to my blog. What this all comes down to is one simple fact: Social media is building a “social” relationship with your brand.

Now Is Your Turn…

How do you build your blog from scratch? Does Social Media plays a big role in your blog-building plan? Share with us your story or if you have anything to ask Srinivas, do so in the comments below.

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A lot of resolutions been talked about lately. How many of you have set up goals based on what you’ve learned in the past? Now I must admit, initially I have no intention to do a blog review based on performances in 2009. To dig up old archive seem troublesome and it’s much better to save effort for a much productive work, right? Wrong.

Measuring blog success isn’t just about bragging how good you are, but identify how much you could or should have done to improve blog traffic. Bottom line, if you are serious to increase blog traffic, a review is needed for:

• Periodic goal-settings

• Understanding own potentials and ability

• Measuring current blog status and progress

• Knowing parts to improve and avoiding repeated mistakes

• Following up on lost comments & connections

Based on these 6 ways to track blog success, I can have a general idea how my blog survived all the way from March, 2009 (1st post about social media). During the process, I immediately realized the first and utmost lesson is to involve Analytics and Feedburner more in my planning instead of just a casual check monthly.

Popularity and Blog Traffic Review

Results are ranging from 17th March, 2009 to 6th January 2010 (my 1st day of work in 2010):

What I love about tracking comments is to find out which post type attracts the most discussions; what matters to the readers when they visit and the content that stands out from the rest. Engagement is a big deal here therefore I’m blessed to have a group of loyal readers who are taking comments very seriously! May the spirit continues in 2010. Of course, in order to obtain more accurate results, social media strategies and time factor are to be taken into considerations as well.

Other criteria that helped in commenting: Do-Follow, CommentLuv (Reasons To Love), Blog Promoting via Social Media

Top 5 Famous Posts via Google Analytics:

13 Facebook Applications to Promote Your Blog
How To Pick Up From Your Blogging Downturns
How Seriously Do You Take Blog Comments?
16 Social Bookmarking Plugins to Promote Your Posts
16 Misconceptions About ‘Serious’ Blogging

The results are slightly different but undeniably, Facebook is a hot topic here. The post was only written in October, 2009 but it overtook other posts and came first in Analytics. Also, it made me realized which type of posts are search-worthy; which are favored in social bookmarking sites and so on.

My Top 5 Traffic Source in 2009

I’m only active in Stumbleupon after migrating to wordpress in July. SU brought me a lot of new visitors but its bounce rate was still among the highest comparing to other traffic source. In order to capture the right audience in StumbleUpon, do make sure the submitted post is tagged correctly. Here’s a great post of 5 Tactis to drive in traffic from StumbleUpon, old tricks but good tips. As for Google Search that improves to rank #3 out of no where, no doubt that WordPress plugins such as All In One SEO helped me a great deal.

I believe migrating to WordPress from Blogger is the smartest decision I made in 2009 to increase blog traffic.

Power of Twitter & StumbleUpon in Promoting Blog Posts

Even though I started to blog in August, 2008, I only switched to social media blogging in March, 2009. Between my first and last social media post in 2009, I found 2 spikes happened in May and September respectively. It was during the time when these 2 posts were published:

a) The Best of Twitter Desktop Clients – Secrets Revealed!

- (61% direct traffic while 21% Twitter.com)

I remembered clearly it was the magic of Twitter that drove in the traffic. Loic from Seesmic tweeted about this post and soon the tweet went viral! You may be surprised why Analytics showed most of the visits are from ‘direct traffic’ instead of Twitter.com, this is because some clicks from Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck, Twhirl etc will not be counted in Twitter.com but as ‘direct traffic’ to your blog.

b) How To Pick Up From Your Blogging Downturns – ( 85% stumbleupon)

I was very surprised with this result but I think part of the reasons is the kind support given by my blogger friends. Could it be due to the Su.pr evolution and easy-to-adapt toolbar for browsers which made stumbling quick and easy? I think so too since I’m also an active stumbler in the same way. Everyone can easily participate in more than one social media sites nowadays so it will definitely help if we manage to assist one another in post-promoting. That’s the beauty of integration and networking.

Now It’s Your Turn…

What is your most popular post and which social media site has been your main traffic source so far? Share your post link and ideas in the comment below.

Are you a prolific blogger who owns multiple blogs and eager to share everything on your Facebook Fan Page? If yes, congratulations! This post is dedicated to you.

We all are aware of how easy it is to autopost from A BLOG to facebook account. You can have plenty of app choices even among the 13 Facebook Applications to Promote Your Blog. However when it comes to multiple blogs, sometimes we are forced to input them manually or rely on combination of apps such as Notes, Social RSS to make it happen. Actually there’s an easier way!

Here’s a request earlier from a blogger friend who posted on my blog’s fan page :

As much Wordbook sounds promising, we know it is not capable enough to post for multiple blogs and to Facebook Fan Pages. Truth is, you don’t have to add any WordPress plugins. The answer lies in the hand of NetworkedBlogs and I’m gonna show you how:

Register Your Blogs to NetworkedBlogs

First requirement is you need to make sure all your blogs are registered to NetworkedBlogs and you’re following them individually (skip this section if you’ve done that already):

1.  Add NetworkedBlogs to your Facebook application.

2.  Then click ‘Register a new blog’. Fill up the details required.

3.  At ‘Blog Feed’ section, click ‘Pull Now’ to import all posts from your blog. Refresh the page if needed.

4.  Verify your account for each blog (either way) following the instructions given (Repeat step 2 – 4 for your multiple blogs) :

Configure Your Facebook Fan Page For Autoposting

1.  Go to your Facebook Fan Page. Click ‘Edit Page’ to enter management page.

2.  Scroll all the way down to locate ‘Networkedblogs’ and hit ‘Edit’.

3.  All the blogs you’re currently following will be displayed in the Page Settings. Select the blogs you wish to import to your Facebook page.

4.  Grant permission and Save your settings.

Done. Now whenever your blogs are updated with new posts, they will be published on both Facebook page and personal account.

But, what if you wish to prevent personal account from receiving blog updates?

Some people may not like to harass their real life friends with business related info, here’s what you can do:

1.  In NetworkedBlog, look for ‘Feed Settings’ at the right sidebar to change your feed-posting preferences.

2.  At ‘Fan Pages’ section, click ‘Configure’ and mark the ‘Auto-Publish blog posts to Page Wall’ ; whereas for Personal Profile remained un-ticked.

That’s it! All can be done within Facebook Fan Page! Import as many entries you need to enhance blog traffic.

Recommended Read: How to Import Twitter Favorites to Facebook Page
(More ways to import blog posts to your facebook Page with RSS feed)

Here’s A Great News…

We reached 100 members today so we got ourselves a custom URL ~ facebook.com/SocialBloggingTracker ! YAY! You guys rock and can’t thank you all enough for the participation. If you haven’t join us, by all means! It’s a perfect place for all readers/social media enthusiasts to meet and get inspired!

Do you find the tutorial useful? If you know a better way to autopost from multiple blogs to Facebook Fan Pages, do share with us in your comment.

Having trouble separating social lives between leisure and work? Let Facebook Pages help you out.

I’m on Facebook Page for days now and glad that I don’t have to bombard my own profile site with updates my friends find annoyed *chuckle*. But being active on Twitter, wouldn’t it be fantastic if we get to publish selective tweets between personal and Facebook Pages? Good thing that’s now doable in various Twitter platforms and I’m going to show you how.

3 Easy Ways to Share Selective Tweets on Facebook Pages

Tweetdeck (v0.30.5)

1. Go To Tweetdeck Settings > Accounts > Add New Account > Add Your Facebook account.

You will prompt to add your Facebook Pages as well. Isn’t that convenient?

2. Approve the authorization to connect with Facebook by logging in.

3. Tweetdeck will display all Facebook Pages that you are administrated.

Pick either or all for your preferences; publish posts or comments without repeated logins:

4. Now your can update your Facebook account or Page(s) via Tweetdeck.

Seesmic Desktop (v0.6.2)

1. Go to Control Panel > Accounts > Click the ‘+’ sign & Add your Facebook account.

2. Click at the newly added Facebook account, you’re optional to have either or both included for:

a. Administered pages – Facebook Pages you’re an admin of.

b. Fan Pages – Pages you followed.

3. Make your selections after you’ve authorized and integrated Facebook Pages with your Seesmic Desktop.

4. Configure the Extended Permissions to have posts/comments published via Seesmic Desktop without repeated prompting.

5. There! Add as many Facebook Pages you like and start your selective tweeting.

Twitter Web Page Interface

If your computer system is not compatible to either one of the desktop client above, Facebook has a plugin that’ll work just fine with Twitter web page interface. Introducing:

Selective Twitter Status – choose particular tweets to be published on either Facebook profile or Fan Pages. Make sure your Twitter updates are NOT protected on Twitter. Put ‘#fb‘ at the end of each selected tweet as shown below:

a. Put #fb at the end of your tweet, for example–
Your message here http://your link #fb

b. have #fb followed by a space then a link, for example–
Your message here #fb http://your link

Add the Selective Twitter Status to your application. Remember to click ‘Add to Page’ first before proceeding to your Facebook Pages setup.

During the configuration, you can have either Your Profile or Your Fan Page(s) to integrate with Twitter account. We’ll look at the Fan Page configuration first:

1. Go to ‘Your Fan Pages‘. Only pages you’re an admin of will be displayed. Make your pick.

2. Type in your Twitter username > Save Changes.

3. In order to have BOTH Fan Page and personal account compatible with the plugin, you need to grant permission for Fan Page first before doing the same for profile.

4. After ‘Grant Permission‘, you’ll be directed to allow status updates as illustrated.

Choose your Fan Page first and click ‘Allow Status Updates‘ before you do the same for your profile page.

But make sure you have filled in your Twitter name first before authorization.

5. This is how the updates will appear in Fan Pages:

Isn’t it great? Problems solved! Now you can post however and whatever you wish interchanging your Facebook personal account and Fan Pages.

Recommended Read: Use Google Reader to Import selective Twitter Favorites to Facebook Page

It’s Your Turn To Share

What other difficulties you faced while trying to integrate social media with one another? Do share your thoughts. And if you’re on Facebook, why not say hi and let’s connect at Facebook Page.

Can you do me a little favor to share this post with your network? ^^

It has been 5 days since Stumbleupon had a makeover, or, plan to.

Stumbleupon has long been my favorite social bookmarking site & blog traffic source. Ever since the emerge of Su.pr & firefox plugin, I hardly log in to its main site except to check on messages and friends’ submissions occasionally.

Enough said. You must be wondering what’s new?

The 3S – Simpler, Searchable & Sociable!

Simpler

New skyblue-ish interface is now towards simplicity. Upon logged in, you’ll notice main options ‘Discover, Favorites, Stumblers’ are arranged systematically on top. No more distracting tags splattering over the page (listed in dropdown menu of ‘Topic’). When selected, sub-tabs of each main option will display horizontally as shown. Neat and easy to navigate. The grid & list options stay.

Page submission and tagging much easier done through SU toolbar plugin. Take notice, as the current Stumbler URL is listed as www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/username instead of username.stumbleupon.com. Maybe the SU team will auto-update it for us in November. Will look into this.

Searchable

It is said that new Stumbleupon is much search-friendly now. You can have the keywords search not just within your own favorites, but friends’ or everyone’s as well. Amount of page views shown for each stumbled page; suggested search terms will be given if no match was found. With Best Match & Recently Rated options, you can have all the scoops related to your niche in no time.

I’ve tested but found out present interface has more accurate search results comparing to new. Perhaps may upgrade after the full implementation? We’ll see.

Socialble

Apart from email import, new Stumbleupon is facilitated with Search for stumbler option. Friend request is no longer available. Site-sharing will base on Accept shares to my toolbar setup or mutual subscribers. So be your friend’s SU subscribers if you plan to receive their recommended sites.

Similarity meter is gone for good, replaced by We both like.

It’s Up To You Now…

Go ahead and taste the switch. You can switch old interface back anytime before November. Dislike it? Feedback to SU team to have them review the changes.

If you like this post, kindly share it with your friends:

Request: “Hope you can write about FB applications to promote blog in future ! Thanks !”

Do you own a Facebook and a blog? If so, think you’re going to enjoy this week’s discussion. Thanks to S.Pradeep Kumar for bringing up the question during his visit at 16 Social Bookmarking Plugins to Promote Your Post. I’ve started a little journey digging through Facebook in past weeks, hoping to find some relevant ideas on how to promote your blog using Facebook applications. Before we’re getting into any of those, make sure you fill up as much information on your Facebook Profile as possible — digital name card for first timers:

13 Facebook Applications To Promote Your Blog

There are ways to frequent your blog’s visibility within Facebook network. Do bear in mind you don’t have to use ALL of them or keep your Wall busy with all the blog updates – especially if you are a productive daily-blog-poster. It may get a little annoyed and your friends may secretly switch off your news feed reminder so be smart on picking the ones that suit your network.

Basic Features:

1. Links & Updates

- Share your blog / post link with your friends to have them feedback or comment on it. Or easier, announce an update to have them all aware of the blog launch. Just a snap!

2. Notes

- Copy and paste your individual blog articles or import the entire blog feed into Notes so your friends can read them, either through link sharing or by tagging them. They can spread the notes on your behalf or comment on it as well. The notes can be viewed in Full or Compact (shown in pic) mode.

Blog/Posts Exposures via Additional Applications:

3. Facebook Pages

- Facebook Fan Pages can be a good idea for blog promoting when:

a. You plan to keep your personal Facebook account separated from your blogging community.

b. You can have discussion board, customized applications while sending email updates to ALL fans, as I like to call them supporters instead.

I have just setup my blog’s Facebook Page. Hope to see you guys there!

Social @ Blogging Tracker

Suggested Read: you may be interested in 16 Facebook Applications to Boost Popularity of Facebook Fan Page

.

4. Networked Blogs

- The most-used application to promote your blog on Facebook with the ability to network with other blogs easily through ‘follow’ option. Followers can post comment, rate the blog and enjoy meeting other followers. Not to mention it equips the ability to autopost from multiple blogs to your Facebook Page too! I had my Social @ Blogging Tracker all fixed up in NetworkedBlogs. It’ll be a privilege to see you there!

You can have your networked blogs visible at the sidebar, underneath your Facebook Profile or on your Facebook Pages. Displaying yours and other blogs you’ve joined or liked, served as an active blogroll apart from blog promotion.

5. Social RSS

- Provide RSS feed subscription for your blog through Facebook. Make your Social RSS visible by setting it appeared as box tab or at the sidebar. Tag the RSS with a familiar name like ‘blog’ so others will notice. Configure and fill up the required fields before activate it. The feeds will update automatically in accordance to your latest post.

6. Simplaris Blogcast

Add To Info

Add To Facebook Profile

- Display your latest or chosen posts with or without graphic on your Facebook Profile (box tab or sidebar) or on Facebook Page. Normally latest posts will be displayed on your Facebook Wall as well if you preset it. Visibility is what Simplaris Blogcast do best, however the updating is quite slow sometimes and require manually setup (free version).

Indirect Methods:

7. Blog

- How about a little indirect method to promote your main site via ‘Blog’ on Facebook? This application allows you to blog directly on Facebook – by unmark the ‘private’ option you can make the post public in ‘Explore’ section to whoever is using the application. Extra audiences, why not? An idea I picked up from those who are using Tumblr and Posterous to promote their main blog.

8. Blog Box

- The efficiency of writing a post on Blog Box (similar to no.7: Blog) or import from your existing blog. If for the latter, it will update every 6 hours checking for new post on your main site. Unless you prefer to spend some dime on Pro version that may save time on the updating, for me that’s unnecessary. Blog Box is said to be visible outside Facebook too, so people can add your blog to Google Reader freely.

9. Blog It

- Ability to inter-posting between your social media sites and Facebook. Choices ranging from microblogging to various types of blogging platforms. I’m more into using it for microblogging instead of blog posts but that’s just the matter of preferences. Some similarities shown as Mirror Blog application.

10. Tumblelog

- The ability to display content from your Tumblr blog on your Facebook profile. If you own a Tumblr blog this application is worth a shot.

Extra Facebook Features:

11. Create Facebook Groups

- Create a group that you’re passionate about and have like-minded people to join in. Have on-going and active discussions, connect with members often. You may even find some new members interested in your writings too.

12. Facebook Ads

- If you’re willing to pay for publicity, another idea is via Facebook Ads. You can create a campaign to drive in traffic to your website or your well-known Facebook Page and more. The idea of reaching out to targeted readers varied by age, location, interests is what Facebook Ads do best.

13. Social Media Integration

- Ever since Facebook has decided to open up and willing to integrate with other social media and microblogging sites, sharing a blog post or promotion has never been easier. Through a well-written post you can gain massive exposure on Facebook when blog readers submit your post to:  Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Twitter and have it shown on their Facebook Wall ! As you’ve noticed I’ve tried a few on my Facebook, along with LinkedIn account info and Twitter updates:

a. Social Twitter

b. LinkedIn

Now It’s Your Turn…

If you have any experience gaining popularity to your blog using Facebook applications, feel free to share in the comment section. If it’s relevant I’ll be including it in the post and credit you a mention.

If you like this post, kindly share it with your networks:

How would you like your blog posts to go viral?

Ask any blogger, he/she will tell you: Submit your posts to social bookmarking sites; promote them on social networks.  Sure, but have we optimized our blogs for that challenge yet? Do your readers ever bother to use those lovely social bookmarking plugins beneath your post?

Educate Readers To Utilize Social Bookmarking Plugins.. HOW?

Since self-submissions are prohibited, it lies in the hands of our readers. They may like your post so much but no idea how to share it. What you can do is :

1. Increase visibility of your social bookmarking plugins. Make a post to showcase the tool if you have to.

2. Announce your newly adapted plugin or a social network you just joined; encourage readers to try/join as well.

3. Make a summon at the end of each post to whether ‘stumble/tweet’ the post if they like it. Needless to sound pitiful or demanding, just a friendly reminder that makes them realize  ‘Ohhh.. I can do that! ‘

4. Create a poll. Ask your readers what are their likes/dislikes in post-sharing.

I enjoyed Darren’s latest post about The Myth of ‘Great Content’ Marketing Itself. Post-promoting is a part of content-seeding. If you don’t care about that little post-sharing plugin, your readers won’t either. Remember,

“A Quality Content is Nothing Without Audiences!”

16 Social Bookmarking Plugins To Promote Your Posts

Before that, let me share with you a plugin-check I had on blogs I subscribed (nearly 60% of them are the frequent visitors of my blog). Although the figures do not represent the majority but at least they show the behavior of those who I am networking with for the time being.

Good to know that most of them are using social bookmarking tools, but how about 25% who aren’t? Do they aware of the plugins or simply not planning to include one? Thanks to Christie and the discussion we had in one of her posts’ comment, I decided to test the WordPress plugins myself. Instead of going into lengthy reviews, I decided to share them visually instead — the images can speak well for themselves.

Expandable Plugins vs. Displayed Social Bookmarking Icons

Expandable plugins required mouse-over or a mouse-click to expand the bookmarking list, usually supporting up to 50 to 100+ bookmarking sites; while displayed social bookmarking icons are more focus and visible, but limited choices. If you’re a visual type of visitor like I am, probably you are more into the latter. There’s no exact right or wrong pick, simply self-preferences. If you don’t own any just yet, now it’s a good time to grab one!

Expandable Plugins — A Click/Hover to Expand

1. Share This

2. AddThis

3. Socialmarker

4. Sexy Expand Bookmarking

5. Add To Any

6. ibegin share

7. Social Bookmarks

- The setting is ‘hide’ in default, meaning you need to click to expand the social bookmarking icons. You can preset the preferred icons to be shown:

Or you can have the icons displayed without hiding (arranging from 1 to 5 lines) :

Displayed Social Bookmarking Icons — One Clear View

8. Tweet This

- Plenty of social bookmarking sites to choose from, come in various styles, colors and sizes. Settings available to tweet your latest post.

9. AddToThis

- Simple is better. 5 nice-looking icons as shown below:

10. Bookmarkify

- Can reposition the plugin on top or bottom of the post. The ability to display all the icons chosen (multiple sites to choose from):

Or prevent them from crowding the area by adding a ‘More’ option for expansion.

11. diggZ-Et

- The familiar, good-old Digg button on top of your post.

12. Social Bookmarking RELOADED

- Exactly how they will show up underneath your post:

13. Social Dropdow

- Preset your favored social bookmarking/media sites and have them appear in each post. Adjust the drop down width according to your likings. Do aware while activating this plugin, you may need to embed a code as instructed in ‘other information’ to have them displayed properly:

Too many of them? Configure it for 1-click expansion instead, or ‘more’:

14. SocioFluid

- Absolutely one of my favorites for fun visual effects. Not only it has plenty of social bookmarking options, but including the flexibility to resize the icons (16, 24, 32, 48) and adjust placements (top/bottom). Below are the examples of 16px and 48px respectively:

Or better! Have it configured as when hovering you get to see the fluid-movements from small to enlarged. Pretty neat huh?

15. Top Social Bookmarking Buttons

- Yes, only 7 sites provided. If that’s all you need, why not?

16. Tweetmeme

- Not only it comes with analytics, but visible and easy tweeting with just one click. If you’re a Twitter fanatic, you’ll agree this is a must-have.

Now Is Your Turn

What is/are the criteria(s) affecting your choice in social bookmarking plugin? Kindly share your experience or likes/dislikes while sharing posts.

One more thing…

If you like this post (or this blog), can I ask you a tiny favor to vote for me on Famous Bloggers Club contest? No pressure though, it’s all Free Will. ^^ I advanced my thanks to your support.

We all read other people’s blogs. And often the case we’re advised to leave our digital footprints in ‘comments’. Hoping by doing so, while gaining some link juice (from Do-Follow blogs), the author or visitors will be kind enough to, maybe, return the favor? That’s the general idea of commenting as one of the traffic-magnet and relationship-building strategies, is it not?

I am NOT someone with the highest ability of commenting, but just how serious we should take blog comments? I know there is a need to be succinct so we could have links spread on 100 new blogs daily! However, what if all the efforts went down the drain just because we didn’t  apply QC in our commenting?

There should be an awakening on …

Treating Commenting as Micro-blogging (Quality over Quantity)

Even I, made the exact same mistakes! Came across a perfect post that I have nothing else to add but to compliment on the effort. Then it makes me realize, “Gosh, I’m doing the ‘You’re great’ type of commenting!” Then I’m in dilemma – shall I comment at all? Does the author bother to check out who am I?  Of course you can, but you may need to do it differently. We’ll be discussing about that shortly. But first:

What type of posts attract comments?

Ask yourself, what do you like to read best? Here are just some that probably have crossed your mind:

• Informative & thought provoking.

• State out a problem, providing solutions, asking for more opinions and added ideas.

• An inspirational story that makes people go teary eyes, strike the emotional cords.

• An honest confession / experience that teaches a lesson.

• List post that’s one of a kind – resourceful, entertaining or different.

• Self made comic, poetry, vodcast – there’s a risk for putting yourself out there, but surely there will be tons of feedback on it. Be prepared as some may not ‘enjoy’ it as much.

• Tool-type reviews – How cool/ effective is the tool? Sometimes it requires more than just a brief content to evoke comments. Otherwise people will be more into ‘great review, I’ll consider using it’. Don’t blame them for doing so. They may read through them just not in need of using it for the time being.

• Totally Out Of The Box!

My Personal Favorites:

Informative + personalized postings = while absorbing the useful information I could learn a bit more about the author as well — personality, creativity, his/her art of blogging… It matches my goal in learning while building a relationship with the author through commenting.

What type of comments that least likable by authors?

a) Covering 80% of the already limited sentences with same-meaning vocabs — ‘great, love, good’ or ‘bad, sucked, hate’.

“This is great. Love your blog. Good job!”
“This sucks! Dislike the idea and really bad!”

— Kindly prove your point a little bit more? Otherwise..

b) Not speaking straight to the point, left the author hanging with ‘HUH?’

“Thanks for sharing 8 great ways to drive in traffic. Can you explain how to get more traffic to my blog?”

— Do you mind to read the post beforehand? Or do you need particular elaboration? Try to be clear.

c) Translated comments from software with no further modification.

“I really like you to write the article..”

— Some direct translation might sound unnatural. Modification is needed otherwise the author may think you’re a bot.

d) Too extreme with self-centered opinions, with disrespectful tone.

“That’s stupid. No way that would work! I have a much better solution for this problem on my post ‘ABC’ (with link). I explained it more thoroughly on how to deal with problem XYZ with cool examples. So you guys do head over to my site and catch the real deal!”

— Seriously? Kindly be respectful and more specific instead of just self-promoting for people to visit your site.

e) Repeated ideas without strengthening your point.

“I like your point A. I also use point A to deal with Z problem. A is really a good way. We shall all apply A.”

“Others have given good ideas. I have nothing else to add.”

— Alright, A is good, but how did it really help you? Kindly elaborate on that. Nothing else to add? You gotta do much better than that to get approved.

How To Comment and Leave an Impression?

1. Be personal with your comment. Share you opinions/insights as you are microblogging.
2. If disagreeing, kindly be respectful and provide advises to assist author in strengthening the point. – you come to build relationship not to ruin one.
3. Needless to be over-used with vocabs, make it plain and understandable.
4. If ‘Me Too’, type anything but the two words.
5. State your interest/gratitude for the provoking story as it helps you in what ways.
6. Request for explanations for your doubts, respectfully.
7. Can you be humorous and unexpectedly entertaining? Even a ‘Me too’ comment attracts with a simple twist.

What If the post is too perfect and I have nothing else to add??!!

Bookmark the page, tweet it or stumble it! An action speaks a thousand words. Whether you meant it genuinely or to ‘bribe’ the author, doesn’t matter as you’re doing a good favor. A little act of kindness is always a beautiful thing to do, why not? It’s just a simple click away nowadays.

Should I notify the author? It’s up to you. I don’t see the harm in doing so but in reasonable frequency. Don’t ‘hard sell’ your effort and do expect nothing in return.

Commenting is a type of social networking

Drop the author a note at the social media sites, complimenting him/her for the great work. It’s much better than just a ‘I love your post’ comment — such visibility may not be in much help since no constructive comments are given. Or you can try Add/Follow the blog author in social media sites. Be initiative.

As of the authors,
Obviously, we still need to provide quality content or else, show people some personalities. Sometimes don’t just blame the commenter as maybe we need to improve our content firstly.

Here are some links that may help you in proper managing your comments and encourage feedback:

30+ Plugins for WordPress Comments
WordPress : Combating Comment Spam
WordPress Plugins for Comments

I don’t plan to use all of them for now, but plugins like Akismet, CommentLuv, Do-Follow, Recent Comments, Subscribe to Comments are the ones activated in my blog.

It’s Your Turn..

Do share you opinions on how to manage your blog comments. What are you likes/dislikes and how us, as visitors could improve our commenting skills over time? Love to hear from you.

First off, I’m officially 1-year older last week, thank you.

I was extremely occupied recently due to some description-writing tasks. The 24/7 working condition was hectic, but the experience gained was priceless. Thank God the work finished the night before my birthday! Yay!!

It’s almost a month since the WordPress migration from Blogger. Today I officially announce WCHINGYA.COM is now a Do-Follow blog! Thanks to my dear friend, Christie’s wonderful post, I decided to join in the force of link love! This means, whenever you leave a comment with your blog link, you will entitle link juice from my blog. Why not? Spreading a little link love for visitors while encouraging useful comments. It’s the best of both worlds! However, you may need to watch out for spammers as well. I too, will be a little bit more skeptic than before. I will go through the comments  personally before approval. Self-promo or unrelated links are not allowed; suspected link droppers will either have their comments edited or removed.

If you too, had just became a Do-Follow blog, it’s necessary to let your visitors know about it. How? Do-Follow Images! In conjunction with my birthday, I’ve put up the effort to create these self-made do-follow images, F.O.C just for you guys! You can also contact me for customization on the colors and sizes to fit on your site properly. For that, I will charge you NOTHING so don’t worry!

If you don’t need them, can you do me a favor to spread the words? That will be a perfect birthday gift for me too. *chuckle*

T&C:
These Do-Follow images are F.O.C and should not be put on other sites as merchandize or self-claimed design work. The ownership is solely belongs to the author of Social @ Blogging Tracker. Kindly download the images on this site only.

If you can’t find anything you like here, try Sire’s self-made animated image or extremejohn’s.

Is your blog a do-follow blog? Do share your opinions on this topic.

Traffic is life and blood of Internet. It is the driving force of any successful online business. There are dozens of channels through which traffic may arrive on your web site or blog. Some of these are conventional channels and some are unconventional and relatively new which were non-existent a decade back. Here are some popular traffic sources that contribute in building traffic on your blog.

Organic Traffic

Social Media

Feed Aggregators (Email + RSS)

Guest Blogging

Discussion Forums

Article Marketing

Comments

Blogrolls

Advertising

Other Traffic Sources

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