Toluu

Skelliewag.org

A unique blog about creating content your readers will love. Written for bloggers, webmasters, freelancers and anyone else who publishes on the web.

Be the Best, Be DiscoveredSeptember 25

Photo by bestfor.

I’ve been thinking about some of the important lessons I learned in the very early days of my engagement with the web, back when only an obscure few knew what blogging was, and before blogs like ProBlogger existed. There were no websites (at least none that I found) to tell you how to build popular sites, or how to make money online. Those who had done it probably weren’t sure exactly how they’d done it, but were pleasantly surprised and pleased none-the-less.

As you may have read on my About page, I’ve been creating web content for about nine years now. The first site I ever created was hosted on Yahoo! GeoCities and featured lime-green text on an image background (completely unreadable). There was no medium for interaction on the site. I hadn’t discovered stat counters yet, so I also couldn’t tell if anyone ever visited it. I certainly never promoted it, though I think I would have if I’d known how. The focus of the site was on writing lessons for beginner writers. I–someone who has never published a novel, or received any accolades for her fiction writing–was the guru. In reality, I was just excited about what I was learning about writing fiction at the time. I was as much a beginner as the imagined peop

How to Level the Playing-field With DiggJuly 1

If you haven’t noticed already, Digg is the most deeply gamed social media service on the planet.

‘Gaming’ social media is the act of using private networks and arrangements to propel your own content forward. Asking for votes is gaming, organizing submission be select individuals is gaming, and so on.

The argument against so-called ‘gaming’ is that it’s undemocratic, and it goes against the principle of a level playing field. At first glance, this objection sounds both fair and logical. The issue is made more complex by the truth: everybody does it. From top bloggers down to little minnows in the web ocean, people are trying to maximize their chances of success on Digg using both arranged submission and private networks.

For a second, though, let’s imagine if nobody did this. Small blogs would be at a huge disadvantage, as they’d be unable to get more than a few Diggs from their regular readership. The chances of the Digg community picking up on a submission with 5 - 10 diggs in as many hours is miniscule at best, considering the huge number of submissions made every hour. At the opposite end of the spectrum, highly trafficked blogs and websites would dominate the front page more than ever, because they could rely on their own traffic to propel the stories forward.

Is it really a level playing field if content succeeds bas

How to Play the Odds Game and Win With DiggJune 27

Most bloggers would love their content to hit the front page of Digg. Unfortunately, most of those bloggers are never able to experience the huge spike of traffic and the feelings of accomplishment this brings.

In this post, I want to argue that success with Digg is an odds game. You can never guarantee it, but you can give yourself the best possible odds. I’ll be describing how to do this, right down to what kind of post you should create, and how to get it moving up the ranks on Digg.

There are things you cannot do

Most of the content on the front page of Digg at any given time is news. If you can’t break news, you can’t benefit from that. Unless you’re writing for a particularly well-resourced or popular blog, you may never be able to do this. Play smart by focusing your efforts on the 10% or 20% of content that hits the front page on the back of human creativity and hard work.

The IEN Formula

Time and time again we’ve seen that there’s no magic formula for a front page stint on Digg. We see posts that look like front page material swiftly buried. We see very mediocre content rise to the top insanely fast.

I believe the erratic nature of the process can be described by what I call the IEN formula. I = Idea. E = Execution. N = Network. My premise is that your efforts with any one post will need at least 2 of

The Pocket-sized Guide to BloggingMay 21

Photo by place-light.

(A bit out of practice, but stick with me.)

If you’re like me, you’ve probably read the equivalent of a few books worth of material on how to run a successful blog. You’ve read about getting more traffic, getting more subscribers, getting more links, more comments, social media votes and so on. If triggered, you can probably remember (broadly at least) most of what you’ve read. But it’s easy to forget the steps involved, particularly when we consume so much new information every day.

The purpose of this post is to lay out the key principles of successful blogging in one place. The details of each point aren’t here — that’s where your own knowledge comes in — but I think it should be helpful in terms of reminding us about the skills and habits that are most important to what we do.

I could have added a dozen more sub-headings, but I wanted to take some of my own advice and simplify down to the eight areas that I believe are most important.

How to grow

1. Self-promote until your posts start to get traffic with or without you.
2. Then — produce something other people want to talk about.
3. Always focus on building your blog’s vital signs: your comments and subscriber count — the marks of popularity that people ca

How to Get Piles of Links, Subscribers and CommentsApril 14

Photo by Iydurg.

It’s easy to get caught up discussing high-level Digg strategies and complicated metaphors, but it’s important not to lose sight of the things that make the advanced stuff worthwhile.

Without the ability to gather links, subscribers and comments, your blog can’t grow. These three basic things are the lifeblood of your blog. It’s essential to be reminded (every once and a while) of how you can keep that lifeblood flowing.

Let’s get back to basics!

18 ways to get links

1. Create them yourself. The strength of this method is that it’s completely under your control. You don’t need to wait for others to create links because you’re building them yourself. You can place links in comments, a forum signature, an email signature, exchange sidebar links with other bloggers, add links to your social media profiles… the list continues. You can create a lot of them in a relatively short period of time.

2. Create a meme. Ever seen those post formulas repeated by several bloggers, who all link to each other? These are usually called blog memes, and they’re quite easy to create. The most basic meme model involves answering a few defined questions and ‘tagging’ a