My blog token for Technorati is B9EMVW5HVS7P. Please ignore this number as it is only listed here in order to get index myself with www.defactomind. Please read on.

With over 250 million blogs indexed by Technorati is hard to ignore such a powerhouse if you want to promote your blog. The process is easy and joining it’s free.

Before we start please make sure that you have an RSS Feed for your blog. You can find it here: http://feedburner.google.com. In order for this to work you should also have a Gmail account. The article “Subscribe via Email to Feeds in 5 Easy Steps” will explain how to do this.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Go to www.technorati.com and click the “Join” link.

Step 2: Next, you need to claim your blog by clicking on the button called “Claim”. Pretty straight forward, huh?

Step 3: Just fill in all the required information and don’t forget the URL for your own blog. You do this in the box at the bottom of the page where your “Profile” is. The box is under the heading ‘My claimed blogs’. Once you are done, just click “Claim”.

Step 4: Fill in all the relevant tags related to your blog in the box provided.

Step 5: You will also be required to fill in your RSS Feed URL. Refer to the Notes before these steps.

Step 6: Now you wait until you receive an email from Technorati with your token. Sometimes it’s minutes but sometimes it could take days. The email will say:
“Thank you for submitting your blog claim on Technorati. Technorati will need to verify that you are an author of the site [your site URL will be here] by looking for a unique code. We have just assigned the claim token [your number will be here] to this claim. Please visit http://technorati.com/account/ for more details, including how to use the claim token.”

The number inserted in the beginning of this post is my “Claim Token”. It has to be in a post to prove that I am the author of the blog.
In order to post your token you can create a simple post with the title as “Token post for Technorati – Please ignore” or something of that effect and within the post copy & paste your claim token number.

Step 7: After your post is live, you need to visit http://technorati.com. Sign in and click on the ”Check Claim” button at the bottom of your account page.

Step 8: You will be asked if you have already made a temporary post – and you have – so confirm by clicking the button at the bottom of the page.

Step 9: You will then receive an email confirming that Technorati has successfully indexed your blog and found your pesky “Claim Token”.
Once accepted, you can view your blog listing on Technorati. This listing will help others find your blog much easier.

As a business owner you should encourage all your staff to engage in promoting your products and services on Social Media.

This activity should be daily and performed religiously. These activities should be separated on the type of platform they are using, thusly:

COMMUNICATION PLATFORMS

Blogging (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday):

The company promoters will have to report at the end of each day on all the activities performed and closely monitor spikes in traffic within Google Webmaster Tools. These activities will include making comments on all the blogging websites and/or include your company’s website. Here’s a list of such websites:

• Blogger.com
• Livejournal.com
• OpenDiary.com
• TypePad.com
• ExpressionEngine.com
• Technorati.com
• Blogged.com
• BlogCatalog.com
• Blogarama.com
• PitchEngine.com
• BlogSearchEngine.com
• DMoz.org
• IdeeaMarketers.com
• Ezinearticles.com
• GoArticles.com
• OneMinuteU.com
• ArticlesBase.com
• Authorsden.com

Micro-blogging (every 30 minutes):

Company promoters and professional staff will have access to TweetDeck and continue on promoting the company throughout the day. The following will be used:

• Twitter.com
• Plurk.com
• Tumlbr.com
• Jaiku.com

Social-Networking (every 2 hours):

Every employee will be encouraged to make as many friends possible without affecting the overall performance during the day. The following platforms will be visited every day, after lunch for no more than 30 minutes daily. The marketing promoters will continue to engage others on these platforms throughout the day.

• Bebo.com
• Facebook.com
• LinkedIn.com
• MySpace.com
• Skyrock.com
• Hi5.com
• Ning.com

Social network Aggregation

The company staff will have HootSuite installed on each computer and perform these small marketing tasks on a daily basis.

• FrindFeed.com
• HootSuite.com
• Twitterbadges.com
• Twitterfeed.com

COLLABORATION PLATFORMS

Wikis (update 1 per month):The company marketing staff will be in charge of composing these wikis only after gaining approval.

• Wikipedia.org
• PBWorks.com
• WetPaint.com

Social tagging (Daily):

• Delicious.com
• StumbleUpon.com
• Stumpmedia.com
• CiteUlike.com

Social News (Daily):

• Digg.com
• Reddit.com
• Mixx.com

Opinion Sites(1 per week):

• Epinions.com
• Yelp.com
• MouthShut.com

MULTIMEDIA PLATFORMS

PhotoSharing (1 per week):

Company promoters will have access to a company digital camera and will take pictures that will later be uploaded on the following platforms:

• Flickr.com
• Photobucket.com
• SmugMug.com
• Picasa.com

Video (1 per month):

Company promoters will have access to 1 digital video camera and editing software to uopload professional made videos and create buzz on the following platforms.

• YouTube.com
• TubeMogul.com

Livecasting (1 every 3 months):

Podcasting will include interviews with bloggers and industry experts and will be distributed on the company website as well as the following platforms:

• Ustream.tv
• Justin.tv

“What Should I write about? Who would be interested in what I know?” I hear this a lot when entrepreneurs start being active on their blogs. They are all experts in their field of interest but somehow they assume everyone else is too.

What do you think? Try it out and let me know if this method works for you.

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Here are 10 awesome tips on how you can improve the online presence for your business:

1. Submit Your Business to Local Listings
   Do a local search for your business make sure your listing is up to date and accurate so customers get the right information about your business.
2. List Your Business in the Correct Category
   Very often the owner (or the webmaster creating the website) categorizes the business listing in the wrong category. Include as many relevant categories as possible to your business to attract customers. 
3. Add or verify your business listing with data providers for search engines
   Search engines and local search sites use data providers (e.g. InfoUSA, Localeze, InsiderPages, MerchantCircle, etc.) and it’s very important that you update their listing of your business. 
4. When Possible Include product / service keywords in your local business listing title
   This tactic will help customers find your business more easily on search engines and you will be ranked higher in the process.
5. Check the Accuracy of Your Full Name and address on all search sites and especially your website
   A full and accurate address generates a sense of trust for both customers and for search engines so make sure that wherever you appear on the web, your information is up to date, accurate and consistent throughout.
6. Hire a Professional and Build a Great Website with an Optimized Number of Keywords and Good Content
   Your company website is the image project on the web to the rest of the world. Show the world you care about your image, your business and your customers with a unique, easy to navigate website. Stay away from cheap imitations, standard templates and cookie cutters (one size fits all) websites. If you want to stand out from the crows so should your website/blog.
7. Get your customers to write online reviews and testimonials about your business
   Many customers look for objective reviews before they decide where to spend their money. Online reviews of your business can also contribute to your ranking on search engines as they give credibility to your business and puts your potential customers at ease.
8. Encourage your customers to talk well on and offline about you
   Create more “buzz” around your business. Customer feedback is always good and you an use that to your advantage to improve your business.
9. Understand and use social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Flickr, etc. to stay in touch with customers and attract new ones
   Use these sites to form a community for your business – this is a good way to communicate with existing customers, advertise sales or specials, and a good way to be visible to potential customers. 
10. Create a Blog and be active on others as well
    This is the cheapest way to sort of “toot your own horn” on line. It only takes time to research and write on your blog but very soon you might be able to attract more and more people who enjoy your products and/or services. In addition – your website and thus the company’s brand will rank higher in the search engines. This might not be sufficient unless you also find other blogs within your niche and become an active contributor.

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There are 5 ways to make money with your blog (or website). Might be others – I’m open for suggestions: 

1. Sell ad space on your blog
2. Write articles for other companies/blogs/individuals
3. Syndicate your blog posts to other blogs/Sell Blog Subscriptions
4. Sell your own things on your blog
5. Sell third party goods online

1. Sell ad space on your blog

One of the most popular ads is GoogleAds: https://www.google.com/adsense (although they pay you only when someone actually clicks on the ad) and the Yahoo Publisher Network https://publisher.yahoo.com/portal/login.php

Selling ad space is fairly easy to do; just create a section on your blog that describes the benefit for companies/individuals to place an ad on your blog. 

One word of advice though: When you start this adventure, do not fill your blog to the gills with ads – it will not look very professional. Your readers need to see what you can offer first before they will buy anything from you or off your blog. 

You can spot a newbie, right-away by the imense number of ads running on his/her site, trying desperately to make some dough. People do not respond well and they will leave your site fairly quick before you can even write about your expertise. 

Here’s an example from the highly acclaimed blog called doshdosh (http://www.doshdosh.com/advertise) 

Dosh Dosh Advertising Page

Same can be done for a website. The more traffic you have the more you can charge. 

If your blog has low traffic you can always go to TextLinkAds or TextLinkBrokers. Even better connect with your network in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and let them know you are offering ad space on your blog for a minimum of $XX amount per month. You will be surprised of the response you get. 

2. Write Articles for other companies/blogs/individuals

This usually frightens some people but you don’t have to be an expert in a particular field.

You’ll have to show proof that you: 

 - are a creative blogger
 - have articles you wrote and published on your blog, ezines or squidoo lenses
 - comment and are active on other blogs as well
 - are proficient using social media, plug-ins and add-ons
 - have a basic understanding of simple SEO rules

The best way of all is to show that you are a pro is creating, maintaining and actively contributing on your own blog. You should have at least 3-4 months under your belt and a minimum of 30-50 good articles consisting of 250-500 words each .

The core subject or theme of your blog does not matter as long as you write frequently and professionally. Obviously check for grammar. Write well and write often. 

3. Syndicate your blog posts to other blogs/Sell Blog Subscriptions

If the information posted on your blog is in high demand you might want to think about syndicating your blog.

You can accomplish this through 3 easy steps:

 a. Find out what your blog’s feed is (it should look like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/your-blog-name-here)
 b. Customize your feed through the feed dashboard
 c. Finally – publicize your feed to your readers.

Others have started blogging and got so popular that know they sell subscriptions. See problogger.com 

Again, based on how popular your blog is, the amount of money you can charge can vary. Initially start small and as you add more value you can increase the dollar amount you can charge.

4. Sell Your Own Things

In the fortunate even that you already have something to sell on your own, you’ll have to have some additional tools along side your blog: 

 - If you are selling digital assets (e-books, art, photos, music, etc.) you’ll need an ecommerce shopping cart and a PayPal account.

The alternative is http://www.payloadz.com or http://www.payloadz.com

 - If you are selling physical, tangible products you’ll need all of the above, a FedEx account and…lots of boxes.

The majority of bloggers sell their ebooks and books, usually directly from their blog using a simple PayPal account.

5. Sell third party goods online

This is the part where beginners make the mistake of selecting products that they enjoy disregarding their reader’s likes and dislikes. Chose the products your reader base enjoy and look for. If your site is about web design don’t post ads for MP3 players or mortgage adverts. 

People that come to your site seek your advice in whatever you are writing about so offer them the things that augment your articles and the entire theme of your blog. 

Look for products to sell by signing up as an affiliate. For instance I host my blog with JustHost. I love their customer service and I think it brings a lot of value to every webmaster out there; I therefore promote their company on my site, of course getting a little money for that. 

Other sources where you might find good affiliate programs: 

Clickbank: http://www.clickbank.com 
Commission Junction: http://www.cj.com 
Hydra Network: http://www.hydranetwork.com 

Once you set this up, you’ll need to promote your blog so it increases in traffic and thus your chances of selling directly from your site. How can you do that? See below a list of articles talking about that. 

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Commenting on blogs similar to yours is one quick way to promote your own blog/website. I discovered this a while back but wanted to beef up a bit my own blog before jumping on the “comment on other blogs” wagon.

Although a lot of them are very well designed I found it hard to write about some mistakes I kept on seeing on other blogs. In fact I have learned a lot.

The most important thing to remember is this:

Scan not read

People do not have the time to read a whole lot now-a-days (unless they are really interested in a particular subject) so “Good bye Reading” and “Hello Scanning”. In order to capture attention you have to create breaks in your text such that the human eye can easily scan, stop and read small bits.

This can be accomplished by using colors, bold fonts or a combination of the two.

Here’s an example of bad text on a blog:

Bad Blog Structure

Now here’s something I would scan rapidly and read portions of it (if not the entire post). Notice the titles, bullets and other breaks in the text.

Good Blog Structure

If I made it a goal to comment on several blogs each day, this approach will save me time and rapidly move onto the next one. In the same time I retain some good information because the major points in the blog captured my attention.

Sometimes even a picture comes in very handy by tickling the viewer’s curiosity so use them in your blog. Don’t just copy some image from Bing or Google images. Besides being copyrighted, you won’t get brownie points on originality either.

So, bloggers out there – make your readers’ life easier and incorporate these tricks into the flow of your post:

• Write posts that are 500 words or less (this is just under 360 words)
• Break the post in several chunks of text (each chunk consisting of 3-4 sentences)
• Emphasize titles, important ideas or key elements in your text for easy reading
• Do use bulleted lists (just like here)
• Ask questions and spark interest such that comments are welcomed
• Draw conclusions at the end of the post

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This marks my 100^th article in this Defacto Mind blog and fulfills my pledge to post exactly 100 by the end of the year 2009. It all started on September 16^th, 2009 and in 3 months period I was able to publish this hundred articles. 

Defacto Mind Celebrates 100 Articles and a New Year

Next year I will start slowly because I am working on a monster project that will probable take at least 6 months to finish. I will share with you all once it is finished and marketing commences. 

I already have some New Year resolutions; among other things I want to start a new trend (or so I think although it seems PSDtuts.com is already working on it) and publish a new design every day. Instead of surfing the web, I will try to dedicate 10-20 minutes each day and publish a design (either, Photoshop, Illustrator or CorelDraw) and maybe some other designer(s) out there would want to join me. The stage is set and I welcome everyone.

That will not onlt enhance my design skills but will increase the number of works for my Design by Satori portfolio.

In the meantime, I wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope that 2010 will be better and more successful for all of you.

2010 is just around the corner, and we’re working on our new years resolutions! Here are some ideas for bloggers out there that want to start the new year with a bang!

Article published on UX Booth by David Leggett on Decmber 29th, 2009.

Another blog project on Defacto Mind; there are only 18 days left until New Year and I decided to schedule 2 more activities and write about in the Defacto Mind blog.

For the next 3 weeks I will write a book review every Tuesday and I’ll call it “Cool Blue Tuesday Book Review”. There is really no reason why Tuesdays would be blue or cool for that matter but I just thought it sounds catchy. So, every Tuesday, after reading a book about SEO, marketing, design or social media, I’ll share with you my impressions about a particular book and recommend it (or not) to you – the reader.

On the same token, every Thursday will be reserved for a small summary of a blog with information covering the same items mentioned above. I will call this “Thursday Blog Talk”.

At this point, I don’t know which blog or book I will review so I guess it will be a surprise for everyone. If all works well, I might continue this practice throughout 2010.

In the same time, I’ll continue with “Creative Friday” with articles about design resources for everyone who wants to improve their skills and craft.
In summary, my blogging schedule for the next 18 days will as follows:

Tuesday – Cool Blue Tuesday Book Review – December 15th, 22nd and 29th
Thursday – Blog Talk Thursday – December 17th, 24th and 31st
Friday – Creative Friday – December 18th and 25th

…and the madness continues…

After lots of online and offline research I came up with a schedule for those who want to blog successfully and even make a living out of it.

Day 1 – The Groundwork

1. Install a custom WordPress theme for your blog

Although the web is full of blogging platforms, I believe WordPress is still the most powerful blogging platform with awesome versatility.

Resources:
18 Alternative Ways to Use WordPress
Free WordPress Themes from Smashing Magazine
Free WordPress Themese provided by Free WP Themes
Top WP Themes

2. Install and place your RSS icon above the fold (just like here)

Resources:
The Ultimate List of Free RSS Icons from Hongkiat
ProBlog Design
Free & Fresh RSS icons from Smashing Magazine

3. Provide an RSS-to-email option

Resources:
Aweber
MailChimp

4. Create an opt-in mailing list

Resources 
Aweber

5. Create a free product

or service so you can get people to sign-up and capture their email addresses

6. Link to your social profiles

Resources
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter

Day 2 – Write for Your Blog

1. Start posting and do it often; daily if you can but don’t sacrifice quality over quantity
2. Link to other posts within your blog and outside of it too
3. Create your posts with these must-do’s in mind:

• Use header tags (i.e. H1, H2, H3, etc.) for your titles
• Use keywords in your titles
• Create killer headlines for your titles
• Break down your post into sections by using header tags, bulleted lists, bold or italic text
• Use images and videos (when possible) for your posts
• End the post with “conclusions” and / or open end questions to generate comments

Day 3 – Write on Other Blogs

1. Find other blogs within your niche market and write for them or post comments on a daily basis.
2. Don’t be a “me too” blogger. Write interesting copy by adding your own opinion to the comments. Don’t just type in “thanks that was great”.
3. Write product and book reviews.
4. Once a week write and publish an article for ezines.
5. Once a week create a Squidoo lens
6. Create accounts for Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. Be active within your social media network and post at least 2 or 3 times a day.

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to promote yourself. Consistency is the hard part. Lots of people start blogging, only the ones who persevere are really the successful ones.

The power bloggers are the ones who stick through thick and thin by engaging a regimented approach towards this activity. Ultimately they are the ones who succeed. In fact they are the ones who end up making money by blogging. So when you hear about internet self-made millionaires – think of them and ask yourself why you aren’t among them.

What do you think? Have I missed any of the activities for these 3 days in order to become a power blogger? If so, let me know and I’ll make sure your comments are introduced in the list.