Archive for January, 2011

‘Social Bookmarking’ As An Aggressive and Acceptable Blog Marketing Tactic

Social bookmarking websites are becoming more and more popular. They allow you to save bookmarks online and Tag/Categorize them with keywords instead of saving them as bookmarks in the favorite’s list of yourbrowser. This is particularly useful when your browser based bookmarks have become unwieldy. It’s also help since you can access your bookmarks from any computer where you have an internet connection.

I have compiled a list of Social Bookmarking websites from a number of sources. You can find it here: http://www.blogmarketingtactics.com/social-bookmarking/social-bookmarking-top-links.html

Once you have bookmarked them, you can view them, sort them by category/keyword as well as see links from others that have been categorized like yours.

You also establish RSS feeds for each category (tag) that you ‘subscribe’ to. This alerts you to new links in your areas of interest. Your bookmark collection/RSS Feed becomes viewable to others who can also copy your bookmarks to their own collection. So now you can aggressively promote your RSS feed to the RSS Directories and Search engines, syndicate them and make them available to a much wider audience.

Social bookmarking sites also help you to meet other people who are interested in the same topics you are and who may also have knowledge of web resources that you don’t.

On Social Bookmarking sites, you first create an account. Then you bookmark interesting and useful things in the area of your interest or expertise. By doing so you create a useful Feed. Once you’ve done that you intermittently, (or aggressively), add useful and interesting items, (that could use additional exposure), from your own content. Make an honest effort to contribute USEFUL information and links. This is all about sharing and exposure. Done properly, you can be as aggressive as you want to be about sharing information. You can share your blog(s), links to your informational/resource sites etc. Think about the fact that when you share links to other’s resources, you’re also effectively promoting their content as well.

This is a way you can aggressively and ethically promote your content and the content of others. I personally have hundreds of gigabytes of my own information and information of others, connected to my notebook. In the final analysis, it’s doing me no good what-so-ever just sitting there. But by organizing it, online, I can help myself, (getting organized, getting my content exposed, etc.) and help others at the same time.

If you spice up your feed with too much sales and marketing related or self promotional stuff, people can and will easily drop their subscription to your feed. And instead of gaining good will and doing a service to the internet community you could get labeled as a spammer and suffer the consequences.

So while being aggressive is possible and acceptable, being careful to consider the best interest of the community is certainly warranted.

Balancing being ethical and providing a useful service to others with promoting your own content enables you to be as aggressive as you like. But remember, in the final analysis, others will make the decision on whether it’s ethical and useful or spam.

Gamer Dedicated Servers

Millions of people spend hours a day on internet gaming. Internet gaming used to mostly consist of gambling online and casino games. Over the past several years, however, internet gaming has taken on a whole new form as role playing games have become more popular.

If you have been fortunate enough to create a role playing game and website where people can enjoy playing the game, you may find the traffic to your website increasing by leaps and bounds on a daily basis. If you are using a shared server, all of your hard work in creating your game and establishing your website may be for naught if customers are unable to access the game.

Internet gaming can be very addictive. People who participate in internet gaming are more than willing to pay money to continue playing a game. This does not only apply to casino games, but role playing games as well. Despite the fact that there is no monetary reward in playing these games, people pay a few bucks a month to be able to enjoy the game. This can be quite beneficial to the owner of the website.

Anyone with a gaming website should consider gamer dedicated servers when thinking about their internet server. While a shared server may be much cheaper, especially when starting out, when your game takes off, it is time to switch to one of the gamer dedicated servers that are available on the market today.

Gamer dedicated servers do not host any other websites but your own. This means that you can have more customers as well as more space. If your gaming site has forums, this takes up quite a bit of space. It makes more sense to have a gamer dedicated server than a shared server if you want your forums to run accurately.

Bandwidth is important to any business website. This relates to the number of customers who can visit your site at one time. You naturally never want to limit your traffic flow to your website, but if you are using a gamer shared server, you are probably doing that already. Because the shared server can only accommodate so much traffic, some of your customers may be experiencing trouble logging on to your website.

When seeking gamer dedicated servers, be sure to find one that will accommodate all of your space needs as well as provide you with quality service. The internet gaming industry is continuing to boom, with no sign of slowing down. Now is a great time to get into this business, but only if you can accommodate thousands of customers a day.

Seeking out gamer dedicated servers on the internet instead of relying on a shared server for your internet gaming website is tantamount to the growth of your business. If you want to have a successful internet gaming site, consider a gamer dedicated server that will be able to provide you with added bandwidth, space as well as quality customer service. It will be well worth the extra money, and necessary in order for you to grow your business.

5 Things To Overcome The Tough Parts Of Blogging…

There are times when a blogger, like any other writer, will ‘loose the muse.’ Every idea that comes to mind seems either trite or dull or, worse still, no ideas come to mind. What’s a blogger to do? Here are five tactics that just might clear away the cobwebs and allow you to find an inspiring idea for another great post:

Start with the news! Open up your favorite news page or open a newspaper and see what catches your attention. What are the politicians up to today? Any pending legislation that worries you or flat out scares you? Or perhaps someone is running for office or proposing a law that you may want to publicly support. Some celebrity is sure to be in trouble again; have anything to say about that? Maybe you have an idea about who should be dating or marrying who. Who died? A nice memorial post for a nice person may be in order. What happened “On This Date” in past years? Some past events are worth researching and writing about. Are you into sports? Many bloggers or blog readers are sports fans and they might be interested in your take on the playoffs or the players. Don’t forget to check the editorial page and the letters to the editor — do you agree with the opinions? Tell the world why or why not.

Read some blogs! Start surfing your favorite blogs. What are they talking about? You might have a different perspective on the latest hot topic that might just be interesting to your fellow bloggers or a perspective that might make them mad (BTW, never worry about making bloggers mad — most of them love having something to gripe about). If you can’t find anything that inspires you in your favorite blog, surf through some of those blogs that always make you mad; the ones that seem to promote everything that goes against your lifestyle. Anger is always a good blog motivator but don’t get so angry you get irrational. Comment on some blog posts and then expand your comments into a post on your blog. Also try logging onto Blog Explosion, Blog Clicker or one of the many other blog traffic generator programs — there are lots of ideas out there that are worth writing about from either a pro or con perspective.

What have you been watching or reading? Have you read any good (or bad) books lately? Write about your latest read — recommend it, blast it or even write an abstract for your blog (but don’t give away ending). How about movies, the great ones or the pitiful losers might be worth some good or bad words — you could make movie or book reviews regular features of your blog. The same goes for television shows. Start a series that follows your favorite TV show, there might be quite a few fans of the same show that will be interested in your take and appreciate your summary of episodes they missed. If there is a book, movie or TV show that you thought was great there is sure to be a reviewer who panned it. Find the bad review and write a post countering the reviewer’s opinions.

What have you been doing? Your work place, your co-workers, you bosses, your home and your family members are all fair game for your blog — keep it short and amusing and you’ll have a great post. Once you introduce a particularly interesting person to your readers you may want to do some sequels. When was your last travel vacation — write a travelog about where you’ve been or do some research on some places you’d love to go to and write about them.

Do you have a special skill? If you can make something that is unique or something that is common but made special because of what you know, there may be people interested in knowing how to do it. Give away tips on cooking, sewing, cleaning, fix-it projects, pet care, child care, beauty secrets, personal care or organizing tips. Make it a regular feature on you blog. If you have a digital camera find an interesting subject, take some pictures and then write something based on the subject. If you found it interesting or comical or sad its likely to interest someone else.