Timing is everything, at least that is what I have been told. It seems to be true then it comes to social bookmarking as well.

Do you know where your ‘friends’ on any of the social bookmarking sites. For many sites such as Digg, they say you have 24 hours for your post to get noticed, after that forget it. For Digg, it can often be as short as 12 hours.

If your in the UK and many of your followers are in the US, when would be the most appropriate time to submit your post. Social bookmarking can be tricky. You can submit a post and get zero response one day and then next day get a flood for a different post.

Timing can be important, both in what time you submit and on which day. Some days do seem to perform better than others depending on the genre and your target audience. It is only by trial and error that you can determine the times and days that produce the best results for your genre.

As a general rule, social bookmarking across the board is more active between 10am and 3pm US Eastern Time and between 8pm and 11pm. Weekdays appear to be active than weekends. Different genres will produce different active periods and it seems that weekends are more likely to see page one activity for topics that generally don’t get a look in during week days.

There is no hard and fast rule for submitting to social bookmarking sites, however, if you can find an ideal time then make the most of it.

Blog content is becoming more important as time goes by. Internet users are now either looking for answers or looking for entertainment. If you can provide either one or both then you will gain a strong following of loyal readers. Of course, you need to attract those readers in the first place and the best way to do this is with a great title. In fact, see if can turn your title into a great headline.

Titles need to be written so in such a way that they catch a prospective readers attention and then brings them onto your website to read your blog content. Titles can be witty, or in the traditional ‘how to’ or numbered as in 7 Great Ways to…..Look at some of these titles and tell me if you would follow them up:

Facebook Gets A New Face Lift

Google Gets The Giggles

Microsoft Gets Harder

Yahoo! Says BooHoo

What about our parent site, Brick Marketing.

Brick Marketing Turns To Stone

These are more headline type titles but they can be very effective in drawing in new readers. If you follow the headlines with some great blog content then your readers are going to want to come back for more.

What about keywords, I hear you say. It is still possible to include keywords in your headlines, it just takes some clever word use. Often, the company or business name is included in your list of keywords anyway. The headlines from above could have keywords placed either side of them. For example if search engines is one of your keywords:

Search Engines: Google Gets The Giggles

The headline still works - perhaps better as it now has a category in the title. Blog content is important. Your title sells the content. If you think back to newspapers, headlines, particularly sensational, sold newspapers. Your headline needs to sell your blog. Your blog content seals the sale.

Two old saying contradict each other - First impressions count and Never judge a book by its cover. When it comes to blog design, your landing page is not just the cover, it essentially a snapshot of the whole blog so First Impressions Will Count. Avoid these six blog design mistakes and you may keep your visitor long enough for them to read the content.

Avoid the overuse of Flash: in fact, if possible don’t use it at all. Flash graphics can look great in a blog design but they can also be turnoffs as well. If you need to use flash graphics, place them below the fold so the visitor at least gets a feel for your blog before the flash scares them away.

Avoid auto play video and audio files. These slow down the load speed of your blog and can often be a huge turn off for your visitors. Give them the option of playing the file if they wish.

Avoid placing badges and banners everywhere. A nice clean look to a blog is the ultimate aim. You can still have banners and badges, the key is to balance how many and where they are place. Having too many can be counter productive as the visitor can be confused as to which button the need to press when the time arises.

Avoid fancy fonts and/or fonts that are too big or too small. This is a simple equation. If I cannot read your site, I am gone. Be sensible with font colors and sizes.

Avoid the use of ‘click here’ links. When providing a link, use anchor text that makes sense to the user. you should also avoid simple home page links. If you are discussing someone else’s article, link using good keywords and using the articles URL.

Finally, tell me where I am! I don’t know how many times I have clicked on a couple of links only to find the page I have landed on has no indication as to who they are.

If you can avoid those six blog design mistakes you may find your traffic staying a little longer and your conversions, if you have them, increasing. Your blog design is selling you and your brand.

Feedburner is about to lose its identity, or at least, its look and feel as it migrates across to a typical Google look and feel including using your Google details to log in.

According to the Feedburner blog, you wont see many changes to start with but you will be managing your feeds through your Google account (if you have one). The blog also reports:

Following on the footsteps of this account migration, FeedBurner will start to look and feel more like a set of Google services, and we will be completing much tighter integration into other Google services such as Google AdSense.

Slowly and surely the internet is getting smaller. It wont be long and you will be able to log into Google; manage your Feedburner feeds, slide across to several different social sites before returning to your home page to check your gMail.

At least your Feedburner feeds wont change - although then again, reading more on their blog:

If you are a feed advertiser, don’t worry: we have some happy surprises coming for you as well, and if you are an advertiser who is not yet a feed advertiser, you too shall be blessed with good fortune.

Sounds a little confusing, particularly the last phrase. That is Feedburner and Google for you. So long as everything passes seamlessly everyone will be happy. From past web experiences, I doubt the seamless part. Happy feed burning.

Marketing used to be about getting your name out there, getting known and talked about. Guess What? Blog marketing is no different. What has changed is how you go about it.

Traditional marketing consultants often have difficulties when it comes to online marketing, particularly when it comes to blog marketing. In the past, marketing consultants would look around the local environment to determine how and where they could advertise their clients business.

Is the online world really that different? To be honest, no it probably isn’t. We still look around, find appropriate sites and try to get some form of advertising going. Those scenarios are advertising more than marketing. The old methods of marketing often involved seeking out publishers and trying to convince them to talk about your products or your brands. Radio was a very popular means of delivering these messages.

This is where the online world takes a major detour. Whilst the online world is quickly gathering its own version of ‘traditional media’, it is no longer a marketing experts job to talk people into discussing products or brands. Blog marketing now is about first, producing content that everyone finds useful.

From that point on, a blog marketing expert will ‘introduce’ the blog to the various social sites. The hope is that over a period of time of form of organic discussion takes place where the blog in question is referenced, hopefully as an authority on a particular subject.

If your blog is being talked about or if you are receiving visitors based on recommendations, you will know that your blog marketing strategies have been successful.

If you use WordPress and have a presence on Facebook then you may like this little blog plugin - Facebook Dashboard Widget - that enables you to stay in touch with your Facebook friends.

The blog plugin is quick and easy to install running under WordPress 2.5 and utilizing the dashboards widgets feature, will add an RSS feed for each of your friends.

….this plugin will process your Friends status updates RSS feed and/or your Facebook notifications feed, and add a widget for each to your WordPress admin dashboard. So now you can keep up with whats going on in your friends lives from anywhere without needing to access Facebook!

Now there is no reason not to stay in touch with your Facebook friends - at least not if you install this blog plugin.

Podcasts are very popular and can easily be added to your blog content with five simple steps. Since a podcast can be downloaded and listened to at any time, it makes sense to offer it as a subscription option as well.

Five Steps To Podcast Success

Plan your podcast: is it going to be a recording of your blog post or are you going to do special one of posts like problem solving or how to’s. Part of your planning is to script what you are going to record.

Record your podcast: recording is fairly simple and straightforward. There are many free and paid software packages available - it is simply a matter of following their instructions.

Upload to a server: upload to either your website server or to a podcast hosting service. If you plan on doing regular podcasts then using a podcasting host will be money well spent. Podcasts can put a drain on your bandwidth and storage space.

Create a podcast feed: create a podcast feed using either a dedicated service or Feedburner. If you use Feedburner for your RSS feeds then using them for your podcasts is quite sensible. They also provide reasonable tracking statistics as well.

Promote: that is it. Promote your podcast, on your site, through social media and in emails.

Podcasting is not difficult and can become a valuable addition to your blog content. The next step is to learn how to promote your own products within a podcast - thats for another post I think.

…..And Nasty. I forgot to add the tag to the end of the title! Being serious for just one moment, if you were hoping to find out how to get your blog and website services really cheap, don’t bother. The two do not belong together.

In today’s online world, you really do get what you pay for. If you pay $5 per month for hosting then you are going to get $5 worth of blog and website service and that is it. Possibly limited bandwidth and SQL  databases and when it comes to person to person service, forget it.

I have known some of these cheap providers to take 30 minutes to answer a phone call and the person on the other end of the phone not having an answer to your question - even hanging up on you.

If you are serious about running a website or blog then you need to start by being serious about your blog and website service provider. It is not just about bandwidth. What support do they have? What is included with your service? What software, particularly eCommerce do you have access to?

The top quality blog and website service providers include features such as search engine submission when you launch your website. Many of the good providers also have webpage design, graphic design and search engine optimization service available.

Select a cheap host and you will, eventually, regret the decision. Saving a few dollars now may end up costing you a lot more down the track so think about your blog and website services right from the start and find a professional service that meets your needs, not just your wallet.

This WordPress tip is aimed at those who have not bothered to update their software for sometime. If use or rely on Technorati they will soon stop indexing sites that have not upgraded to the latest software.

Technorati are taking this action due to the number of security breaches that have been detected in recent times. These breaches include the insertion of hidden links on blog pages created prior to the version 2.3.3 update. To quote a lengthy piece from Technorati’s blog post on the topic:

Blogs that have been compromised by this security vulnerability are typified by having links to spam destinations inserted onto the blog page. These link insertions may be invisible to casual observations; the links are often obscured by style attributes that render them invisible.

You can check your blog for links using the page source code or the Tools - Page Info - Links option in Firefox. The ramifications are, again from the Technorati blog:

Because of this ongoing problem, we’re discontinuing processing crawls of blogs that exhibit common symptoms of being compromised. We strongly recommend upgrading your WordPress installation. Even if you haven’t been afflicted by a compromise, by the time you are aware that you have been a number of negative consequences may have already occurred (for instance, flagged spam by Technorati, Google or Yahoo!) — this has been reported by many WordPress users.

The last thing you want is to suddenly lose your rankings within Google or Technorati due to ‘link selling’ when in actual fact you have been spam linked. The biggest WordPress tip for the year so far is to upgrade to the latest software, check your pages for any spam links, and protect your hard earned rankings.

I could also have written how to prevent halving your blogging income through Adsense. The income you receive for each click is based in part on your click through rate or CTR.

As you work to increase your traffic, you need to carefully watch that your CTR doesn’t start to fall. Many bloggers use traffic generating solutions which, while great for generating traffic, usually deliver poor CTR results.

Examples of poor CTR traffic include StumbleUpon, Entre Card, Blogrush and many of the other social sites. The best traffic for generating higher CTR’s is that derived from organic search results through the major search engines.

Common sense would suggest that as they have clicked a link to find you, they will also click a similar link to leave if you don’t quite match what they are looking for. If it is an Adsense link they are clicking then your CTR will rise.

With this in mind, you need to be sure your Adsense units are optimized to deliver the best results. Matching those ad units to web page is the first step, however placement can be critical. Visitors will not always travel below the fold if they feel the site is not providing what they want. Trial your Adsense units in a variety of places to see which placement produces the best results.

The bottom line when relying on Adsense for your blogging income is to ensure that any growth in traffic is not matched by a drop in your CTR. If this happens your per click return will drop dramatically. If you can increase your CTR then you may well find your per click return increasing and, with luck, your blogging income doubling.

For many businesses, having a blog is an integral part of their marketing strategies. Blog SEO is similar to website SEO where the aim is to get to the top of the search engine results pages.

To achieve this, a company that specializes in blog SEO can provide services that will further the commercial goals of your business. This achieved in a number of ways.

Metrics and statistics are a cornerstone in blog SEO, however, the most important metric of all, and the most honest, is your bottom line. Are you achieving your targets?

The only way to achieve targets is by selling and before any sale can be made, or a lead generated, or for that matter, an inquiry received; your website must be found. Building a web site and maintaining it will not generate any traffic unless you undertake some website or blog SEO programs.

Blog SEO is not simply a matter of submitting your web site to search engines. Sure, you can build the most perfect web site in the world, but they will not come unless your web site ranks for the terms your customers are typing into search engines.

The link between your blog or website, the search engines and the millions of internet users is the blog SEO specialist. Their role is to have your business promoted to a position within the search pages where potential customers can find you.

In simple terms, blog SEO oils the wheels of commerce by bringing potential customer who have already shown interest in a products or services such as yours to your blog or website.

Have you updated to WordPress 2.5.1 yet. Are you a little nervous about going through the update process. Worry no more. Keith Dsouza has written a post on a blog plugin called WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

As the name implies, this blog plugin will upgrade your WordPress installation to latest version almost automatically. I say almost as you do need to click through some of the processes. However it is as auto as you are ever going to get. In fact the whole process takes no more than five minutes.

The upgrade follows the recommendations for WordPress upgrades in that it:

1. Checks that everything is okay to upgrade
2. backs up your data files
3. disables plugins
4. puts the site ofline
5. uploads the upgrade files from WordPress
6. install the files
7. updates data files
8. enables plugins
9. puts your site back online

All this is done while you basically click okay at each step. You can put it on auto and the blog plugin will do many of these steps without you clicking ok. It certainly makes the upgrade process much smoother and less intimidating.

Why do we go to great lengths to undertake blog SEO programs? That sounds like a silly question. We all know that the only way to get a decent placement in the search engine results is by telling the search engine all about us.

So what exactly are you telling the search engines about your blog and what should you be telling them? The term keyword is bandied about alot and yet it is only a descriptor. Search engines want to know more than just a list of keywords. The want to know all about your blog - and that is where blog SEO comes in.

Do you need to tell the search engines what each post (page) is about? No. Search engines are not human, they cannot think or understand meanings. In fact, search engines are only interested in words. They are becoming smarter when it comes to deciphering un-natural word groupings, but they cannot put a word into a picture as a human does.

Search engines are really only focused on word matching. I enter a search term and the search engine goes through its data base trying to find entries that match that word or group of words. The search engine then delivers those results as a list based on the rankings for each page found. Blog SEO is all about (a) telling them that your page exist and (b) getting your page the highest ranking possible.

The word matching process is labeled ‘keyword’. In simple terms, a user enters a search word - called a keyword - and the matching process begins. If your blog SEO has been successful using that keyword then you may well find yourself with a high ranking for that page.

Why undertake blog SEO. To get ranked by the search engines so that internet users can find your pages and come and visit. If no one knows you exist, no one will come. Very simple philosophy, however, blog SEO is darned hard work.

Outsourcing your blog content has become popular particularly with web site owners who are also running a bricks and mortar business. Having the time to write interesting and informative content that is also search engine optimized can take time, and business owners often don’t have that time.

When trying to find a blog content provider there are several things you should look for. These include:

1. Look for a blog content provider that has been around for awhile
2. Ask to see examples of their work
3. Determine whether or not they offer extra services such as social bookmarking
4. Look for value - can they provide daily posts
5. Can they provide writers skilled in your niche

There are many good blog content providers around these days. Find one that is willing to actually talk to you and not just communicate online. Discuss your needs and get a thorough understanding of what you are receiving for your money.

Blog content providers can prove to be good value for money if you employ the right people for the job.

I say pain as sometimes it can be very tedious and even frustrating getting your blog listed into many of the blog directories. One of my biggest frustrations is trying to find a category that is suited to the blog I want listed - and every directory seems to have a different set of categories.

However, are they worth the effort? Most directory sites seem to have taken a little dip in the rankings of late, does that mean that Google no longer favors them or is it a temporary glitch? For some blog directories  it no longer matters,  they have incorporated no follow into the their out going links.

If you do decide to submit to one of the blog directories, determine if it does follow, if not, is it popular enough to deliver traffic - if not - don’t bother.

Blog directories that haven’t  gone the no follow route can still provide some good value. If they allow links to inner pages, so much the better. Blog directories that use the do follow and allow deeper linking are few and far between. If you can find one, use it and use it well.

Ensure you select the right category and write a good description. If submitting to more than one directory, use a unique description for each one - chances are you are using a slightly different category so write your description to marry your blog to the blog directories you are submitting to.

Whilst it may be a tedious job submitting to blog directories, the links you receive will all help to build on the rankings of your blog - use blog directories only if they do provide some real help.