Blogging and Social Media
Web Analytics and Customer Insight | Data Visualization | Competitive Intelligence and Context | A/B & Multivariate Testing | Search Marketing | User Experience | Blogging and Social Media
Well, you’re reading a blog so chances are you get what is collectively known as “social media”. Here are some resources to propel you further into the arena. Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog.
Start A Blog in 5 Minutes or 5 Days
- I wrote a series of posts on starting a blog based on my own experience sitting in many a coffee shop putting Digital Alex together. Check them out:
- Want more charts to help you analyze your FeedBurner managed blog feeds? This free tool can pump them out in 10 seconds.
- At the moment, the definitive blog search and measurement tool. Many people have been sounding its death knell, but it remains a force in the blogosphere.
- One of the many blog search engines out there.
- Lorelle writes one of the more popular blogs for the WordPress community (which I run on)
Blog Platforms
- I wrote about choosing a blog platform. Here are “the big 4″ WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger. You can check out a more exhaustive comparison here.
Blog Search Engines
- If you’re trying to find something specific within the blogosphere, you might want to try Google Blog Search, Icerocket, Blogdigger, Syndic8
Social News
- There are a variety of social news sites where people can submit and vote on news in various topics. Digg is the most famous example, as well as sites like Reddit and Newsvine. There are even specialty sites for niche groups, like Sphinn for search marketers. If you’re looking to promote your site, Social Poster will let you do so on multiple sites all at once. However, it’s really best for this to happen organically or you may risk being labeled a spammer.
Blog/Buzz Tools
- If you’re looking to measure and monitor buzz try BlogPulse or looking into any one of the many buzz monitoring companies, such as Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Cymfony, Umbria, BrandIntel, Biz360, Moreover or Factiva.
Blog Syndication
- Set your content free with a syndication (RSS) tool like Feedburner or Feedblitz. Of course, you also want to grab all of your favorite content in a feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines.
- Pinging lets blog tracking sites know that you’ve written new content. Ping-o-matic lets you tell many of these ping services all at once.
- Great writing is at the heart of blogging and Copyblogger regularly dishes out relevant and practical tips to improve your copy.
- HitTail shows you a live feed of the terms that are delivering visitors to your blog. More to the point, it also highlights some keywords that might deserve some copy attention. With a small volume of words, however, take this with a grain of salt.
Blog Measurement
- Writing a blog is creatively satisfying, but having others read your hard work is even more exciting. Chances are you’re going to want to know how many people are actually visiting your site and what they’re doing. Check out some of the popular tools to help you:
- Google Analytics – Free stats from the big G
- MyBlogLog - It let’s you see pictures of visitors if they’ve registered with the service
- If you operate other websites and you want to show the content of your blog easily, then create a widget. This snippet of code will let users see portions of your blog (title or content, you decide) wherever you put it.
WordPress Themes
- If you’re using WordPress (.org, not .com), then you can customize your site with themes designed by other people. Here are a several sites to explore: ThemeViewer, Minimalist Themes, Free WordPress Themes, Themes from Pearsonified, 83 Beautiful Themes.
Web Analytics and Customer Insight | Data Visualization | Competitive Intelligence and Context | A/B & Multivariate Testing | Search Marketing | User Experience | Blogging and Social Media
