Blog About Your Blog » Social Media and Networking

Grow Your Blog by Working With PR

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:00:25 +0000

Contests really took over the blogosphere when I was getting started. By being able to offer different items for free, it made the appeal of your site that much better. It also really gave visitors to COME BACK and a way to grow your numbers daily.

Just by hosting contests on your website you could require them to become an email subscriber, a friend on Facebook, or a member of your forum. I even built up a list for the top 20 contest blogs. Even though it’s a bit outdated it was really popular.

From the emergence of contests, so has people working for companies to find bloggers to host contests. This is where my site, Its All Free Online, has been able to grow. Sometimes the trouble is FINDING those PR reps.

If you are spending all your time looking for companies to work with, it can take away from your blog, as well as the quality of your content. Having THEM come to YOU is always a plus.

There are a few places you can use to help you out with that. And guess what? They are all owned by Moms!

Momdot Brandfluential

I have been a member of Momdot for several years. I like being ‘the guy’ on the forum. The ladies on there accept me as their own, helped me grow, and have been a huge supporter. The owner, Trisha, has gone out of her way to help me out on more than one occasion.

After I joined their “VIP” section of the forum, which is a co-op for PR pitches, my blog changed forever.

Now Trisha is going more mainstream and offering her newest service, Momdot Brandfluential.

Are you a blogger that loves to work with Public Relations? Are you Brandfluential? When marketers reach out to us for specific campaigns, let us know if you want us to email you with potential review, giveaway, or mainstream media opportunities.

Within just one short week of starting this program, she was already able to share a unique spa opportunity with her members. Along with that, she is in the works with more campaigns.

I know this will be a success and I am happy to be able to get in on the ground floor.

Blog Friendly PR

Through my Momdot connections I have also been able to work closely with several bloggers. One of those is Shasta. She recently purchased Blog Friendly PR and revamped the entire site.

Right now she is trying to spread the word and offering a $25 gift card if you post about her grand re-opening!

Double Duty Divas

I am new to this network, but I have already gotten 2 opportunities. I asked them to send me information about their site and this is what I received:

At BlogHer 2009 Bridgette (Experimental Mommy) and Cecelia (Cool Baby Kid) realized they had a full time job, part time blog and two young children each in common. They decided to join forces and create a blog network to support each other and the other Double Duty Divas that shared their multi-tasking challenges. Since that time the Diva network has grown to offer, in addition to support and cross-promotional opportunities for the bloggers, review and advertising campaigns for companies. With some of the top review bloggers among their ranks, the Divas also provide Twitter parties, coupon code campaigns and holiday gift guide inclusion opportunities. Speaking at BlogWorld 2010 about Harnessing the Power of Numbers and Creating a Blog Network, Bridgette and Cecelia plan to help others cross-promote and support blogs within their niche to grow and build a promotional network of their own.

Make sure to check out these websites and feel free to comment below on any networks that you use!

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TweepML Share Groups Of Tweeps

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:38:08 +0000

A while ago “link trains” were very popular. They were used to gain links for Technorati as well as try to build links to get a Google PR. I wrote about the effect link trains can have on your blog, and now they are pretty much non-existent.

With everything moving into social media, a Twitter or Facebook idea like this could be very beneficial.

TweepML Share Twitter Lists

I haven’t visited the importance of Twitter yet, but I did give some tips on Facebook and how you can increase traffic with Facebook fan pages. However I’ve recently explored Twitter. For me personally it’s not as successful because their are no images to pull you in. But for others, Twitter is huge!

A great thing I found was TweepML, where you can add Twitter user names to a list and make it easy for people to “follow” them.

I was lucky enough to get on the MomDot Mafia list, which is a list of great mom (and dad) bloggers. Within 48 hours I was able to gain 100 new followers.

Another TweepML list I used was a follow-back list. About 250 people are on the list, so I added them all and most of them followed me back.

There are tons of lists you can find for any topic.

Great Bloggers List

I wanted to make my own group strictly for blogger’s. I currently don’t do too much with Twitter on my “blogger” Twitter, so I thought this would be a good way to get started!

If you are a blogger and want to be added to our list please visit: Great Bloggers to Follow on Twitter.

There you can “suggest” your Twitter username and I will add it. After you do that please follow everyone on the list.

You can share your list with your Twitter or Facebook fans, as well as those on your blog!

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iDooble Social Online Shopping and Contest

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:58:31 +0000

I personally love online contests, it can definitely help either brand or promote your business and website. Everyone loves free stuff, it’s not hard to sell someone on something free.

Have you heard of idooble.com? Me neither, but they are making their splash with a huge contest! It’s a great way to get users interested in their brand and already grow a base before they even really launched yet.

Win a Mac Book Pro and More!

The iDooble contest has 100 prizes to giveaway! Here is a list of the contest prize breakdown:

1st – Mac Book Pro
2-4 – iPod Touch
5-10 – iPod Nano
11-25 – iTunes Gift Card
26-100 – iDooble Tee

To get started, simply create an account. You will be asked to complete a short 12 question profile with a few of your interests in social media. Then the next step is just to start referring people!

For each referral you will receive 10 points for 1st tier, 3 points for 2nd and 1 point for 3rd. You can invite your “friends” via your blog, forum, or any social networking.

Right now the #1 person has close to 10,000 points, but to at least get a t-shirt it looks like you only need to refer about 1-2 people, so it may be worth it just for that. To get an iPod nano or touch is still very attainable if you have reach on your website or social media.

This contest runs through November 2009 so you have plenty of time to start recruiting.

Please join as my referral here.

What is iDooble.com?

iDooble looks to be a social media shopping comparison site. What I think is kind of odd is that they are doing so much promotion for this, but don’t have much information as to what it is.

Right now you can sign-up to be a beta tester and see some screenshot’s as to what the website is going to look like on iDooble.com’s homepage.

It looks like you will be able to shop, compare, review, and share all in one place. Maybe like a super Amazon, with all the stores in one place.

iDooble will give you ways to instantly compare prices for whatever product you are searching for. It will show you the price, reviews, shipping cost for all the different online stores selling the item.

You shopper profile brings in the social media aspect. You can add friends, favorite stores, your twitter updates, make lists of items you may want, as well as display your reviews.

Are you ready to take your online shopping to a social media level?

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Increase Website Traffic with Facebook

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:55:58 +0000

Maybe it was rust, or just getting excited about updating this blog again I made a mistake with my last Facebook Fan Pages article. I completely forgot to really sell you on the importance of it. By that I mean giving you some proof! Where’s the traffic? Well let me show you some stats of my most successful fan page.

Facebook Traffic

As I mentioned my Facebook Fan Page for Free Samples grows everyday, pretty organically. However to start it wasn’t as easy. I first really started seeing traffic in July, making it my 5th top traffic source (after Google, Bing, Yahoo and “Direct”). After that each month it has sent plenty of traffic.

July 2009

July 2009 had 436 visitors from Facebook. That works out to be about 14 visits per day coming from Facebook. Decent, but not enough.

August 2009

In August 2009 that number grew by 6 times! Facebook became my #2 top traffic source (behind Google) and came out to be 2,932 visits. If you want to break that down, it works out to be 94 visits per day (some days had nearly 200 visits).

September 2009

The great thing about these pages is they continue to grow. In the month of September Facebook easily was my #1 top traffic source. In September we received 6,211 visits from Facebook. That works out to be 207 visits PER DAY. The best day got nearly 400 Facebook visits.

With October I am anticipating even more as the page continues to grow. I will definitely keep this updated.

Did I convince you to make a Facebook Fan page yet?

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Importance of Facebook Fan Pages

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:11:31 +0000

Myspace reminds me of high school drama and spam, it’s just what I associate it with. When I was told about Facebook I thought it was just another network, and I passed on it. Wasn’t it just for college students anyways? Well at first it was (right?), but it has emerged into a dominant social network.

How To Utilize Facebook

Shortly after I joined Facebook I saw the potential to promote my websites, affiliates, and any other type of sponsorships. It can all be nicely done with Facebook Fan Pages.

Facebook Fan Pages can be very beneficial to any website or company. You can really become a fan of anything, whether it’s for someone famous like George Lopez or an interest like free samples.

Every time a Fan Page is updated, the updates go out to everyone who is a fan (unless they have it hidden from their news feed). Whenever I update my fan pages, all of my fans see what’s new and can comment, engage in conversations, ask questions, and visit my website all at one central place.

As of right now Michael Jackson and Barack Obama have the most fans/supporters on Facebook. How great is that?

So what’s the best way of setting up a fan page?

In my eyes their are three different types of fan pages. One for businesses, one for websites, and one for products. A business is going to have a different type of fan page. They are going to be for the entire company, not just a particular product they sell. The most popular one is Starbucks.

For most of us, we would want to do one for our website, or the product or “theme” it’s about. However I would recommend targeting more to the niche rather than your website brand (unless it already has a huge following).

Blogging SEO 101 tells us to target the popular terms of your niche. Ranking well in search engines can be difficult and time consuming. Yet on Facebook the same rules don’t apply.

Targetting Your Niche on Facebook

When making my fan pages, I generally make the page about the topic instead of the website name. Once you make the page, you cannot change the name, so it’s forever.

For example, I’ve made fan pages for Free Samples, Coupons and Poetry. Most of the updates all link to my websites, but in order for people to find the page in the first place, they would search these terms. On Facebook I rank #1 for Free Samples, #3 for Coupons, and my Poetry page should be moving up soon.

I’ve thought about making a page for Blog About Your Blog, but I wouldn’t call it that. Most likely it would be “Blogging” since it’s becoming a popular word and I could rank well for that.

Promoting Your Fan Page

My fan pages have been the easiest to grow for my websites. One click and you can gain a fan. In about 3 months, I was able to get 2,000 fans for my freebie site with 0 (ZERO) paid advertising. Once you gain your initial fans, they grow pretty organically.

There are some easy ways to promote your page. Of course add the widget on your sidebar. You can include the name, thumbnail image, number of fans, and the newest update. To get your widget go to “edit page” and under your Admins you should find “get your badge”. There you can customize what you want the widget to display.

After doing that, I would definitely recommend “suggesting” your fan page to your friends list. Simply go to your fan page, on the left side select “more” then “suggest to friends”. I usually like to do this once a month, so I can send the suggestions to people who haven’t joined yet and send it to new friends I added.

Does your website/business have a Facebook fan page yet?

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StumbleUpon With New Algorithms

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:03:44 +0000

Rumors are circulating that SU has been sold and updated their algorithms. This basically means how they value the “power” of your stumbles. Some users think that only “spammers” should care about this but of course I disagree. The whole point of SU is to share what you like, so wouldn’t you want as many people to see it as you can?

The LinkBackProject wrote about their beliefs of the new StumbleUpon algorithms. There are several new theories which basically says not to submit your own websites as well and not to “power stumble” and more.

This will supposedly inflict a penalty on your user, but which can be changed if you follow certain guidelines.

This claim by the Link Back Project has brought out loads of Stumbleupon users to either agree or disagree. Make sure to check out their comments as well as Stumbleupon feedback on the page. There is 9 pages of reviews on the stumbleupon page!

It’s Been Sold?

This is another ‘rumor’ going around. I would expect that they would announce this eventually if this rumor were true. I’ve heard that people think eBay has purchased SU and that would definitely be interesting.

If you start seeing “Stumble this Auction” I think it’s safe to say they purchased it!

What do you think?

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Your Personal Brand

Anthony — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:20:23 +0000

Here’s a quick introduction to building a brand based around you.

Personal Branding is complex field of marketing and branding that would take an entire book to explain, but I would like to give you a few tips as to how to build your own brand.

What is a Personal Brand

Your personal brand is how people ientify with you. You may be the “geeky tech blogger” or the “creative photoshop genius”. Your brand consists of your blog posts, tweets, videos, photos and even the links you save on Del.icio.us.

Be Yourself, Be Open

You can use an alias online, but this will weaken your brand and make you harder find. I use the same username for most of my social accounts, that same username is the name of my blog and is indexed in Google – People see my username and know its me! Its also important to be yourself. When writing blog posts or tweets etc. don’t take on an alter ego as people see straight through this.

Be Social

Create a Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, Youtube, Del.icio.us, Digg and Facebook account. Your website used to be your homepage. Now its spread across all of these sites. Its also very important to use these sites properly. Many people fail on Twitter by simply posting links back to their blog. This just annoys the community. The same can be said for all other social networks.

Yes, you should be using all of those sites. If you think they are useless its due to ignorance rather than actually believing they are duds.

Copy The Best

Take a look at Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington. They all have strong personal brands. So its a good idea to look at what they are doing and copy. And yes, that does require passion and commitment. All three of those guys love what they do….and it shows.

Join In

Comment, Comment and Link. When I see a cool article I link to it. All my profiles are linked so posting it to Delicious will distribute it out to my network. Giving link love (to quality content) is your most powerful marketing tool – so don’t underestimate it.

And once again – don’t bother talking about yourself and your content on Twitter, FriendFeed or your blog. Limit posts about your own ventures to 3 per month, max!

For more of my content check out my blog feint.me – or follow me on Twitter.

Should I Move Off Of Blogspot? YES!

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When Networking Fails…

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:28:32 +0000

To successfully network a blog with other blogs in your niche can do wonders for your SEO, traffic and overall branding. I had that idea with Contest Live. Its the only active contest voting network and with so many contests going on daily, I thought it would be a perfect resource for bloggers with contests. After getting set-up with the website and content up I began contacting the blogs on the Top 20 Blogs list as well as several others.

And The Result Was…

Well it was sad. I got one response declining link exchange and that. One actually asked a bit more about Contest Live, but that was two weeks ago, with no response since.

As BAYB has become a great place to find contest blogs as well as our weekly contest round-up, I not only envisioned Contest Live as a place for contests, but also a place to find other great contest blogs.

So how do I attain that with a failed networking campaign?

Attraction with Contests

To get initial buzz and visitors, sponsoring contests has been a huge boost. I have sponsored entrecard credits and advertising space for Contest Live. I’ve been able to balance links to Contest Live as well as the blog.

Getting set-up as a sponsor was a lot easier than I thought. Some contests were already in progress and I caught them early enough to throw in an additional prize. Ive also contacted people who are looking to host a contest and get in that way.

I even got my own contest featured at A Blog of Goodies and was able to pick up several great members and people submitting great contests.

We have a great guide 6 Tips for Hosting a Blogging Contest, which is a little old, but still remains pretty valid. I am looking to feature a few more contest tips upcoming.

Have you been able to use contests to further promote your website?

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Squidoo Is Perfect For Bloggers

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:36:43 +0000

Ok, I know I am a little late on this one. I’ve found quite a few people making a Squidoo Lens everyday so I figured I would find out what all the fuss was about. Overall I am pretty impressed and think that it’s perfect for any blogger to use. Yesterday I created my first Squidoo Lens.

Why Squidoo?

Every time I go back to Squidoo I find something new. I probably can’t cover everything in this article.

Building a Squidoo lens is like making a mini blog that exists on one page. It’s basically a landing page for any niche you wish to write about. Basically it can be an extremely targeting web page about whatever you want it to be about. You can even create multiple lens’ to basically link them all together.

But why? Well for many bloggers building links to your blog can be difficult, but it is also very important. The more links that you have the better your website will rank in Google, and for the terms you want.

For example, I made a Squidoo Lens about free samples. In the lens I put links to my own blogs, as well as displayed their RSS feeds and put a bit extra ways for me to make money.

For every Google Adsense click, Amazon Sale, eBay sale, I get my own bit of commission for it. As well, I put my own affiliates on my lens to give me 100% of whatever I can get sign-ups for. If you haven’t taken advantage of Squidoo lens’ for affiliate marketing, you just might want to.

Squidoo is Easy!

I was surprised at how easy Squidoo is. Blogger took me a bit to master, but it is pretty easy as well. You can start a blog and publish an article in a few minutes at blogger. With Squidoo it’s even easier. You can have an entire lens finished in 5-10 minutes after a bit of navigating around.

There are different modules you can incorporate into your Squidoo Lens to make it interactive. One of my favorite Squidoo Lens’ is about online contests. There you can submit your own contest or even a contest blog if you want to. I’ve used this function on my own Squidoo Lens and allow visitors to add their own free samples.

Squidoo Referral Program

I didn’t even know Squidoo had an affiliate program until after I joined! It’s not much, but if you can refer people and they earn money, you can get money too. When your referral earns its first $15, you AND your referral will each get $5.

Basically it’s incentive enough for you to join as my referral so we can both earn $5!

Sign-up to Squidoo.

Squidoo Wrap Up

While writing this article I got inspired to create a few more lens’. The possibilities and topics for Squidoo are endless. You can build links to your niche sites, as well as earn a bit of income doing it. I definitely plan on keeping updates posted about how am I doing with my Squidoo. If you are already on Squidoo make sure to comment on my free sample lens and point me to your lens’. We can exchange ratings as well as favorites and fans.

If I haven’t convinced you to join, maybe Janet can. She has the #1 lens on Squidoo. She writes about how shes made money with Squidoo. From June 4th to July 10th she’s made $483 on Squidoo alone, not including her affiliate commissions. Check out her lens, but make sure to come back and join as my referral!

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MomDot – It’s Where The Moms Go

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:27:02 +0000

I’ve always been partial to mommy bloggers. I can’t honestly say that I read too many of them, but I love networking and participating with the mommy’s in the blogosphere. I was pretty active in the PayPerPost forum, many of the bloggers there were mommys or women. Whether you need a vote, a link, or really anything they are there for you. Luckily I’ve found another place similar to that.

MomDot – For Moms and Me

I find myself joining “women only” or “mommy forums”. I originally found MomDot, because someone posted the Top 20 Contest Blogs list and I was getting traffic from it. I generally check out all of my traffic sources and make sure to say thank you etc, especially on a forum.

MomDot’s main thing is their blog, that is updated by the three owners. There are loads of contests, right now I just counted 11 open contests to win. There are also Mommy posts, contest round-ups, meme’s, and plugs to other sites. It’s really just directing traffic to everyone.

Right now one of the mom’s are going for hottest mommy, so vote and help her out.

Free Listings

A huge thing there are the free listings. None of their advertising is paid, it’s all given away. Their sidebar is filled with different blogs, boutiques and websites. All the contests are also sponsored, so it may be a great place to donate a prize and get some buzz from the mommy’s.

Networking

Conversing and just really getting to know the ladies on the MomDot forum has allowed me to really network, build contacts, more than I have been able to do in one place in a long time. One of my new friends even made me a button for Contest Live and put it on her blog. She runs a great contest blog, A Blog of Goodies.

Another one of my new friends/contacts made an entire post about Contest Live because I put her contest up for voting, and blogged about it on the Contest Live Blog.

I think there are two men on the forum including myself. I am the self proclaimed The Mom Dot Man, but after this post I may not be.

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Blog About Your Blog » Social Media and Networking

Grow Your Blog by Working With PR

Random Posts

TweepML Share Groups Of Tweeps

Great Bloggers List

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iDooble Social Online Shopping and Contest

What is iDooble.com?

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Increase Website Traffic with Facebook

Facebook Traffic

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Importance of Facebook Fan Pages

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StumbleUpon With New Algorithms

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Your Personal Brand

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When Networking Fails…

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Squidoo Is Perfect For Bloggers

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MomDot – It’s Where The Moms Go

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