Looking for a fun party at this year’s BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles? Looking to have a drink, learn from a live blogger panel discussion and network in a relaxed, fun environment?

You’re invited to BlogUP, the blogger party that is guaranteed to be a good time!

The BlogUP is a unique networking event that enables like-minded bloggers to meet face-to-face. The party is a relaxed way to network and make connections for future collaborations that will help each other grow in the blogosphere.

Unlike other blogging meets, all guests must currently maintain a blog and there is to be absolutely no solicitations. This is simply an event for bloggers to network and discuss collaboration.

REGISTER HERE

This year’s BlogUp party:

• “Content Monetization and Blogs—a Viable Combination?” panel discussion featuring leading blogger speakers
• Launch of LA Blog Club
• “What Is Personal Branding?” by Jim Kukral and Murray Newlands Book Release and Signing
• Complementary Drinks and Appetizers

When:

Thursday November 3rd 8:00 p.m. til 10:00 p.m.

Where:

ICON LA Ultra Lounge
1248 Figueroa Street,
Los Angeles, CA 90015
(213) 867-6000

Register:

Admission: Any BlogWorld pass gets you in to the party! Use code MURRAY20 to get 20% off a ticket to BLOGWORLD

ALSO to find out about ongoing Blog Club events here LA Blog Club

Sponsor:

INTENTclick contains content rich sites in specific performance driven categories, and is able to deliver to these sites the highest monetization levels available in the market.

About Murray Newlands

My name is Murray Newlands and I’m a successful marketing blogger, founder of London, San Francisco and Los Angeles Blog Clubs and author of many blogging eBooks interested in bringing like-minded bloggers together for an evening of fun.

This year’s party is going to be a blast and I’d love to meet you, so please come!

REGISTER HERE

Last year Elisabeth Hasslebeck noticed that American Idol contestants with the most followers on Twitter were less likely to be voted off and more likely to make it to the top.  I thought I would use that same logic to rate the current Republican candidates.  It seemed appropriate as this year’s lineup is almost as entertaining as the contestants in a karaoke singing contest.

But seriously, we know that in 2008, President Obama was able to gain momentum by using social media for his campaign and fund raising.  As of September 26, 2011 Obama has well over 10 million followers on Twitter.  He has a grand following and his social media efforts have paid off.  So how do his Republican counterparts measure up?

After Herman Cain won the Florida GOP Straw Poll with 37% of the vote and with eight candidates officially in the race and more sure to come, there is no telling what could happen between now and next year.   So if we had a Twitter election today, here’s how it would play out.

In eighth place is Rick Santorum with 28,109 followers with Jon Huntsman just a bit above with 36,474.  In sixth place is Ron Paul with 69,159 followers and Herman Cain in fifth place with 80,167 followers.  The top four candidates are as follows:

4^th place – Rick Perry  (91,798)

3^rd place – Michele Bachmann  (98,197)

2^nd place – Mitt Romney (106,862)

1^st place – Newt Gingrich (1,331,471)

Surprised?  I was.  Of course these numbers will change hour by hour, day by day and week by week, but Gingrich has a remarkable lead over Romney, Bachmann and Perry.  Of course, Saturday Night Live recently poked fun at Gingrich implying that he didn’t really even want to run.  So, is this just a Twitter fluke or does Gingrich have a chance to come through and make it to the top?  How does Gingrich compare to other candidates likely to make a run for it?  Well, he’s currently well ahead of Sarah Palin (667,351) and Chris Christie of New Jersey (62,900).

So while Mitt Romney thanks his followers for getting him well over 100k and Perry cuddles his pooch in his Twitter profile picture, Newt Gingrich is ten times ahead of his competition in our little Twitter poll.

If Twitter is a good predictor of who will become President in 2012, perhaps Lady Gaga (over 13 million followers) should throw her hat into the ring.  President Gaga has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Note: Rick Perry Photo courtesy of Ed Schipul and Mitt Romney photo courtesy of C. Berlet @ publiceye.org via Wikimedia Commons.

Not Just for Development
Page speed has been talked about for years, but it has normally been a web building issue, not an SEO issue. However, with faster internet and the importance of speed becoming more and more important, there is no excuse for having a page that loads slowly. If your website cannot load faster than an otherwise equivalent site, then you have potentially lost a reader. Moving on to the next information source is a simple click away.

The things that keep most websites from loading quickly are the common eye-candy elements. This includes improperly-scaled images, videos, JavaScript, and other elements that can slow load speeds. That is not to say that a few eye-candy pieces are not important, but they should not be the main focus of a search-conscious website.

How It Plays into Rank
Search engines consider countless elements before deciding which website should go on top. Google has announced that one of these elements is page speed. Not coincidentally, speeding up a website’s load time by eliminating excess code has collateral SEO effects. High speed internet SEO can be your way of bumping up the SERPs with only a few changes to your website. Removing unnecessary elements that do not add much value to your page will keep your website from loading slowly. Site builders often leave a website’s code riddled with excess text that can otherwise be taken out.

First Mover Advantage
Speed isn’t just important for ensuring that readers stay on your website. For time-sensitive websites, speed can be the number one factor in determining success. Those sites focused around news and recent events thrive on getting information to the public first, and speed is everything for them. More and more users have access to high speed internet, and they immediately turn to the web when they want to learn more about recent occurrences. Whether a site loads quickly determines if people can read the information they seek and if they will stay long enough to read the content.

Quick action also determines how quickly the page circulates through social networks. With a speedy website and fast internet, you can be the first to report on a story. This not only gives you the upper hand in rankings, but first movers tend to get the most social network love. For a news site, this is exceedingly important, especially since they live off this hype.

Announcing New Products
High speed internet has made communicating globally absolutely seamless. Over a billion users take advantage of this on social media networks. This creates a great platform for website and business owners to promote newly-released products. Gaining exposure through these mediums drives traffic to your site and gives you the appearance of authority among websites in the same niche.

A quick internet connection and a website optimized for speed do not just help you and your readers, but it helps your website survive the deadly search engine game. You can’t afford to let any chance or opportunity slip away, especially if you are in a competitive niche where any advantage can help you win.

Blake Sanders is a tech writer at broadband comparison site Broadband Expert. Blake specializes in providing industry news and information on high speed internet providers, cell phones, and wireless internet.

Note: Photo courtesy of davenportdesign via FlickR Creative Commons.

There are actually tons of remarkable bloggers and publishers doing excellent work, and those who stand out deserve to have their hard work recognized, relate with each other, and see their readerships grow. That’s why the World Media Awards exist- to recognize and reward great contributions to media from bloggers and publishers.

In my own career, I’ve learned and benefited so much from others that I wanted to help build some way to give back to an industry I love show appreciation to the up-and-coming leaders. The World Media Awards will culminate in a one day event in San Francisco that will celebrate the best in blogging, forums, publishing and media from around the world.

So if you are a world class blogger, why should you enter?

1. Get Recognized- You Deserve It !

You put a lot of effort into making your blog incredible. You know it and your readers know it. The World Media Awards is a way for you to get authoritative credit from other bloggers and industry experts. That recognition will help you grow your readership, make fresh collaborative connections, and hopefully have a few warm fuzzy moments that make all the late nights even more rewarding.

2. Meet Other Bloggers Who Care

Blogging, forums and most other online media is about conversation and interaction, but sometimes it’s easy to end up hiding away behind a screen in your office or home all alone. Meeting other bloggers and publishers keeps the fire lit and the conversation going. When you enter the World Media Awards, you’ll be listed alongside other bloggers and publishers who put the same level of delight, care and effort into making their blog top notch.

3. Expose Yourself to New Partners

If your blog or forum is part of your business, being part of the World Media Awards will increase your exposure by putting your name in front of the thousands of visitors to our site and the award ceremony. That means you can find out who else is doing great work, strut your own stuff, and expand your network of contacts and collaborators.

4. Make Yourself Irresistible to Clients

What helps your chances at winning that next pitch more than expanding your network? Telling that network that you are the winner of a World Media Award. Winning an award shines a light on your achievements, and it serves as an example of the commitment, engagement and exacting standards you apply to your work.

5. Be Part of the Beginning of Something Big

Because 2012 is the first year for these awards, you have the one-time chance to be the inaugural winner and set the standard for the World Media Awards in your category. Getting in on the ground floor of these awards will open doors for you as a blogger and a publisher.

The bottom line is, the World Media Awards will shine a spotlight on the year’s most prosperous bloggers and publishers, and on the organizations that serve and interact with them.

Now is your chance to be one of them.

The sponsors include Growmap, Pace Lattin, VigLink and Trancos.

World Media Award judges include Steve Hall, Sarah Austin, Chang Kim, Julie Wohlberg, Pierre Zarokian, Ivka Adam, Cheryl Contee, Krystyl Baldwin, Adrian Harris, Jeremy Wright, Rob Bloggeries, Dave Duarte, Tanya Alvarez, Dana Oshiro, Tom Foremski, and Judith Lewis. hashtag #wmads on Twitter.

Media partners include Adrants, Bloggeries, MediaVision, The Affiliate Marketing Awards, Read Write Web, My Blog Guest, Web Traffic Control and FeedBlitz.

Murray Newlands is author of How to Make a Blog Book and Online Marketing; a User Guide. He is also founder of the Affiliate Marketing Awards. Born in the UK, he now spends his time in San Francisco and New York. Murray works for Audience Mindshare and consults for Trancos Ins as well as being an advisor for VigLink. Actually he is working on his new book: The Email Marketing Book.

For those of us who practice the art of creating and maintaining good sites, we had nothing to worry about.  Google has made some great changes to reward good content and web development.  I have always preached that developing appropriate content is the way to a “natural reward”.  If the content is good and provides a service or information for your visitors, you are contributing to the “greater good” of the web and Google will reward you for this. So the first “do” on the list is to CREATE GOOD CONTENT.

The 2nd “do” involves web structure.  As a web developer and programmer, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of smart web design and development.  My motto is, “You gotta keep them separated!”  What I mean by this is you must use CSS to house your design elements and use HTML for site structure and content.  If you keep the design elements out of the page, the bots that scan your pages will see what your visitors see and be able to get to the heart of the content.  Also, I think you should include appropriate meta tags in your header.  Some experts say you don’t need title and keyword meta tags anymore, but I disagree.  They may not help your rankings on Google but they do help categorize your content and some search engines still use the information.  It’s a nice touch to a site and shows that you thought about what the page’s purpose is and what is about. So “do” number two is GOOD WEB DESIGN!

The 3rd thing that will help your Google rank is FRESH CONTENT.  I think this is the hardest thing for most people to do because it takes the most time and energy.  Fresh content usually means blogging which means RSS feeds (or some other feed) which means social media and bookmarking sites will pick up your content and your link building will gain momentum.  Most people trying to get to the top of Google know that lots of links to their site usually means lots of love.  But it’s not just the number of links to your site that’s important, it’s type of link.  You want good quality links from sites that host similar content as you do.  Quality content and blog material will help you get to this point.

Regardless of what Google does with its algorithm, you will always make progress and work your way to the top if you implement these three simple but effective strategies:

1) Good and appropriate content

2) Good web design

3) Fresh content

I also have an awesome new look for the site.  I can’t wait to show it off.  It took me months to finally create something that shows off who I am and that makes me smile when I look at it.  Hopefully it will make you smile too.

Let me know what you’ve been up to and how you’ve been using social media to promote yourself, your site or your ideas.

This post has nothing to do with SEO, web development, e-learning, good work habits or anything else.  It has to do with the fact that we finally got snow in San Antonio for the first time since the big one back in 1985.  We only received a half inch at most, but it was enough to make the kids smile, the roads and schools close and everyone else feel like a kid again.  I’m not sure if I’ll be doing much work this morning since it’s so nice to see white in the streets and on the grass.

It’s melting pretty fast though -so I thought I’d post some pictures before it disappeared!

It’s not the rest of the country’s winter blizzard – but it’s our little piece of winter and I’ll take it.

I’m not sure about you, but making such a huge, daunting list makes me lazy.  I feel so overwhelmed.  I don’t know where to start and so I just don’t.  And so as January comes to a close and February peeks out from behind this cold front coming, I decided not to give up on those resolutions.  In fact I’ve found a new way to help accomplish my goals and here’s how.

1. Firstly, don’t expect to accomplish all of your resolutions in the first month.  That’s just ridiculous.  Even if you have only one – like lose 15 pounds – it’s not an easy task and you shouldn’t expect to accomplish it in one month.  In fact, you may not want to because then you are left with 11 months of do-nothing or failure to uphold that resolution (especially after you caved in around February 14^th and ate all that Valentine’s Day candy you swore you wouldn’t touch -ahem).  If you spread the resolution out a bit, you have time to make up for any mistakes along the way.

2. Spread out the resolutions throughout the year.  I’m starting a “Monthly Resolution” list which seems more manageable and will allow me to continue my goals from a month to month opportunity.  Since I didn’t finish everything in the first month of the year, I don’t have to wait through 11 months of failure to try again.

3. Next, don’t be so hard on yourself!  Remember the only one who will be disappointed that you didn’t fulfill that resolution is you (probably).  Your loved ones will support you no matter what, and others in your life will be secretly happy that you didn’t accomplish your goals either.  Misery loves company, so remember you aren’t alone.

4. Lastly, make it real and cut it into bite-sized, manageable pieces.  Let’s say you decided to run in a 5k race this year.  Well, you probably won’t put down the potato chips, stand up from the couch, brush yourself off and start running a 5k without a sweat.  You may need to start off with 20 minutes a day or 1k a day and then add a little each week until you reach your goal.  Maybe trying to run a race on February 2^nd isn’t a good idea and finding one for say May or even September would be more realistic.

I’m sure, if you are like me, you want everything to happen now.  I want to be able to run that mini-marathon, have my major projects completed and be super healthy today!  But the reality is, whatever your goal – whether it’s to get a job, quit smoking, or uphold your gym membership –  you CAN make it happen in 2011 even if it didn’t get done in January.  Eleven months to go people – let’s make those resolutions proud!

So with that said, I say to you, please keep up your blog if you want to keep your customers interested.

Now, hopefully I will have more content up before three weeks go by again!