Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 12/11/2009 in General Social Media, How Tos, Steph's Life | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 10/30/2009 in General Social Media, How Tos, Video | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
The big question when starting a new blog is always, "What should I blog about?"
Your blog topic is most important because it's something you should care about deeply as you will be writing about that topic all the time, it gives your audience something to learn from and relate with, and your topic will determine what kinds of brands you can work with for advertising or sponsorship.
In this post, I'll share the typical advice on how to pick a blog topic and then my advice. The two are related yest different in approach.
Continue reading "How To Pick The Right Topic For Your Blog" »
Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 08/28/2009 in How Tos, Making Money, Writing | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 08/13/2009 in How Tos, Twitter, Writing | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)
In June, I retired my blog Back in
Skinny Jeans which was a popular and high traffic blog by an individual in the
healthy living niche. In the blog's goodbye post, "When It's Time to Let Go of the Skinny Jeans,"
I shared the emotional and mental reasons behind my decision to retire the blog.
Today, I'd like to share some of the
business reasons behind my decision because I think it's a good reminder that
when you make money from your blogging you are not only a blogger but a
business owner as well. From my observations, the bloggers who operate
understanding this fact are the ones who end up making more money, growing
their brands, and landing opportunities that extend into bigger media.
As well, it is a balancing act being
a content creator, a more right-brain activity, and a business owner, a more
left-brain activity all in the same body. As many of you know, it's not easy to
be 2-in-1 like that. Most of us tend to favor or be much better at one activity
over the other.
To give you a better picture of the business side of Back in Skinny Jeans, here are some key stats over the blog's life, 3 years and 8 months:
Continue reading "Business Perspective: How I Decided To Retire A Popular Blog" »
Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 08/03/2009 in How Tos, Making Money | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
One of the best ways to increase your odds of getting your tweets retweeted is to make those tweets easy for others to retweet.
Quite often, original tweets have to be manipulated in order to make them retweetable. Here's 3 ways to make your tweets easier for others to retweet:
Continue reading "3 Ways to Make Your Tweets Easier For Others To Retweet" »
Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 07/31/2009 in How Tos, Twitter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Now that Twitter is proving itself to be a hotbed of traffic for bloggers, getting a post retweeted is a big score in terms of getting viral exposure for your blog.
Many bloggers, yours truly included, are using the Tweetmeme "Retweet this" button on their blogs to make it super easy for their readers to retweet a post. Tweetmeme offers two visual choices of buttons:
Here is where you get the Tweetmeme code for each button option.
Blogger and Wordpress
If you use the Blogger or Wordpress platforms for blogging, here's further explanation on how to integrate the Tweetmeme "Retweet This" button into your template:
TypePad and other blog platforms
If you use TypePad or any other blog platform that Tweetmeme does not currently have integration options for, or you use Blogger and Wordpress but get deer in headlights when thinking about integrating anything into a template, you can simply cut & paste, the "Retweet this" code for the button style you like into each post.
For example, I use TypePad for Everyday Tweet. I go into the "Edit HTML" tab of my post, and insert the Tweetmeme code at the very bottom of the post. Yes, for now, I have to cut & paste for every post. Hopefully soon, Tweetmeme will have an integration option for TypePad.
Make your blog title retweet friendly
Now that getting retweeted is a factor in your blogging efforts, it's even more impotant to create a blog title for each post that is retweet friendly. In this post: "3 Ways To Make Tweets Easier For Others To Retweet" #3 is specifically about writing blog titles for use with the Tweetmeme button.
Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 07/31/2009 in How Tos, Twitter | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
A Retweet in Twitter is when you see a tweet you like written by someone else, and you want to share that tweet with your Followers.
For example, I saw this tweet from @Foodimentary about a marinara sauce factoid that I thought my audience would enjoy, and here's how I retweeted Foodimentary's tweet:
1. Highlight and copy the Foodimentary tweet
2. Hit the Reply arrow on the side of the box
When you hit the reply button, your Twitter stream will open up straight to your home box along with Foodimentary's name with the @ symbol attached.
What the @ symbol does is let Foodimentary see in their @replies box that you did a retweet of their tweet. This is nice because people like to see where there stuff has been mentioned. Helps you build goodwill with others.
3. Paste the Foodimentary tweet
4. Add the letters RT which stand for Retweet in front of the @name. It is important to add the letters RT because it gives credit to the original source of the tweet, and communicates to your audience, "Hey guys, here's something cool I saw and wanted to share." It also tells Twitter that your tweet is Retweet and not a continuation of a conversation.
It is also important to make sure there is a space between the letters RT and the @Foodimentary name. If the RT and @ are butted up next to each other, the @Foodimentary name cannot become a live link again to let Foodimentary that you retweeted them.
5. Hit the Update button, and now the Retweet will show up in your Twitter stream, and in Foodimentary's @replies stream.
A common faux pas newbies make is simply copying someone else's tweet, going back to their home page, pasting the tweet in their home box, and then hitting the update button with no addition of the RT or the person's @Twitter name.
This makes the tweet appear like you are the original source/creator of the tweet which is not the case. It appears that you are plagiarizing someone else's tweet which is not a way to build goodwill.
It's always a good rule of thumb to be generous with praise and to give credit to other people's work again helping you build goodwill with others and in the Twitter community as a whole.
Posted by Stephanie Quilao on 07/30/2009 in How Tos, Twitter | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)