5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs

If you’re not going out this weekend to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, maybe you’ll want some reading material. (Or you could go see a recent release like Iron Man - but skip Speed Racer, in case you’re expecting it to be as good as the Wachowski Brothers’ earlier effort, The Matrix.)

It’s still arguable whether or not bloggers are generally opinionated, but some are definitely introverts. Chris Garrett gives some advice on breaking out of your solitude - something that’s necessary for online success.

One way to ease into being less introverted is to speak in front of people. (I was incredibly shy before becoming a teaching assistant in college.) If you don’t want to do that, try talking to a video camera set up on a tripod. (Or just start with podcasting. Both are less intimidating than public speaking.) Start with product or movie reviews, or a simple vodcast about something you know. (Write a rough script, to keep yourself focused.) Review the recordings and if something’s good, pop it up on YouTube. (Then use Google’s new YouTube Insight tool, to study the breakdown of viewers.)

You could also combine web cam video of yourself with screencasting, to educate your readers about blogging, how you produce content, how they can comment constructively, or even request information from you. Or do an excercise where you answer 20 questions about whether to stop blogging. As before, set up a video camera on a tripod, then review the recording sessions. Other things to talk about: whether the recession has hit the Internet [via Xfep], whether you should self-brand yourself as a freelancer,  getting naked as a blogger, or how great Twitter is as a broadcasting tool.

Another outlet for being outgoing is to drop video comments on the sites that allow it. Thanks to Disqus and Seesmic, there’s a WordPress plugin that allows WP blogs to enable video commenting (or use Magnify to create a video community). Personally, I’m not big on the idea of video comments, but if you are, don’t forget to brush your teeth first - in case you have some chive stuck in your gums.

Most of the time (when I’m not busy becoming a father, like in April) Performancing is committed to bringing you a free new WordPress theme each month.

This month’s theme is called The Story Theme. It’s a 3 column design where the content is situated to the far left, followed by two contrasting sidebars.

I’m especially fond of the look of the left-margin on this theme. It’s a nice touch that I’ve not seen in a theme before, but which adds a lot of class.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

You can preview the theme here.
You can download the Story Theme here.

Peter D. Marshall, a veteran filmmaker, asked on Twitter whether anyone had links for social media tips for a talk he’s preparing. The talk is aimed at theater people and how to promote themselves using social media.

Now, I see a lot of musicians on MySpace, but I’ve so far only come across one on Twitter: Henry Rollins. (Not that I’ve actively searched, mind you.) He’s not very active, and only follows 21 other Twitter accounts. Still, he establishes a presence and indicates when he’ll be play somewhere next. He also divulges little tidbits that give a glimpse into his life. This has garnered him over 6,500 followers on Twitter.

Yeah, So?

Well it’s like having a sort of subscription list if you are a performer, because then you can equate “follower” with ‘fan” (most of the time). Now had you started to build these followers from scratch by asking the same 6,500 people to sign up for an official newsletter, you might not have the same response. But now that you have these followers, you can offer something, and because they feel they know you, it’s possible that you’ll get a much better response. (Just speculating.)

Another person in the entertainment field that I follow is Diablo Cody, aka Brooke Busey, the scriptwriter who won an Oscar this year for the movie Juno. Her experience before Juno includes being a stripper, phone sex operator and ad agency work. Oh, and she has a university degree in media studies.

It’s fascinating and entertaining to follow her. Like watching the genesis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, simply because she’s documenting her progress from relative unknown (in a wider scope) to acclimating to the entertainment life. More specifically, she talks about when she’s going out for the night, parties, what she’s thinking of wearing, and that she’s taking acting classes, etc. (I originally liked Twitter simply for this ability to peer into the mindstream of a Twitterer - but Twitter is useful for so much more.)

Diablo Cody only follows 14 accounts and has 3,243 followers. What she isn’t doing is including a link to either her official website or her MySpace page in her Twitter profile. But she is Twittering - something that I think all performers or others in the entertainment biz should do to supplement their Facebook/ MySpace profile pages and their official websites. Just remember to link in your Twitter profile to one of those profile pages or your official site.

A Simple Plan

Treat it all as part of building your personal brand:

1. Your website can be very professional and maintained by someone (webmaster, PR person, business manager, etc.) The website should provide links to your Twitter account and to your MySpace (and/orFacebook) page.
2. Your MySpace (and/or Facebook) page is like another view of your website, with pictures and audio or video of your performances. Aside from managing “add” requests and comments, you don’t have to spend a lot of time running this page. (You could have a friend or hired hand managing add requests.) Link to both your Twitter account and your website.
3. Twitter is more immediate. Fans will love to peer into your head. You can use Twitter when you’re on tour or have some project coming up and want to let little bits of info out about it. You only have one link out, so take your pick: MySpace/Facebook or website.
4. Make sure that your YouTube (or whatever) videos have a watermarked of you Twitter URL. (For that matter, go upload your own videos to YouTube, before someone else beats you to it.) That way, you’re visually emblazoning your Twitter presence into viewers minds.

So, are there any performers who read this site and who use social media for self-promotion? What do you use and how and why? Feel free to drop your Twitter link. (Get one if you don’t have one. You don’t have to follow everyone that follows you.)

At BusinessWeek, Stephen Baker has written his look at why Twitter matters - and he used to Twitter to do it. He asked several questions and got back over 250 replies.

I suppose it helps that he has over 700 followers. So far, none of the questions I’ve asked on Twitter have received a direct response. But I’m thinking there’s probably a “critical mass” point in the number of people following you, after which you can ask pretty much anything and get a response. Which just reinforces why Twitter is a great resource.

Yeah, I’m drinking the Twitter koolaid now. Twhirl made me do it. And while it’s still like tapping into a stream of multiple free-associations (not quite a hive mind), Twitter via Twhirl has actually increased my productivity and kept me updated on breaking events. Forget robot agents programmed to find stuff on the web. Use Twitter and follow the active blogger/ twitterers. All will be revealed on Twitter.

So how do you use Twitter? Do you just put info “out there”, or do you use Twitter as a lead generator for your blog posts?

(If you want to follow me, I generally try to add people as soon as I have a chance - though I won’t guarantee that I’ll add everyone. You are welcome to drop your Twitter links in the comments as well.)

So the other day I had this idea. Why not build a tool that only shows the stories that went popular on at least two social voting sites?

I passed the idea by a few people. Mubashar Iqbal from Suffolk Software took that bait and quickly built the app.

While development is still in BETA, you should really take a look. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the results and think you end up with a really strong list of articles.

Here’s the site: SocialMediaPop.

What do you think of the results?

Guest blogging is simply the act of contributing to another blog which you would not normally do so, and generally those guest bloggers are rewarded not with money but a link to their website with credit given to the author. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it can really be significant when considering it from an SEO standpoint.

Guest Blogging For Others

Let’s say you have agreed to post an article on a blog that is well established and has a very high PageRank as a guest blogger. You write the article, it is posted on the site, and you receive recognition and backlinks for your blog (maybe even the ability to promote your own content on other blogs as well). If your blog is not as well known, this could be a great opportunity to spread the word. Not only that, but the search engines will be taking notice as well.

It works out because the owner of the blog you posted on receives free content, and you receive links and recognition. It is practically a mutual benefit, and you might not receive a link otherwise. In other words, if you are dedicated enough to guest post on a wide variety of blogs with high PageRanks, you are helping your own blog indirectly, and you also show that you have experience by blogging at very many other recognizable blogs.

Allowing Guest Bloggers

If you allow other bloggers—particularly those that will post quality content or are well known—to post on your blog, you will receive great content at absolutely no cost (with the exception of possibly editing) to you. There really is little point in not allowing other bloggers to contribute to your own blogs.

Also, chances are high that the person in question will also link to his or her guest post from their own blog(s), and it could also benefit your own blog from an SEO’s standpoint. It really is a win-win situation. Some blogs around the blogosphere thrive on guest posts, and maybe it is time for you to consider opening up to others as well.

Socializing

The final benefit of guest posting is that it allows you to build up relationships with other bloggers. If you make a great impression on a blogger that is well known (or will eventually be as such), perhaps it can open the opportunity to blogging jobs or similar benefits.

As the blogosphere becomes more of an even playing field, it is slowly progressing to that famous “who you know” instead of “what you know” adage. This is an unfortunate truth that all bloggers must realize with passing time, and those that know the best will put themselves in a position to make it to the top.

The Blogosphere

Overall, I must say that guest blogging is good for the blogosphere, and good for the bloggers that actually participate. Both parties will generally benefit from the act of guest blogging, and it allows for great content to be distributed where it might not have been able to receive as many views otherwise.

Have you been a guest blogger before? Have you allowed others to post on your blog? How has it worked out for you? Let us know in the comments section.

With so many ways online to tell people what you’re up to/ what you’ve done, lifestream filtering is becoming a popular way to package all those personal-feed items. A lifestream is an aggregation of your social media feeds. A lifestream filter helps you to filter out the noise and create a custom stream of information. For example, you might want one lifestream that shows your Twitter tweets, your images and what you’re listening to on Last.fm. Then you might want a separate stream that just shows your blog posts from multiple sites and any YouTube videos you’ve created.

Lifestream Filtering in Dipity Timeline

There are a growing number of tools for lifestream filtering out there, but I like to see a visual representation of information whenever possible. After reading Markus Merz’s take on the Dipity Timeline web service, I signed up for an account (free).

Dipity makes it very easy to your  filter your personal lifestream feeds. While you are signing up for your account, you’re presented with an easy-to-use form for entering a variety of social media details (usernames, email addresses, profile links, RSS feed URLs, etc.). At present, this is what you have to choose from:

1. Picasa
2. Twitter
3. Pandora
4. WordPress
5. Last.fm
6. Flickr
7. Yelp
8. Blogger
9. YouTube
10. miscellaneous RSS feed

(Note: you get these same options any time you create a new timeline and want to add feeds.)

A lot of popular social media sites are not in the list. However, you can use option #10 repeatedly, after the initial lifestream timeline is built, to add your other social media feeds. The result is a handy timeline representation of your aggregated lifestream items:

You can remove feeds or add feeds by using the “Manage Feeds” option on your personal lifestream timeline page.  (You only get one of these, but you can use your Dipity account to build other lifestreams as regular Dipity Timelines with their own URLs.) You can view your lifestream in Timeline, List View, Flipbook or Map View modes. (The latter requires tagging stream items with geographical information - i.e., geocoding.)

Since Dipity Timeline lets you mix events and feeds, you can produce some very interesting lifestream timelines. For example, you could have one lifestream that contains your Twitter tweets and supplement those items with images or video “events”. So if you Twitter about movies and film, you can add an “I’ve just seen Iron Man” event, then include a poster image and video clip. The resulting is a custom lifestream timeline.

Have a go at Dipity and you’ll at least have a bit of fun. (There’s a developer API, if you want to get serious.) I had trouble adding my Last.fm and Flickr feeds, though. And the resulting timeline is really creaky while redrawing when switching duration view. (That is, if you change fom viewing your timeline over “1 year” to, say, “3 months”, some of the items do not redraw right away. So you might see an expanse of nothing for several seconds. Be patient and the items will pop up.)

Curriculum Vitae Timelines

It occurred to me there’s a special type of “lifestream” that might need to be interactive: your C.V. - Curriculum Vitae (aka “resume”). If your body of work (articles, podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts, etc.) is available online, a timeline might be a handy way to present it all. Since Dipity allows you to mix RSS feed items with manually-added events, you can always add details about jobs you’ve held, etc. The only thing Dipity doesn’t do - that I’ve seen - is allow “duration” information like SIMILE Timeline does. So you don’t “see” when one job ended and another started. Still, for those of you that freelance, this could be an excellent interactive way to present your CV to potential clients.

Groupstreams

Why build lifestreams for just one person? Dipity allows you to assign editors, so you can create “groupstreams” too. This could be for a group of friends, or for a team of employees. Here’s the process:

1. A group “manager” builds a timeline that includes Twitter feeds for all group members.
2. Each member is added as an editor.
3. Each member adds new events as desired. You can add images, video clips, description, a location, and a link to each event. The link, when clicked, opens a new window. So you could link to all kinds of web applications - including a live video feed, an online meeting room, Campfire, mind mapping, etc.

Since you can add future-dated items, groupstreams could be used to show schedules for a virtual team, plan get togethers and much more. (Note: future-dated events will not show before the actual date to anyone except Dipity members that have editing access to the timeline.)

Summary

Dipity does have a developer API, but its REST-based approach is very different than SIMILE Timeline’s interface. Of course, you can use either tool for more than just lifestreams. If you want to learn more about lifestreams and lifestreaming, visit Lifestream Blog.

Have fun, and enjoy this “Bring the Noise” video of Anthrax and Public Enemy. Flavor Flaaaav!

We have been handed a double-edged sword when it comes to feed reading technology, but while that has its own problems, we need to find ways to save the content those great pieces of content we find on the web. Whether you use the bookmarking feature within your browser or a web-based service, you should still consider the alternatives available.

The Bookmarking Tools

ScrapBook

ScrapBook is not your conventional bookmarking tool. As a matter of fact, I would suggest several other tools for simple bookmarking tasks, but there is one reason why ScrapBook is very impressive—it allows you to capture and save entire webpages with ease. If you are asking yourself why you might want to save a webpage, you might want to pass on ScrapBook, but if you have ever had some content on a site you wanted to save locally, ScrapBook is a real winner.

Zotero

Zotero is a great tool developed for the scholars of the world, and can be valuable tool for any blogger that learns how to utilize it. Acting more like an intricate digital library for storing information, Zotero allows its users the ability to store webpages, media, links, and other documents, and the best thing is that they can all be labeled in a folder and/or tagging system. The only issue with Zotero is the fact that your information is not saved on a server, so be sure to create suitable backups.

Delicious

Delicious is the premiere social bookmarking service developed currently owned by Yahoo! It simply is one of the best straight up bookmarking tools that I have been able to find so far. However, it is after you install the Delicious Firefox extension when things really start getting interesting. I am only surprised that there hasn’t been any serious competition to Delicious thus far.

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 makes a great move with the built-in bookmarking functionality by giving users the ability to use tagging. This is far more superior to the bookmarking functionality available in Firefox 2. One of my favorite features is the ability to find the site you are looking for by typing in the name, description, or an associated tag of any site. All very handy features, but unfortunately, your bookmarks are always at risk. This brings me to my last option.

FoxMarks

FoxMarks compliments the built-in bookmarking feature of Firefox by storing them on a server. This means that those of you who are a bit paranoid (and for good reason) about losing your bookmarks can always have a backup online. FoxMarks also has another benefit, and that is the ability to access these bookmarks on multiple computers through the FoxMarks extension or the website.

Save It or Lose It

There is a lot of crap on the web, so the stuff that really stands out needs to be saved. You just never know when you might want to refer back to some content, but might have lost the link to only never find it again. Be prepared, and be sure to make use of these tools that will help you keep track of great and important content.

If you are looking at your analytics and wondering why you don’t get any search traffic, or looking at search results wondering why you are nowhere to be found, then read on.

There are fundamental reasons why one site ranks and another doesn’t, and sorry but it takes either effort or money to put right.

1. Your site is broken for search engines - If you can’t even get indexed then you will never rank, so that is the first thing to check. Next is your site being found with both www. and without? After that make sure your structure is correct and the content is well ordered and prioritized over markup.
2. You are not targeting the right keywords - If you do not target phrases then whatever you rank for, if anything, will be left to chance. What are the phrases that will bring the best traffic (not always the most, but the quality traffic you need).
3. You do not have enough links - Link building takes effort or you need to pay someone, but do not leave it to “build it and they will come”. If you are just hoping for links then you can be sure your competitors are actually doing something about it. Quality, on topic, good anchor text links = Rank

So what do you need to do? Get your site in order, work out what phrases you want to be found for, and start building links around those phrases!

If you want someone to do the link building for you, look no further than our own Performancing Services Link Builder Package.

I keep noticing people questioning the usefulness of Twitter while using the service. The catch is that each of these people are—usually—using the website to “tweet” throughout the day. What fun is that? After all, if you were going to utilize a web browser, Jaiku would be the better option. The reason Twitter has become so popular is because of the third-party applications that have been developed for it, and if you’re not using, at the very least, a desktop client, you are missing a significant portion of the Twitter experience.

The desktop client gives you an almost instantaneous connection with your friends. In some sense, Twitter can act as a a huge resource for live news. People that provide links to great content on the web are worth following, and I am sure that, with time, Twitter will have tools developed for it to manage and save the information. Previously, I wrote about how useful Twitter can be to the dedicated blogger, and a desktop client is the way to maximize the usefulness.

Hopefully those of you that are still on the edge of your seat about Twitter will take my advice here and check out a desktop client. It will enhance the usefulness and fun with Twitter. I don’t think Twitter is worth much at all without these various applications, and it is no wonder why so many people that are new to Twitter think it is pointless; I did as well when I first started using it. So, I have decided to compile a simple listing of the various clients you can try. My favorite is Twhirl, but there are many great alternatives as well.

Desktop Clients

Twitter Clients for Windows:

• Twitterlicious
• Witty

Twitter Clients for Mac:

• Twitterrific
• TwitterPod

Twitter Clients for Linux:

• Twitux
• gTwitter

Multi-platform Twitter Clients:

• Twhirl
• Alert Thingy
• Spaz
• Tweetr
• Twitterfox
• TwitBin

Let me know what you think of Twitter after using one of these clients. It might possibly change your mind about Twitter’s usefulness if you are not a fan.

What goals do I have for this blog? Are they being met? Am I getting […]

So today I logged into YouTube to see what information I could glean about the viewers of my videos. from the new stats. Here’s what I learned about who is watching my videos:

Across my Channel […]

Over in the question widget on my sidebar I was asked to comment on the future of blogging and where I see it heading.
In this video post I explore 5 trends that have been emerging (and that I think we’ll see continue to grow) including:

Multiple Author Blogs
Multi-Topic Blogs
Blogs Converging with Other Types of Sites
Portal-Like Design
Indirect […]

I’ve been nagging the Chitika team to get them to produce ads for non […]

“I would love if you’d do a post on how you handle emails from people who ask for one on one help.
As my site and blog grows, I continue to get more and more emails for one on one assistance. I […]

The biggest tipping point for me was a redesign of MarketingPilgrim.com.

I moved from Blogger to WordPress and also had a custom template built.

Within 30 days of the redesign, I had twice as many RSS subscribers […]

The […]

Today I want to talk about AdSense Ad Design - another key […]

Is Syndicating Other People’s Content on Your Blog OK? - Reader Discussion
Migrating your Blog Between Platforms: Pitfalls and Consequences […]