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Today is SEM Synergy’s 100th episode anniversary and we celebrated live on the air! It was exhilarating and exciting and rewarding and fun and people were hanging in the chat room and Bruce was answering questions on air and people called in to the show and there was so much love going around I think I’m still on cloud nine!

Breathe, Virginia…

Seriously, thanks to friends and listeners for all the kudos and support, and thanks for listening to the show because that’s what makes it worth doing!

If you tuned in to the show today, you heard Bruce, Susan and I talking about how Rhea Drysdale (who you may know as co-founder of Outspoken Media or from her frequent SEM conference speaking gigs or as next week’s SEM Synergy guest!) defended “SEO” from being trademarked.

CC BY-SA 2.0 SEO trademark denied!

When the SEO community learned of Rhea’s story, they immediately snapped into action to donate the out-of-pocket legal costs that had piled on Rhea and Jonathan Hochman, another trademark opposer. You can find a recap of the full story (among other juicy delicious news and articles) in yesterday’s SEO Newsletter.

While we’d like to think that such an undeserved trademark claim to a common term like SEO would never have gone through, nobody knows what could have happened if Rhea and the opposition hadn’t acted when and how they did.

The issue now is that this trademark application is not the first of its kind, and it won’t be the last. (Here’s a trademark application for SEO that’s currently in the queue!) Anyone else think it would be ridiculous to watch this happen again? How can we be sure someone will come to our rescue next time?

Some have proposed that SEMPO, the industry’s professional organization, should take up the cause. Bruce, who sits on organization’s board of directors, explained on the show today that he’ll be bringing the issue up with the board to see what might be possible. I think we can all agree that it’s time to ensure SEO is treated as a generic term in the public domain, so it seems it’s time for some legal advice.

From a little sleuthing I found this Wikipedia entry (sophisticated, I know) on public domain for trademarks:

Terms can be deemed “generic” in two ways. First, any potential mark can be deemed “generic” by a trademark registry, that refuses to register it. In this instance, the term has no secondary meaning that helps consumers identify the source of the product; the term serves no function as a “mark”. Second, a mark, already in use, may be deemed generic by a court or registry after the mark is challenged as generic—this is known as “genericide”. In this instance, the term previously had a secondary meaning, but lost its source-identifying function.

I’d think that the second option would only be applicable if “SEO” was already a trademark, which it’s not. So that leaves us with the first option, which is to trust that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office won’t let anymore of these applications though. And if the USPTO opens the doors to another, it may come down to another individual reaching into their personal pocket to champion the security of SEO once again.

Let’s not let that happen again. At the very least, can we agree to rally around the issue if it ever comes back up? Can we promise not to let another individual tackle the issue alone? And of course I’ve gotta ask, any trademark lawyers in the house?

How Can SEOs Avoid More Trademark Trouble? — SEM Synergy Extras was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.

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How Can SEOs Avoid More Trademark Trouble? — SEM Synergy Extras

In this post Mark Hayward shares some great tips on social media for small business.

Image by jn is not here

Do you own a small business? How long have you been using social media as a marketing tool and what have you learned?

In a little over a months time I will have owned my business for just about three years. When I began using social media some thirty six months ago, I had no real marketing background experience, and I certainly had never written a blog post, interacted in a forum, or sent a Tweet.

My social media evolution began with a simple foray into blogging as a way to try and rank well for some keywords related to my business. From there I expanded to niche forums, review sites, FLICKR, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Man! Just trying to keep up can be intimidating and overwhelming.

However, my number one goal has always been to create a distributed social media footprint with all of my online marketing activities pointing back towards my small business website.

After almost three years of working hard, learning continuously, making lots of mistakes, and monitoring successes, below are thirty valuable social media marketing lessons that I have learned through my experience. I hope they help you:

1. Location is dead. We have now fully entered into the Interaction Economy.

2. It does not pay to engage in ‘pissing contests’ on business review sites or in forums.

3. When used properly, a small video camera like a Flip and a standard digital camera (or just an iPhone), can be like having your own marketing department.

4. Instead of trying to be everywhere in the social media space, determine what online activities work best for your business and focus your attention there.

5. Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is important but it needs to be combined with a well distributed plan for Search Engine Visibility (SEV).

6. Conceptualizing and then defining your social media goals can help to keep you on track.

7. Social networking sites can be a tremendous time suck. Use a site like Egg Timer to help limit the time you spend interacting online.

8. Get to know the online influencers in your small business niche, as well as, the social media pros.

9. There is gold to be mined with Twitter Search if you are willing to use it to listen, engage, and provide value.

10. Uploading well titled and tagged videos to YouTube and photos to FLICKR can drastically improve your Search Engine Visibility.

11. Consistent small business blogging pays the greatest returns.

12. Technology changes daily. Read often.

13. You should not fear customer review social sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Rather, you should embrace them.

14. Helping people online when they least expect it can bring you great rewards.

15. Even on your worst day, you have to remember that every interaction counts.

16. Spamming and jamming your business down the throats of potential customers only drives business away.

17. Not everyone is going to like you, so be prepared to get flamed and read negative reviews.

18. Turn negative reviews into a positive by using them to help better define who your ideal customer is.

19. Your backstory matters and weaving it into your online business persona is important.

20. Social media is a lot like exercise. Doing a little bit consistently everyday will produce better results than one eight hour marathon session per month.

21. The people who criticize you the most for using social media to promote your small business are the one’s who are most afraid of embracing change.

22. One of the easiest ways for small business owners to measure social media ROI is to ask every customer how they heard about your business.

23. When starting your social media marketing efforts for your small business you will get frustrated. Try to keep a long term outlook like six months to a year.

24. Don’t discount the power of niche forums that are related to your small business.

25. Use Google Alerts to see who’s talking specifically about your business and anything related to your business.

26. If you are using social media as a customer service tool, when something goes wrong (and it always does!), being sincere, humble, and apologetic will be greatly appreciated by your future potential customers.

27. Utilizing free email lists like Help A Reporter Out (HARO) can help you find valuable public relations and news opportunities for your business.

28. Social media in the short term does not work. You must be in it for the long term and be persistent, consistent, and committed.

29. Anyone who owns a small business can ‘do’ social media, but NOT everyone ‘does’ it. (And that is your true competitive advantage.)

30. If you have a spare hour or two everyday to aimlessly surf the net, or sit and watch T.V., then you have more than enough time to commit to using social media for your small business.

How long have you been using social media for your small business? What have you found works best?

Mark Hayward hates the snow and cold! Luckily, he owns a small business in the Caribbean. Mark is passionate about helping other small business owners avoid the online mistakes he has made. You can follow Mark on Twitter @mark_hayward and you can subscribe to his RSS Feed for weekly small business social media marketing tips.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business

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30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business

Over the last few days I’ve been in Austin Texas attending the South by South West Interactive (#SXSWi) conferences. Sometimes known as ‘Spring Break for Geeks’ I try to get out to this gathering each years because there are so many of my colleagues in attendance and it is an opportunity to meet up with old friends, network, do a little business and a meet a few readers at the same time.

Today is the last day of SXSW (I return home tomorrow) and despite some late nights I woke up this morning with a start on the dot of 5am (jet lag sucks). As I lay in bed reflecting upon the days I’ve just had I just started to feel very very grateful for this opportunity and especially the chance I’ve had this week to interact with some very special people.

A few highlights come to mind:

People Practicing the Art of Saying Hi

Lets start with what has happened constantly, day and night, since arriving. The people who come up and introduce themselves are amazing. Whether they be past or present readers of ProBlogger (or one of my other blogs), members at Third Tribe, previous bloggers from b5media….. the amount of people who have come up to say hi has been amazing.
I think what I enjoy so much about these real time and face to face interactions is that it makes me realize in a more tangible way that what I do as a blogger impacts ‘real people’. I find it very inspiring and a great reminder to keep building a blog here that helps such people to take their blogs to the next level. If you are one of the people who stepped up (sometimes a little out of your comfort zone) to say hi – thank you.

Salaam Garage

One project I came across on day 1 was Salaam Garage – founded by Amanda Koster (a photographer, author, speaker… and great person) – Salaam Garage brings together a variety of things I am interested in and passionate about – storytelling (with writing, video and image), humanitarianism (partnering with international NGOs) and traveling in teams. You can read more here.

Book Reading

On Friday at 5pm (day 1) I had the opportunity to do a book reading to promote the upcoming 2nd edition of ProBlogger the book (I’ll talk more about this in coming weeks as its launching late April). In the 20 minute session I planned to share what was new in the 2nd edition and run through a case study on my photography site (which is a new chapter in the book).

The session was 20 minutes but 10 minutes in a siren began to sound and an announcement came over the speaker system saying that an emergency had just taken place in the building and that everyone should evacuate. Wow – talk about a mood killer Everyone calmly filed out (literally thousands of people in the building at all of the different sessions taking place at that time).

My stomach sunk a little as I realized how far I’d travelled for this 20 minute session that was now potentially just 10 minutes but even as I traveled down the escalators people were very kind and I met some amazing people. Luckily we were let back in the room 10 minutes later and I was given 10 minutes to finish my presentation.

About half those who had been there returned which was great. The other half of those who were there for the 2nd half were there for a completely different book which was strange but it seemed to go ok!

I’ll turn the presentation into a video in the coming weeks but in the mean time if you’d like to see what the reading was like you can read the notes of one person in attendance here and here and see some visual notes on it here.

Photo Shoot – Meeting Jasmine

As I was leaving the book reading (the first time…. during the ‘emergency’) a number of people said hi – one of whom was an amazing photographer by the name of Jasmine Star. I’ve long admired Jasmine’s photography and have particularly enjoyed watching her blog develop over the years (she is someone who uses her blog VERY well to build her business – a great case study). Jasmine is a photographer who many of my dPS readers LOVE too.

It’s bad enough when vendors offer real estate SEO services and/or advice that isn’t worth a dime … but what about when the national organization that’s supposed to support real estate agents starts spreading around misinformation to its members?

The National Association of REALTORS® offered up some SEO tips in its official magazine last month via an article titled “6 Weeks to Better Search Engine Results.”

I like the idea behind the article — simplifying some of the low-hanging SEO fruit into tasks that can be worked on one week at a time. Good idea. But some of the specific advice is … well … not so hot. Frankly, some of it just exacerbates the same problems that have plagued real estate agents for years — namely, that so much of what they call “real estate SEO” is over-the-top and spammy.

Here are the six one-week tasks listed in the article:

1. Week 1: Write Better Page Titles
2. Week 2: Broadcast Your Links
3. Week 3: Use Keywords Generously
4. Week 4: Reword Outgoing Links
5. Week 5: Develop a Site Map
6. Week 6: Tweet About It

On the surface, that list looks … okay. Not great, not what I’d list, but not terrible. It’s when you get into the specific suggestions that things get ugly and real estate agents get misled. Let’s look at a few tips:

Real Estate SEO: Linkbuilding?

Under Week 2: Broadcast Your Links is this advice:

Develop a campaign to get other Web sites linking to yours. Focus on social networks and trusted real estate Web sites, advises Cheryl Waller, a real estate technology expert in Port Saint Lucie, Fla. One way to do this is by making thoughtful comments on real estate blogs and leaving your link as part of your blog post. “You don’t need 14,000 links to your site. What you do need are relevant links to your business from reputable Web sites that are trusted by search engines,” Waller says. This helps search engines deem your site as trustworthy, too.

Reality: Commenting on blogs can help with exposure, but it’s not a “campaign” and isn’t likely to make a search engine think your site is trustworthy, either. Worse, it’s something that too many people overdo and get wrong. A lot of real estate agents dropping links on each other’s blogs only adds to the perception that the entire industry is one big spam-fest. Consider these two comments that came in overnight on the Richland Real Estate Blog:

Not very “thoughtful,” is it?

Real Estate SEO: Keyword Density?

Under Week 3: Use Keywords Generously is this advice:

While it might seem like overkill to repeat certain keywords heavily throughout your site, the strategy really does work, says real estate and technology blogger Matt Rains, a practitioner with Keller Williams Atlanta Partners in Loganville, Ga. He suggests incorporating the top phrases that you want associated with your site—”St. Louis Historic Homes,” for example. For strategic ideas, try the Keyword Tool on Google AdWords. Using the tool, you can type a phrase that’s relevant to your business and immediately find out how many people search for that term each month. Your main keywords should appear at least 10 to 13 times per 700 words on a page, says Mark Menzella, who runs RE/Advantage, a real estate Web design company in Fairfield, N.J.

Reality: Keyword density is a myth. There’s no perfect amount of times a keyword should appear on a page to rank, because there are countless other factors that determine a page’s relevance and importance. Hearing “real estate Web design” people pitch this advice only reinforces the idea that real estate SEO is a joke. Better advice is what I said here: There’s no magic formula or perfect “keyword density” — write for your users so the pages are readable, but be sure to include the right search terms as you write.

Real Estate SEO: Twitter?

Under Week 6: Tweet About It is this advice:

“Now that tweets are indexed in Google, Twitter has become an important part of SEO strategy,” says Misty Lackie of Go Smart Solutions, a technology consulting firm in Grover Beach, Calif. So get a Twitter account if you don’t already have one, and create useful tweets that happen to include your business keywords and links to your site.

Reality: I love Twitter, but the SEO benefits of using it are neglible … especially if your tweets are going to “include your business keywords and links to your site.” Look below; does anyone think this is how to use Twitter?

No human will click on the link in a tweet like that, and since the link is no-followed, there’s no SEO benefit from using Twitter this way, either. Twitter can be an amazing tool for local visibility, but it has nothing to do with Google indexing tweets (users are blind to real-time results). It has to do with being real and creative on Twitter, not spamming your keywords and links there.

Final Thoughts

If you’d like to see the whole article for yourself, it’s on Realtor.org. Sadly, it seems that nothing has changed in the two-plus years since I first wrote about real estate SEO being a disaster and a joke. Even more sad is that the bad advice is coming from the national organization that’s supposed to make life easier for real estate agents.

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This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Bad SEO Advice for Real Estate Agents … from the NAR

Related posts:

1. Real Estate Marketing 2.0
2. Real Estate: SEO Disaster / SEO Opportunity
3. How Should a Real Estate Agent use Twitter?

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Bad SEO Advice for Real Estate Agents … from the NAR

Over on Twitter last week @ChrisGuthrie asked me – ‘At what point should you quit a blog and move onto the next project?’

It is a good question and one that I’m not sure that there is any single answer for – however I can certainly talk about what has led me to quit some of my previous blogs. There have been a variety of reasons – in fact in most cases it was more than one reason that led me to quit a blog. The reasons included:

1. Lack of Passion/Interest in the Topic – I went through a phase where I decided to choose topics to blog about that I thought would be profitable – rather than choosing things I had an actual interest in. After a few months of blogging on these topics I soon realize that I simply could not sustain them.
2. Lack of Traffic – there have been a few instances where I started blogging on certain topics that I did have some interest in – but which didn’t attract traffic. In one case I think it was because the niche was too narrow and people just were not searching for the topic, in another instance there was so much competition in the niche it was difficult to break into but in other instances I think it was probably more to do with my lack of passion for the topic shining through (people can tell if your heart isn’t really in it.
3. Lack of Profit – this one tends to flow out of a lack of traffic (which can flow out of a lack of passion….. see how they’re all linked?) but at times I’ve quit a blog simply because I couldn’t justify keeping it running for the amount of time I was putting into it.
4. Lack of Engagement/Lack of Personal Satisfaction – one of the blogs that I quit a couple of years ago actually got quite good traffic (mainly from search engines) and actually was quite profitable – however I found the idea of developing a blog purely for search traffic to be quite un-stimulating and unsatisfying. The lack of reader engagement and the fleeting visits from visitors didn’t really leave me feeling I was doing much that was worthwhile – I so I let the blog die to create blogs that were not only profitable but also hopefully more engaging.
5. Running out of Things to Say – this one relates to a few of the other reasons however is worth saying. I can recall one blog which I started which I simply couldn’t think of more than a handful of posts to write about. The niche was too narrow to really sustain it over the long haul.
6. The life of the Niche Ends – one of the first profitable blogs that I developed (in partnership with another blogger) was one on the Athens Olympic games. While it was an amazing experience to blog about it and it was a very profitable time in the lead up to and during the games – the niche simply ended. We could have possibly extended it with blogs on future Olympics but in the end we felt we could do better by concentrating on different niches.

I’m certain that other bloggers will have quit blogs for other reasons (please share yours below).

Two Extra Thoughts

There’s two more things I want to throw into this discussion:

Don’t Quit Too Early – One thing I do want to emphasize is that I think many bloggers quit blogs too quickly. Not every blog will be hugely profitably or get loads of traffic – however those that do often take quite a few months (if not a year or two) to start reaching their potential.

In having talked to thousands of bloggers over the last 6 or so years I’ve found that most bloggers who quit blogs tend to do it in the first 2-3 months. While you can get a bit of an indication on some factors in this time (factors like your own passion for the topic, whether there’s much to say about the topic etc) it is certainly not long enough time to expect your blog to have reached its traffic potential.

It takes time to build a profile, to get ranked by search engines and to develop an archive of useful content. In my experience 3 months is just the tip of the iceberg of a blogs potential. My own blogs have not really ‘taken off’ for at least a year to 18 months after launch.

It is OK to Quit – The other balancing factor that I’d throw into the mix is that it is ok to quit a blog. I’ve talked to a number of bloggers over the years who ended up feeling trapped by their blogs. They realized early on that the blog wasn’t getting traction and that they might not have had a real passion in their topic – but because they’d been writing content every day for it for a period of time they felt guilty in giving up on it. As a result they continued to blog for years to come despite knowing that it probably wasn’t worth doing.

Hanging in there an giving a blog time to grow is one thing – but continuing to blog on a blog that you know deep down isn’t really going anywhere it probably not a wise thing. In this case I’d be encouraging a blogger to consider either ending their blog, hiring or partnering with someone to help them blog or even selling their blog – all of these things will enable you to move onto something else that perhaps is a better fit for where you are.

Tomorrow: How to Quit Your Blog

In my next post I’m going to continue this train of thought and share a few options from my experience on HOW to quit a blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

When Should You Quit a Blog and Move On?

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When Should You Quit a Blog and Move On?

A Guest Post from Ali Hale from The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing.

You know how to hook the reader at the start of a post. You know how to end on an strong note. But somewhere between that gripping first sentence and that finish-with-a-bang last sentence comes … the middle.

I’ve just released an ebook, The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing, and while I found plenty of great advice about beginnings and endings of posts, I found surprisingly little about the middle. And yet, the middle of your post:

• Is where most of the content lies – this isn’t an intriguing anecdote or a punchy call to action, it’s the meat of what you want to say.
• Can easily lose the reader – have you ever started reading a post only to end up skimming within the first few paragraphs?
• Often loses us as writers – have you ever begun writing only to get bogged down somewhere part way?

The middle of your blog post doesn’t need to be a hard slog through an uncertain wilderness. You – and your readers – can get from start to end without getting lost along the way. Here’s how.

1. Know Where You’re Going

Firstly, you need to know what journey you’re on. Although some bloggers can pull off a rambling, digressive style, most of us can’t. Having a clear title or topic in mind (even if you revise it later) helps. Be clear – in your own mind, and in your post’s introduction – what ground you’re going to cover.

Is your post going to be a step-by-step walkthrough of a particular topic?

Is it a quick tip about some aspect of your field?

Is it an update about your life, or about your blog?

This is also a good time to start thinking about your call to action. You don’t just have to bring this in at the end – you can hint at it throughout. For example, if your post is aimed at selling your product, you might want to make it clear during the post that this is an introduction to a topic which you’ve written more about.

2. Get Yourself a Map

Some people like to travel without a map and to let their mood take them where it will. I’m not one of them. The last time my fiancé and I went on a journey without a map, we ended up wandering around near Lake Windermere (in England’s Lake District) for five hours…

You don’t want that to happen with your post.

With a blog post, having a map means creating a structure. I write a lot of blog posts for various sites, and I always have a template structure in my head: whether it’s a how-to post, a list post, or just a generic one. With this post, for instance, I wrote out all the subheadings at the start, to form a very simple template.

Having some guidelines in place doesn’t mean that your journey is dull and uninteresting: you can still change your mind or take diversions. It does, though, mean you’re much more likely to finish!

When I showed a draft version of my ebook to some reviewers, Dave Rowley commented that the bonus pack of templates alone would have been worth the price for him, because they provided a structure for getting him through the long middle of a post to the finished product:

They clarified things for me and made the idea of writing blog posts a lot less daunting. I have a lot of half written blog posts, most of them are pretty good content, the difficulty I’ve been having is in organizing that content into readable posts that get the point across as clearly as possible.

Just going through the templates, I started to see where I could address some of those problems. I’ve already started using them to shape some drafts and can see solid content shaping up nicely with much less effort.

Having a map lets you know what type of journey you’re on. Are you writing a how-to post, a comprehensive guide to one area? Are you writing a list post, a whistle-stop tour of lots of points of interest? Or are you writing an essay-like post which helps the reader explore?

3. Put Up Big Signposts

When my fiancé and I got lost on our epic walk, we were very relieved to stumble out of the forest onto a road which had a sign pointing us to the nearest town!

Your post has signposts too, which help break up the journey and which tell readers what’s coming next. These are your subheaders, which split your post into convenient sections. In very long posts, readers might choose to bookmark the whole thing and read one section at a time.

Signposts also help you when you’re writing: if you list your subheaders before you start, you’ll know what you need to cover in each section – which helps ensure that you say enough and not too much.

To make your subheaders into effective signposts, you need to:

• Ensure that they make sense to someone skimming
• Make them Google-friendly – use keywords (this helps readers find your post in the first place)
• Use a large enough font to make them stand out. Some bloggers use bold type for subheaders – make sure you’re using header tags instead. Depending on your blog set-up, you’ll either want Header 2 or Header 3 tags
• Make sure your signposts really do what they say! If the material under your subheading wanders far off topic, readers will be even more confused than they would’ve been without a signpost.

4. Point Out Any Dangers

Sometimes, you will want to go off on a tangent in the middle of a post – or mention something that may lose your readers.

To minimize the risk of a reader twisting a metaphorical ankle and dropping out altogether, signal any potential dangers before you reach them. Just as road signs warn about difficult stretches of road, you can alert readers to difficulties that they might be about to have.

This could mean:

• Warning readers that the next bit of your post is quite specialized or technical, and that they can skip it. This reassures readers that the section after that is going to be comprehensible again!
• Explaining that you’re about to go on a digression – this could mean putting a section in brackets or italics, or just saying something like “slight digression here” or “tangent coming up”
• Pointing readers towards a blog post which explains something more fully – for example, if you’re touching on a topic you’ve covered extensively in the past, you might write, “To read more on this, check out my post…” or “If you’re not sure what RSS means, you can find out about it here.”

Here’s an example of making sure that a digression is clearly signaled and doesn’t confuse readers: the section in italics starts “Sidebar” and isn’t on the main topic of the post:

Proactive actions aren’t nearly this structured. Often times, we don’t know what it is we’re creating, let alone what effect it’ll have on the world. Nothing about being a creative is a sure bet except the consequences of not doing your thing. (Sidebar: I’ve worked with people who were physically, emotionally, and mentally sick because they weren’t doing the creative thing that would make them come alive; the fix wasn’t therapy, medication, exercise, or vacations – the fix was them doing their thing, and the rest started to fall in place.) (Charlie Gilkey, How to Lose An Hour’s Creative Mojo in Two Minutes, Productive Flourishing)

5. Make the Route Interesting

Would you last long on a walk which involved nothing but a long, grey, empty stretch of road? Probably not – unless you’re walking purely for exercise’s sake, you want some variation in the scenery.

Most of your readers are not reading your blog because they just want information. They want at least some level of entertainment and interest. Long, dreary blocks of grey text are offputting – however gripping your introduction is.

Making the route interesting means adding some visual elements to your post. This includes:

Formatting
You can do a lot to spice up a post without having to do more than press a few buttons in Wordpress. Try using:

• Lists, which are easier to take in than long sentences split with commas or semi-colons
• Bold text to draw the reader’s eye to key points in your post
• Blockquotes to offer interest in the form of a different voice (someone else’s words) and an inset piece of text
• Italic text to emphasize a key word and suggest tone of voice
• Subheadings, and nested subheadings where appropriate – just like I’ve done in this section with the smaller headings “Formatting” and “Images”

Images

A lot of bloggers just use images to catch attention at the start of a post. Getting graphical can vastly improve the middle of your post, too. Don’t use pictures just for the sake of it, but try:

• Screenshots to enhance a technical how-to
• Using images in keeping with the brand and voice of your blog
• Graphics to visually show statistics or figures which you’re using in the post
• Adding product images for a review post or a recommendation within a post

The middle of your post can easily form 80% of the content. However great your gripping introduction, readers will never reach that killer of an ending unless you get them safely through the middle first. Are your middles up to scratch – or are they losing readers?

Ali Hale has just launched “The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing” – normally priced at $29, ProBlogger readers can get a $5 discount by entering the code “ProBlogger”

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Navigating the Middle of Your Post – Without Getting Lost

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Navigating the Middle of Your Post – Without Getting Lost

Dot Com Pho returns to Happy Pho for another excitement filled episode. This time we had seven people showed up to dine on a variety of Pho dishes (mostly consumed by Chef Aaron Koo AKA the new Stephen Fung). To makes thing even more happy, Michael Yurechko discovered that Happy Pho had wireless Internet access (not in the restaurant but nearby).

This episode of Dot Com Pho celebrates the heroes of entrepreneurship. Evan Carmichael came up a great idea for trading cards featuring famous entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs were selected by 33 famous bloggers (of which I am one). The bloggers were asked to name their favorite entrepreneur. That entrepreneur is featured on the front of the card and the blogger who selected him is featured on the back.

All process from the the sales of Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards goes to Kiva. They will use the money to help entrepreneurs in third world countries. The Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards goes on sale in April. Pre-order your packs today and save 20% off the regular price – only $3.95 per pack of 5 cards instead of $4.95. There’s free shipping if you order three packs or more. In addition, you’ll receive a limited edition hologram gold Steve Jobs or Woz card for every three pack pre-order. There’s also a chance to win a baseball signed by the Woz. Watch the episode and then go buy some cards!

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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Dot Com Pho – Entrepreneur Heroes Edition

Dot Com Pho returns to Happy Pho for another excitement filled episode. This time we had seven people showed up to dine on a variety of Pho dishes (mostly consumed by Chef Aaron Koo AKA the new Stephen Fung). To makes thing even more happy, Michael Yurechko discovered that Happy Pho had wireless Internet access (not in the restaurant but nearby).

This episode of Dot Com Pho celebrates the heroes of entrepreneurship. Evan Carmichael came up a great idea for trading cards featuring famous entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs were selected by 33 famous bloggers (of which I am one). The bloggers were asked to name their favorite entrepreneur. That entrepreneur is featured on the front of the card and the blogger who selected him is featured on the back.

All process from the the sales of Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards goes to Kiva. They will use the money to help entrepreneurs in third world countries. The Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards goes on sale in April. Pre-order your packs today and save 20% off the regular price – only $3.95 per pack of 5 cards instead of $4.95. There’s free shipping if you order three packs or more. In addition, you’ll receive a limited edition hologram gold Steve Jobs or Woz card for every three pack pre-order. There’s also a chance to win a baseball signed by the Woz. Watch the episode and then go buy some cards!

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Dot Com Pho – Entrepreneur Heroes Edition

I’ve been asking myself how local governments could use their websites to help them govern more effectively and save money. The question led to this post.

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Reading through one of the local weekly papers in my area I noticed a large public notice announcing a public hearing for the replacement of [...]

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