As a sales professional for this company, you WILL NOT be representing one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies selling garbage web sites, links, banners, pay-per-click, and generic search marketing campaigns.

You will be working for a motivated, successful, and industry changing company. An elite team of nimble and talented professionals offering services that establish our clients using social media. Our services and products place clients on-top of search phrases for competitive keywords on sites like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, it also allows them to leverage online communities like Myspace, Digg, and LinkedIn to find new ways of connecting with the marketplace.

Social Communities?
Been there, done that.

Podcasting?
We love to hear ourselves talk. (Hey, we are honest and clients love us for it!)

Online Video, YouTube?
Every one of our clients is a possible video star waiting to happen.

This is not a “sit back and relax” position.

It is “hands on and in the trenches” with a team of top-forming and talented members. The position requires the ability to deliver strategic leadership as well as stay involved in tactical execution.

Our services and products are in a niche category of online marketing that is explosively growing. The fundamental root of our company is based on awesome and dynamic personalities, able to make quick decisions and dance to a different beat on a moments notice.

When clients asks us about the latest technology, we look at the bleeding-edge of the online marketing world and ask “does that make sense for this client?” When it does, we leverage our like-minded clients to produce an economy of scale and entirely new service.

Sound interesting yet?

This is a great opportunity for a professional who can address the pain in a client’s current marketing and advertising solutions, and who is comfortable partnering with clients to utilize the latest and most effective cutting-edge technology.

What is in it for you?

That depends on how good you are. This is a sales position after all. For someone who knows how to address the top questions and ask for a signed contract, the realistic earnings for this position are well over 100k. For someone who has the right connections or knows how to source for the right decision makers, the sky is the limit.

Our sales compensation rides a line between sales and account management. Our commissions are on-going for the life of the client. That means our sales force is constantly in contact with a client and has the ability to make more income for themselves by growing existing clients, and are very interested in seeing a return in investment for everyone involved.

Do you know how to manage?

If you do… we’ll put you in as a sales manager and let you grow a team with people underneath you to drive results on a larger scale. Successful sales managers have the ability to establish regional sales teams that generate a lot of growth potential off of on-going clients, as well as developing niche products that focus on specific industries that they have previous experience with.

So to be blunt:

This business development position is a demanding opening for a unique and well-rounded professional with enthusiasm, talent, and personal drive. Ideal candidates have a track record of selling online or intangible marketing services, and have an understanding of online marketing with search engine advertising, branding, and some overall web savvy.

Fast-learning individuals with a business development or marketing background that want to evolve into a more lucrative position having a wide spectrum of development routes are encouraged to apply (everyone on our team has an entrepreneurial spirit!)

• “hunting” skills – willingness to prospect for new clients through calling and networking
• A “self starter” able to produce with minimal supervision
• Outgoing and extroverted
• Affinity for technology and experience with Internet technologies
• Problem solving skills or experience – the ability to understand general business problems and develop solutions based on the tools that will be made available to you
• Strong work ethic – willing to put in extra hours to acquire necessary skills, and for the right sales opportunities
• Professional demeanor and appearance

This shows the power of human networks in the digital era. All of the so called “Colbert Nation” members (viewers, fans) have been banned by some services, but beyond the social networks online, your can use existing organic databases to build a social community that can rank you for anything, even “giant brass balls”. If done correctly this could really help your brand if evangelical people can start using social networks more to promote your brand and site without paying search engines and with honest consumer feedback about you and your products/services.

Whether Mr. Colbert has a giant brass ball business or he is the greatest living American or not, it’s obviously debatable and not the purpose of this post. But social media and bookmarking can have a dramatic effect on your rankings in the search engines. If you have the power and compelling stories, the right social marketing campaign and existing human networks, you can rank you for whatever terms you want, as in the case of Stephen Colbert, even if he is not the greatest living American or runs a brass ball company. The next day on the CNN Blog they announced, Stephen Colbert just dropped a Googlebomb.

You can read a letter about this from Mr. Colbert here.

See a clip of Colbert getting his made up word “truthiness” in wikipedia.

[tags]stephen colbert, greatest living american, colbert nation[/tags]

Looking at the list, it seem appropriate to put the 9 indicators in to 2 categories, the first being negative points to your blog, second positive points to your blog and finally other factors.

Negative Indicators:

1. Content of the posts: If the feed content in your blog is different than the actual content in your blog, this is a negative indicator according to Google patent expressly states, “Spammers may put one version of content into a feed to improve their rankings in search results, while putting a different version on their blog. This mismatch can, therefore, be a negative indicator of the quality of the document.”
2. Frequency of new posts: According to this snippet from the patent, you can get some insight into how the time-stamp feature in blogs can cause a negative indicator. This only applies if you put out posts in regular intervals (which some legitimate blogs do), but remember, this is only one factor, and who knows how much weight it carries. According to the Google Patent, “Spammers often generate new posts in spurts or at predictable intervals. Both behaviors are correlated with malicious intent and can be used to identify possible spammers…”
3. Words/Phrases used in posts: Take a look at this snippet and consider the impact of what you discuss in your posts, or allow user generated content to be published. From Google Patent, “For example, from a collection of blog documents and feeds that evaluations rate as spam, a list of words and phrases (defined by Google) that appear frequently in spam may be extracted. If a blog document contains a high percentage of words or phrases from the list, this can be a negative indicator…”
4. Links to blog posts: Basically, your outbound links count as well. From Googles Patent, “In some cases, a high percentage of all links from the posts of from the blog document all point to either a single web page, or to a single external site. If the number of links to any single external site exceeds the threshold (according to Google), this can be a negative indicator of quality of the blog document.”
5. Size of posts: You should mix up the sizes of your blog posts. Google is using this to get rid of automatic post generators. According to Google, “Many automated post generators create numerous posts of identical or very similiar length…”

Positive Indicators:

1. Pagerank of the blog: Inherit your page rank from your site. According to Google, “A high page rank is an indicator of high quality and, thus, can be applied to blog posts as a positive indicator of the quality of the blog…”
2. References to blog by outside sources: According to Google, “For example, content of emails or chat transcripts can contain URL’s of blog posts. Email or chat room discussions that include blog URL’s is a positive indicator…” This is a good reason to bump up efforts for subscriptions to your blog.
3. Tagging: This reference works on the principle of tags, and how users tag your blog posts. According to Google, “Some existing sites allow users to add “tags” to a blog post. This is an indication that the individual has evaluated the post and appropriately described it’s content…”
4. Blorolls: Google likes good links on your blogroll and your link in other high quality blogrolls. From Googles Patent, “Blogrolls are a dense collection of links to external sites in which the author/blog owner is interested. A blogroll link to a blog is an indicator or popularity of that blog page…Aggregated blogroll links to a blog can be a positive indicator…

Other Considerations:

Google Blog Search also uses a quality score to determine the appearance of blogs in their results. You can read more about the Google Quality Score Patent here.

You also have to consider the current status of your domain (strength), and configurations of your blog.

If anyone has any other ideas, feel free to leave a comment, tips, etc.

[tags]google blog search, google blog search tips, google optimization[/tags]

But what happens when you are short contacts and want a passive way to generate more? I have some answers for you. I will also offer some tips on how to add contacts and also how to search for people you know. According to LinkedIn, people with over 30 contacts show up 75% more than others. This means, the more contacts, the more exposure and leads you can generate. Here is a good passive way to get people to contact you.

First of all, if you have not signed up, do so here: https://www.linkedin.com/secure/register

If you are registering for the first time, take this bit of advice:

For the “first name” field enter your complete name, first AND last (Geoff Simon) for instance. In the “last name” field enter an email address specifically for linkedIn contact requests (you@hotmail.com, gmail.com, or whatever email you want). Then proceed to fill out as much of your profile as you can, the more the better. Also add a picture, this gives it a personal touch and increases the number of times your profile is viewed. Now that you are signed-up, go ahead and look at your profile, it should look something like mine which you can find here: My Profile.

You will notice that you see my full name on the first line and my email on the second line. The email address is important because this is how many people add contacts. This passive little trick is used by many savvy LinkedIn members to generate additional leads. Now go ahead and click on the link in the orange outline at the top under the “Get Introduced” and “Contact Directly” box that says, “know this person – Add Them As A Connection. This will take you to a screen where you need to enter the email address for this contact, in this case it’s me, so type in gsimon@socialmediasystems.com. If you did not know my email, you would not be able to add me as a contact. By placing your email in the “last name” field, users can instantly add you as a contact to build their connection base.

As for other strategies to promote your profile, you can place an email signature which links to your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is nice enough to create this for you with a variety of different template options. You can find these if you click on the “my profile” tab at the top and then below that, “email signatures”. This way anyone you send email to, can add you as a contact or sign-up and add you if they are not already “LinkedIn”.

You can also check out your College or University and search for classmates by clicking on “classmates” at the footer of every page. This will allow you to search all members who attended the same school you did during the same time period. Another way to find contacts is to click the “Expand Your Network” button at the top right of the page. From here you can add friends, business partners, etc. but you need to put in their email address and name. They will then be sent an email prompting them to sign up, or add you as a contact if they are already registered.

You can also add customized buttons to your blog or web site for even more exposure, here is an example:

In addition, LinkedIn offers an Outlook Toolbar that you can download for seamless export/import features from your Outlook contacts into LinkedIn and vice versa. You can also download the LinkedIn Browser Toolbar.

If anyone has any other suggestions, please leave a comment, even if it is just one sentence. I hope this helps anyone utilizing LinkedIn as a business networking tool.

[tags]linkedin, linkedin tips, linkedin contacts[/tags]

Think about all the undue stress this would place on advertisers and suppliers? They would have to make sure all their ads bypass display on a computer in Utah, which in itself is not simple or even really possible. Being a Google AdWords Expert and knowing all the targeting options Google provides, there is still no way to really tell where your ads will be displayed in Google, not to mention their search partners and content network.

In case you are still interested, you can pay around $250 each year for what Utah is calling an electronic registration mark. This will allow you protection for your trademarked term so it is not used by competitors to trigger ads (you can read the specifics here). Take my word for it though, save the money. Even Utah’s General Counsel stated the act would probably be found unconstitutional.

The fundamental purpose of trademarks is to give consumers accurate information about goods and services. Trademarks mark the origin of the product and companies have been using this shorthand to give consumers information about comparative goods and services. Why do you think it’s okay for Pepsi to tell people that people prefer the taste of Pepsi over Coke? Or why Apple is bashing Microsoft on TV all the time? This is about marketers offering comparative advertising based on trademarks that are clearly meant to inform and empower consumers. If you ask me, I feel bad for Utah taxpayers who have to foot the bill for this ridiculousness. Isn’t there anything else going on out there in the Utah Legislature?

[tags]ppc, ppc trademark terms, utah trademark protection[/tags]

Considering there is no solid agreed upon definition of what Web 2.0 is there are companies large and small, old and new signing up to find out how to take advantage. The expo will include internet industry leaders offering examples of business models, development paradigms and design strategies to help mainstream businesses and new companies in various industries take advantage of these new opportunities.

The expo is an addition to the Web 2.0 Summit, previously the Web 2.0 conference, which is the first to address Web 2.0 opportunities and applications specifically. The summit will highlight experts, leaders and under-the-radar innovators. And in the spirit of Web 2.0 there will be ample time for attendees and exhibitors to contribute, collaborate and connect.

Another interesting aspect is the Web 2.Open Sessions which are free to anyone attending the expo or summit, and also free for anyone else who wants to attend (they just ask that you wear a badge). You can find a free code to use to enter this portion of the conference on this page. You can find out more information and up-to-date topic proposals at the Web 2.Open wiki.

Additional Resources:

Web 2.0 Official Expo Site
Web 2.0 Summit Blog
Web 2.Open Site (sponsored by Social Text)
Web 2.0 Speakers (along with bios)

[tags]web 2.0 expo, web 2.0 summit, web 2.0[/tags]

Here are some highlights about how familiar these companies are with Social Media:

• 42% know about social networking
• 38% know about message boards
• 36% know about blogs and blogging

But what are these companies specifically using in terms of social media? Here is a brief breakdown:

• 33% are utilizing message boards
• 27% are utilizing social networking (linkedin, etc.)
• 24% are utilizing video in some format (Vlogs, online videos, ads, etc.)
• 19% are utilizing a company blog (this is the most surprising stat for me, you would think more people would realize the amazing SEO potential here by now

Another interesting tidbit is that 66% of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. stated that social media is either “very important” or “somewhat important” to their overall marketing strategy.

Here is a link to a .PDF of the study

[tags]social media, inc. 500, social media marketing[/tags]

When I originally wrote this post there was a promo code for $100, but has expired as of the end of February 2007. You can try and search Google for MSN AdCenter Promo Code to see if there are any more out there.

To begin, go to the login page for Microsoft adCenter. It will look like this:

As you can see, it is fairly standard, but if you’re not ready to sign up just yet, learn more about Microsoft PPC and adCenter here.

If you click on “Sign up today”, it takes you to the registration page, which looks like this:

Enter your contact, billing information and promotional code if applicable, then submit your information.
Next you should see a welcome page that looks like this:

Before continuing on, you can learn more about the process from the list in the lower left hand corner. Tip: right click on a link and open it in a new page (IE6) or new tab (IE7, Mozilla). If you have used AdWords or Yahoo, you might find it helpful to click on the MSN, Yahoo and Google terminology map. It will help familiarize you with some of the differences between Microsoft adCenter, Yahoo, and Google Adwords. From the welcome page, click on the “Get started now” link, which will take you to a set up screen that looks like this:

Click on “Create Campaign” to get started. The link will take you a page that will lead you through creating your order. It will look like this:

After you name your first order, scroll down the page; you’ll see that you can opt to target specific locations, days and time of days for your order. You can always go back into the order and change these options if you want to or if you’re current settings aren’t yielding you the results you want. Click on the green box to the right of each feature, and you’ll get a drop list of specific options that look like this:

Click on an item in the “Available” category, then click “Add” to put it into the Selected category. You can also remove an item from the Selected category by clicking Remove. You can choose various countries, days and times of day you want your campaign or order to run. Tip: while you can keep the general settings, play around with specific settings to see which combination yields the best results for your campaign. When you’re done, scroll to the bottom of the page and continue on to the page where you actually create your ads. It will look like this:

Under Ad Title, name the title of your ad and incorporate your target keywords for that ad. To the right is the Ad Preview where you can simultaneously see how your ad looks while you’re typing it.

Under Ad Text, type what you want your ad to say. Ideally, this should be catchy, as it has to stand out from many other ads. This is especially important with highly competitive terms and should be given a lot of thought.

The Display URL will be what users see on the ad. The Destination URL is the location the display URL will link to.

Scroll down and you will see the saved ads for this specific campaign. To alter them or view the ads status, click on term next to it in the Status column.

Much like Google, you can do dynamic keyword insertion and even further define your campaign with 3 other parameters that allow more control over copy and also include dynamic destination URLs. Check out adCenter’s editorial guidelines here.

Next you’ll continue on to the Keywords page where you will choose the keywords that best describe and target your ad. It will look like this:

You can either pick your own keywords, or use the Search this website for keywords feature. I decided to use the search feature, partially to see how it worked. I typed in the URL for Acclivity. It returned the following set of keywords on the next screen shot:

You can see, from the URL I typed in, it extracted the list of keywords above, sorted by the number of searches on that particular keyword from the past month.

From the keyword list, I clicked on blog and this screen popped up:

As you can see from the chart, blog got around 160,000 searches (as of November 06 in this case). You can repeat this process with any of the keywords. Tip: once again, if you right click on a link, you can open it up in another page or tab.

Continuing down the list on the left side of the screen, you’ll see demographic information like:

• Traffic Trends (above)

• Age & Gender

• Geography

• Wealth Index

• Lifestyle

For example, this is what the Age & Gender page will look like:

Taking a note from what Google did right and Yahoo did not, in my opinion, adCenter considers your Click-through-rate (CTR) when determining your position, instead of the highest bid gets the highest position, which Yahoo currently does.

Here you can also take a look at your campaign budget and its indicators. The indicators of your advertising campaign, as seen on screen, are:

Status: the status of your campaign; whether its active, pending, etc.
Match Type: Broad, specific, etc. This little section specifies how broadly or thinly you want your campaign spread out (see incremental pricing for other options).

Spend: how much your spending on that keyword or keyword set.

Impr: Impressions, or how many people search for that term

Clicks: how many people have clicked on your ad.

CTR%: Your click-through rate.

Avg. Pos: your position in the ad listings

Avg. CPC: the average amount you’re spending on cost per click.

You can use these stats as checkpoints for how certain terms are performing and see where you need to add money or decrease funds within the campaign.

If you look below the keyword set, there is an option to use Incremental Pricing. Click on this to further refine your campaign’s budget and allocate it across demographic sets.

This is what the screen will look like when you click on the Incremental Pricing option:

Now you can decide whether to use more of your budget on a specific demographic or target group. For instance, you could choose to spend 90% of your budget in the US and 10% in the UK. Remember, this information comes from self-disclosure of Passport users, so keep this in mind when making these decisions. Once your budget is set, the system logs you back to the first screen showing your campaign and statistics once they are available.

Below that is the area where you fill in your monthly campaign budget. It will automatically charge the card you set your account up with each month, so its up to you to cancel if you need to.

Keep in mind that it takes up to 24 hours for your ads to start showing up, as editors have to approve them. If they still haven’t shown up after a few days, check in with customer support.

I will be posting additions to this guide as my campaign continues and I’ll let everyone know what kind of CTRs and response I get.

Resources:

adCenter Blog
adCenter Start Page
adCenter Editorial Guidelines
adCenter Wikipedia

[tags]microsoft adcenter guide, msn adcenter, adcenter guide[/tags]

According to a report out from Outsell, Inc., Vice President Roger Strouse states, The real headliner in this is that the most used content type among knowledge workers for business purposes has switched to press releases.

What Does This Mean For You?
You should optimize your press releases! Copywriters who are used to writing press releases as bait for reporters need to also think about adding keywords in headlines and sub-headers as well as in the content. This allows people to find your press release easier and more effectively. It also allows you to gain more one-way, super valuable links to outside websites, and these alone are worth their weight in gold.

[tags]publicity, press release optimization, seo[/tags]

Mind you, many of these companies are giving thousands of dollars a month to SEM firms, PPC budgets, email campaigns, viral marketing and more, having no idea of what this investment really means, where the money goes, and if the company they�re with is charging a fair price.

Taking a page from the direct marketing world, agencies are paid based on their performance and this performance is measured by certain key metrics that measure progress towards certain goals (leads, subscriptions, downloads, sales, etc.). If we look at all of the targeted marketing that can be done online vs. via list brokers (even in-house lists) and traditional direct marketing (DM), internet marketing seems like direct marketing on steroids.

Additionally, the same metrics that add to the success of a DM campaign can be applied to all of your internet marketing objectives, and much like direct marketing, there are tools that can sort through tons of data to provide information that can validate your online goals.

These include sophisticated web analytic services that provide information which can actually help convert browsers to buyers on your website. A good web analytics program should offer all of the services below; each one performs a specific function that is necessary to tracking the success of your website, such as:

* Scenario Analysis. This examines the actions of visitors through the steps they take from initial visit to check-out. This allows a business to identify which paths lead to sales and modify the navigation accordingly;

* ROI Analysis. To justify the dollars spent on links, PPC, or other CPM, CPA, or other ongoing SEO campaigns, you need to know which tactics are producing a positive ROI and which tactics need to be re-evaluated or eliminated. Usually, you�re able to drill down into this data to see more details such as which PPC keywords drive the most traffic, or more importantly, sales:

* Sales Summary Reports. These should offer a �big picture� look at numerous variables, including seasonal trends, peak buying hours, revenue earned per unique time frame (quarterly) and average order size. This report should generally be graphical or presented in an easily understandable;

* Advanced Merchandise Reporting. This helps merchants identify specific items a customer adds/deletes/buys from their shopping cart, to tap into trends for specific products and help optimize the timing of promotions and other marketing messages;

* Organic Search Report. This gives you an ROI figure for all of your organic search terms. This is what you should get monthly if you are hiring a professional SEO firm or consultant;

Although plenty of other reports can be generated to validate your marketing dollars, good analytics can mean squeezing more dollars out of your website turnip.

[tags] website analytics, web analytics, web site analytics[/tags]

Lets begin with the first question.

While negative press is always hard to combat, one of the best ways to retaliate to bad blog posts about your company is to take action if your product or service was at fault, apologize and correct the problem, then post or announce that you’ve fixed it.

There have been many cases where customers actually persuaded companies to change policies or fix problems by blogging about it. A case a couple years ago involved a video showing someone picking a Kryptonite bike lock. The news spread like wildfire through the blogosphere, and Kryptonite issued a recall of the lock.

They managed to handle it pretty well, all things considered, but imagine what a nightmare it could be if you were in a similar or worse situation. A good tip is to never try and hide from the bloggers: one will always find you. And you could really be in for some crisis management if mainstream media gets involved.

Dunkin Donuts took a different approach when confronted by the national debate blog. They handled it well, but the situation could of gotten out of control if not handled properly. Ultimately, this helps both the consumer and the company. The blogosphere acts as a net that catches the news and broadcasts it to the world. If a product is bad, the consumer will be able to find the reviews.

However, this system is beneficial for companies as well; it helps (though admittedly, not that effectively) them stay honest and up-to-date with the news and gossip surrounding their product or service and, as in the case of the Kryptonite lock, can act as an excellent alarm.

So what should you take away from this? Companies, have someone monitoring the blogosphere fairly regularly-it can save you time, money and a lot of potential embarrassment. You can anticipate problems and begin damage control immediately, like Dunkin Donuts. Consumers keep searching for news, reviews and advice about products and services. Better yet, get your own blog and write some yourself.

Here are some important terms to know and why they are important to you. Even if it’s just to impress your nerd friend with terms like moblogging and other blargon.

Blog: Essentially a contraction of the words web log, or the word weblog, whichever you prefer. Blogs are coming to mean different things to different people, but basically a blog is a way to push content (usually chronologically) on a page, much like a journal.

Aggregator: An aggregator can help you to read content from blogs without having to go to the actual page. It is a piece of software that combines excerpts or updates from blogs so you can read them on your computer or browser without going to the original site. Below are some sites from which you can download aggregators (some for your computer, some for your browser). It is also useful to know that some other terms that refer to the same basic definition of an aggregator. These other terms include feed reader, feed aggregator, news reader, news aggregator and RSS aggregator and reader.

Desktop:

• Feed Reader
• News Gator (FeedDemon)

Browser:

• Bloglines
• Rojo
• RSS Reader

Blogger: This term can be used two different ways. It can mean any person who publishes content to a blog or it can refer to Google’s hosted blog service, Blogger. When referring to Google’s Blogger site, the “B” is usually capitalized; when talking about someone who posts content to a blog, the “b” is not necessarily capitalized.

Blogosphere: Generally, this encompasses all the blogs (commercial, personal, etc.) in the blogging community.

Blogroll: This refers to a list of links to other blogs that the author(s) of a blog also read regularly. The blogroll is usually located on the sidebar on the blog page. So if you like what you are reading, you might want to check out some other blogs that might also interest you and blogroll them.

Permalink: This is another contraction from the term permanent link.Essentially it is a way to keep a URL for a particular blog entry or post.

Post: This is any published content on a blog. A blog is comprised of individual posts that are arranged in chronological order, usually with the most recent on top.

Comment: This allows people who are reading the blog to comment on the author’s opinion or offer supplemental information or anything else related to the post they wish to have published in the comments section (below the post). Feel free to comment on this post with any relevant information or anything you would like to see here that you can’t find.

Ping: This is a notice that goes out when a blog is updated. When blogs are updated they ping certain sites and services letting them know that their blog is updated.

Tag: This is a label assigned to a blog entry to categorize or help define its content. The use of tags was initiated by Technorati and they use tags to organize blogs in their system.

These terms are basic terms that users and novice bloggers should be familiar with so they can talk intelligently about what they do and understand what others are saying. If you’re looking for some more detailed blog terminology, I will be putting up additional terms as well as resources for sprucing up and optimizing your blog.

[tags]blog terminology, blog terms, blogging[/tags]

But what happens when you sit down with your Red Bull, Coffee or other favorite writing beverage, ready to crank out some quality content, but can�t quite think of anything compelling to write about? Here are some of the things that I do that help me get over what my associates call �writers bloggage?�

1. I close my eyes for a while and meditate and re-charge my chakras (especially the blue throat chakra responsible for communication).

2. Then I go to my favorite search engine and start typing in random queries, things I am interested in. For me this would be web analytics, social media optimization, SEM, online PR or basically anything web related. Anything that I can get excited about, or find interesting I research further and cultivate articles using my own slant and opinions.

3.� It is also helpful to set-up Google Alerts with these topics as well, so when they come to your inbox you can get some ideas based on what other people are writing about on these topics and offer a new fresh perspective.

4.� Another good idea is to evaluate a service that you have been using. For instance, the increasing popularity of sites such as mybloglog.com, or linkedin. If you use these services, it might help others to give your opinion on how you found out about them, how you use the service and what sort of measurable results you are getting.

5. Another option is to write some sort of guide, for instance, I wrote a guide on Microsofts AdCenter which people found useful. But any new service, social media or otherwise, is good to put on your blog in the form of a guide. If it is thorough and complete, you can get a good amount of traffic from this.

I hope this helps anyone who has been experiencing symptoms of writers bloggage, and I encourage you to share your tips in the form of comments on what you do to get over the hump.

[tags]blogging, writers block, blog writing[/tags]