This entry is all about Twitter, nothing too fancy. Just a general overview and some links.
Twitter is all about social networking and micro-blogging. You can create a status message of up to 140 characters in length which everyone (who is following you) can see. The service is very open and there are many apps and tools for it as well.
Some apps and tools are:
Desktop
Twhirl - A desktop client which enables you to connect and update your Twitter account. So far this one is my favorite as it provides everything there is on Twitter in a convienient accessible way in your desktop.
Firefox Add-on
TwitterFox - Don’t want to navigate away from your page? Easy, just install this in your Firefox browser and you’ll have some of the Twitter power at your hands, or more like in a corner of your window.
Cellphones
TwitterBerry - For all you people that have a Blackberry, this app is for you.Tweetie - And for all you people that have a iPhone, this app is for you.
E-Mail
TwitterMail - Here you provide your Twitter credentials, then they give you an email address which ends in @twittermail.com and then when you send an email to the email provided it updates your Twitter status.
Counter
TwitterCounter - Just like the Feedburner counter, this web tool counts how many followers you have.
Trends
Twist - With this service you can monitor Twitter trends
Now if you’re just starting out and you have no interesting people to follow, these are people I follow and they constantly update with useful stuff. So I suggest following them as well.
- @freshfocus
- @lizstrauss
- @garyvee
- @Ribeezie
- @Garcya
- @lorellewp
So that’s it for today, stay tuned for more articles soon.
This is nothing new, I’ve known about this for a pretty long time but hey, better late than never and this can apply those who still haven’t gotten news about this great service! Onto the matter. PostRank is the new brand of what was before called AideRSS.
This is a great feed filtering service. What it does is that it takes out the most important, read-worthy content out there and serves it right in your face for you to analyze and enjoy.More specifically, it ranks any type of articles, blogs, news, and feed items.
How do they determine their stats and filters?
They use certain web-sources as their way of engaging and filtering the content. Some are:
- Views - Counts the page views via the RSS reader.
- Clicks - Counts the number of clicks via the RSS reader.
- Comments - Number of comments on the item.
- Delicious - Number of bookmarks saved.
- Magnolia - Same as Delicious, number of bookmarks saved.
- Digg - Number of diggs on the item.
- Twitter - Number of tweets mentioning the item.
- Pownce - Number of times the item has been shared.
- Google trackbacks - Number of links that trackback to the item.
And if you’re a Firefox extension-lover, you’re going to love the Firefox PostRank Extension. With this extension you have greater ability to control and customize your RSS feeds, discover top posts, preview PostRank score, and easy feed management. All this without ever leaving the page you’re on!
So in conclusion, PostRank is a great way to just filter the content so you get good juicy blog posts, articles, and so on. I view it as my free weekly, daily, hourly, newspaper. So go ahead and try the service, if you’ve already tried it tell me what do you think of PostRank in a comment so others can see feedback on the excellent service.
Hey everyone. I was surfing Digg and I found out about an article from former Lifehacker contributor Tamar Weinberg who did an entry called The Ultimate Productivity Toolbox for Creative People on Lateral Action (he is now an associate editor over there).
Its a great post for creative and work efficient people who strive toward being able to raise the quality of their work. I’m always searching for web tools on the Internet (Google, I want to thank you for many successful searches). See, everyone needs help once in a while and that is why developers bring you these tools. So you can excel in all your areas of interest. Don’t just depend on yourself, don’t sit there and use whatever tool first comes installed in your operating system. No. Search for tools and use them to your advantage.
Of course, some tools require payment. But this shouldn’t prevent you from moving forward. No, dear reader, I’m not going to say you should download the tool illegally. Support the tools! Anyways, I know some tools are just too pricey, but don’t get mislead by the price. Some tools are very expensive, but at the end they just don’t deliver. Now, the trick is simple. Bookmark the tool you want to buy, study it. How? Search for reviews, ask people that are using the tool, e-mail the product’s creator and/or the company that created it. Its simple really, always be smart when buying on the Internet.
So don’t wait any longer, go find tools that will make your Internet experience an excellent one. 
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Hey guys, I thought I’d take out the time to post a little motivational article. All bloggers come to a point where they just need a reason to keep on blogging. Maybe its money, fame, family, education, information, whatever. And sometimes its none of them and you just can’t find any motivation at all. Check this out:
“Give a person a fish; you have fed them for today. Teach a person to fish; and you have fed them for a lifetime.”
That is what I want to accomplish in this blog. I want to be able to teach you guys to fish. And I’m not saying I’m the biggest blogging expert, but I will say I know where to get the information if I don’t have it and how to provide good solid content that is not just helpful but is verified truthful information too.
So what are we going to talk about today? We’re going to talk about as if we where going to start blogging from point zero.
So ask yourself this question? What do you want to do with your blog? What do you want to accomplish? What is your goal?
These questions are a way of stimulating your brain for motivation. I think I can, I think I can. No. I know I can.
Sounds awkward sometimes, but its a good way to determine yourself to what you want to do.
Why am I doing this? It could be a number of reasons, including:
- Money - You can decide that you want to blog to make money, this is what most bloggers of today do. But money isn’t everything, right? Try making your goal a bit more wide.
- Quitting your day job - Maybe you’re tired of your day job, it causes stress and you don’t enjoy it at all. You find blogging to be a great way to live off of by working hard on it and at the same time it gives you enough space to enjoy life.
- For the kicks of it - You blog just for fun, for expressing yourself, etc.
- You decide - You are the one that really decides at the end. Only you know why you really want to blog!
Now that you have your goal set in mind and you know why you want to blog. Its time to talk about your work ethic. You must know that if you were to quit your day job for blogging full time, its no joke when we mean full time. Blogging would be like any other job. You have to take it seriously and dedicate enough time for it.
It also depends on your writing habit too, though. Maybe you’re one that posts daily with short concise content, or you’re a weekly poster that puts up good thick and extensive posts. All in all, you have to dedicate time to your blogging.
There is no way you’ll ever get rich from blogging by just sitting around in your chair waiting for a cloud to pour money all over you. You have to act, search content, read books, talk with people, download material for your blog. Do all things possible to please your readers. Blogging is not a “get rich quick” strategy. It takes time and efforts.
Don’t be frustrated if your blog doesn’t pick up in 3, 6, 9, etc., months. Imagine, the other days I had 50 readers and the count dropped to 15-20 or so. But that doesn’t let me down. Not at all, I’m going to keep on blogging and finding new strategies to make all this work. Darren Rowse from ProBlogger said he had been blogging for about 3 years before he became truly successful. Of course there are people that do it in less time but the point is that it takes time. It takes time to blog and be successful.
In the end, it just comes to how much you truly desire your dreams. Never give up on them. And never let anything come in your way. Fight for what you want and achieve it, grab it, make it yours.
Today I’m going to help you guys select your perfect niche blog. Many tools have risen up in the web to help you choose a niche for your blog. These are the ones I’ve used in my past and have proven most useful.
- Google Trends - Google has a tool that is very useful at finding what people are searching for. Even though it doesn’t produce any specific search number nor does it give you results for every term (only the popular ones) it provides excellent results if you know how to anylize them by checking if its growing or shrinking and it allows you to compare how big one is in comparison to another.
- Technorati - Blog search engine that has a “popular” tool that shows you what is hot in the blogosphere.
- Google Blog Search - This is a blog search (obviously) tool from Google that will help you find out what people are blogging.
- WordTracker - Keyword search tool that helps you find out how many people are searching for different words and how many other sites are competeing in those niches. You have to pay, but there is a free trial.
- Yahoo! Buzz - List of information on what people are searching on Yahoo. Use this to your advantage.
So those are my 5 recommendations. Its a fact that people often start out with personal blogs when they have almost no knowledge of the true potential of the blogosphere, but here you have the tools you need to help you choose your very own unique blog. Just search, use intellectual keywords on those search boxes, think creative and I’m sure you’ll be able to find out the correct type of blog for you in no time.
Did you just start up your blog? Want new features but don’t know where to get them? Well, you could have easily gotten them through Google but now that you’re here stay tuned because we’ve got some cool plugins for you.
Here are my edition of the Top 10 Wordpress Plugins.
- Sociable: Add social media buttons to the end of your posts. These include: Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Pownce and a lot, A LOT, more. Great for spreading around your articles on different social sites.
- All in One SEO Pack: This plugin automatically optimizes your website for immediate search engine optimization. 510,397 downloads and counting on the Wordpress official site. ‘Nuff said.
- Top Commentators Widget: Highly customizable widget where its function is to show the top “x” (you determine) number of people who have commentated on your blog and how many comments they’ve made. You can also enable links in the list (the link the person posts in the URL will be the link displayed in the list), why enable this and why have this plugin at all? Well its because people will be more motivated to comment on your blog if you have a type of widget like this, but of course you can achieve same or better results without the plugin. But the point is that this plugin makes people want to comment, simple as that.
- DoFollow Plugin: Removes the nofollow attribute from your comments.
- SezWho: This plugin enables you to rate posts and rate comments, also it allows you to keep track of comments people have made on weblogs and enhance traffic to your blog.
- CommentLuv: This will place a link to peoples last blog entry on comments they make on your website. This is a great way to get people to comment and be in a win-win situation.
- XML Sitemaps: Every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
- FeedBurner: This is a service owned by Google, but when you sign up there are several things that are related to your website. For example live hits stats, accurate subscription numbers, monetizing options, item use and a lot more.
- LightBox 2: Ever seen some image galleries that when you click on an image the background dims and a window pops up the image? Well this plugin does exactly that in a wonderful way. A nice touch for your website.
A source says Lightbox slows your page to a crawl, so I have removed it from the list. Instead I will replace this plugin with Subscribe To Comments:
- Subscribe To Comments: Stay engaged in a conversation by recieving an optional e-mail of further comments made.
- Popularity Contest: This plugin will highlight your best entries in your blog. There are numerical values assigned to each type of view and feedback; these are used to create a ‘popularity score’ for each post.There are numerical values assigned to each type of view and feedback; these are used to create a ‘popularity score’ for each post.There are numerical values assigned to each type of view and feedback; these are used to create a ‘popularity score’ for each post.
So there you have it, 10 efficient plugins for Wordpress. Leave a feedback if these helped you in any way! You can also contact me if you have some suggestions for 10 Efficient Wordpress Plugins v2 and you can be linked back to your website in the entry!
[Updated]
Thanks Rarst for your input. Anybody with ideas and good inputs will get linked in the post they help on. Its the way we “roll”. We actually interact with our readers!
