E. Poff Consulting » blogs

The Internet Blogging Awards

admin — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:58:05 +0000

By Murray Newlands

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.

New Year’s Resolutions – Four Tips to Keep it Real and On Track!

admin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:57:39 +0000

Well, as January 2011 comes to a close, it was a great opportunity to get out my 2011 resolutions list and see if I had accomplished all of my goals. Of course, I knew I hadn’t, but I thought I’d be able to check off something. And that I did. I started a gluten-free diet, which hasn’t been easy, and has taken up a good deal of my time. I had not, however, exercised daily, started cleaning up those children’s stories and writing new ones, or helped my son start his new gaming site. Nor had I started and finished a couple of other major projects.

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!

Do As I Blog For Others – Not As I Blog For Myself

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:47:42 +0000

I realized that taking on the job of blogging for others is very satisfying. I get to blog about different topics in areas that aren’t necessarily my expertise but are interesting to me. I like learning new things, researching different topics and helping my customers help their customers. I like helping people with their SEO and there’s really no better way to help your SEO than to blog, and blog often on topics related to your business.
With that said, I realized that I hadn’t blogged for myself in a few weeks. I realized that I don’t practice what I preach. I tell clients to communicate often with their customers, blog frequently, and use twitter and facebook religiously. I believe that too, and then when the day is done, I log into my blog and am too tired to come up with a great article for my readers. How sad is that?

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!

The Top 3 Must Haves for Good SEO!

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:01:05 +0000

After years in web development and spending the past five years trying to understand Google and the Google Dance and Yahoo! and Bing and all of the search engines and why one ranks you number one for all of your keywords and the others won’t even list you, I’ve discovered the secret to great SEO. Here are the top three things you need to make your site rank higher than your competition.

1) Clear mission: This sounds like business-talk and it is. Most good business people will tell you that you must have a clear mission and set of goals before you embark on a successful business. Why should a website be any different? Before starting a website, ask yourself, “What is it that I’m trying to accomplish?” If the answer is “Make Money” you need to start over. All businesses want to make money. You must dig deeper and determine how you will make money. What is going to drive people to your site and why? What will keep people coming back to your site? If your main mission is to make money, you will fail because even if you get people to your site, you won’t keep them and they won’t come back. They’ll see through your tactics. You have to offer something of value. For example, say you found an affiliate that pays you 70% for all referrals. Sounds great, right? You sign up and start selling the product. Have you tried the product? Have you researched and made sure it doesn’t turn people’s urine purple? Seriously, you need to be the expert on that product. Obviously with 70% return, you’ll have a lot of competition and you have to stand out from the crowd. You become the expert and people will come to you. Your mission here is to become the expert on said affiliate product. The result will probably be that you will “make money”.

2) Market that Puppy: Blog, Tweet and By All Means Tell People You Are Out There!: One of my favorite lines is from Field of Dreams where they say over and over, “If you build it they will come!” Well, if we all had an all-star ghost baseball team lined up ready to play for us that might be true, but for those of us trying to make our way ahead of millions of other sites, it’s going to take a little more work. You must let people know that you are there. Some of the easiest ways to do that is by social marketing yourself. Signing up for twitter probably takes 90 seconds and that’s while you’re getting yourself another cup of coffee. Seriously, sign up, write a profile, and add a link to your page. Find some friends. If you start following people and you are a legitimate person or business, chances are they will follow you too. If you start tweeting about things that make sense, are important to people and are interesting, more people will following you, you’ll get retweeted and things will actually start to roll in your favor.

Also you need to blog. If you don’t have a blog on your own site there are plenty of places you can set up shop for free, like blogger.com. If you have a blog, make sure to register it on business specific sites, and sites like technorati.com. Also, go out and start commenting on other people’s blogs. Make a name for yourself. Marketing is a huge topic, but you get the idea.

3) Clean code: I’m going to get a little “techie” on you. The more valid your code is and the more direct, concise and easy it is to read, the better. Why does anyone care what my site looks like on the backside, it works and looks good! ? Well, the less cumbersome your code is on the backside, the easier it is for the bots (Googlebot especially) to find and properly index your site. Less tags and code on the backside make it easier for your keywords to be spotted and keyword density to be noted. Also, the pages will load more quickly and bandwidth will be saved. I highly recommend a tableless design with a separate css page. Sometimes this last step is easier said than done, but if you start cleaning up your code, Google (and others) will reward you for it. I’ve personally optimized two sites with the same area of focus, one with clean code and one without (I did not build the one without – I tried my best to make it better though). Even though the site with the not-so-good code had more backlinks, exposure and a blog, the site with the squeaky clean code actually ended up at the top of the natural search results. Go figure!

A combination of all three of the above must haves will keep people coming back to your site and help your popularity. You must realize that true results require a lot of hard work and dedication. This doesn’t happen overnight. Anyone who tells you they can get you to the top in seven days is either lying or is utilizing “black hat” or inappropriate techniques to help your rank and in the end you will be penalized. Google will find sites that don’t play by the rules. I think this list is actually just common sense. Have a business plan, market yourself and do it well. Easy!