feed hat blog

It’s that time of year again . . . time to get your trick-or-treating gear ready.

Trust me, this year you’re too old to troll the neighborhood begging for miniature Twix bars. Your neighbors are wise to you and your “Eminem costume.”

Instead, how about putting a little thought into what your blog will be this Halloween?

Sure, you can go the cheap and easy way and get a Perez Hilton mask, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, look through this collection of spooky archetypes and see if you can spot your blog on the list.

The devil

Instead of a pitchfork, the devil blog sports a yellow highlighter and screaming red headlines.

The devil blog is all about setting up scams and systems so you don’t need to show up to write every day. Sure, the convoluted “blueprint” you paid for that combines scraped content, Adwords arbitrage, and finding a source for counterfeit Acai berries is going to take you about three months to build. And that’s if you don’t sleep. But one day it’s gonna pay off big, baby.

The devil blog is all about the blogger. Your needs, your income, your rewards, and to hell with your readers, or anyone else for that matter.

Double bonus points if your blog is about making money online and you have yet to make your first twenty bucks.

The angel

You’ve been blogging since 1968, back when your posts took the form of hand-embroidered manifestos passed from coffeehouse to coffeehouse via traveling folk singers. Readership really picked up once the Internet got invented.

You’ve given thousands of hours of your life to your community and never asked for anything in return. You are saintly beyond reproach.

Ok, there was that one time, back in 2002, when you asked your audience to do you a favor. They flamed you like a campfire marshmallow. You blamed Al Quaeda and global warming, and have never tried it since.

The zombie

This is the blog that actually died about 18 months ago, but somehow it just keeps limping along, looking plaintively for brains.

You keep meaning to get serious about your cornerstone content. You fully intend to get your blog moved over to your own domain name. And you’re definitely going to write a new post since that last one you did on Groundhog Day. But frankly, Farmville takes a lot of free time, and you just don’t have the bandwidth.

Our advice: Put the damned thing out of its misery and give it a decent burial already.

The sexy witch

You’re tough and smart. You’re ballsy. You’re outspoken. You swear, a lot. You’re prickly and inconvenient, and possibly a little nuts.

You’re not afraid to mock your male compatriots for having smaller/less effective testicles than you do.

You look pretty darned good in that costume, and you know it.

The trendy costume

You’re swine flu or Dead Kanye or the Public Option for U.S. healthcare.

The main thing is to get people talking, stir up lots of controversy, and get some buzz going. Six weeks after Halloween is over, even you won’t remember what exactly the point was.

To paraphrase Andy Warhol, in the future, everyone will be a trending topic on Twitter for fifteen minutes.

The power ranger

You do everything right. You have superhuman strength, agility, and you can fly. Your content is strong, your headlines are sharp, your Twitter etiquette is impeccable.

You’ve got everything going for you, except no one can tell the difference between you and the other 10,000 power rangers that showed up at their door on Saturday night. Find a little spark of something genuinely different and you’ll be ready to actually unleash that ninja storm and do some damage.

So how about you?

I was trying to think of the canonical cool costume to end with, but there really isn’t one.

Because really good costumes can be funny, weird, interesting, creative, insane. The things that make for great Halloween costumes are pretty similar to what make great blogs. But they can’t be lame me-too copies of what some other cool person is doing.

Let us know in the comments what your blog is this Halloween. We can’t wait to check you out.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

See the original post: 
What’s Your Blog Going to Be for Halloween?

After averaging around the neighborhood of four posts a day during SES San Jose, you were starting to jones for more from the Bruce Clay blog, weren’t you? In between the liveblogger marathon and writing up this post you’re reading now, the Bruce Clay media team has been busy crafting this month’s SEOToolSet Newsletter.

It’s a cause for celebration here at the BCI office because the edition hitting mailboxes now is the 70th volume of the newsletter! To commemorate this exciting landmark, we invite you to join us (and my friend the party tortoise) for the latest edition in a long tradition of illuminating SEM news reporting (if I do say so myself).

But what, you ask, is this month’s newsletter about? Take a peak with me!

Feature: What You Need to Know from SES San Jose

Last week wrapped up Search Engine Strategies. If you couldn’t make it, or you just a refresher, we’ve pulled together all the things that you need to know from SES San Jose. The overall theme of the conference was summarized neatly by Greg Jarboe in his panel. To be successful online, SEOs need to focus on something more fundamental than the technology du jour. They have to focus on the people using the technology.

Back to Basics: Holiday PPC Campaign Planning

Gift giving and round-the-clock Frank Sinatra tunes are still off on the horizon, but there’s no time left to put off holiday PPC campaign planning. Winter holidays themselves only last a few days, but preparing and managing a seasonal SEM campaign takes much longer — as long as six months or more! Read on for an in-depth exploration of the goals and tactics that can help guide an effective search engine marketing holiday-planning strategy.

Hot Topics: Google Gets a Boost with Caffeine

The search world got a jolt when last week Google launched a preview of its “next-generation architecture for Google’s web search.” Search speed, indexing speed, index size, the number of results returned, and accuracy of results are targeted for improvement through Google Caffeine. Currently available through a developer preview, Google Caffeine is accepting feedback from users.

The above descriptions are a mere teaser of the information found in the two articles and monthly news roundup. And there’s more action-packed info where that came from. Be sure to check out the SEOToolSet Newsletter, and if you like what you see, subscribe to have it delivered to your mailbox each month. We think you’ll be glad you did.

The rest is here: 
Our SEO Newsletter Turns 70!

“Hey man, spare some change?”

Rain or shine, the professional panhandler works a busy corner every day in my neighborhood. He sets up shop right by the ATM, on the theory that people who have just withdrawn a hundred bucks are more likely to give him a dollar or two.

The location is good, but prospecting is tough. Day in, day out, he sits on a stoop, asking people for a couple of bucks. He sees it as a numbers game – 98% of the people who pass by will say no or just ignore him, but if he asks enough people, a few will pony up.

Is panhandling effective?

Strictly speaking, I guess you could say it works . . . but most of us would agree that asking random people for money isn’t a great career choice. You have to deal with continuous rejection, your income is wildly unpredictable, and you get wet when it rains.

Too Many Marketers are Like Panhandlers

“Hey man, spare some change? Check out this great offer I’ve got . . . it’s just what you need, you’ll love it, really.”

On an intuitive level, most of us understand that it’s better to deliver our message to the right people. We know that we shouldn’t panhandle – but then we go out and do the opposite of what we know is right.

We model ourselves on the salesman who goes door-to-door hawking vacuum cleaners. Sure, he might sell a couple by the end of the day, but do we really want to be that guy?

I call this approach evangelism. The goal is to change someone’s mind and convince them to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do.

Why Evangelism Doesn’t Work

Most of us have deeply-held beliefs about everything from religion to politics to what kind of sandwich we like to eat for lunch. You probably aren’t going to change my mind about almost anything, and I’m probably not going to change yours.

So let’s not try to sell unwanted vacuum cleaners to each other.

The alternative to evangelism is recruitment. Instead of knocking on doors or begging for spare change, recruitment is all about opening your own doors to the people who are already naturally predisposed to your message.

Instead of needing to be sold, these people are dying to hear what you have for them.

At its best, recruitment involves welcoming a select group of people and challenging them to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

When people feel simultaneously welcomed into a group and challenged to go above and beyond their current limits, you’ve got a group that’s eager for your attention.

I call this a small army of remarkable people. Seth calls it a tribe, Gretchen calls them super-fans, Sonia calls them a village.

Regardless of terminology, these are the people you want in your group. You can think of them as your basic church choir. And preaching to the choir is a good thing.

“Come if You’re a Good Fit” Instead of “Come As You Are”

Recruitment also requires the gentle filtering out of people who aren’t a good fit for what you offer.

Wish them well . . . then wish them to go somewhere else. Most people won’t pitch a dollar in the panhandler’s bucket, and most people probably aren’t suited to what you have to offer.

That’s okay. Ignore the atheists outside the church. Rise above the noise, recruit a choir of your own, and start preaching.

Here’s wishing you well in your next sermon.

About the Author: Chris Guillebeau preaches to a choir of remarkable people at the Art of Nonconformity site. His 279 Days to Overnight Success manifesto offers a free case study of how to build a career in new media. Follow Chris on Twitter @chrisguillebeau.

Originally posted here: 
Why Preaching to the Choir is a Good Thing

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Thanks to this Months Sponsors – May 2009

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Thanks to this Months Sponsors – May 2009