One Wrong Way to Get Links

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We all know that getting inbound links, links from other web sites linking in to yours, is an important part of marketing your blog and raising your authority and rankings in the search engines. There are all kinds of ways to encourage other bloggers to link to you, but ultimately the best way to get inbound links is to earn them.

When you produce high quality valuable content people will see its value and link to it. Combine that with consistent active networking and the number of inbound links you get will grow over time.

No Good Shortcuts

It is a consistent part of human nature that people tend to be lazy. Most folks want the reward without the work.

Unfortunately at best shortcuts tend to run smack into the Law of Unintended Consequences. At their worst, shortcuts can be manipulative, destructive and downright counter productive. Especially when it comes to influencing others to take an action that benefits you.

This is especially true when it comes to building an audience for your blog.

There is no substitute for consistent effort over time. Sure there are some things you can do to help compound your efforts. But there are no shortcuts. Without work there is no miracle.

Don’t Try This Guy’s Approach

I get lots of requests for links. I’ve been blogging here at SuccessCREEations for a while, have decent page rank and people want to tap into that. It’s flattering.

Most of the requests are bumbling and get ignored. Occasionally I’ll respond with a, “no thank you” if the request is especially polite.

But the other day I found this comment in my moderation folder and was floored. I have never posted a comment like this, but this guy was arrogantly rude. On top of that he put this in my comment box (twice, by the way) instead of emailing me through the contact page so he fully expected it to be public.

Please don’t ever approach a blogger like this: Read more

Being Thankful

This Thanksgiving morning Gorgeous and I were talking about how much we have to be thankful for.

The news is full of all kinds of horrible things going on in the world. In the headlines today is a terrible attack in India with over 100 tourists killed. Apparently a plan to bomb Penn Station in New York City was thwarted, thanks God.

And most of the news is about the struggling economy. Companies are going out of business. People are loosing their jobs. The government is passing out free money to major corporations to try and keep some of them afloat with the hope of preventing a full scale meltdown.

Even the tech sector has been affected. Just this week Technorati announced layoffs and pay cuts across the board.

Thankful

With all that mess going on in our world, Gorgeous and I are incredibly thankful that we are able to work for ourselves from home.

In the past year I’ve found out that being self employed can be a bit stressful. But on the good side I don’t have to worry about whether my employer is going to cut my job and leave me out on the street.

Been there. Done that.

Even when the economy is rolling loosing a job because a facility is closed or a company goes out of business (I’ve been through both) is tough. It is always easier to find a job when you already have one.

I feel for the folks who are struggling through that this holiday season.

My encouragement to them would be that I made it through so it can be done. The days won’t always look so dark. The sun will come out again come morning.

History of Thanksgiving

If you are interested in a little bit about the beginings of Thanksgiving, go check out my Thanksgiving history post from last year.

Those early early Americans were going through tougher economic times that any of us can imagine yet they were thankful just the same. We can learn something from that.

I hope you have a wonderful (and thankful) day today.

WordPress Security Release Version 2.6.5

WordPress gave us yet one more security update to version 2.6 before the long anticipated major release of version 2.7, which is expected in the next few weeks.

The new WordPress version 2.6.5 addresses a security vulnerability as well as a few other very minor improvements. There are a total of five files modified in this security release. You can simply replace these five core files to expedite the upgrade process.

However performing a full normal upgrade to the new version is probably the easiest way to go if you are only upgrading one or two blogs.

The security fix is critical for WordPress installations on virtual servers and these should be upgraded immediately. Other users may elect to hold off until the new version 2.7 comes out, but again prudence dictates updating to the current version is best practice.

Fake Spoof Version of WordPress

Another reason I suspect the good folks at WordPress decided to issue a security release for version 2.6 so close to the anticipated release of the major update in 2.7 is that there is a fake, spoof version of WordPress out there.

Apparently someone bought a domain name just one character off from the official WordPress.org site and put up a rough copy of the WordPress.org site. They downloaded a copy of version 2.6.3 which they modified to potentially allow hijacking of affected blogs, and then said it was 2.6.4.

But the truly evil part of these cretians diabolical plan was when they hacked into the dashboards of some blogs running older versions of WordPress to put up a fake security warning urging users to “upgrade” to the bogus version and directing them to the bogus site. Craig Murphy explains that whole thing.

As I’ve said before, like any software older versions of WordPress are vulnerable to hacking. Keeping your WordPress blog version current is a critical step to keeping your site secure from hacker.

Because of this incident WordPress is skipping verion 2.6.4 in their official release line to avoid confusion.

Help Us Help You - A 3 Minute Survey

Here at SuccessCREEations we are looking for ways to serve you better.

We have been getting quite a few inquiries lately from folks wondering if we have any kind of material they can purchase that will help them get started with blogging and social media.

Unfortunately we don’t. Yet.

However on the good news front we do have a wealth of information just waiting to be packaged up in a format that will make it easy for people to wade into the wonderful social media world.

That’s why we’re asking for your help.

We’ve put together a little 4 question survey. If you can spare about 3 minutes to go fill it out we’d be much obliged.

• Click Here to take survey

And thank you in advance for helping us help others learn more about social media.

Social Media Autoresponders - Good Marketing or Missing the Point?

People generally prefer to interact with other people rather than machines. And most folks are especially not keen on interacting with machines masquerading as people.

Ever get frustrated by an automated phone tree when trying to contact a business and feel like screaming, “I just want to talk to a person!“?

Robocalls were big in the news leading up to this past election. You know. Those recorded calls that just start talking at you as soon as you answer the phone.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a political candidate or a credit card sales pitch, I hang up on ‘em without listening.

Autoresponders

In email marketing there is a thing called an autoresponder. The most basic form is the email you get when you first subscribe to a list.

There are some very real benefits to email autoresponders. For starters, they help ensure that you really meant to subscribe to that list. In that capacity they help keep spam down a bit.

Another benefit is that you don’t have to wait to get the information you signed up for with email autoresponders. No matter what time, day or night, you can have access with a good autoresponder system.

One reason why email autoresponders work so well is that we don’t have the expectation that the sender is sitting by their email just waiting for us to sign up to their list. The automation helps us out as recipients as well as making life easier on the sender.

It’s a win-win and I am a fan.

Social Media is Different

Social media sites like Twitter, for example, have a different expectation. They are by their very nature more personal than email. That’s the “social” part. Read more

Joining Skinny Moose Media

Last week I alluded to an upcoming announcement. Today I’m thrilled to announce that I have joined Skinny Moose Media as their new Community Development Director.

Between their Skinny Moose blog network and their US Hunting Today brand they have just over 100 websites in their community generating nearly a million page views a month.

As Community Development Director I will be working with the Skinny Moose bloggers and their readership to create a place that people can feel a part of where they want to belong. We have several initiatives that we’ve talked about and I’m exited to be joining such a dynamic group over there.

Longtime Relationship

I first met Steve Remington, the President and driving force behind Skinny Moose,  years ago over on Liz Strauss’ Successful-Blog. It was one of her Tuesday night Open Comment Nights in fact. (I even found that original connection.)

That was when he was just getting started putting a blog network together. And I was just looking at taking the step away from Blogger over to WordPress. In Steve’s world that was 2 kids ago (he’s got 6 now!)

Over the years we’ve tracked each others progress and kept in touch. Steve even asked me to come blog for him a couple times in the past but we never quite came together.

We did talk several times the past few months and then last month Steve made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. The moral of that story is that it pays to network!

SuccessCREEations & Clients

What does this new turn mean for SuccessCREEations and our clients?

Ultimately they’ll see no change. We will still serve our existing clients. That was part of what made Steve’s offer so attractive to me.

Of course we will now have to be more selective on the new clients we take on in the future. But that will workout in everyone’s benefit as we will now be able to focus down even further on our core competencies here.

And in the end it may even free me up to once again blog more consistently here at SuccessCREEations. We’ll have to see how that works out.