Tag Archive for 'blogging'

WordCast Conversations 8: Anne Helmond on SEO and Social Media

Published on March 10, 2010 in Podcasts. 0 Comments

Anne Helmond 300x199 WordCast Conversations 8: Anne Helmond on SEO and Social Media

Anne Hel­mond, New Media Lec­turer at the Uni­ver­sity of Ams­ter­dam and an expert on the rela­tion­ship between blogs and search engines.

When it comes to the rela­tion­ship between blogs and search engines there’s no com­par­i­son to the exper­tise of Anne Hel­mond who has worked for years research­ing blog soft­ware and how it con­nects to Google and other search sites.

This week, she talks to Kym about her research and how it con­nects to search engine opti­miza­tion, Word­Press, blog­ging, and social media.

Guest: Anne Hel­mond

  • New Media PhD can­di­date with the Dig­i­tal Meth­ods Ini­tia­tive at the Medi­as­tud­ies depart­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Amsterdam
  • Grad­u­ated from the Uni­ver­sity of Ams­ter­dam cum laude with a the­sis on ‘Blog­ging for Engines. Blogs under the Influ­ence of Software-Engine Relations.’
  • Researcher on the sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship between blog soft­ware and search engines
  • Anne pre­vi­ously joined us on Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions when we cel­e­brated Blog Pro­duc­tiv­ity week, to share her tips on being a more effi­cient blogger.

To pre­vent users from com­ment­ing with links to their site sim­ply to boost their search engine rank­ings, Word­Press includes a “nofol­low” tag by default with all links. To change this on your self-hosted Word­Press site, sev­eral plu­g­ins are avail­able. Below are a few of our recommendations.

DoFol­low Word­Press Plugins:

Mak­ing great strides in both the social media and edu­ca­tion worlds, Anne knows first-hand the stigma that comes along with young women in these fields. She shared her thoughts on this, explain­ing that, when there are more men than women, that’s the way it is, and it has no effect on what one can achieve. She also gave us a few of her favorite sto­ries as a teacher.

Of course, Kym brings you the dirt: Anne’s favorite “guilty plea­sure blogs” include XKCD and Perez Hilton

We’d love to hear your feed­back about what we can change, fea­tures to add, and guests and top­ics for future episodes! Con­tact the show by email­ing con­ver­sa­tions [at] wordcastnet.com, or call (toll free) 1–888-525-BLOG (2564). You can also dis­cuss the show in the Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions forum.

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WordCast Conversations 7: WordPress and Blogging for Musicians and Bands

Published on March 3, 2010 in Podcasts. 0 Comments

Kym Huynh 300x218 WordCast Conversations 7: WordPress and Blogging for Musicians and Bands

Kym Huynh, vocal­ist for electro/pop band sSalvia.

Many of you might not know that WordCast’s own Kym Huynh is quite a pro­lific musi­cian, not only by him­self but in his band: sSalvia — a dance/electronica project. This week on Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions, we turn the tables as Dave Moyer inter­views Kym about how Word­Press, blog­ging and social media can be used for musi­cians and bands.

Kym’s Musi­cal Projects

  • Kym’s older solo work can be found at www.kymhuynh.com
  • sSalvia is a dance/electronica project
  • sSalvia runs on Word­Press, and com­pared to sta­tic HTML sites, Kym says there’s no rea­son to not be on WordPress

Essen­tial Ele­ments of a Band’s Website

  • About pages are needed!
  • Like our friend Rox­anne Dar­ling rec­om­mends, con­tact pages are essential.
  • Gigs cal­en­dar: When are you performing?
  • Sam­ples of music
  • RSS feeds are impor­tant to mar­ket to return visitors

Gig Cal­en­dar Plugins

What to Write

  • Don’t just post the extremely big news! Bring the audi­ence into the process.
  • On the sSalvia web­site, the blog’s con­tent is aimed at bring­ing fans into the music mak­ing process.

Social Media for Musicians

  • Even if you have a web­site, you need to tie in all these services.
  • sSalvia’s Twit­ter is used to update peo­ple about lit­tle behind the scenes bits.
  • Face­book is a land­ing page for reach­ing out to new listeners
  • MySpace has always been a big part of music online. Kym uses it specif­i­cally for net­work­ing, but less as his “offi­cial presence”
  • Con­nect your blog to Twit­ter with the Twit­ter Tools Word­Press plugin
  • KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID! Don’t make too much work for yourself.

We’d love to hear your feed­back about what we can change, fea­tures to add, and guests and top­ics for future episodes! Con­tact the show by email­ing con­ver­sa­tions [at] wordcastnet.com, or call (toll free) 1–888-525-BLOG (2564). You can also dis­cuss the show in the Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions forum.

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Click here to visit the offi­cial episode page.
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WordCast Conversations 3: Blog Productivity

Published on February 6, 2010 in Podcasts. 2 Comments

WordCast Conversations WordCast Conversations 3: Blog ProductivityIt’s blog pro­duc­tiv­ity week here on Word­Cast, and to kick it off we’ve got a Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions episode like no other! Join Kym Huynh, Dave Moyer and a panel chock full of the best and bright­est blog­ging stars shar­ing their secrets to blog­ging more efficiently.

Pan­elists

Tips For Research­ing and Man­ag­ing Poten­tial Post Topics

  • Ever­note is a favorite of our pan­elists for tak­ing notes, man­ag­ing to do lists, sav­ing impor­tant blocks of text.
  • Rea­d­it­later browser add on allows you to save sto­ries for later.
  • Deli­cious allows you to book­mark story ideas on the web, Maria rec­om­mends the Posta­l­i­cious Word­Press Plu­gin.
  • Text edi­tors can work just fine, too! John uses a sys­tem of todos.txt, posts.txt etc. with Ultra Edit.

Find­ing Stories

  • Keith uses the Word­Press IRC chan­nel. In gen­eral, immerse your­self in the community.
  • John sug­gests Twit­ter searches on your topic. (Dave loves his TweetDeck!)
  • Maria also rec­om­mends Twit­ter, by fol­low­ing a select num­ber of peo­ple, but “really fol­low them”.
  • Anne runs through her fee­dreader every morn­ing with her cof­fee. Dave depends on feeds as well.
  • John likes to use a smartphone.

How do we Bal­ance Our Time as Bloggers?

  • Maria says she can write quickly, so the amount of time actu­ally blog­ging is fairly lim­ited. She likes a post per day as a good rule, but if she doesn’t make it she doesn’t STRESS. Her life doesn’t stop.
  • John “spends almost every wak­ing moment in front of a com­puter” but bal­ance is nice.
  • Anne says “don’t be a per­fec­tion­ist”, “don’t be afraid to hit the pub­lish button”.
  • Keith’s Feed Pauser Word­Press plu­gin keeps posts out of the feed for a cer­tain amount of time, so you have a win­dow to cor­rect any typos.

Power Blog­ger vs. Nor­mal Blogger

  • John: A power blog­ger is once a day.
  • Maria: As a writer first, the topic’s the tough part. Power is not how much they write but what their influ­ence is.

Blog­ging “Periph­er­als” – Side Projects Like Mail­ing Lists, Twit­ter etc.

  • John is a Twit­ter freak, but does more read­ing than writing.
  • Anne: All these are impor­tant extras. They don’t replace a blog, they’re supplemental.
  • Maria: “I’m on Twit­ter more than I should be.”

Work­ing With Mul­ti­ple Bloggers

  • Keith: Focus on com­mu­ni­ca­tion within the group. As a leader, you have the job of help­ing oth­ers write bet­ter content.

Desk­top soft­ware: Writ­ing Out­side Your Admin

  • John is a big fan of desk­top soft­ware, sav­ing things out­side of your CMS so that you have a local copy to progress with.
  • John uses Win­dows Live Writer and Ecto.
  • Keith also loves Live Writer, but it can cause prob­lems with Word­Press plugins.
  • Ecto on the Mac is dying and lots love to MarsEdit.
  • Anne is very much mov­ing towards every­thing in the cloud, and local copies aren’t good for that but…
  • Keith rec­om­mends using Drop­box to sync files across the Inter­net so you can access your posts everywhere.
  • Our own Lorelle Van­Fos­sen loves blog­ging in NoteTab Pro.
  • Write­Room for the Mac is loved by Anne and Dave.
  • Anne men­tioned Omm Writer. Dave finds it weird.

HTML vs. Visual Editor

  • Every­one LOVES HTML except Keith. He flips back and forth for dif­fer­ent uses.
  • Anne men­tioned that her stu­dents use both.

Insider Secrets From Our Experts: Final Quick Tips

  • Elim­i­nate dis­trac­tions. Any­thing get­ting in the way of your writ­ing needs to be eliminated.
  • Maria likes to take notes on PAPER about her blog­ging duties. She also rec­om­mends to get posts out of the way, then go about your day. She likes to blog in the morn­ing because she’s fresh and it comes out best then.
  • Keith reminds us to keep your expec­ta­tions con­sis­tent with your posts. If you have high expec­ta­tions for a post, you’ll get no results. If you have low expec­ta­tions, you’ll be sur­prised. Treat all posts the same. Also, make sure you have SOME tool to keep notes, write, etc. You need good tools to do good work. Find what works best for you.
  • Anne tells you to be care­ful of draft posts. What hap­pens in drafts stays in drafts. Don’t spend too much time.
  • Dave rec­om­mends using text sub­sti­tu­tion pro­grams like Tex­tEx­pander or Texter.
  • Kym tells you to set a real­is­tic expec­ta­tion or goal, and set a reg­u­lar schedule.

We’d love to hear your feed­back about what we can change, fea­tures to add, and guests and top­ics for future episodes! Con­tact the show by email­ing wcconver­sa­tions [at] wordcastnet.com, or call (toll free) 1–888-525-BLOG (2564). You can also dis­cuss the show in the Word­Cast Con­ver­sa­tions forum.

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Click here to visit the offi­cial episode page.
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WordCast 63: Everybody Loves Clippy

Published on August 5, 2009 in Podcasts. 0 Comments

wordcast WordCast 63: Everybody Loves Clippy
Harry McCracken of Tech­nol­o­gizer joins us this week to talk all about his expe­ri­ences run­ning a big-time Word­Press blog, the tran­si­tion from print to online media, and all of the lat­est and great­est in Word­Press and blog­ging. Join us this week for end­less ban­ter rang­ing from a new secu­rity update, to the pos­si­ble removal of Hello Dolly, to a bit too much of Clippy. All this and more in this week’s WordCast!

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WordCast 52: I Pee Too!

Published on April 29, 2009 in Podcasts. 0 Comments

wordcast WordCast 52: I Pee Too!

We’re back after a fun lit­tle break here on Word­Cast to fix our feed issues. Things should be back to nor­mal soon. For now, you’ll have to enjoy this episode we’ve got here. From the shock­ing real­iza­tion that I pee, too, to a Word­Camp in the sky, you’ll enjoy every minute (or at least a cou­ple) of this week’s Word­Cast. In addi­tion: WPs on TW. Really.

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