How to Link Your Twitter Account with Your Blog or Website

Why should I link my Twitter account to my Blog?

When you blog or run a website, the most important thing to do, is to build your brand. To get people to buy into you as a writer or into whatever it is you use your site to promote. You want people to know when you have fresh material for them to read. One way that is great for promoting your blog and new material is Twitter and the best way to get them linked with you on Twitter is a simple advertisement on your blog or website.

This is a gadget that you can add through Blogger in the “layout” section of your dashboard. It is a floating icon that will display on the screen of anyone visiting your site and allows them to follow you on Twitter by clicking it.

How to add this gadget to your blogger Blog

-Go to the “layout” section of your dashboard
-Add a new gadget, look for the HTML/JavaScript one
-Then paste this code into the box;


Twitter Static Badge Generator

Thank you to Allblogtools.com for providing this code! I hope this helps you advertise your blog, your ideas and you!

Enjoy this day,
Matt

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How To Increase Your Website Traffic

So I read about this idea recently and found it really creative and really shady. At first I didn’t do it, but have since succumbed to it and am glad I did. The idea is simple, set your homepage to your blog or website, but it doesn’t end there. Set everyone’s homepage to your website.

Of course, what this means is that each time a person using that computer signs in, they will knowingly (or unknowingly) be signing into your site. This is good, because blogging is a way of making money and more visits to your site means more money.

I have tried this with my family’s computer and mine, but internet cafes and public library computers (if you can change their homepage) are two other simple examples of computers you can do this with. It seems sneaky, shady, and unsatisfying, but it sure helps your website’s visits.

Do you have any sneaky ideas about gaining web traffic to share? Make sure and do it here.

Enjoy this day,
Matt

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Tips for Becoming a Better Writer - Use Twitter

OK, so lately I’ve been reading articles on how to become a better writer and a lot of times the advice to cut your stuff down is offered. To be able communicate the most important part of your message in the shortest amount of time is a gift, but it’s a gift that can be developed.

After reading the advice about editing your stuff down I also read someone say that Twitter is a great way tool to help you get better at this. They felt this way because when you use Twitter you’re only working with 160 characters or less so you’re stretched to be creative and to cut unnecessary stuff out. When I first read this I was a bit skeptical. Lately though I’ve seen how Twitter has helped me become a better communicator, here’s how.

Writing headlines to advertise my posts is where I’ve seen Twitter help me the most (with more visits to my site as well!). Like I mentioned earlier, this is because I’m forced to get better at writing with less space.

Twitter not only forces me to be creative, but it also lets me follow the real pro’s at this like Seth Godin who writes really good headlines.

It might not seem like much, but I’m glad to get to use Twitter if only for those two reasons. I’m also glad that someone passed on this advice of using Twitter to help me in my writing, because if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have taken advantage of it.

I hope it helps you also!

Enjoy this day,
Matt

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Why You Should Use Google Analytics To Help You Blog

I’ve found blogging to be an absolute blast to do, but today I wanted to share about a tool that helps me a ton in doing it. Well it’s actually a service Google provides called Analytics. Here’s their website www.google.com/analytics. If you write for a blog you need to use this.

What Google Analytics does is tracks the web traffic coming into your blog, but it will tell you incredibly detailed stats about each visit and visitor. It might sound like a simple service, but here are some ways it helps me. Hopefully it can help you too!

Here are the stats I find most useful and why:

Visits - Do you wonder how many people are coming to read your latest post? Well Analytics most basic feature answers that question by telling you how many people are coming to your site. It breaks down by day and you can adjust the filter to show the last month, 6 months, year, ect. This is a really nice feature to have, because knowing people are reading your stuff will encourage you to keep writing (I know it has helped me!)

Where they’re coming from - This is another stat that I find really useful. Analytics will tell you where people came from to get to your site, either by typing in the address, clicking on a link on another site or through a search engine. This is useful because I will put links on my Facebook and Twitter account and it will tell me if people are coming to my site through those sites. So if people are coming through those sites I will continue to post links… if not, I won’t waste my time posting links there. It’s also nice to see what posts have good search engine appeal.

Where they’re coming from - This time I mean what area of the world that they are coming from. And really, I like this feature mainly because it’s cool to see people all over the world coming to my site (ok, no one really comes to my site… I made that up).

New Visitors and Repeat Visitors - It might just be me, but I like to know how many people have come to my site. It helps me know if what I’m writing is good and if people are telling others about it and what not. So to cure this curiosity I look at these stats. It’s also nice to see if people are coming back to your site, because it means you’re writing stuff that’s useful and adding to other people’s lives… which is a good feeling.

Pages visited and how long they’re staying - Both of these stats help me by answering this question, are people enjoying what I’ve written enough that they stay and read more of what I’ve written? Again, it might just help me, but it’s encouraging to know that what I’m putting time and energy into is being read by someone. If no one is reading it, why am I gonna spend time writing it?

Well these are only a few of the features Google Analytics provides, but they’re the ones that help me most. If you blog, I encourage you to use this service.

Enjoy this day,
Matt

What things have helped you blog? Do you have any questions I can help you with?

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How to Raise Your Blog Catalog Page Rank

So your BlogCatalog page rank, might not be of major importance to a lot of you out there, but nonetheless I thought I would post about it. Actually, part of the reason I’m posting about it is because I had no idea how to raise my BlogCatalog page rank and why they would adjust it. So for those of you who are interested in getting your page rank up, here you go:

(Before I begin I should clear up this one thing, the HIGHER your page rank is, the better. It’s a little confusing to know if you should be aiming for a 1 or a 100, but just to make sure you know the higher the better)

Complete Your Profile - In the advice I sought, this was one that people said was the most important. Finishing your profile (including picture and what not) as well as joining groups seemed to be one of the best ways to help your page rank.

Adding a BlogCatalog widget will increase you page rank as well.

Add relevant tags to your blog - This will make it easy for others to find your blog, but make sure your tags are relevant to your blog!

Blog a lot - This is good advice even outside of BlogCatalog because it impacts your viewers and the amount of people that will find your site through a search engine. Blog a lot because it will also help your page rank on BlogCatalog.

Rating and Reviews - Get people to rate and review your page is one thing people suggested in helping you get your page rank to go up as well.

I also read that getting more people to come to your site and what not helps your page rank, but that’s something all of us bloggers are already trying to do, so nothing new there.

So that’s about all the advice I found on this subject, I hope that it helps you in getting your page rank up as well as getting your blog out there!

I love BlogCatalog and find it to be a fun and great way to get my blog out there. So being active on this site is a good idea. Hope that this helps you Bloggers out there.

Enjoy this day,
Matt

Is there anything else you know to increase your BlogCatalog rank?

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10 blog directories to submit your blog to

OK, so you started a blog and now you want to get it out there. Truth is, if you took time to start a blog, then you should take time to advertise it so that others can enjoy what you're sharing. A blog directory is a place you can submit your blog so that others can find it as well as a place for you to connect with other bloggers. It's a great way to build those bridges to get your name/blog out there. Here are ten blog directories to submit your blog to.

Technorati - This is a great site and probably the most popular and recognized. If you want to advertise your blog this is the first place to go.

Blog catalog - Personally this is the one I enjoy the most. It has a great area for people to share about their blogs and find others willing to help them.

Blogged - I enjoyed Blogged, it was one of the first blog directories I joined and I see my site getting traffic from it. So it’s definitely worth the ten minutes it will take to submit your blog too.

My Blog Log - This is another fun site that I enjoy, it’s a great place to meet other bloggers and get your name and site out with.

On Top List - This is a free site that will also help you to build relationships with other bloggers. Great place to start building those important connections that will help you get your site out there.

Blog Flux - A very well organized and visually pleasing directory (a lot of directories aren’t).

Blogrankings - This is a great directory and a lot of bloggers use it. They will rank your page and place your ranking on your blog if you so desire.

Blog top sites - Straight forward directory, very easy to navigate.

Top blog area - A nicely made site for you to submit your blog too. Again, it never hurts to submit your blog to many of these sites to help get the word out about you.

Blog ratings - Lastly, this is a site I enjoy. Add your blog here and continue to find directories to add too!

Well I hope that this helps, if you have questions or other directories to submit, leave a comment below.

Enjoy this day,
Matt

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