A Fun Way to Increase Blog Traffic - Have a Contest!

Blog contests are gaining more popularity as bloggers begin to see the benefits that a simple contest or giveaway can bring.

Why Run a Contest?

Traffic
Running a contest can double the amount of traffic coming through your site. Making sure you advertise your contest will drive more people to your blog to see and enter. Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and ask your followers on Twitter to retweet your contest information and they’ll gain an entry to the contest. Word of mouth is key, and who doesn’t like free stuff?
You can also list your contest at sites like these:
•    tipjunkie.net
•    online-sweepstakes.com
•    contestblogger.com
•    myblogcontest.com
•    contestbeat.com

New Readers
New Traffic means new readers as well. People who stop by to enter themselves in your contest might also find themselves enjoying the content of the rest of your blog, and come back for more.

Loyalty
Giving away the right prize for your readers can produce a sense of loyalty and an eagerness to come back. Make sure you’re giving away things that are of interest to your particular group of followers, and things that somehow pertain to your particular expertise. Books, CD’s and gift certificates are popular giveaways.

Relationships with Marketers
When your blog generates enough comments and traffic, marketers will be interested in teaming up with you to promote their products, and often this means they will provide you with free products to use as prizes in your contests. This means free advertising for them, and no out of pocket expense for you to run your contest.

Running a successful contest can take time and practice, but judging from the success of other bloggers, blog contests can be a real way to help your blog become successful and popular.

We found some blogs that are currently having their own contests, check them out!

• Karikuy is giving away a 6 day trip to Machu Picchu!
• Sterling Roses Design is giving away three 4 x 6 metallic prints from Jennifer Dickerson Photography
• Joyce Cherrier is giving away a pair of New Balance Women's Cross Training Shoes (ends this Sunday, 1/31)
• The Centisible Life is giving away various prizes including gift cards, books and other cool stuff in honor of their 1-year anniversary!

We want to hear from you! Have you run a contest on your blog? What were the results, and what did you learn for next time?

Landau Design is a web design and online marketing company. Let Landau Design review your online presence and devise an online strategy to take your company to the next level.

How to Add Share Icons to Your Blog or Website

Many Landau Design clients have asked this question: How do I get those cute share icons onto my blog or web page? It's quite simple if you're willing to do a little diving into the code. The two most popular share links are:

• Tweetmeme (see our blog post: Tweetmeme is the Way to Get Tweetseesee)
  
• AddThis
• ShareThis

You'll notice at the top of this code we have the Tweetmeme and AddThis links (and if at this point you'd like to click them and share this post, we'd love you for it!)

If you're blogging in Blogger
You need to add the code for these icons into your Blogger template. If you add it as a widget in the sidebar, then the share link will go to your blog home page, and not to a specific blog post. It's better to have it go to a specific blog post so then you can reference what the blog is about when you share the link. Here are tutorials for adding these icons

• Add a Tweetmeme Retweet Button in Blogger
• Add AddThis Button in Blogger
• Get the ShareThis Button for Blogger

If you're blogging at Wordpress.com
Wordpress makes your life easier with simple widgets you can add to your blog template. There are several different kinds you can add, each with its own design. Tweetmeme And AddThis use Javascript, which is not allowed in blogs hosted at Wordpress.com, so you cannot use these share icons here. The following links show you how to add the other share buttons if you are using Wordpress.com to host your blog:

• AddThis from Wordpress Support 
• GetSocial Social Bookmarking for Wordpress.com
  

If you're blogging on a personally hosted Wordpress.org blog
The personally hosted version of Wordpress has a lot more flexibility, and there are many social link plugins that are easy to add. Here are some links that will help you decide what to choose and how to install these plugins:

• 10 Wordpress Plugins for Social Media 
• Top 10 Wordpress Plugins to Promote Your Social Media Profiles
  

If your website is built in Joomla
Joomla offers several options for social media icons. There are ones that reside right on the page, and then there are global plugins that you can put into the header bar. We have used the following two extensions with great success:

• Ultimate Social Bookmarking Plugin (plugin that goes on all pages)
• Simple Page Options (module that you place on the page)
  

For the traditional Tweetmeme and AddThis, you would need to add HTML code to your articles using a custom code plugin (Sorcerer is a great one). You would then follow the HTML directions in combination with the plugin syntax to put the share links onto your page.

If you have a regular HTML website
Adding the share icons is going to have to be done one page at a time. You will have to get the HTML code, and paste it into your page using an HTML editor, or by viewing the source code in your WYSIWYG (i.e. Dreamweaver) editor. Here are tutorials that show how to add Tweetmeme and AddThis icons to your pages.

Landau Design is a web design and online marketing company specializing in helping small businesses utilize the internet to get ahead. Let Landau Design review your online marketing strategy to take you to the next level.

How to Share Your Blog in Cyberspace

You put a lot of effort to write your blog, but how do you get people to come and read it? Social media outlets are very effective in reaching viewers, but can sometimes take more time than you have. If you want an effective blog sharing strategy, consider using blog and bookmarking directories for spreading the news about your valuable posts.

What is a blog directory?
Blog directories are like a phone book for blogs. People submit their blog URL into specific categories in the directory, so all your blog content gets indexed. You only have to submit it once, which means it's a quick and easy way to share your blog.

Once in the directory, users who are looking for specific information will come and search for content, and if they are looking for your content genre, you will have easily gained some new readers. Some of the most popular blog directories include:

• Technorati
• BlogCatalog 
• Bloggeries
• Blog Universe
  

Sometimes an individual creates a private directory, and while it may not get as many eyeballs as the commercial ones, the users it gets tend to be more engaged. A great example is the Directory for Bloggers by The Brave Programmer (Robert Bravery).

What is a bookmarking directory?
There are many sites that are bookmarking directories, which means they are indexing specific URLs of specific blog posts. These sites you have to submit your blog posts one at a time. The advantage of bookmarking directories is that they are part of the social media world, so you can have buttons on your blog that allows your readers to submit your content as well. All these sites have submission counters, so the more a specific blog post is submitted, the higher it is ranked in the bookmarking directory index.

Users come to the bookmarking directories and browse posts in specific categories. Again, an excellent way to gain some new readers. Some of the most popular bookmarking directories include:

Digg.com

StumbleUpon

Buzz

Delicious

Consistently submitting your posts to the bookmarking directories is also a very effective way to continually add link backs to your blog.

Keep track of your progress
If you are going to utilize a directory strategy, be sure to track where you have submitted your blog. In this way you can hand off submission responsibilities to others without worrying about duplicating effort. Also, watch your traffic analytics to track how many people are finding your blog through places you've submitted. This will give you a great idea of what types of directories are most likely to bring you new visitors.

How to Schedule Posts in Blogger

We've discussed the benefits of blogging for business and SEO, but how do you find time to write all those blog posts? If you're required to input the blog post every morning, then you have to put it into your schedule. Alternatively, you can post your blog ahead of time, and use the scheduling feature to launch your posts at the chosen time.

Steps to schedule a post:

1. Create a new post and write your copy (or you can write it in Word and paste it into the editing window).
2. Add any images/graphics you would like.
3. Add in the labels it should be categorized under.
4. Click the Post Options link in the bottom left of the window (see figure).
5. Click the Schedule at radio button in the bottom right.
6. Write in the date and time you want the post to publish.
7. Click the Publish Post button.

Now in your list of blog posts there will be a "scheduled" label next to the post's name. This tells you that the post has been input into your system, but it has not yet been published for public view. The system will then launch your post at the assigned time.

Using this scheduling method, you can pre-write all your blogs for the week, month or whatever time schedule you prefer. So you can set aside larger amounts to time to write your blog, rather than spending every morning making sure it gets launched on time.

Tweetmeme is the Way to Get Tweetseesee

If you have a blog or website, Tweetmeme is an excellent way to make it super easy for your readers to Tweet you. With two button clicks reader can select to tweet your posts, and they don’t even have to write anything. A blog without Tweetmeme is missing out on a great opportunity! Don’t believe me? Click on the bright green rectangle at the top of this post, and you’ll see how easy it is to tweet this post.

The other advantage of Tweetmeme is that every post that is tweeted gets indexed in the Tweetmeme directory. That gains you SEO points plus more eyeballs reading your work.

What do I need to use Tweetmeme?
In order to use this service, you need a Twitter account and you need to sign up for a Tweetmeme account. Once signed up, you can install it on your blog. You can also install it on pages on your website.

How do I get Tweetmeme?
You need to visit the Tweetmeme site to get the appropriate code for the retweet button. The code you use will be specific for your blog application or your website format. If you visit the Tweetmeme Retweet Button page, you’ll see the code is neatly organized by how you’re going to use it. The page where you grab the code gives specific instructions on how to use it.

How do I set up Tweetmeme?
While the Tweetmeme site has some excellent information, other writers in the blogasphere have written some excellent tutorials on how to set up Tweetmeme and customize the code:
Improve Your Tweetmeme Setup For Better Results
A Fully Customized TweetMeme ReTweet Button for Your Blog Post
Add A TweetMeme Retweet Button To Blogger
Generate custom Tweetmeme code for Blogger

If you add Tweetmeme to your blog or website, be sure to post a comment below so everybody reading can come take a look and give you some tweets!

Follow Landau Design on Twitter.

Should You Sell Advertising Space on Your Blog?

Advertising on your blog is a popular way to make some extra dollars. But how does one approach the concept of advertising? The following steps will help you determine what to charge and how to implement your advertising venture:

1) Determine if you should have advertising on your blog.
You need to consider if advertising is right for your blog. Will your readers be okay with it? Do you have space for it? Would people even pay for it? If your blog is new, it may not be something that you could sell, and instead you might want to use Google AdSense, which means you only get paid when people click on the ads. If you aren't at a place where you could sell ads, consider trading ads with another blog that is complimentary to your own.

2) Determine the value of an ad on your blog.
To determine the value of an ad you have to attempt to quantify the value of your blog. This means you have to come up with a cost per click or cost per impression value based on who visits your blog, how often they visit and how long they stay there. It's a somewhat ambiguous process to figure this out, but ProBlogger expert Daniel Scocco has written an excellent tutorial to help you determine how much to charge for advertising on your blog. If you're still stumped, you might try running through the My Blog Value calculator. While the creators claim it's just for fun, it does help give you an idea of where to begin.

2) Decide if you want to use a service to manage the advertising.
You can manually accept and place ads on your blogs and keep an Excel file to track expiration dates and due dates for payment. But there are companies that will manage the placement and payment for you. Of course they take a percentage, but they will also promote your blog in their directories so you might find other advertisers you may not have otherwise connected with. I have not used one of these services, but these are ones I have seen on popular blogs:

• Adready
• Smorty
• Blog Ads
• Pay Per Post

Determining whether to have a cost-per-click (CPC) versus pay-per-impression (CPM) or affiliate ads may determine which service you choose. Robert Bravery explains the difference between CPC & CPM in an article on his blog. Affiliate advertising means you get a commission if somebody clicks the ad and makes a purchase on the advertisers' site.

4) Decide where the place the ads
Decide how much space on your blog you are willing to give up to advertising. Advertisers will not be happy if the ads are pushed way down, so usually somewhere near the top, in the sidebar, is optimum positioning. If you are going to push ads below the fold, you might consider charging a reduced rate for this less-than-premium placement.

Hopefully this will help you decide whether to have ads and how much to charge from them. Making money from blog advertising is a common and easy way to generate revenue for something you are already doing. It's worth serious consideration as a means of generating some passive income.

How Do I Set Up a Blog?

Setting up a blog can be really easy, if you know where to look for instructions. I have put together some of the best tutorials I have found for the two most popular blogging programs.

Two most popular blogging programs:

• Blogger.com (free, owned by Google, hosted by Blogger.com)
• Wordpress.com (basic is free, pay for upgrades, hosted on their server)
• Wordpress.org (free, open-source, hosted on your server)

How do I set up the blog itself?

• Blogger setup: video tutorial | written tutorial
• Wordpress hosted on their server: video tutorial | written tutorial
• Wordpress hosted on your server: video tutorial | written tutorial

Where do I find free templates?

• 70 new and fresh Blogger templates
• Free Blogger templates for your blog
• 120 best Blogger themes around
  
• 41 great looking Wordpress themes
• Free Wordpress Templates and themes
• 100 excellent free Wordpress themes
  

How do I install a template on my blog?

• Installing a template in Blogger.com
• For Wordpress.com, you cannot install your own template unless you upgrade to a pay account. If you do upgrade, you can only customize the existing themes, you cannot install and template created outside the platform.
• Installing a template in Wordpress.org (hosted on your server)

Now What?
After you've installed everything it's time to start writing and publicizing your blog. I would recommend subscribing to pro-blogger blogs to gain tips and learn how to manage and grow your blog:

• Problogger (my favorite)
• David Risley
• Copyblogger

Why Should I Syndicate My Content?

Syndicating online is just like it is in other media. When Oprah first started in television, her show only aired on the local ABC station in Chicago. But when her show became syndicated, it was broadcast to all ABC stations around the country. Web syndication is a means of distributing content you have created to other places on the web. An RSS feed is the code used to share this content.

Why syndicate?
If you want to increase your online exposure, syndication is the way to go! A large component of the Internet is about sharing information. By sharing your content through a syndication feed, you are allowing others to benefit from your knowledge. In addition, you provide fresh content to other sites so they can do less work maintaining a current site.

What kind of content should I syndicate?
Anything you have that would be of interest to others. Syndication is not just for blogs, it could also be for press releases or other content within your website. It’s also not just for text either. You can also syndicate images and video. Focus on the area you have knowledge or can add value, and offer that information in an RSS feed. At Landau Design we created this blog to answer the questions all our clients ask, and we have syndicated this blog to help others who are creating or maintaining their web presence.

How do I get people to subscribe?
Make certain you have an easily visible link on your site that says “subscribe to our RSS feed.” Using the orange RSS icon is an excellent way to get your feed link noticed. In Joomla there is a syndication feature built into the system which allows for syndication of any content category. You can also subscribe your content to syndication directories, which allows users to search and select content to use on their site.

More information:

• Avoid These RSS Feed Syndication Mistakes
• Publish and Syndicate Your News to the Web
• How to Get the Most Out of Your Content
• 10 of the Best RSS Tips
  

Getting Links in Other Blogs

Link building is an important piece of gaining ranking in Google. Different links have different levels of relevance, so it's important to understand what you're getting when you obtain links to your site. The best types of links are organic links, or ones that are within content that is relevant to your site.

Other people's blogs are an excellent way to gain these relevant links. But how do you get links in other people's blogs? Here are a few articles that give excellent suggestions on how to gain these valuable links:

• Why No One Links to Your Best Posts
• 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger
• How to get links and get sites to write about you

Why Use a Blog Reader?

Readers (also known as news aggregators) are an awesome way to bring together all the online content you read. Not only can you keep organized, but they make it a cinch to glance through your list and know who has made an update that you might want to read. They work by pulling all your RSS feeds from blogs and news into one window pane. Down one side they have a list of the blogs you're subscribed to, and in the viewing pane they show the articles that have been posted. They highlight the blog titles whenever a person does an update, so in one glance you can see what new content to view.

I resisted a reader at first, but now in 15 minutes a day I can glance through 30+ blogs and read the articles that interest me. I chose the Google reader, but only because my blog is on Google and I already had an account.

Why do you need to read so many blogs? Because so many people are posting so much of what they're thinking. Blogs are also an ideal way to learn about something new (SEO is my topic of choice these days). Many people write extensively on one topic, so you can learn a lot just by reading a few minutes daily. They're also a great way to share information between friends. Many people write in a blog like a diary.

If you want to take in the benefits of blog information, then I would recommend a reader. You can use one online or through your computer. It will save you so much time! Here are some of the most popular readers:

• Google Reader
  
• Bloglines
• Feedreader
• My Yahoo