Demons Lounge » Blogging

Interview High Profile Figures On Your Blog

Kevin Muldoon — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:34:40 +0000

One of my favourite methods of increasing exposure to a blog is interviews. I’ve seen some bloggers get lazy and post interviews too frequently, however if it is done right interviews can be a great resource for readers.

Interviews allow you to engage with high profile figures within your niche. I’ve contacted hundreds of web developers over the years with ideas for partnerships and joint projects and the response has been fairly low. I’ve received a much better response with interview requests. It’s not difficult to understand why. Time is something which many successful just don’t have however most make the effort to take part in interviews if your website has some sort of an audience. It allows them to raise their own profile, promote any new projects they are working on and most of all; talk about themselves! It also generates incoming links to their website or service.

Video interviews are obviously the hardest to arrange as not all successful people are comfortable with the medium and the interview requires the interviewee to be available at a set time or date. Audio interviews can also be difficult if the person for the same reasons. Undoubtedly, email interviews are the quickest and easiest to arrange for both parties. From a bloggers point of view, an email interview is easy to set up. All you have to do is send several questions to them via email and then post the answers when they reply. This obviously suits a lot of interviewees too as they can respond to the interview in their own time (or have one of their assistants to do so).

An added bonus to interviews is that most people who are interviewed let their readers know about the interview. You may get lucky and get an announcement about it on their blog but at the very least you’ll get a Tweet about it on Twitter. This kind of technique can greatly increase exposure to your blog over the long term as the interviewee will send people to your site who have never visited before. If only 5% of these people decide to subscribe to your blog then you could potentially get dozens if not hundreds of new loyal readers.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, I don’t recommend overusing this technique. I’ve seen some bloggers post more interviews on their blog than their usual style of article. For me, an interview should be used sparingly on your site and you should never post more interviews on than your ‘regular content’.

I encourage you to contact high profile people within your niche (though I would wait until your blog has some sort of audience as people want to believe they are getting a return for the time they took to take part in the interview. My advice would be to contact people who have something to promote. For example:

People who have just released a book
Websites who have just announced a new product or service
High profile people within your niche that use social media services such as Twitter a lot (i.e. are more likely to take part)

Remember to take the time to personalise the questions to the person you are interviewing. You’ve got a better chance of getting a response if your questions are tailored to the persons experience and history. That is, don’t send the same generic questions to everyone you interview.

I’d love to heard your blog interview tips. Please share them in the comment area.

Good luck,
Kevin

RSS Readers – A Bloggers Best Friend

Kevin Muldoon — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:00:04 +0000

A look into why all serious bloggers should consider using an RSS Reader on a regular basis.

In Affiliate Marketing it is very important to track how each site is performing; from traffic, to clicks, to conversions. This enables you to monitor how each site is doing and adjust your site accordingly e.g. put more energy into sites which are doing well or change the strategy for those which are not.

In Blogging your time is used differently. One of the most important tasks for most bloggers is staying up to date with the latest news, views and events in their niche. Put simply, in order to write good articles, you need to know what you are talking about. Articles on the latest news and current events are two of the biggest traffic draws for bloggers too so it pays to read regularly.

In the early days of the web, most people used bookmarks to keep tabs on their favourite websites. Many people still do this (including myself) as it’s a useful way of accessing your favourite sites and remembering useful articles you’d otherwise forget about it. In 1999 a new method of filtering content arrived on the net but it wouldn’t gain acceptance with mainstream audiences for a few years more. This new method was called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS for short. RSS is a format which allows you to draw content, audio, videos and much more from numerous sources all into one place; which cuts down the time required to read your favourite websites.

Websites that support RSS will usually have the famous RSS feed icon somewhere on their page. The icon is usually orange and white however some blogs have designed their own custom RSS icons to fit into their design better.

To read a website through RSS you need to use an RSS Reader. These are sometimes called News Aggregators, Feed Readers or News Readers; though they all mean the same thing. RSS Readers are available for most modern mobile phones and most browsers and email solutions have an option for reading RSS content too. Through a laptop or desktop computer I find RSS services such as Google Reader to be the most practical. My personal favourite, and the one that I use on a regular basis, is NetVibes.

Using an RSS Reader

I thought it would be good to show you how I use RSS Readers to keep up to date with news sites and blogs which are relevant to my own. The vast majority of RSS Readers require you to sign up to use their service. It’s important to do this as once you are a member you can access your news feeds from any computer on the planet.

After you have signed up you need to add RSS feeds from sites you want to track. It’s simply a matter of finding the feed URL on the site and adding it to your reader. Most blogs only have an RSS feed for blog posts and comments however large news sites such as BBC News have feeds for each news category (e.g. a feed for Technology news, a feed for World news etc).

Most good RSS Readers allow you to categorise your feeds. This is something you will need to do once you have added a lot of feeds so you can manage reading your content more efficiently. You can categorise feeds to suit your own reading style. I create categories for different subjects and split them into sub categories to help me find news and inspiration for new posts. For example, for my WordPress blog I have created 3 different WordPress categories: news, blogs and themes.

The news category ensures that I always read about the latest releases and developments, and can then inform my own readers. The blogs category allows me to read other WordPress related blogs in my niche, which is important as I can follow the latest trends and respond to hot topics and viewpoints. Finally, the theme category lists the RSS feeds from dozens of WordPress theme stores, so I can quickly see the latest designs to be released from the top WordPress theme stores.

Most RSS Readers also show which posts you have already read with older articles being greyed out and unread articles being highlighted in bold. This allows you to quickly see at a glance who has added new articles on dozens of websites without visiting them one by one. For bloggers this is a godsend as it speeds up the whole process of staying up to date with news and related sites.

Information Overload

Image Credit: JoseToons

RSS changed the way which we read content online by allowing users to read their favourite sites in one location. It was practical and it saved people a lot of time.

Many prominent bloggers believe there is a downside to this and note that they don’t use RSS readers anymore. Their main argument is that they find it makes them less productive. I can see where they are coming from with this. Over time people tend to add more and more feeds to their RSS Reader, which is understandable as once you get used to using news aggregators you get in the habit of adding good websites and blogs you find to your account.

More feeds to check means more time spent reading articles through your RSS Reader, to the point where information overload occurs. In my opinion, this can be easily avoided if you remove feeds which are not longer updated or are no longer relevant. Sites which only update every few weeks or months can be placed in a separate category so that they don’t clutter your main pages and important feeds should be placed more prominently on your reader so that other non essential feeds are only read if and when you have time.

I regularly do this so that using my RSS reader doesn’t become too time consuming; the key is to ensure that your RSS Reader complements your work schedule rather than hinders it. So please, don’t be put off using RSS by people who say it’s counter productive. If you manage your feeds correctly it can be an incredibly useful took which will help inspire articles and ensure that your blog always writes about the latest news, views and developments.

RSS Readers

As I noted previously, my RSS Reader of choice is NetVibes. I don’t believe it is any better than other readers out there, it is simply a service I tried many years ago and got used to the way it works.

Below is a collection of some of the most popular desktop RSS Readers. I recommend trying a few until you find one which suits your needs.

Web Based:

Windows:

Mac:

I hope that you found this article useful. I appreciate that most bloggers will be used to using RSS Readers already however it is not common practice amongst marketers and I’m sure they will find it useful.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask

Thanks for reading,
Kevin

100 Great Web Development Blog Posts From 2010

Kevin Muldoon — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:00:59 +0000

Image Credit: Endless by Philipp Klinger
As someone who blogs on a regular basis, I try and keep up to date with the latest news and views by subscribing to dozens of web development related blogs on topics such as blogging, design, marketing and productivity.

Since we are approaching the festive season and the end of 2010, I thought it would be good to share with you some of the best articles I have read in 2010. If you make a living through the internet then I’m sure you will find a lot of these articles useful.

I hope you enjoy the list

Kevin