The Real Lance Brown

This is a really solid post from Joe Foley at WPMU:

15 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

I wish I was following more of the rules here. If you’re trying to get serious about blogging, bookmark that post and re-read it every day until you have internalized the tips in it. I can’t argue with a single one of Joe’s suggestions, and while I might be able to think of some to add to the list, there’s no need to even bother–follow his advice and you will have plenty to do (and all of it wise and effective).

I’m not a big salesperson, so I don’t want to belabor this, but my web host is having a 1/2 off sale today only, and it makes for a pretty great deal. (Around $2.50 a month for the basic plan.) It also happens to be one of the only places I have an affiliate account with, so I get a little kickback if you order via my link. (It doesn’t make a difference in the price you pay.)

Here’s some background on hosting: I’ve used about 6 or 7 different major web hosts, for myself and through web site clients of mine. To name some: Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Dreamhost, my current host (Hostgator), and a few others that slip my mind right now. I’ve also used a number of small local hosts, which I won’t name, because local hosts, as a rule, are a bad choice, no matter who they are. Hosting is not something that you should go “small” with, and without exception, I have run into numerous problems with local hosts relating to their smallness. Unavailability, inconsistency, and especially, not keeping up with the latest trends and standards. (Namely, in my line of work, WordPress-friendly hosting, which has always been a hassle with small-time hosts.

As far as the big hosts go, those first three I named suck. Dreamhost may suck the least of the three, because it is at least a place that is primarily focused on hosting. The other two do hosting as a sideline, and that puts them only just barely above local hosts in terms of lameness. Also, all three of those hosts use their own customized “control panels” where you administer your hosting/server, whereas decent hosts all use cPanel, which is a widespread and easy to use control panel. They also have their control panels hosted centrally on their main site (rather than on your rented server location), which means if their main site where everybody is croded in has problems, you can’t get at your hosting tools. I have had that happen at all three of those hosts, and it sucks, big time.

There are many large national hosts that use cPanel, and they are all probably about the same in many ways. Hostgator is definitely a leader of the pack, both in terms of success/size/client base, and in terms of ratings and reviews. They’re not perfect, but in my experience, web hosting is kind of like cell phone providers–they all kind of suck, and the best you can do is find one that sucks less than the others. Hostgator does not suck very much. I’m not crazy about their support, just because you end up having your ticket handled rather anonymously, and each response tends to come from a different person so the chain of communication can be frustrating, but I think you’ll get that with almost all large hosts. (And with small hosts, you’ll usually get one or two overworked people, who often aren’t available after business hours or on weekends, which is just plain unacceptable.)

I’ve been using Hostgator for around 8 years, which I think kind of says it all. Most of their plans support unlimited domains names, email addresses, databases, and plenty of disk space and bandwidth. (Way more than some of the joker hosts like Network Solutions, or Charter Communications, who I just found out only supports one domain name even on their top-end plan, and NO mySQL databases–required by WordPress and other blog/CMS software–on their two low-end plans. <– Ridiculous!)

Anyway, today, until 10 PM PST, Hostgator is offering 1/2 off on all their hosting plans. The 1/2 off is on the first payment only, so it’s best to pay for a year or more up front to get real savings. But, for example, you save over $60 on a year of their Business Plan (which is good if you need to have an SSL/secure server for a shopping cart). Of if you go with the cheapy plan, it’s $2.48 a month if you pay for 3 years, or $3.47/mo if you do a year up front. ($4.47 if you do 6 months up front.)

Those are very good prices. If you have or know of a host that is cheaper than that, they probably aren’t a great host.

So there you have it. If you click here and go buy a plan from Hostgator, I get a little check in 3 months, and you get a sweet deal. If you feel like I’m being lame by trying to get the kickback, you can use this non-affiliate link, and let Hostgator keep that kickback money to themselves. The price for you will be the same. And I recommend Hostgator enough that I still think you should host with them even if you don’t use my affiliate link.

If you do the affiliate link, I’ll also help you out by answering any questions you have in getting things set up there. Just contact me here or on Twitter.

So go ahead! Time’s running out. Thanks for reading.

Oh, by the way, I recommend using 1and1 for registering your actual domain names. They are cheap and easy to deal with. (I have no affiliate deal going with them.)

Confused about WordPress, and don’t understand what’s up with its dot-com and dot-org variants? That’s about to end!

What is WordPress?

Basically, WordPress is a piece of software made up (primarily) of many PHP files, which work together, in conjunction with a database, to serve up pages and blog posts. (The way they display is controlled mainly by a Theme, which is made up (primarily) of PHP template files.)

WordPress runs on a web server. You access and use it via the Web. If you install it, you install it on your web site/host – - not on your own computer.

What is WordPress.org?

That software described above is available for free download at WordPress.org (and via various “one-click”-style installers at many/most web hosts). To use that, you need to own a website domain that is already hosted somewhere. (Thus, this version is sometimes called “self-hosted”.)

If you install “dot org WordPress” at your own web site, you can use it for free and do whatever you want with it. But just as you have full power, you also have full responsibility for operating and maintaining that WordPress installation. You might need to do some online learning to really get underway, and while there are lots of WP support resources on the web, no one would be around to hold your hand. (Your host will almost certainly offer little to no help with WordPress, beyond maybe helping you get it installed.) A lot of business owners in this situation will look to a WP professional like myself to help them get squared away, or get their theme tweaked, etc.

WordPress.org is backed by the WordPress Foundation, and its mission basically is to spread WordPress across the globe, and to keep making it better while making sure it remains free and open source forever.

What is WordPress.com?

WordPress.com is a free blogging service as well as a for-pay WordPress host. It uses basically the same software as above, but it’s hosted by the WordPress.com people. (Which makes this the “hosted” version of WordPress, vs. the “self-hosted” dot org version.)

With the free account, you get a blog at something like yourname.wordpress.com. It’s not as pimped-out as it could be if you had it hosted on your own site, but you can definitely get off and running with it.

If you pay for their hosting, you can use your own proper domain name–basically getting you to the state that a “dot org” version user is in, except you have the creators of WordPress as your hand-holding guides and hosts. But you also get less control over your actual WordPress installation. (You can’t add plugins, for one thing…you’re stuck with their handful of widgets.) Those WordPress.com people have to manage a gazillion blogs and sites, so they have some limitations in place on their WordPress installations. And they are a for-profit enterprise, so they will definitely hit your wallet a bit, especially if you want to get more features or control.

WordPress.com is run by Automattic, a for-profit company started by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg.

Which one to use

Which one you should use really depends on your situation and your priorities, as well as your access to tech help and/or your willingness to learn new things and get your hands dirty.

“Self-hosted” WordPress.org is infinitely more powerful than its commercial cousin, due to having full access to all features, plus the ability to use plugins. (And I don’t mean it’s a lot more powerful–I mean it is literally infinitely more powerful.) But it might be scary or confusing to dive into; you could end up daunted just trying to get it installed, and you will probably have lots of questions early on. Push through that, and you could end up with an awesome slick site with hundreds of pages and tons of neat features for essentially free.

“Hosted” WordPress.com is convenient and turnkey, and you get “24/7 support” from the people who know WordPress better than anyone else. Of course, since their WordPress installations are relatively limited, most support probably deals with basic issues involving their limited set of tools and features. But if you’ve seen (and been freaked out by) the full WordPress menu set, you might prefer a more scaled-down version. And your ambitions for your web presence may be such that a WordPress.com might be the perfect simple solution for you.

I’m such a huge fan of what the WordPress folks have brought into the world that I’m more than happy to see people spend money on their dot-com services, even though it’s a limited version of WP, and even though I generally make my bacon from business owners who are forging into the denser forest of dot-org WP. ;-)

If you want some advice on which way you should go, you can always tweet me at @freeWPadvice–I’d be happy to help you figure it out (and as the username suggests, I’ll do it for free). If you’re not on Twitter, hit me up some other way and I’ll talk to you there.

You remember my post about how I love WordPress plugin people? In it, I mentioned the very cool phenomenon where one would randomly stumble upon some humble plugin author, and discover that said author has a whole page filled with eyebrow-raising plugins of every type. Stumbling onto such people with such pages, I said, was one of the experiences that helps open your eyes to the real vastness and variety of the WP plugin universe.

Witness: Christopher Ross, and his eyebrow-raising page of plugins.

I found Christopher when I found his External Link to New Window plugin, which makes all your links to external sites automatically open in a new window, so people also stay at your site when they visit links to other sites that you post. I’m glad I clicked through from the plugin search results and ended up at his actual site, or I wouldn’t have found the other 25 plugins he has created. And they are cool plugins. Check them out on his site where they have full descriptions and download links, or on his user page at WordPress.org, where you can see how (appropriately) popular his plugins are, and go right to their pages at that site. Then, if you install the WordPress.org One-Click Install Plugin ahead of time, you could install every one of Christopher’s plugins in probably 52 or 78 clicks. That might sound like a lot of clicks, but if you consider all the neato new tools and functions you’d be getting, and the fact that the total financial outlay would be $0.00, it’s a pretty amazing deal.

In fact it’s so amazing, that you should actually give Christopher some money, if you dig his plugins and have some money to spare for appreciation of them. (You can donate via PayPal right on his plugin page.) But even if you don’t/can’t, go check ‘em out, and install 1 or 2 or 26 of them. If all goes well, you should feel a cool little rush, from the realization of all the possibilities that must be available in the world when things like Christopher’s huge page of free WordPress plugins exists.

Thank you, Christopher Ross! I love you and what you do, and have ordered my readers to love you as well.

Here are a couple other great plugins from Christopher’s big page:

Auto-Copyright – adds a copyright message to your footer that (here’s the brilliant part) automatically sets the date range based the dates of your earliest and most recent posts.

WordPress Admin Quick Menu – Add your own menu cluster on the side in the WP Dashboard area, with whatever links you want, including external sites (like Google Analytics maybe, or your other WP dashboards, or help pages for your clients…you get the idea.)

How about a fundraising thermometer? A frame blocker? A login redirect plugin? Those, and 20-odd more. All from one person.

This is why I love plugin people.

Thanks again, Christopher!

Open Site Explorer is a “Link Popularity & Backlink Analysis Tool”, which means it tells you what sites link back to you, and how valuable or popular those sites are. You have to get a pro account to get full data on the value of all your backlinks, but they will show you the links themselves for free.

While you can see who has sent you traffic recently via your referrer logs/site stats/analytics tool, that won’t necessarily show you all the sites that link to you overall. I have a few sites that are older (read:out-of-date) and a lot of the sites that link to them may be a bit dormant, which means they probably won’t all turn up in a given month’s site stats. But Open Site Explorer seems to be keeping track of the big picture.

For example, it shows PNAC.info having 4,825 links to it, which includes all the various pages on all the various sites that have linked to it over the 8 years it’s been up (I’m assuming). By comparison, my relatively-unknown and newer lancebrown.org (this site) shows 605 links altogether (which sounds better than it is; they’re only from 47 “root domains”).

Open Site Explorer seems like a pretty good tool for checking out your site’s overall connectedness on the Web. Do you have other similar tools you can recommend?

The New York Times did an investigative piece on how JCPenney.com was able to cheat Google for months, giving it top-ranking listings in dozens of widely-varied commercial terms: Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets. Depending on your perspective and whether you like dangerous shortcuts, this is either an inspirational or cautionary tale about using “black hat” tactics in your search engine optimization efforts.

(NYT tends to phase out free access to their articles over time, so I can’t promise that article will be available forever. If it’s not, you can try a Google search for the article’s title; someone has probably archived a copy of it.)

Clare Lancaster at ProBloggingTools has been nice enough to compile a simple checklist of the 9 most straightforward ways to draw attention to your social media accounts. The short answer is: “promote it in various places”, but Clare has nailed the most important places, and explains why they are important quickly and concisely.

Print Clare’s list out if you must and use it as a checklist; make sure you are taking advantage of most of these methods, or you can’t say you are seriously supporting your own social media efforts: 9 Practical Ways to Start Attracting an Audience to Your New Social Media Account.

Not much to be said here…Diana Adams at Ink Rebels has compiled a tremendous list of prompts to help you get unstuck if you ever don’t know what to blog about: 100 Sources of Blogging Inspiration

I’ve been planning on writing one of these “things to post about” posts myself, but it’s becoming increasingly unnecessary. Between Diana’s awesome list and the resources I linked to in this blog post here, the pool of potential content ideas is growing very wide and very deep. We may need to reclassify it as a pond soon.

Here’s a tip: bookmark this post, so you can find Diana’s list as well as my other post with three other lists on it. That should keep you busy for a while…unless you’re posting like 10 times a day or something (in which case you probably don’t need our help coming up with ideas anyway).

As long as it conveys something useful, informative, entertaining, or otherwise engaging, a blog post doesn’t necessarily have to be a full-length article.

It’s OK to post a short blog post sometimes.

David Garland at Small Business Trends has a nice succinct post about becoming a new kind of “celebrity” – the entrepreneurial niche celebrity (or “trusted resource”, which he suggests as a less hype-driven descriptor).

It’s funny – I’ve gotten so used to the list-style articles that are so popular these days, that when I discovered that David’s list ended after 3 items, I felt like it was abrupt or short. But when I looked back at the piece I realized he covers a lot of ground in his “short” list–each item has a lot of sub-points, especially the first two.

I read (or skim) so many articles these days that if I shared them all it would be overwhelming for both of us. So I’ve started using a rule of thumb that I’ll only post articles that taught me something, or moved me to action. David’s article gave me the final push to get my picture up on my site, and to work on infusing a little more Lance into things. (Stuff I tell all my clients to do of course, but you know, do as I say…) So maybe his quick run-through will give you a needed kick in the pants too…or provide you with a starting blueprint for your own rise to “celebrity” in your niche.

WordPress plugins. You gotta love ‘em.

No, I mean it–you have to love them. I’m not going to let you leave until you do. Sorry, I know it sounds strict, but this how we learn. Now go sit in the corner until you love WordPress plugins.

I’m just joking–of course I know you love WP plugins as much as I do. You’re frickin’ plugin crazy! Why else would you be reading this blog post, right?

You and I are going to be revelling in our mutual adoration for plugins a lot here this year. And we’re also going to be checking out a lot of them…and a lot of compilations of them.

While I will talk about individual plugins in time, there’s nothing quite as juicy (and deliciously distracting) as a nice fat compilation that’s been put together by someone with real knowledge and love for the plugins he or she is highlighting. The 7 sweet compilations featured here are just a glancing swipe at the vast universe of plugin compilations that I spoke of in my ode to plugin people–but they are a glancing swipe that could easily take over your month, or wildly advance your site, or both. Hopefully both.

10 Un-Usual WordPress Plugins that Improved my Blog by Stefan Vervoort at Divito Design
A nice little mix of plugins; introduced me to Feed Pauser and RSS Footer.

30 WordPress Plugins To Help You Improve Your Sidebar by Cosmin Lupsan from 1stWebDesigner
A really great assortment of widgets and other sidebar-related WordPress tools.

33 WordPress Plugins To Power Up Your Comment Section by Dainis Graveris at 1stWebDesigner
The title speaks for itself; I’m just writing this blurb for proper article feng shui. (Your chi will thank me. With money, preferably.)

15 helpful WordPress plugins for the savvy user by Jacob Gube at Six Revisions
Advanced plugins for coder-bloggers and geekier WP users, and a few key plugins for WP webmasters (Maintenance Mode, WP-DB Backup, etc.).

WordPress Web Optimization: 15 Tips And Plugins To Monitor, Speed Up And Optimize Your WordPress Blog by Dicky at WebDesignBooth
Even more advanced plugins for tuning the engine of your WordPress site – plus 7 tips for optimizing your WP installation.

40+ Quite Useful WordPress Plugins using jQuery by Lars of tripwire magazine
Ooh, jQuery! Stuff reloading on the page without the whole page reloading! Lightbox, slimbox, sliders, carousels! Slick! Snazzy!

Some Powerful WordPress Plugins by Shefeek Jinnah from 4TechInfo
This has 60 plugins arranged in different sections – a wide array of, as Shefeek says, powerful plugins. (The article is getting a little old, so a few of those plugin links might not pan out.)

If that’s not enough WP plugin compilations for you, you may want to talk to someone about your plugin compilation addiction. Assuming you both decide that you can control yourself, then Ari Herzog’s got a few dozen more compilations listed here.

Got your own favorite WP plugin compilations? Share them in the comments, and I’ll share them with folks in a future blog post!

Jeff Bullas has created a nice simple guide to getting started advertising on Facebook:

How To Advertise On Facebook In Ten Minutes For Less Than $10 A Day In 10 Simple Steps

I don’t have anything to add really, other than that it made me want to get started advertising on Facebook! :-)

If you have a locally-based business, this is a great and really easy way to get more local traffic to your site, and it can also be an excellent way to make nice personal connections with businesses that might become customers or referrers one day.

The concept is simple: if you have a locally-based business, make a place on your site where you link to all the businesses that are nearby (and that have websites).

Here’s how it goes:

1. Look around or walk around or somehow find out the names of all the businesses near you. How you define “near you” is your call. One local client of mine had about 40 businesses within a block or so. That’s a great start. You can reach out as far as you want—just have a sense of what “neighborhood” you’re compiling. It could be a block or an office building, or it could be a whole town or a county. You’ll want to do them in reasonably-sized portions, whatever your range.
2. You may want to narrow your list down, and pick your targets based on an estimate of their likelihood of “paying off”. I discourage taking that approach–though it couldn’t hurt to at least make sure you’re putting your best effort into the better bets. Still, you never know what might come from reaching out, even it’s to Grandma Smith’s Sewing Shop. And part of this exercise is about using old-school relationship-style marketing, and when translated to your neighboring businesses, that means being friendly to everyone you can. So if they have a website, I say keep them on the list unless there’s a good reason not to.
3. Find websites for all of the businesses on your list that you can. As you add them to a links page on your site (or a text file on your computer), note down contact info for the business in question. (Email, phone, address, owner or manager’s name, etc.)
4. Post the links on your site. There are two main ways to deal with that:
   1. The easiest is to create a links page and just add whatever links you want to it. (Or use WordPress’s Links function to add your links, and a links page plugin to display them.) If you use a links page, make sure you add a link to that page somewhere in the common navigation areas of your site. Some marketers might say you could just have your links page exist without cluttering up your menus with a “Links” button. Those same folks implicitly would be thinking that links pages are a thing of the past, and they’d probably think of your links page as simply a chance to bleed away visitors who will never be seen again.
      I disagree on all counts. It’s true that links pages have been around since the earliest days of the web, but this is still the Internet, and people still want to get pointed to other cool places. And the idea that you lose people from linking off of your site is 99% myth. So if you have a links page, make it a full partner in your site. You can stick the link to it down with the bottom-of-the-page links if you want, rather than up in your main navigation. But don’t just create the page and leave it lonely and untethered from your site. That’s cheesy, and it undermines the genuineness of the connection you are trying to make with these other human beings, your neighbors.
   2. Another option, if you a) only have a blog or b) have a lot of empty sidebar space, or 3) don’t want to have a links page for whatever reason, is to post your links “blogroll”-style–i.e., in a list in your right or left sidebar. If you have both sides available, do the right. And put it below other primary stuff in your sidebar. That will make it the least emphasized of all your sidebar stuff–but even still, you will be giving very prominent props to the folks on your blogroll.
      If you have a lot of links, or are concerned about giving up that much real estate, you could use a plugin to rotate your links on a page-by-page basis, showing just one or five or ten links at a time. (That could make it tougher for your linkees to go see their link, since it would be rotating randomly around the site, but if it’s a good fit otherwise, then it might be the way to go.)
      If you really want to get friendly with some other places with websites, putting them in a blogroll/links list that shows up in the sidebar on all or most of your pages is a very generous gesture, and if they are web-aware at all, they will realize as much, and most likely feel indebted or at least grateful.
5. Once you have posted the links on your site and your blogroll or links page is looking good, then you get in touch with your newly-linked neighbors. How you go about that is up to you–you could stop by in person, call on the phone, or send an email. You’ll have to go with your gut on that. Obviously each has a different time commitment, and will be received differently.
   I would go for at least a phone call probably, but it does depend on who you’re dealing with on the other end. It might be that an email is all you can do to try and reach the person who will care. But if you are looking for an excuse to get some face time with your fellow neighborhood business owners, I think this makes for a great opportunity/excuse to make it happen.
6. When you tell them about the link, do not ask for a link back. Do not try and sell them anything. Do not try and give them your card unless they ask. This is important. Break this rule and you risk spoiling the whole thing. You are not doing this for easily measurable cost/benefit-based reasons, so don’t bother trying to make it “pay off”. This doesn’t mean don’t engage in conversation or even strut your stuff if asked, but your mission is simply to drop by and let them know that you did something nice for them, “just because you’re my neighbor and we’re both business owners, and it was an easy way to maybe point a few people in your direction every now and then.”
   Paraphrase what I just said there, and if they don’t say anything else after they say “Thank you” or “OK”, then bid them a courteous goodbye and call it good. (Let them know how they can find your site and their link on it also, of course.) Don’t make sales moves of any sort on them, and don’t try and get anything out of it other than making contact with another human being. If they want to go forward in business with you, they will let you know.
7. Now, wait for the piles of money to start pouring in! Just kidding. You will get some links back, though. That’s pretty much guaranteed. (And those will pay off over time.) And you will definitely be more at the forefront of those neighbors’ minds for the next while. If they didn’t know you existed before, they will probably look for you, and if they did know you existed, they will think more vividly of you when they walk or drive by every day. Because you will be the nice neighbor who did a nice thing for them, just to be nice. And not that many people do that these days.
   Trust me, with a few of your neighbors, this little gesture will make a big difference in these modern times of detachment and increasing isolation. And while they themselves might not need a lawyer or hair stylist or whatever it is that you do, they probably know other people in the world. And some of those people will need your services (or will have what you need), and your neighbor buddy might be the one who is in the position to connect you when the time comes.

This is “Networking 101″ stuff here, but it can be easy to forget how simple it is to make a new personal connection that could help your business (and your heart and spirit and stuff too).

It can also be easy to forget that your website doesn’t have to always be focused on “way out there”; something as simple as a list of neighboring business websites on a links page can get you traffic, referrals, and maybe even new lifelong friends! (Remember back when people made friends with other people in their neighborhood? Me neither really, but it’s in all those old TV shows, so it’s definitely a real thing.)

By the way, most of these principles can be applied to making a links page or blogroll even if you aren’t locally-based. You just define your “neighborhood” differently–by industry (horizontally and/or vertically), or by common interests, etc. If you reach out this way to folks around the Internet, treat it just the same, in terms of making a real personal connection. Don’t make it generic and impersonal just because you’re emailing or calling someone far away.

And do not–I repeat, do not–ask for a link back. (Don’t suggest it, don’t half-ask for it–don’t even mention it.) It won’t increase your chances of getting one, it will increase your chances of not getting one, and it destroys all the positive vibeage that you are trying to manifest, because it turns you into someone who’s trying to use them under the guise of helping them, and that just feels slimy and lame.

Link freely and with genuine neighborly love, and you will get dividends back, don’t worry.

Or at least maybe a nice plate of brownies or something.

Do you have a neighbor-linking success story to share? Well then share it, yo! (In the comments, yo.)

One of the simplest things you can do to put your locally-based business website to work for you is to add or update your information in the many free business directory sites on the web.

Taking advantage of free business listing sites offers a few benefits, namely:

• You get to make sure all the sites have your correct address, phone number, and web site. This is especially important if your key information has changed recently (obviously).
• While a lot of the local directories will already have your basic “phone book” info, they are less likely to automatically have your web address or contact email address. Since most businesses won’t bother adding theirs, if you add yours you will have an automatic leg up on the competition.
• While the value of links from these sites will vary, a lot of the business directory sites tend to be top results for Google “yellow pages”-style searches (like “hair salon”, “real estate agent”, “car repair”, etc.). If you get most or all of these mega-sites to link to your site, Google should take your site a little more seriously as a result.
• Not to mention, it means that when people land on these directory sites, they will be able to click and get to your site, rather than just seeing the dry “Name / address / phone number” listing.
• Also, some of these sites offer opportunities to rank or comment on a given business. (Some, like Yelp, are primarily focused on just that.) If you seek them out, you get a chance to respond to good or bad reviews. And if you keep track of them, or have a blog, you can send your customers there to help you get good ratings and reviews on those sites.

Now on with the sites!

NOTE: I’m only focusing on sites that list businesses for free, and I would recommend thinking twice before paying for any online business listing, unless you’ve heard from a solid referral that it pays off for them. Some of those directories won’t last or succeed, so paying money to them can be a gamble. But there are plenty of ways to get free listings and links.

• Yahoo Local
• Google Local
• Bing Local
• Yelp
• Craigslist (doesn’t have a business directory, but allows free ads)
• MerchantCircle
• Froogle Local (you can list retail products that you have for sale)
• YellowPages.com
• SuperMedia
• Foursquare
• LocalPages
• CitySlick
• LocalDatabase
• BrownBook
• Best of the Web Local
• Angie’s List
• HotFrog
• Kudzu

There’s an even longer list here; I wanted to check those sites out myself before I added them all here.)

Lastly, just search for your own type of business and town in Google or elsewhere, and you will probably find some directories I haven’t mentioned here, including some that are specific to your industry. (So one of my clients would search for “hair salon grass valley”, and look for all the local-business and salon-industry directory sites in the first couple pages of results. Or search for your business name and town, and see the places where you are already listed.)

I will dig into some of these more in the future; a few, like Yelp and Foursquare, deserve detailed discussion in their own right. But for now, making sure your business has a spot on those sites, and has all the info you’re allowed to list for free, is a pretty good start.

This list is by no means comprehensive; I’ll be adding to and updating it over time.

Do you have some free local business listing sites I should add? Have you had good or bad experiences with any of the ones I have listed?

I’m teetering dangerously on the border of “practice what you preach” hypocrisy here, but you should let your readers know if you can’t post on a given day. That’s right: you should post even if you can’t post.

People understand that you have a life, and that lives involve responsibilities, and that some of those responsibilities will interfere with blogging. This doesn’t mean you can cheat all the time and be like “It’s laundry day today, so no new blog post.” If you’re that frivolous, then you aren’t really committed to posting regularly, and in response, your readers won’t commit to reading regularly. This is due to what is known as (or will be known as, in just a second) The Flakiness Reflection Rule, which states that your readers will give approximately as much of a crap about your blog as you appear to give. Put another way: if you want your readers to read your blog on their laundry day, you need to be willing to post during yours. Pretty simple.

In my case, I had a family tragedy yesterday, which is a little tricky, since it’s wicked personal and inherently touchy. But I could have posted something like: “I have to take a personal day off from the blog today. Sorry everyone – I’ll be back on schedule tomorrow.” (Post title: “Personal day”)

Boom – done. It’s that easy. If, say, we’re in Opposite World and I have thousands of readers who check their RSS feeds or my site itself and expect something new from me everyday, they don’t have their rhythm thrown off, and their trust in me stays rock-solid—again, as long as my “personal days” don’t start recurring too often…which you’ll find is hard to do when you are posting publicly about them, and you can see yourself how frequently it’s happening. (It’s much, much easier to slack off if you don’t bother checking in…in which case the Flakiness Reflection Rule will result in your readers finding it easier to not check in too.)

Unfortunately, my tragedy was also basically a day-long emergency, which is pretty much the one time you can be completely excused from blogging. Not coincidentally, such circumstances generally excuse you from almost all real-life responsibilities—and that’s a pretty good yardstick to use. If you’re serious about your blog, and you’ve established a frequency, then keep up with it by hook or by crook, except in the most extraordinary of cases. And if you aren’t going to be posting on a day that people will be expecting you to post, post and tell them that, and why.

WordPress allows you to post-date your entries, meaning you can write your posts in advance and set the time and date they will go “live”. So if you have a planned absence, where you literally won’t have time to even post a note (or you would rather not have to), then write it the night before and set it to appear in the morning. Easy peasy lemon-squeezy.

If you’re really clever and proactive, you could write up a handful of posts and keep them “in the can” as drafts, to be brought out on those days when life (or just a crappy mood or whatever) gets in the way of blogging on schedule. Just bust out one of those drafts on those days, or pre-schedule them the night before, lemon-squeezy style. (See the previous paragraph, in case you skipped that for some reason. And stop skipping my stuff, man!)

To make up for my own transgression (because I know in my heart I could have popped off a quick note yesterday despite circumstances), I will be posting at least once more today. Which, in case it’s not obvious, is a nice way to make it up to your readers if you do happen to have to take a day off.

Have questions? Lame excuses for me to shoot down? Post them in the comments! :-)

In my ongoing series of posts debunking reasons not to post (it has been ongoing for about 17 words now), I’m taking out the biggest and lamest one right off the bat. This is the excuse, often implied more than stated, that one simply does not think they have anything to post.

Fortunately, this one has never been the issue for me, but it has stifled many a beginning blogger. People start out with the best of intentions, but they never seem to break through that first threshold of realizing that there is literally no end to the possibilities when it comes to things to blog about. And so they don’t post. And other people go on to reap the magical rewards of the Internet instead.

In support of their “post daily” challenge to bloggers, the folks at WordPress.com have created The Daily Post, a blog about coming up with ideas for what to post about. They are posting a new suggestion every day, all year. So if you are frozen up, you can always lean on that. They’re just a few days in, and already there is enough food for thought to keep anyone going for quite a while.

I also posted a couple of resources for brewing up post ideas a while back in my For My Clients section: 50 Content Ideas that Create Buzz and How to Turn Staff Into Prolific Bloggers. (My For My Clients section is where I file things that could help my clients do more with their blogs , social media, etc. You can use it too. :-))

Between those three resources, the “nothing to post about” issue is nullified. Say it from here on out and points will be deducted from your score.

If you’re a new or shy blogger, it may be that you don’t think anyone wants to hear what you have to say. But that’s probably not true. Certainly, if you have any sort of expertise, specialty knowledge, or any sort of unique perspective on life, work, or anything else, then there is an audience that wants to hear from you.

And even if you don’t know what your purpose or voice is yet, your search for those things is a worthwhile topic for examination, and unless you are a robotic drone, your journey will be unique. It’s up to you to make it interesting to your reader, but that might not be as hard as you think.

People are pretty damn interested in just about everything these days; we’re undergoing a renaissance of information awareness, global interconnection, and other vague slogans that mean we are gettin’ it on, brain-wise. So people want to know what you want to know, if you know anything they don’t know. That’s an overstatement, but not by a whole lot.

If you started a blog, you had an inkling that you might want to get in on the big sharing party that the Internet has become. At some level, you have things you want to say. Creating a new blog post is as simple as typing down a thought you have, and then going from there. If it doesn’t come out awesome, then your next one will come out better. By which I mean, even if you suck, you won’t suck for long if you care about it. It’s not that hard, and you will get better fast.

But only if you do it.

WordPress Challenges Bloggers to Post Daily in 2011

The headline says it all. And then the article says some more, and then there are links…well, you know how this works.

I’ve been a bad blogger for a while now, for a few reasons. (I tried doing it for no reasons, but it just seemed stupid.) And I’m going to blog about those reasons, and oh so freakin’ much more that you will regret you ever gave me crap for not blogging more which you didn’t do but WordPress did and I’m displacing my defensiveness toward them onto you, all this year, as I try to live up to WP’s very sound recommendation.

Just the other day I was reading Kirk Taylor’s blog post about posting twice a day, which was inspired by John Chow’s post about posting twice a day (or at least picking a frequency and sticking with it).

That’s what we in the industry call serendipity. Or a sign. Or a perfect storm. I really don’t know what industry I’m talking about. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore such a serendipitous perfect storm sign. And neither should you! Your storm is even more serendipitous! You’ve got four layers! I only had three. So you best get posting.

From Makeuseof.com, a sweet overview of (drumroll…super-buzzword coming up!) SEO keyword tools:

6 FREE Tools To Get The Best Keywords For Your Site

In case you’re still wondering…

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