A couple weeks ago I seriously riled some folks up. It was fun, but now I want to show you why I did it and how perfectly my fiendish blog-traffic-linking plan has unfolded so far. If you haven’t yet, definitely read my recent post about misusing five words. If you’ve already been there, you know there was a little controversy stirred up, but otherwise, a lot of fun talking about the idea. If you hadn’t guessed yet, that post was not really about screwing up the English language at all. In fact, it was an experiment in linkbait. What is linkbait? Oh my, where have you been? Please allow me to refer you to the number one Google result for the term linkbait by Matt Cutts (at least it’s number one as I write this).  

It Sounds a Little Dirty

The word linkbait sounds like it could be a bad thing, or at least, it could have a few negative connotations. In fact, it’s not bad at all if you do it right. Linkbait is essentially nothing more than writing a great headline that attracts a reader to click your link and commit to reading your article. And if the article is good enough, they cannot resist bookmarking it, or linking to it on either social media sites, their own blog, or their website.

When newspaper, or magazine editors select a headline, they’re creating the equivalent of linkbait. They make the headline as compelling as possible and attach it to a phenomenal article. And the best articles are passed around by friends who may eventually subscribe to the publication, if they like the article enough. This is offline linkbait. More like, readbait, or make-you-not-able-to-put-the-magazine-down-and-also-insist-your-friends-read-it bait. You get the picture. If you want your blog, or web site (or printed ad, for that matter) to attract and keep readers, you must learn how to write headlines and posts (articles) that are so compelling that a majority of casual observers click through and commit to spending a little time with you and then even bookmark you for reference and sharing. A curious thing about this:

The headline is useless if you write a terrible article and the article is useless if you write a terrible headline.  

Doing it Wrong Can Hurt You

If you’re just writing a snappy headline and it has a crappy article behind it, you probably just lost yourself a whole mess of readers. You made a great promise with the headline, but failed to deliver with the article. There’s good linkbait and bad linkbait and if your article is weak, or an obvious attempt to linkbait-and-switch, you will get what you deserve: a bad reputation and no catch-of-the-day, AKA link love. I’ve already written a post about how to write great headlines and there are some good references there to get you started. That post, by the way, had a terrible headline and is a perfect example of how to fail epically at writing a linkbait headline. I got almost zero readers for that post, although it did have some good info in it. Word to the wise—seriously consider your headlines.  

So, Does Linkbait Work?

I’ve been practicing and diligently doing the training in the Social Power Linking program and my last, best attempt at a linkbait piece succeeded better than I could have expected in my wildest dreams. I spent probably five hours on that post, whittling away every non-esssential word and making sure it flowed smoothly, etc. I also spent a good 30 minutes on the title alone, to which I grant the most credit for having made that post so popular. My post on five misused words got more traffic than any other post I’ve ever made.  

In fact, during the two days following my linkbait post, this blog received over 1800 pageviews and is now up to approximately 4870 pageviews at the time of this post. Unique visitors climbed to over 900 during those two days and have continued to flow in ever since. I got more unique visitors and overall traffic from that one post than all my other posts combined to date. 

A Few Resources

If you want to learn more about the fine art of linkbaiting, the following resources will really cover almost everything. I owe a lot to SPL, but I also spent a lot of time reading the posts linked below and I want to thank the authors for taking the time to put that information together. I’d also love to hear about your own experiments in linkbaiting as well as any advice that the resources below may have left out.  Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM The Link Baiting Playbook: Hooks Revisited

And if you don’t feel like reading right now, check out Aaron Wall’s video on linkbaiting, How to: Create Linkbait Every Day:

And finally, here are just a few more linkbait resources you might find useful:

• 5 Linkbait Ideas Any Blog Can Use
• Linkbait in difficult industries
• Beyond Linkbait with Media and Blogger Relations – SES NY
• Productivity, How-to and Advice Sites: Making Linkbait Useful Again
• Five Simple Linkbait Metrics (& How To Measure Them Cheaply)

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This is only the beginning. It’s going to get much, much bigger.
Social marketing is all the rage right now and if the signs are to be believed, this is a mere taste of the future. Part of social marketing involves joining various online communities in your niche and adding value to those communities.

Social marketing is most definitely not about joining as many groups as you can, regardless of their relevance to your niche, and spamming the living daylights out of everyone with “ME! ME! ME!” kinds of advertising and requests. This will get you banned, and rightfully so.

I wrote a post earlier that basically said marketing is really about making friends and exchanging value honestly and transparently with others in your community. I especially emphasized the importance of giving freely without immediate expectation of return, or profit.

Recently I’ve noticed traditional marketing folks who are excited to do this “new” social marketing thing and botch it up terribly by forgetting the cardinal rule of all human interaction. Namely, give before you request. Offer your assistance, advice, service and do so without expecting anything in return. Be a member of the community first and then you won’t be a so-called marketer.

[In online communities, the word, marketer has a fairly bad connotation. Members of a group frequently refer to an outsider who is trying to take value without offering anything in return as a marketer.]

Stop
If you’re ever banned, even once, you need to step back and take stock of your online behavior. And then change it; radically! Being banned means you didn’t follow the community rules. It also suggests that you’re in the wrong place, or offering information that is only self-serving.

Look
Whenever you join a new community, the first order of business is to read the guidelines and follow them very carefully. Next, if the guidelines don’t say not to, introduce yourself and don’t mention anything at all about what you have to sell. It’s not about pushing your wares, it’s about the opposite. You give people valuable ideas, answers, or assistance and they are eager to learn about who you are and what you might have to offer.

Listen
Are you getting repeated complaints about your profile, signature, or comments? Are you humbly taking the advice of the group? If people are kind enough to not instantly ban you, be grateful and listen carfeully to what they’re telling you. Assuming you are really interested in being a part of that group.

Be Valuable
Read all the hot discussions and get a feel for the group’s style of posting and responding. Follow along until you feel you have something valuable to add, whether that be an important, but so far unasked question, or a great answer to a previously posted query. Be a part of the group by showing up regularly and contributing excellent quality material and we will appreciate you and listen to what you have to say.

Social marketing is not about advertising. It’s not about yelling in the streets. It’s most decidedly not about appearing to be a member of a community so that later on you can sell the hell out of your products when everyone has their guard down. (Trust me, that’ll never work.)

Make connections with people and be a friend. Take the time to do it right and you just might find you’ve also made a bunch of great new friends who are as thrilled to become your customers as you are to become theirs.

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Day-before-yesterday I read a great post over at skelliewag.org that stirred up an excellent discussion about whether or not it’s important to write well online. I’m not a great writer myself and, in fact, I started this blog in part to get a little more practice.

But this got me thinking about writing in general, word usage and credibility. So I put on my tall, pointy hat and decided to post my opinion about five words that really annoy me when misused. Here they are in no particular order.

Our first word is unique. No, really, that’s the word!

Unique
Like being pregnant, you can’t be a little bit unique.

Wrong
Hey I woke up the other day and realized I was somewhat unique. Later I got over it.

Right
Hey I woke up the other day and realized I was unique. Thankfully, I’ll never get over it.

Next up, a word which will probably produce a little argument. I maintain that, unlike unique which should never have a modifier, quality must always have one.

Quality
I saw someone write (for the thousandth time at least) that, “this thing is a quality piece of work.” Or, in another instance, “that’s a quality blog.” The only thing missing is a clue as to whether the confounded thing is any good or not! Quality has to have a modifier. Bad quality, good quality; the word quality by itself is utterly meaningless.

But I’m afraid it may be far too late to get that issue fixed as it’s really gotten embedded in the English-speaking world’s psyche, no thanks to the foolish aristocrat who first pushed that concept out there in the 14th century. Blast that dictionary for contradicting me anyway. Nevertheless, I’m right.

Wrong
Hey buddy, you gonna’ finish that quality bowl of lecithin gravy?

Right
Hey buddy, you gonna’ finish that top quality bowl of lecithin gravy?

Irregardless
There is, in fact, no such word. I finally figured out why this is such a common mistake. I believe this to be the illegitimate child of the marriage of “irrespective” and “regardless”. It may sound like it’s a good idea, but regardless of your intense desire to misuse this one, and irrespective of all the reasons you might offer in your defense, using “irregardless” is probably the biggest no-no of the bunch since it’s not a real word.

Wrong
Bill continued to awkwardly reach toward the precariously balancing bowl of warm, lecithin gravy, irregardless of the inevitable disaster which was sure to follow.

Right
Bill continued to awkwardly reach toward the precariously balancing bowl of warm, lecithin gravy, regardless of the inevitable disaster which was sure to follow.

Hopefully
It’s almost always used incorrectly these days. Cotton really wrecked it for everyone back in 1702. “. . . Hopefully, we’ll see you tomorrow.” Hopefully I’ll do this, hopefully I’ll get that; this is just so wrong I can’t begin to even tell you. (Granted, according to the dictionary, my attitude about this word apparently places me in the traditionalist camp, but I’ll address that in a sentence at the end of this post.)

Wrong
Hopefully, the unicorn-riding space travellers from Alpha Centauri will arrive and give us plankton, chocolate and some sort of odd, gravy-like substance.

Right
I hope the unicorn-riding space travellers from Alpha Centauri will arrive and give us plankton, chocolate and some sort of odd, gravy-like substance.

In the wrong sentence above, the literal meaning suggests that the space travelers will be feeling hopeful as they arrive bearing their lovely gifts; they will arrive feeling hopeful. However, 99.9% of the time, the writer writing this intends to suggest that they themselves are the ones feeling hopeful about the arrival of the space travelers bearing gifts. Always ask yourself, “who is feeling hopeful?” and then make sure the sentence is reflecting that properly. (I know, purists will also say I should have said, “s/he himself/herself is the one feeling hopeful” but man, isn’t that awkward!?.)

Anxious Instead of Eager
Many people use the word anxious to describe an upcoming event they are excited about. In fact, by using the word anxious, they are saying they are worried about it. If you’re excited, say you’re eager. If you’re worried, then use anxious.

Wrong
Ludlow was anxious to open all the incredible presents he knew he would be receiving at his very first lecithin-gravy party.

Right
Ludlow was eager to open all the incredible presents he knew he would be receiving at his very first lecithin-gravy party.

Now many will probably hassle me endlessly about the swiftly changing nature of the spoken language arguing that anything that gets used often enough becomes validated by its very ubiquity.

But hey man, I’m tellin’ ya, if we don’t have at least a few ground rules and standards, I might as well start riggle plag mimmbly bum toothbrush the squirrelpaste. Know what i mean? How will we understand each other if we make up our own rules and just run with them? I’m as excited about change as the next guy, just as long as it’s change for the better.

If you are as excited and curious about language as I am, and if you want to find more ways to avoid those embarrassing usage boners, have a look at some of these related articles I found during my travels.

10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid
Common Errors in English by Paul Brians
Style Guide from The Economist
Words & Expressions Commonly Misused from Bartleby.com

Disclaimer: I’m no expert grammarian and also don’t think anyone is a dummy. I’m just a grammar muckraker raking up some muck. Hope you liked it. I also encourage healthy debate.

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Or you can grab the free, 2008 version of the Authority Black Book that was just released a few days ago. I’m sure there are a few folks who will insist on the former option, but hey, whatever flings your shuriken. (*I know, I’m mixing styles and cultures all over the place, but you know you love it!)

About a year ago I downloaded the original version of this ebook and, sadly, let it collect a fair amount of dust before picking it up. When I finally sat down and read it, it felt like receiving a swift roundhouse kick to the head as I realized I could have gotten started and had a world-class blog (or site) by now.

Happily, I’m finally putting some of these principles into use and finding that this stuff is actually working; like gangbusters, in fact. (What actually is a gangbuster? Sheesh, will the research never end?)

I started this blog about a year and a half ago, but only started posting seriously in the last 3 months. And I only began to use the principles that Jack Humphrey teaches in the Authority Black Book within the last month.

It’s been quite a thrill to see the upward spike in my traffic stats. I’ve only used about 1/100th of the recommendations in this book so far and the big deal is this: unlike Entrecard, or Project Wonderful, where you either have to click and click like a spastic, clickity clicking madman, or pay cold, hard cash to keep the traffic flowing, this traffic continues to grow on its own, like a massive snowball, once you reach critical mass.

Here’s a screenshot of the latest news from Alexa:

Yup, like anything that’s worthwhile, it does take some dedication and a little elbow margarine, but if you focus and start right now, you can expect big, even huge results very quickly.

Best of all, the ebook is free. You may have seen it sitting there in my top recommendations spot and now you know why.

So what are you waiting for? Seriously, if you want to understand how to create marvelous content that adds real value to the online community and builds a foundation of permanent traffic for your site, this little black book holds the key.

I look forward to hearing your opinion after you read it and hearing about your results after you implement. Let me know!

*Grasshopper refers to the TV series, “Kung Fu” which referenced Chinese martial arts, black belts are usually associated with Japanese martial arts, holy grails are distinctly Western culture and roundhouse kicks are most often associated with Korean Tae Kwon Do.

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As it turns out, even though those of us who blog take it mostly for granted, the vast majority of people have still never heard of blogging (don’t gasp so loudly, you’ll hurt yourself!) or still consider it as novel as email once was just a few short years ago. Because of this, it’s not unusual for me to start at the very beginning when explaining.

Of course, my response to anyone asking about a blog is to suggest that if they’re serious about building their business and serious about creating a fantastic platform for interacting with friends and customers, they need a blog yesterday.

So i have started to use the business card metaphor and offer the following reasons why blogging is like a super charged business card, only far better and why it will be a big part of succeeding in small business (I believe) as we move forward.

• A business card lets you quickly give someone your contact info.
• A blog has your contact information and far more constantly available 24 hours a day. And you can’t lose a blog the same way you might lose a business card.

• A business card is a reminder of a conversation you might have had.
• A blog IS the conversation you had, saved and stored and searchable online for future reference. Not only that, the conversation is bigger by far than a one-to-one telephone or email conversation since it involves potentially anyone who stops by and has an interest in joining in.

• A business card is a way of developing brand awareness using color, logography and short, pithy tag lines.
• A blog is a way of creating more than just brand awareness, it allows your customers to help you define your brand in an ongoing conversation about your mutual needs and interests.

• A business card is an impersonal pointer back to your business.
• A blog IS your business and it’s a humanized and honest invitation to be a part of creating powerful solutions. A blog creates an immediate opportunity for interaction on a personal and individual level whereas a business card is just a reminder of such a potential opportunity.

Of course there are some stretches here and some may argue that it’s silly of me to try to compare a business card with a blog, but I felt it was important to attempt to draw whatever parallels I could since so many people can relate to one and not the other. (Me? Silly? That’s unpossible!) A blog is also a heck of a lot more work than designing, printing and handing out a business card, but the rewards are orders of magnitude beyond anything a simple business card will get you.

If you want to maximize your marketing effectiveness, you will obviously want, not only a blog and a business card, you will, of course, have a business card with the address of your blog on it!

A blog is a powerful means of getting the word out about the ongoing nature of your business. It’s a calling card on the Internet, a tireless brand builder, and a marvelous conversation starter. If you haven’t figured out how important I think it is for you to have a blog, then please let me know so I can jump up and down and wave my arms while singing the happy blogger song . . . no, no, wait, I mean, seriously, what i meant to say is this: A blog is a critical part of your business and a fantastic way to open the lines of communication and create more transparency. If you don’t have a blog yet, stop wandering around in the dark and flip on the light!

If you would like more information about the benefits of blogging and why you should have a blog, have a look at a few of the resources I found while researching this post.

The Social Customer Manifesto

Small Businesses and Blogging

10 Great Strategic Benefits of Blogging

Small Business Blogging (advice)

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Or is it?

Setting this blog up has given me ample opportunity to spend lots of time working with WordPress and learning many of its ins and outs.

As it turns out, building a site “while-you-wait” IS crazy talk if you don’t know anything about web design, installing scripts, or any of that. However, if you are technically savvy, the 10-hour web site is fast becoming a possiblilty. Now, of course, when i say ten hours, that’s a bit of stretch for a fully customized theme with logos and graphics etc., but the part that used to take 20, or more hours of painstaking coding can be all but eliminated now by using WordPress as the foundation of your site design.

Now all you have to do is concentrate on customizing the features, graphics and loading the content. Frankly, it’s enough to make a grown developer wriggle about a bit and even, just possibly, run naked through the streets drinking Ovaltine™ on a Saturday morning. Er sumpthin’ like that.

Anyway, the point here is that there are some really great reasons to use WordPress as a starting place for your brand new web site and here are the ones I can think of right now:

1. Major time savings in creating a consistent templating system for end users. It’s an instant foundation for a custom CMS (Content Management System)
2. Makes it a breeze for non-techy folks to add content (text, graphics, audio, video) without programming a custom interface. (Save days of programming time (or money paying a programmer) )
3. Creates a site that is automatically optimized for the search engines (with easily added, free plugins)
4. Update the look and feel easily with changes to the CSS, templates and widgets.
5. There are thousands of free and low cost, gorgeous themes available to start with
6. Easy to add new functionality at the drop of a hat with plugins
7. WordPress is free
8. Most WordPress plugins are free
9. WordPress is constantly being upgraded and bugs are fixed by the dev team almost immediately
10. Keeping spam off your site is a peace o’ cake using even the base installation and it gets even better with available, free plugins
11. A huge WordPress community is available to help you with answers should you run into trouble
12. So many marketing opportunities are aimed at WordPress blogs that a WordPress-based web site is a marketing no-brainer
13. Instant RSS feed for all your content. Now that’s a BIG deal!

OK, so that was actually 13 reasons. Just smile and nod with glee that you got 2 bonus reasons.

So how to get started? When I first thought about doing this I wondered if anyone else out there was doing it yet and if there were any easy and fast ways to do it. You need to do way more than just create a blog. You need an entire web site.

So I researched it and found that Tara over at Graphic Design Blog has already done a massive amount of work in this area and pulled together almost all the known information on creating a website with WordPress so check her post out posthaste.

If you are looking for more technical information about the nuts and bolts of editing the existing WordPress structure, check out Nick La’s post over at Web Designer Wall.

Additionally, since Tara published her CMS article, Freshout Development has published the Fresh Post – WordPress CMS Plugin that practically turns your WordPress installation into a CMS in one fell swoop. The only issue that I can see is that it may limit your design a bit and it’s a little on the technical side as far as getting it up and running and possibly managing it.

Also, you will sometimes need to limit areas of the site to members only and WP Members is another plugin not mentioned elsewhere that will help you with that.

While I was writing this I also realized that many folks are not able to pull all this stuff together and then run it and maintain it. I hadn’t originally thought of this when I started writing this post, but as it turns out, I have an answer for that too.

You want a website that’s totally optimized and perfectly designed and ready to work round the clock building traffic and I have only one answer for that.

You can go to the front of the line (yes it will cost a little, but way less than what I would charge) and get all the design and customizing and search optimization done automatically and have your new site up within about 48 hours (or less depending on the situation). I’m referring to the Blog i360 Site Management for Small Business Owners and it will pay for itself in short order if you are serious about your site.

ASC Blog i360 uses WordPress as the foundation of their system and I recommend it to all my clients now when they say they need a website immediately and they don’t know any HTML and don’t have time to learn any tech stuff and don’t know where to start. Frankly, you shouldn’t have to know all that tech stuff, unless you’re a geek like me and really dig it.

Update about ASC: they are no longer offering their original site building program and although their Authority Site Center system is still a great way to learn about building authority web sites, they don’t do the actual blog creation and maintenance for you anymore.

I’ve since found an even better resource for getting a new blog up and running extremely fast, with no technical skills needed and a HUGE amount of search engine and social marketing clout built-in. I recommend you give Blog i360 a look. They have an outstanding program and I really like the folks who created it, Deborah (@CoachDeb) and JP (@JPMicek) Micek. I’ll be writing a review of the system as well so watch for it.

OK, back to the regularly scheduled blog post…

I’ve decided to build my next site with WordPress and have started working on it already. It’s a secret for now, but as soon as it’s done I’ll post it for your review and we’ll see what you think.

If you can think of any other reasons to use WordPress (or not, for that matter) feel free to comment.

Thanks for reading and be well.

-Zack

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Here’s a quote from the page where WordPress gives examples of types of blogs they are deleting:

And here are some examples of blogs that are banned from WordPress.com (all of these fall under the general heading of “spam blogs”, or splogs, and we will be deleted as soon as we find them or they get reported to us):

Scraper blogs: Blogs that take content from other blogs and re-publish it without permission (this is sometimes called scraping). If a blog contains all or mostly stolen and unoriginal content, it’s gone!

SEO blogs: Blogs that are written for search engines instead of humans. These blogs are dedicated to trying to fool Google and other search engines into ranking them highly. WordPress.com is not meant for this type of activity.

Affiliate marketing blogs: Blogs with the primary purpose of driving traffic to affiliate programs. To be clear, examples like people writing original book or movie reviews and linking them to Amazon, or people linking to their own products on Etsy do NOT fall into this category. We’re only talking about blogs that are primarily designed to promote different affiliate programs.

And here’s a quote from WordPress TOS. The relevant quote is currently highlighted in purple on their site:

By making Content available, you represent and warrant that:

[ . . . ]

the Content is not spam, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

Here is the WordPress TOS Page

This should create a pretty huge shakeup and I expect it will clear the decks and make ranking well in the search engines a whole let easier for those of us putting great, original content on the web. It will be very interesting to see how it pans out these next few weeks.

[UPDATE] Please note, I believed, based on my research that this was a new development, but right now I can’t verify whether the terms have, in fact changed recently, or have been this way for some time. I’ll let you know if I hear anything regarding timing and would appreciate any comments as well. Yup, I may have jumped the gun a bit. Thanks for understanding.

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You know how you read a great blog post and get to the bottom of it and someone’s made a truly stellar comment? You know how you think to yourself, “holy mackerel, that was a good comment, who the heck is this person?” (Don’t tell me you don’t say holy mackerel! ok, ok, you probably say “shazam!” or “zoinks!”, but you get my point, ya?)

Anyway, let’s say you then attempt to click on the person’s name in the comments and check out their site. And it doesn’t work. The commenter mistyped the URL. Horrors! You’re sad. You can’t find out who this amazing person is. You’ll never know what else they might have to say. And the name they typed in was something like “Dan”. Argh, how will I ever search for that?

BUT you’re not half as upset as the person who mistyped their URL in the comments box would be if only they knew.

The commenter has completely lost the greater opportunity to join the conversation web-wide; they’re only conversing on that little blog post floating in the info-ether with no link back to their site. Such a great comment and they get no search engine, or pagerank credit whatsoever for having made the effort. And all because of a little typo. Now that hurts.

Here’s how I avoid this problem altogether: I use a text replacement application that fills in a complete text snippet whenever I type a key word.

So, for instance, I type “hms” (no quotes) and that immediately expands to http://honestmarketingsecrets.com. Can you imagine how much time I save? The most important things I type over and over again are deadly accurate every time. I will never go back to plain old typing.

In fact, the program I use tells me how many hours of my life I’ve saved since I started using it. So far I’m up to about an hour and I’m still adding snippets. I’ve actually saved over 22,000 keystrokes since I started using it.

And never, ever, not once have I gotten my URL wrong in a comment box. Every time I comment, I am guaranteed to get a working backlink to my site.

I think I’ve made my point.

If you’re on a Mac, get Text Expander and watch the excellent video demonstrating it over at TWiT TV.

If you’re on Windows, try Texter, or AutoHotKey.

Here’s a Texter video from Lifehacker that shows just how useful this can be:

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Track Your Posts, Track Your Blogs
Need to track your own blog and other blogs you read every day? Wish you could track more easily? Want to find out how well a specific post is doing compared to your other posts? Want to quickly find the best posts ever made to your blog, or to any or all of your favorite blogs? Definitely grab an account over at aiderss.com. I just stumbled across these guys a few days ago and I’m thrilled with it so far. You can track trends, see the historical performance of your blog, or any blog you’re interested in. I could go on . . . but the best way to see why I’m so pleased with it is to just check it out. (You can also do RSS mash-ups here too.)
Check out AideRSS

Follow the Conversation
I mentioned before that marketing and blogging are all about conversations. Now I’ve found a great tool that helps you track blog conversations and will really surprise you with the alternate view it provides. It puts even older stuff you might have seen before into a different context that might trigger new ideas, or interpretations. Never mind the fact that you can watch what people are talking about in an up-to-the-minute sort of way about whatever key phrase is burning a hole in your brainpan today. This tool may be my tool-of-the-month, if I had such a thing.
Check out TalkDigger

Mash Things Up a Bit More: 2 Great Video Tutorials on Using RSS Feeds
If you were to take all the information you’re interested in and mash it up together and then sort it so the most important and relevant stuff popped to the top, wouldn’t that save you a ton of time? Wouldn’t that be cool? That’s what a feed mash-up can do for you and all you need is a good feed masher. There are a number of feed mashers out there, but I recently ran across an RSS tutorial over at John Jantsch’s blog that covers the how, but also suggests a site I hadn’t seen called mySyndicaat. I’m still having a go at mashing my favorite feeds and comparing all these tools, but so far mySyndicaat definitely seems worth checking out.

Alternatively, Jack Humphrey posted a great tutorial on another great feed manager called BlogRovr which you may find very useful. So far, this one is duking it out with AideRSS above for my favorite, but they do slightly different things and I can see using both of them.

Check out the tutorial at John Jantsch’s blog.
Check out the tutorial at Jack’s Friday Traffic Report
Check out mySyndicaat
Check out BlogRovr

Have fun finding yourself and others and have a great weekend! (Holy mackerel, I used an exclamation mark. What on earth was I thinking? . . . was that wise? Hmmm, we shall see.) [dang, WordPress won't accept my interrobang . . . argh.]

-Zack

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So how can you encourage lots of great conversations? One way is to make it easier for people to join the conversation and another is to reward the folks who do take their precious time to hang out and “chew the fat” on your blog.

I’ve chosen just a few key plugins to help you get started. This is by no means comprehensive and if you want the BEST listing of comment related plugins I’ve ever found, (it’s overwhelming and that’s why I chose just a few here) check the end of this post . . .

Make It Easier with Good Settings

1. Get your WordPress Sorted
First, before you even worry about a plugin, make sure your WordPress settings are letting people comment without too much trouble. (I’ll mention my spam fighting methods later.)

Make sure that under Options > Discussion your settings allow commenting without moderation after the first comment by that author is moderated. Here’s how I have mine setup:

2. Make Comments Easier to Read

Nested comments can be very useful for quickly seeing who’s saying what about what. Try this plugin for threaded comments by Brian Meidell. I’m experimenting with it right now. Some people like threaded comments and some don’t. Check it out and see if it suits you.

Reward Comments with REAL Link Love

3. The Do Follow / No Follow Thingamabob

Next, if you haven’t noticed lately, there are a ton of these (or similar) icons showing up in comment sections everywhere. [I borrowed that image from randaclay.com]

In 2005 Google instituted the nofollow policy for comments and basically any link that anyone other than the author places on a site is not followed and indexed by the search engines. This means that even though you might leave your site address in your comment, if the blog, or site you’re on doesn’t reverse the nofollow policy, the major search engines will not follow your link and you will get no page-rank, or back-link credit for your post. This was done to combat spam, but it seems to have mostly combated great conversations on blogs, based on my research.

So I have decided to turn off nofollow on my blog until further notice and this means that when you comment here, you’ll get search engine credit for it. I encourage you to do the same. Obviously we don’t want to reward spammy comments and interestingly enough some of the bigger bloggers in the sphere haven’t really weighed in on this. For instance at problogger.net, all comments are still nofollow encoded (as far as I can tell. Please correct me if you note otherwise!). Check the sites you comment on and see if they use nofollow or not. I have the Search Status plugin for Firefox installed and it does this and much more for you.

Right now I’m using Dofollow by Semiologic. It’s very simple and just turns off the nofollow deal in WordPress. However, if you want to make certain only real humans who like your blog are commenting, try Lucia’s Linky Love plugin. It offers a lot of flexibility in configuring nofollow as it allows you to set the number of posts required before nofollow is removed from a commenter’s comments. This encourages only real people who are interested enough to return to your blog to comment and discourages drive-by commenters. It also has quite a few other settings and is my second choice for now because, the only caveat, it does put one more barrier between the commenter and the comment. Since this is a post about making it easier for folks to comment . . . I’ll let you know how Dofollow goes though if there’s a problem.

There are quite a few plugins out there already for disabling nofollow and Andrew Beard has already gone and done us all a huge favor by posting them here: ULTIMATE LIST OF DOFOLLOW & NOFOLLOW PLUGINS – BANISH NOFOLLOW FROM COMMENTS AND TRACKBACKS Take your pick!

UPDATE: I had some trouble with the semiologic plugin not working and I’m so swamped right now I don’t have time to troubleshoot it. So, I found this excellent alternative called DoFollow 4.0 that has some great options inlcuded by Kimmo Suominen (kiitoksia paljon!) and it worked perfectly right off the bat. Definitely check it out!

4. Commenter’s Most Recent Blog Post

Here’s a great way to help your fellow bloggers and yourself. I found out about this over at Suzanne’s blog and absolutely love this idea. Use this plugin by Andy Bailey to add a commenter’s most recent blog post title and link at the bottom of the comment. I love this idea as it really encourages even more interaction among our blogs. And it’s a great way to reward loyal commenters.

BONUS Idea # 5 (wow cool, I can turn too much typing into a bonus! see how I did that? )

5. Email Responses to Comments

Finally, place the option for commenters to tick the box if they want to be emailed about any responses to their comments. This is wonderful way to invite your readers to return to the conversation again and again. Often I can’t remember where that blog was, or which post I commented on and this is handy way to deliver that link and save time and effort for all.

I use the plugin Subscribe to Comments by Scriptygoddess and now managed by Mark Jaquith.

OK, this post is never going to end. There are more things I want to suggest and more plugins you can use to enhance your blog’s conversation power, but it will have to wait. I’ll do a whole series on conversation power, in fact. Yeah, that’s it, what a great idea! Or maybe someone else can join in. Maybe you already have! Got ideas for generating and sustaining great conversations on your blog? Share ‘em! Let’s create a great resource.

I’ll also do a complete list of my plugins soon as well and maybe that will be of interest and use to you. If you have any questions at all about this stuff, please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer . ..

until next time . . .

PS – Here’s that link I promised to a vast treasure trove of comment plugin goodness over at Lorelle on Wordpress.

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My favorite tutorial right now is the 7 Must Have Killer WordPress Plugins

If you can’t figure something out, check here first. Really well done, these.

Internet Marketing Videos from Tubetorial

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The solution?

Use the WordPress Compressed All-Inclusive Ping List

This is a list of the top ping services with no overlap. Just copy and paste the following list into the text area at the bottom of the page located here: Options > Writing Options > Update Services

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

And now every time you post, you will automatically ping all the services you need to with no manual pinging required. (and no problems with accidental ping spamming.)

Happy pinging!

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