Month: January 2007

more tips on blogging success for 2007

Assuming that you’ve made the decision that you want to be a successful blogger, Darren Rowse (the six figure blogger) has added his tips on How To Market Your Blog in 2007. The shortlist:

Get Your Own House In Order

  • Write well, write consistently, don’t give up
  • Become an expert on something
  • Design is more important than you think
  • Get Your SEO On
  • Publish full feeds
  • Do interviews with other bloggers
  • Break important stories
  • Have a contest
  • Publish original research
  • Put out Press Releases
  • Work your long tail
  • Answer your comments, in your comments, and off blog
  • Spend time to create links and trackbacks
  • Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way)

Getting the Word Out

  • Join a blog carnival
  • Join blog network
  • Participate in forums
  • Participate on larger blogs in comments
  • Join Blogburst
  • Participate in Darren’s contests
  • Submit to blog directories
  • Submit to Google sitemaps
  • Submit to article directories
  • Get interviewed
  • Get listed on a news aggregator, or blog aggregator
  • Create free stuff for yourself and give it away
  • Create free stuff for other people
  • Pay for pub

Connect, Connect, Connect

  • Make friends with other bloggers
  • Guest blog
  • Volunteer, intern, scut-monkey your way into a blogger’s graces
  • Get hired
  • Network in person
  • Join virtual groups
  • Cross promote

Make Social Media Work For You

  • Facebook
  • Join Helium
  • Yahoo Answers!
  • Create a Squidoo Lens
  • Use MySpace Marketing
  • Get Dugg / Netscaped / Reddited / Stumbled upon

Oh, wow! I can’t even count the items listed that I never would have thought about. Of course, that means I’m not doing them.

Providing full feeds? I wasn’t doing that, I am now. I think I’m going to go through this post, item by item, and start some positive new activities.

10 foods to help you sleep better

Need some help getting your 8 hours of sleep? Try one of these 10 foods. According to Yahoo they “relax tense muscles, quiet buzzing minds, and/or get calming, sleep-inducing hormones – serotonin and melatonin - flowing.”

  • Bananas
  • Chamomile tea
  • Warm milk
  • Honey
  • Potatoes
  • Oatmeal
  • Almonds
  • Flaxseeds
  • Whole-wheat bread
  • Turkey

For doses and suggested combinations, check out Yahoo! Food.

(Found via LifeHacker, who found it via lifehack.org.)

a Super Bowl alternative for women

Thank you, ShopGirl, for giving me an alternative activity for Super Bowl Sunday:

[snip]

The Robbins Bros. jewelry store in Webster will host a party for the ladies on Sunday (Feb. 4) with manicures, champagne, chocolate-covered strawberries and other treats. If football and beer are more your thing, well, they will have that, too. At the end of the night, one woman will win a diamond ring.

That’s certainly something to cheer about.

Details: 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday (Feb. 4). 1251 W. Bay Area Blvd., Webster. 281-316-9933.

Perry’s $100 million plan to secure the border

Texas Governor Rick Perry recently gave additional details on his plan to increase border security. As reported by the Houston Chronicle:

Gov. Rick Perry gave more details today on his $100 million plan to crack down on drug and human smuggling along the Mexican border by enlisting hundreds of armed National Guard forces and thousands more agents from other state and federal agencies.

Perry described “Operation Wrangler” as a second phase of an initiative to use state resources to fill security holes left by the federal government.

[snip]

Perry said the plan piggybacks on last February’s Operation Rio Grande, which he said helped border sheriffs reduce crime by 60 percent by helping them buy more equipment and pay officers overtime. Since October 2005, the state has spent $20 million on border security efforts.

Operation Wrangler will send 604 National Guard troops throughout the state, he said, “covering the coast, the rivers, and the interstate highway system.”

The troops will work with agencies totaling more than 6,800 personnel working for 11 “joint operational intelligence centers,” all guided by a control operations center in Austin. Five centers were to be at Border Patrol offices along the border and others were to be along smuggling corridors.

The guard members will operate in platoons accompanied by a Border Patrol member. A Border Patrol spokesman referred all queries about the program to the governor’s office.

Perry said state and federal agencies are much more cooperative since the 2001 terrorist attacks, which he said changed the old atmosphere of “turf protection.”

He said the operation will put more than 2,200 vehicles, 48 helicopters, 33 fixed wing aircraft and 35 patrol ships to the task of catching and deterring smugglers.

Along with the state and federal law-enforcement agencies, others in the operation include the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Texas Civil Air Patrol, the Texas Cattleman’s Association, the Railroad Police, the U.S. Postal Service and University of Texas Center for Space Research.

[snip]