Even a short year ago, it would have been impossible to predict the success of smart phones or the impact that they would have on our society. It is no longer unusual for a person to be completely dependent on their phone for email access, social networking, and even locating businesses. When savvy modern people want to find an ice cream shop or a barber, they turn to their phone. As you can imagine, this has huge implications for the way you run your small business.

First and most obviously, the smart phone revolution has changed the type of small business we are seeing in the technology field. A variety of phone apps provides relevant location services, encourages customers to try new products at stores they are entering, and offers special deals to customers who are near key advertisers. Some even provide time sensitive special deals for businesses near their current location, while will create a sense of urgency in a market that might otherwise pass them by. These small businesses are capitalizing on the fact that smart phones can track not just their owner’s shopping habits, but their owner’s precise location at that moment in time. Many local small businesses are contracting with these companies to offer special deals that build and solidify their customer base.

Second, the use of smart phones makes it all the more necessary to market your business in a way that reaches out to customers using this hip new medium. When even ten percent of your market is using a particular form of technology to get business information, it is important to begin dabbling in it yourself. Because technology such as this tends to grow exponentially (until it is replaced by a new technology, that is), you may miss out on a substantial amount of current and future sales by choosing to ignore it.

Third, small businesses should maintain their marketing through more traditional channels such as print ads, the internet, and telephone. This will prevent alienating the substantial portion of your customer base that has not yet become part of the smart phone revolution. While it may feel that you are being pulled in a variety of directions, a well rounded marketing plan is essential to success in the modern market.

Last, track your success using smart phone apps and other new technologies for marketing. If smart phones are bringing in a large percentage of new customers, put more of your energy into marketing through. If they seem promising but just aren’t bringing in results, consider using a new advertising company or otherwise changing your approach. If any type of marketing seems largely unsuccessful, then move on to marketing strategies that have been proven to work.

Keeping up with trends may feel silly and unnecessary, but it is an important part of small business success. As a savvy small business owner, you need to identify the venues your customers are using to find businesses like yours and then place yourself prominently on these venues. Constant change and innovation are the hallmarks that set small businesses apart from larger, more established ones, so don’t be afraid to try new ways of building your business.

We all have heard about small businesses that make it big using Twitter, Facebook, and other social media websites. Some websites—this one included—offer advice for what to do to help build your business through these free, low demand methods. However, there are certain moves that will compromise your social media marketing campaign before it even begins. Here are the five top social media mistakes a small business can make.

1 Not having a plan.

Your business is a brand, and everything you do for it should be carefully planned to be congruent with this brand. This includes social media. Everything moves faster in this medium. The wrong joke or choice of words can make enemies of people who would otherwise have been supporters. Failing to post on a regular basis can lose a hard-won fan base. Before you even open a profile, you should have a plan for who your target audience will be, how they will benefit from your site, and what you will do to win them over.

2 Not considering your target audience.

This is important because, as we mentioned above, everything you do will be for them. You probably already have a general demographic in mind, but think beyond this. How technologically savvy are they? What kind of information would persuade them to become loyal to your business? How can you best reach them and engage with them?

3 Not being consistent.

Your social media sites need to be regularly updated and maintained. More important, you need to be part of the online community. Respond to comments and tweets, post relevant information often, and get to know your customers. This is a once in a lifetime chance to develop a real long-term relationship with your customer base.

4 Wasting your customers’ time.

While it is important to post information on a consistent basis, don’t let this turn into such a chore that the quality of your posts or tweets begins to suffer. Give your customers informative and entertaining posts that are relevant to your industry and their own lives. Don’t be a walking commercial; people get enough of these in a modern world filled with guerilla marketing messages. If you build a relationship with your customers, they will naturally want to buy your products and services.

5 Not having a firm internet policy.

This should extend both to your business and your employees. You have a right to ask that your employees not act in a way that embarrasses your business—whether at work or not. Define how your company’s brand will be portrayed by their interaction with the community, both in person and online. Educate them about exactly what language and types of messages are okay in these contexts. Your employees are a reflection of your brand, and you need to ensure that they know how to act in a way that is brand-consistent.

Social media can make or break a business. By following these five simple steps, you can make sure that the time and money you spend to build an online presence pays off.

We all have heard the stories of businesses that made it big using social media, but most small business owners are unsure of exactly how to harness this powerful marketing tool. While it is easy for national brands to garner millions of online followers, it is a little more difficult for smaller businesses. Here are a few tips for using social media to build a small business.

1 Use multiple social platforms.

Don’t expect that Facebook alone will be sufficient, especially not before seeing what websites are being used the most by your customer base. Start out by creating a well branded presence on several different social media networks. Because many of your followers will also use multiple platforms, make sure you are posting some original content on each site. However, services like ping. fm allow you to post content on multiple sites, which can be handy when you are making an announcement or passing along important information about your business.

2 Don’t be ‘all work and no play’.

Your customers and fans did not sign up for a 24/7 commercial, and they won’t stick around for one either. Add content that is relevant to your area to ensure customer loyalty. You just may be a local expert on your industry, so act like one. Make your content short, relevant, and entertaining to keep people coming back.

3 Be consistent.

You can’t expect sustained interest in your business if you are only posting every few weeks. Ideally, you should post a few times a day, and these should be a good mix of commercial, informative, and entertaining posts. You can often set auto-posts to make this easier. If you have trouble thinking of content, try picturing your ideal customer. What do they need to know? How are they or should they be using your product?

4 Give people a reason to visit your social media sites.

All of your business’s contact information should be on these sites, as well as information on your products and services. Many businesses offer special discounts or promotions for social media followers, and these can help you track which platforms are the most lucrative. If you cannot afford to offer monetary value, simply offer good content that is relevant to your customers with out killing your company.

5 Act competitively.

Just because a social media site is free, many business owners treat it casually. You will have better results if you act competitively, the way you would if this were any other marketing tool. While there is no set amount of activity, you should try to do just a little more than your competitors. If you are the only one of the internet, you’re already doing fine. However, this is highly unlikely. There is a good chance that your competitors are using social media as well. See what they are doing and replicate what works. Further, try new ideas. This will allow you to learn from their mistakes while doing a little experimenting of your own. By learning to harness social media, you will provide your business of a free and highly effective form of marketing and branding.

Your business has a solid presence on the net; you’re tweeting, blogging, and have hundreds of Facebook friends and using social media help your small business. You’re done, right? Wrong! In order to set yourself apart from your competition, it’s important that you remain somewhat ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and marketing. Twitter and Facebook are important, but there is a new way to reach out to your customers online: the podcast. Well, it is not really new but if you have never tried to podcast, then I would consider that to be a new tool for you.

What is a podcast? It is basically your very own radio show, broadcast on the internet. It’s a chance to speak directly to potential customers. This technology represents the most modern type of online social media, which means that you will be ahead of the curve if you get in on the action. Here are a few tips to help you ensure that your podcasts are the brilliant marketing tool for entrepreneur that you need for them to be.

1 Create high quality recordings.

This means using adequate recording devices and software. It also means paying attention to volume, which should be neither too soft nor offensively loud. Trying to listen to a low quality recording is annoying and hardly the impression that you want to give your customers.

2 Structure your podcasts.

You should plan for them the way you would for a speech or presentation tips. Know the basic subject you will be discussing and have a list of talking points and ideas to cover. For best results, have a similar structure for every podcast. Your customers will enjoy the consistency and know what to expect. Most important—do not ramble or drone. No one wants to hear that. Stick to your subject and make it interesting.

3 Sound like an expert.

No one will want to hear a podcast that is mere opinion. You need to position yourself as an expert, someone that your community can trust for information about your field. This will make your business the natural place to turn for quality products. However, claiming to be an expert comes with accountability as well. Educate yourself about your subject so you can give accurate information that won’t damage your credibility.

4 Show some personality.

It’s okay to throw in appropriate jokes and relevant stories. Practice talking in a way that is engaging and interesting, with a variety of vocal inflections—listen to a few radio talk shows if you don’t know exactly what this means. This is a chance to connect to your audience, not a chance to bore them senseless.

5 Edit.

When you are done recording your podcast, listen to it and use a sound editing program to remove portions that are not polished. As you get better, you can move around segments and even add background music to give your podcast a professional feeling. Music and extras should not be the focus of your podcast, but they can give them a finished and professional feeling.

6 Monitor your customer’s experience.

Test your podcasts after uploading them to make sure the URL works and there are no glitches. Also, you should always subscribe to your podcasts so you can see exactly how your customers hear your podcasts.

If you are a small businessperson or interested in becoming one, one of your first steps should be to select an accounting logos software package. Accounting software is absolutely essential to maintaining the detailed, accurate records you need to run a business. The following five accounting software packages give small business owners everything they need to handle bookkeeping in an affordable and easy to use package.

QuickBooks Accounting Software Pro Edition.

Quickbooks is one of the most popular accounting software programs for small businesses and it’s easy to see why. This software includes not just accounting programs, but payroll management and other financial features as well. Quickbooks is easy to master and there are a variety of how-to books on the market detailing how it can be used and modified according to your needs. Quickbooks can be bought in a variety of editions, but the Pro Edition has certain extras that will make your life easier, such as a vehicle mileage tracker. This software is the golden standard of accounting software because it is easy to learn and includes everything you need to manage small business accounting.

BusinessVision 32.

BusinessVision is a great choice because it includes real time accounting, constantly updating all of the records as new information is entered. It uses Crystal Reports for credit reports, which makes it easy both to create reports from the data and to import any information into Microsoft Excel. Like many accounting software packages, BusinessVision comes in a variety of editions. BusinessVision 32 is custom-tailored to the needs of small businesses.

Microsoft Small Business Manager.

If you are already using other Microsoft Office programs, Microsoft Small Business Manager is an easy choice. This program is easy to integrate with other Office software and allows easy importing and exporting. Microsoft Small Business Manager has an intuitive design that allows users to use it as soon as it is installed. There are also many add-ons available, such as a PayPal account manager, that can be bought for a reasonable price if you need them.

MYOB Plus Accounting Software.

MYOB wins for versatility. This small business accounting program with a variety of features including ecommerce management. It is made to link to and work with Microsoft Office programs. This is an especially apt choice in accounting software if you will have multiple users, because the program is designed to accommodate several users.

Peachtree Complete Accounting Software.

Peachtree is a good choice if you will need to make regular reports, because this software comes with the benefit of being able to quickly and easily import information to more than one hundred different report templates. The design is intuitive and there is a feature for every need a small business owner might have, from inventory to time billing. The software is simple to learn because the screens resemble the paper documents once used for the same purpose.

As you can see, there are several excellent choices in small business accounting programs. Whether you want an easy program, a fully featured one, or one that integrates well with your other programs, there is sure to be a good choice in this short list for you. What’s most important isn’t which of these programs you choose, but that you select a program and begin keeping good records from the very start. Please read this article on logo software too.

Are you interested in starting a small business? Do you have an idea that you think is almost guaranteed to make money? If so, you might be interested in the following five basic tools, which will help your business open its doors with a good chance of success.

A Logo. Many businesses begin without a logo, but this is a mistake. A company logo is as important as your name because it is how your prospective customers will recognize you. Your logo will be the face of your business, present on business cards, stationery design, and even your office door. It is so important that there is no way to be successful without it. If you are starting a small business, getting a professional logo is the first step.

A Website. Many people view a website design as an option, but in the modern world it is a small business necessity. In the modern world, your customers are just as likely to turn to the internet to find a business as they are to look in the phone book. Having a website—a professional one that will interest your target audience—is one powerful way to keep the customers coming. As a side benefit, this website will allow you to have a more professional email address: yourname@yourbusiness.com.

An Audience. You may know a lot about your products and/or services, but what do you know about the people who will be buying them? You must know your target customer’s age, income, and aesthetic tastes so you can know what they want to buy, how they want to buy it, and what kind of shopping experience will bring them in as a customer and keep them coming back. Knowing your audience will allow you to better reach your future customers without wasting valuable time and money on people who aren’t interested.

Product Literature. In order to sell a product, you need to have a brochure design, marketing materials or other literature describing exactly what you are selling. This literature should include your business name and logo along with pertinent information about your company and product specifications. Although this may seem unnecessary, you won’t think so the first time you have the opportunity to hand your professional brochure over to a potential customer or vendor.

A Marketing Plan. Once you have your small business ready to open, you will need a marketing plan. This can be an expensive plan developed by a team of marketing consultants and graphic designers or simply an outline of how and when you will get your message into the hands of your audience. If you have an interesting story behind your product or another aspect of your business that is interesting and unique, you may want to market your business to news stations and other media.

Did you think this list was going to talk about accounting logos software or the latest telephone systems? These things are important, but they will not affect your business’s success in the profound way our top five will. The reason many small businesses fail is that they don’t pay attention to these five key areas. Giving your business the right start will ensure that you don’t become just another statistic and infinitely improve your odds of accomplishing your goals in a competitive market.

If you’re designing a page or running an e-store I bet you’re curious to know the behavior or reading pattern of your online visitors. Thanks to eye tracking method, researchers can analyze where online visitors are looking on your site. The output is what we call heatmaps.

Though this is a very useful tool, most entrepreneurs do not use eyetracking method for the simple reason that this service is not quite affordable. The good news is there are several sites simulating heatmaps to help you optimize your Web pages.

One such site is Feng-GUI. In essence, it answers one of the most important questions in Web usability: What your online visitors are looking at? Here’s the technical version:

The Feng-GUI heatmap is based upon neuro-science studies of feature integration theory, salience, visual attention, eye-tracking sessions, perception and cognition of humans.

It’s a user-friendly site. Just type your Web address, hit “enter”, and Feng-GUI will generate your heatmap in a few seconds. You can also save the image for your basis. Here’s a sample of heatmap for our main page.

How accurate is Feng-GUI compared to eyetracking? Of course, there’s really no substitute to a formal eyetracking research. Just take a look at the comparison table below and be the judge.

Via Neuromarketing

Colors have a strong impact on our logical or emotional state. For instance, red evokes sexiness or aggressive nature while blue is associated with calmness and loyalty. You might find it hard to believe but colors can even help treat some diseases.

It is no surprise then that finding the right color or color combinations is proven to boost your brands. It helps attract attention and set a mood for your customers. Though a great logo designer (read what to look for in a good logo designer) can help you choose the right colors, it is also valuable to learn this aspect.

A common mistake committed by many entrepreneurs is using more colors in their logo designs. Each color creates a single message or association. So if you are using 5 colors in your logos or brands, it will deliver 5 different messages. Unfortunately, consumers cannot handle that much perception.

The first thing you should consider in finding the appropriate color is your competitors. It is not wise to copy the color scheme of the leading brands for it will create an impression that you’re just a second-rate version.

Also, pay attention to the demographics of your market such as gender, age and culture. A trendy neon green might appeal to youngsters but painful to look at for your average grandmas and grandpas. In a way, it sets the limitation of the color you can use.

For more information about this topic, I suggest you pay a visit to Inspiration Bit for it offers a comprehensive discussion of the dos and don’ts of colors.

Disclaimer: The image is for reference only. Hence, copyright belongs to the respective owners. If you are the owner and wish to have the image removed from this post, please send an e-mail to remove-logo@logodesignworks.com.

Can’t think of creative and effective ad or slogan to go with your impressive logo design? Burnout happens even to very creative individuals. Also, not all entrepreneurs have the much needed creativity or enough resources to commission a branding agency.

In case you badly needed an ad or a memorable slogan, you can visit The Ad Generator by Alexis Lloyd. It is a free mashup tool which manipulates languages and images to create fake advertisements every 15 to 30 seconds. Here are some of their samples.

Here’s the explanation of his process:

Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby generating fake advertisements on the fly. By remixing corporate slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold.

While some of the generated ads are really meaningless, visiting this site can guide you to the right direction or help spark the creativity within you. If you’re lucky, you might find the ideal slogan or ads for your small business here.

If you make a living from creative ideas like a great logo designer (read what to look for in a good logo designer) or painter or logo design, you ought to read the free e-book published by a London-based creativity coach Mark McGuinness entitled Time Management for Creative People (pdf).

Subtitled ‘Manage the Mundane – Create the Extraordinary’, this free 32-page book provides practical tips to help you maintain your creative focus while handling other business or personal commitments.

Undeniably there are numerous Websites tackling about time management but most of them are created for the consumption of the general public. Creative people, on the other hand, think differently. For instance, McGuinness pointed out most creative thinkers view organization, habit, and discipline as threats to creativity and not as good qualities to strive for.

Creativity is all about thinking outside the box and breaking the stereotypes. One of my favorite tips is to ring-fence your most creative time by asking the following questions:

When is your most creative time, when you are most alert and find it easy to focus?

If you could arrange your ideal schedule, what time would you ring-fence for focused creative work?

How close to your ideal schedule can you get within the constraints of your current situation?

Do you have a special place for creative work?

What physical triggers (such as pens, paper, computer hardware or software), rituals or routines do you use to get yourself in the right state of mind?

The e-book is under Creative Commons License, meaning you can share this on a noncommercial basis with any people you believe would benefit from these insights. Just keep the name of the author intact.

Via Creative Generalist

Whether you’re an aspiring graphic designer or not, there are times when you need to manipulate or edit images according to your needs. You might be blogger looking to improve the images in your site or simply an avid collector of memories. At the end of the day, most of us are after the same thing – high quality images.

Good thing Vivien of Inspiration Bit shared about Picnik, a FREE online image editor which allows you to manipulate photos to fit your needs. To make this tool more useful, you can install it as a Firefox or Internet Explorer add-on so you can just press right click on any image and you will have an option to pull that image to Picnik site for quick editing.

No need to buy expensive software like Adobe Photoshop for basic editing or download free graphic software and spend time to learn it. You just need an Internet connection and a Web browser.

It can be a stand alone application as well for non-heavy users. To make our lives a lot easier, it enables us to edit directly from popular sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, and Facebook.

Picnik users can rotate, resize, sharpen, remove red eyes, and crop images as part of its editing functions. Looking at the sample image above, you can add text, shapes, frames, touch-up, and effects like sepia, black & white, matte, and many others as well.

Standard features are free of charge. If you love this simple tool and happen to be a heavy user, you can upgrade to premium account for only $25 per year or around $2 per month.

Via Graphic Design Blog

We already highlighted the difference between vector graphics and raster graphics. Just to recap, vector graphics are ideal for those perfectionist designers who want high quality images and razor sharp precision. More importantly, it gives you the flexibility to resize images easily without sacrificing image quality.

However, the problem is you need to have illustration programs like Adobe Illustrator or Corel. Good thing there is VectorMagic, an online tool that converts bitmap images to vectors for FREE. This simple to use tool is the outcome of Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda.

You just need a decent browser like Mozilla Firefox, a Flash Player to see flash logo designs, and an image you want to vectorize. Just upload the image and this online tool will handle the rest. You can now resize the image without any pixelation whatsoever.

Source image can be in JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF format and you can download it in formats PS, SVG, PNG. See how this free service fares with Adobe Live Trace and Corel PowerTRACE.

Whether you’re using this for your personal or professional images, one thing is sure – it’s time to say goodbye to pixelated images.

Via freewaregenius

By Design links to various websites, blogs and resources related to blogging, design, analytics, and infographics. This round covers a domain name brainstormer, video search engine, video display widget, AJAX libraries, and a color tool.

1. Bust a (domain) name.
   

   Still considering a domain name for your website or blog? Not all the good ones are taken, despite what it might seem like. If you’re looking for the availability of the domains using a combination of words, try Bust A Name [via Randa Clay]. Just type in a few words in the “word combiner” and it’ll give you back a list of available domains using combinations of two words from your list. If a domain is available, you’ll get a drop down list that provides links to registrars.

2. Gujam Video Search Engine.
   

   Looking for video content for your website or blog? Gujam searches a number of video sites and returns the results collated for convenience.

3. WeShow video widgets.
   

   WeShow is a video sharing site that also offers a widget for displaying videos on a web page. The blog widget comes in one vertical and four horizontal formats, and each displays a snapshot of multiple videos that react when a mouse cursor hovers over them. You can customize the border color and select multiple content channel categories. Videos for selected channels for the widget appear to all come from YouTube, but I haven’t verified that.

4. MiniAjax.
   

   If you’ve been thinking about adding some Ajaxified dialogs, demo or info windows, draggable content, lightboxes, contact forms and much more, MiniAjax makes it easier. You can easily add a bit of “wow” to your site without having to code from scratch.

   MiniAjax is actually a portal to DHTML and JavaScript code available from several websites. There are snapshots of the use of each piece of code, along with an explanation. As far as I could tell, all of it is free.

5. Name That Color.
   

   Chir.ag offers a neat little color tool that can be used to learn color names. Drag the circle in the colorwheel or in the embedded color square, and the rectangular area to the right fills in with the selected color. Alternately, you can use the drop-down list of over 1500 colors. In addition to the RGB and Hex color values, the closest color name is show. There’s also a downloadable JavaScript library that you can use to embed the tool into your site.

By Design links to a variety of articles found online, with topics relating to design, blogging, information interfaces, analysis and more. This round summarizes articles about web surfing, color theory, and data charting.

1. Web surfing.
   

   Wisdump shows you how to surf like Tom Cruise. Surf the web that is. Read the article and you’ll understand the connection between the interesting web interfaces profiled there and the science fiction movie Minority Report, based on the Philip K. Dick short story. [For another wild information interface, watch Paycheck, another movie based on a PKD story, starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman.]

2. Home Page: Full Post or Excerpts?
   

   The more websites you surf, the more likely you are to prefer excerpts on each home page. Or will you? I personally don’t. I like full-text on home pages and in RSS feeds. It’s a necessity for me because of the amount of content I have to browse regularly. But some people prefer it.

   An alternative is to have full-text on the home page and excerpts on archive pages (page 2, page 3, etc.). If that’s something you like, Daniel and Daily Blog Tips has a free Homepage Excerpts plugin for WordPress blogs. Previously, David at Xfep  did the same thing manually and provided some WP PHP code.

3. Color harmonies and matching.
   

   EasyRGB offers a set of tools for those of  you that work with color:

   1. Color matching.
   2. Color harmonies.
   3. Color calculator.
   4. Monitor calibration.
   5. Tint searching.

   In addition to these web-based tools, they offer EasyRGB-PC, which runs on Windows computers.

4. Browser-safe colors.
   

   Website Tips provides an easy-reference grid of browser-safe colors, organized by hue. These are the colors that are supposedly consistent on any computer monitor, provided they’re calibrated. Also see Design Vitality, who offer the meanings of basic colors, in terms of moods set.

5. Charting tools.
   

   Need to create charts from data on the fly? PHP/SWF Charts [via WebAppers] is a tool for PHP scripts that generates Flash charts and graphs. There’s also an XML/SWF version that functions the same way with other scripting languages including ASP, Perl and more. Both have a full complement of standard charting and graphing features – including lines, columns, pie, candlestick, and more – so they can be used for a variety of data.

Not everyone agrees, but Technorati does have value to bloggers. If you agree, then you also probably feel that being on their  Technorati Top 100 at least gives your blog authority, and probably additional traffic as a side effect. It might also result in your blog accumulating more back links. So it behooves you to at least try aiming to get on their list – an activity which is essentially an exercise in link building.

Disclaimer

The fact that none of the blogs I write for are on the Technorati 100 (but a few of them are actually closing in) should tip you off to the fact that this article is speculation. However, it is speculation based on sound link building principles that I’ve learned after over a year of intense application of these principles. So, here are some tips for making your way towards the Technorati 100.

Premise

Being on the Technorati 100 list will bring you fame and fortune. Well, at least blog authority in your niche.

5 Rules

Here’s what you need to keep in mind, before you apply the 7 methods listed below.

1. Aim high.
   Build at least as many backlinks as the blog at position #100 in the Technorati 100. Then build more.
2. Plan ahead.
   Have a strategy to keep garnering backlinks from both new blogs and those already linking to you.
3. Factor in the momentum value.
   Technorati only counts blogs giving you a backlink for 180 days. That is, if Blog B links to Blog A today (as far as Technorati is concerned), blog B needs to link again before 180 days are up – counted from today. If that doesn’t happen, the backlink from B ceases to be considered in A’s Authority measure.
4. Could you repeat that?
   Repeat your link building strategy. If you gain, say, 10-20 new links every week of the next year, that’s about 500-1000 new links per year. Even with Technorati’s 180-day link value expiry, you’ll get noticed and gain links from elsewhere.
5. Set limits.
   Give yourself a time limit to reach #100. You can and should aim higher, though do it in stages. If you are aiming for #1, expect it take a while, even if you have a team of bloggers, link baiters, and SEOs.

7 Ways

These are only seven ways that might get you on the Technorati 100. They are neither the only ways nor are they guaranteed. It’s the sum of the parts, not any individual method, that will carry you up the list.

1. Target the Linkerati.
   The Linkerati are those people online that are most likely to link to you or get someone to do so. Suggestion: start by linking to all the blogs in your niche that are in the top 101-500 positions at Technorati.
2. Target the movers and shakers.
   Next, after success with Linkerati, target the blogs on the Technorati 100 list. These bloggers are much harder to get backlinks from, for several reasons:
   1. They get so many backlinks that they don’t “see” yours.
   2. They don’t know you.
   3. You are not in their niche.
   4. They know you and consider you a threat because you are following the suggestions in this article.

   At the least, linking to relevant authority blogs in a way that’s useful to your readers will build your authority, possibly amongst search engines. That will eventually pay off because other bloggers will take notice and link to you.

3. Be a profiler.
   Profile each and every blogger on the 100 list. Then email/ contact every one of them. Don’t expect 100% success in catching a backlink, but if you score even a handful of PR6-10 links, it’s worthwhile. You can also profile each blog on the 100 list. Indicate their method of monetization, posting frequency, age, etc.
4. Be an ass-kisser.
   This networking advice comes courtesy of Ryan Caldwell at Performancing. There are lots of top bloggers that will be happy to help you online. You have to find them, then give them something before expecting something back.
5. Be analytical.
   Analyze the Top 200 (authority, subscriptions, backlinks, or content-wise) and present it in an interesting fashion, with outbound links to select sites (at least 20).
6. Give credit.
   Come up with your own blog awards for various niches, and link to the Top 200. The Catch-22 is that your blog needs some authority (high subscriptions, medium PR) else the award may not be taken seriously. A quality, meaningful Awards scheme will still produce some backlinks, though it may require a year’s worth of work before that shows, so prepare in advance.

   If you can’t come up with blog awards try web award for resource sites or web applications. Be unique. Remember to contact each site about your Awards, and cross your fingers. If you’re really lucky, they’ll link back to you from their own official blog, which will count in Technorati.

7. Have a plan.
   Come up with other clever ways to get back links from blogs. Present info about a selection of sites. This could be some interesting way that you’ve clustered similar sites and made it easy for a reader to use. Or you could analyze trends [via ChrisG.com] in the Top 100 and publish that – making sure you link out to those sites. Keep in mind that you do not need to be on Digg to make the Technorati 100.

Return

The idea is that if you link to enough of these blogs regularly, and you have good content on your blog, at least some of them will link back eventually. At first, you’re more likely to succeed with bloggers in your niche in the 101-500 positions. That should increase your backlinks and thus your Technorati authority. Then, if you try again with blogs in #1-100 positions, you might just find that you get enough high authority backlinks that everything else falls into place.

Alternatives

There is another way to get on the Technorati 100 which I have not mentioned yet. That’s to be “favorited” by other Technorati members. Personally, I think that this is a lot harder to control or “calculate”, and it does not increase your Technorati authority. It also gets gamed due to “reciprocal favoriting”, which may get discounted in the future. I believe in organic link building, which means not targeting the favoriting method.

Caveats

On the other hand, now that I’ve revealed all this, it might be that much harder. Most bloggers will not want to lose their spot. Some will be climbing up the list themselves, and some might even not link to you out of spite. However, since the Top 100 bloggers are unlikely to be reading this article, you’re probably safe.

Conclusion

You’re probably asking why all this is any different than your current link building plan. In the worst-case scenario, attempting all this will garner you attention from other bloggers not in the Top 100.

The algorithm used to calculated the Top 100 is not necessarily perfect, it’s subject to change and being gamed. However, aiming to be on it gives you a mental focus. Simply by trying, you’ve put yourself in the mindset of producing a better quality blog, which in turn will result in an increase your blog’s authority and ranking. If you’re persistent with your goal, you might just get into the Top 100.

While doing some semi-random surfing using Stumbleupon, I came across a website, 10 Ways, that is a collaboration of five designers, each with two projects. Two that caught my eye are Light and Information, both found under project Sumona. They are variations on a similar idea, using images (from Getty Images) in a fascinating way.

Light has a collection of images mapped onto a a rotating sphere that you can interact with.

Information starts with an initial image, and as you zoom in on area, you see a grid of smaller images that constitute the image – like pseudo-pixels. The idea is not new, but it’s presentation on a website is not one I’ve seen before.

I recorded a 3 minute screencast of a “journey” through Information, which you can see below. Please note: all of the images used in the Information project and thus the video below are property of Getty Images.

If you haven’t explored Technorati, the blog search engine, you might be surprised at what a great tool for bloggers that it is. This short list shows you there is more to Technorati than you might realize, and many of the features are useful to bloggers.

1. Find hot terms: top searches.
   Want to know what people are searching for on Technorati? Check the Top Searches list. If you search for the same terms a fair bit, use the Watchlist feature, which acts like an automated search aggregator.
2. Find hot terms: top tags.
   Technorati indexes blogs and assigns one or more tags for each blog post. The Top Tags tag cloud displays what tags are most common at the moment. This data can change at any time Technorati indexes new blog posts anywhere in the blogosphere. Note that Technorati tags might overlap blog platform categories but are not the same.
3. Find popular rich media.
   Want to know what videos, music, movies, games and other items are popular right now? Technorati scans blog posts – that it has indexed – for links to known “media” sites such as YouTube, IMDB and Amazon and builds a Popular list.
4. Blogosphere search.
   Search for blog posts mentioning a specific keyword/ phrase. The results are displayed starting from the freshest.
5. Find niche blogs.
   Search for blogs falling into a specifc niche category. This is a great tool for building up Top X Blogs lists for a certain category.
6. Track backlinks.
   Use their Cosmos feature to determine who is linking to you. Amongst other uses, this also helps you track blog carnivals you might have been accepted into.
7. Get traffic.
   Once Technorati indexes your blog, that could bring you traffic, especially if you are writing in a popular niche. It’s not guaranteed, but it could help.
8. Spread trends
   That’s “Where’s the Fire?”, not the other meaning. WTF is Technorati’s social voting feature. Submit a brief description of a topic to create some buzz about it. You can include relevant links, so a WTF might bring you traffic. Just don’t spam WTF.
9. Claim your blog(s).
   Let other Technorati users know that a blog is yours by claiming it. You can even put an avatar up if you like, and your bio.
10. Favorite some blogs.
    The Favorite feature simply aggregates the latest posts from any blogs you add to it. They can be your own or someone elses. Essentially, you can use it in lieu of an RSS reader.
11. Customize Technorati tools.
    Use the Technorati API to build custom applications, or use one of the many widgets or plugin tools.
12. Find popular blogs.
    See what sites have the greatest buzz going. Blogs listed in the Technorati Top 100 already get a lot of traffic, but being on the list is sort of self-perpetuating. Or at least it had been, and many bloggers complained that they didn’t stand a chance at cracking the list.

    Then Technorati started applying a sort of momentum measure for Authority. That is, Authority indicates the number of sites linking to your blog, but those links are no longer permanently recorded in Technorati. They’re only good for 180 days. So newer popular blogs now stand a chance of knocking off veteran bloggers.

Bonus Use: Web 2.0 logo mashup random slideshow.
Here’s how to have some real web 2.0 mashup fun. This is completely frivolous, but a bit of entertainment.

1. Sign up for a free Technorati API key.
2. Pick a term, any term.
3. Build a Yahoo! Pipe and use the URL Builder and Fetch Feed modules to retrieve search results for that term.
4. Sort results chronologically (most recent first).
5. Use the Term Extractor module to extract any keywords.
6. Use the Loop and Flickr modules to pull 1 or more images that have tags related to each extracted term.
7. Feed the output URL to a slideshow player such as SplashCast.

It’s quite possible I’ve forgotten something, since there’s a lot more to Technorati than just a blog search engine.

Blogging carnivals can be a very effective way to promote your website and build links. They’re free, requiring only your time to find and submit URLs to appropriate carnivals, and writing good content to submit.

I’ve been running several carnivals for clients and it gets tedious at times to keep track of submissions. Because many blog carnival hosts prefer only one submission per person per week, it’s simple etiquette to track the URLs you’ve sent, when you did, etc.

If you are running a link building campaign, it’s also good to track which carnivals accepted your entries so that you can link back. (It’s also carnival etiquette, though unfortunately too many bloggers don’t bother linking back.)

Keeping track of at least your carnival submissions simply takes a bit of organization.

Basic strategy:

1. Create two spreadsheets for weekly use:
   1. Track the articles you’ve submitted and where.
      • Column 1: URL of the article submitted.
      • Col 2: Date of submission.
      • Col 3: Carnival name
      • Col 4: Status (accepted or not)
      • Col 5: If accepted, then the URL of the carnival edition.

      Update this spreadsheet whenever you (1) have a new quality article to promote, (2) have submitted an article to a carnival, or (3) have been accepted to a carnival.

   2. Track most recent submission to any carnival. There is obviously a bit of overlap, but this sheet also serves to be an easy reference to any carnivals you’ve previously submitted to.
      • Col 1: Carnival name.
      • Col 2: Carnival submission page URL.
      • Col 3: Homepage of carnival [optional].
      • Col 4: Next edition [optional]
      • Col 5: Last URL submitted.
      • Col 6: When submitted.

      What I do is after a submitted article has been published to a carnival, I clear out the info in Cols 5-6.

   Summary:

   • From spreadsheet 1, I can see which articles haven’t been promoted enough, whether due to lack of enough submissions, or because they were not accepted.
   • From spreadsheet 2, I remind myself to check if a carnival submitted to has published the article in question.
   • I use Google Spreadsheets because they’re easy to use and can be shared teammates and/or clients.
2. Each week, choose 2-3 articles to submit to 3-5 carnivals each. Keep in mind that your blogging niche may or may not have enough weekly carnivals. Do your best. Get creative in the next step.
3. For each article you intend to submit, make a short list of 3-5 keywords/ tags/ categories.
4. Using the first item in the keyword list for an article, search for appropriate carnivals at BlogCarnival.
5. Read over the carnival description, and if you’re article suits, submit it.
6. Repeat this with any of the keywords until you’ve submitted the same article to 3-5 different carnivals.
7. Repeat the process with each article you’re promoting that week. Remember to keep track in your spreadsheets.

Additional strategy:
Here are a few extra tips that I use.

1. If you’re having a hard time finding appropriate carnivals:
   1. Make a mindmap of the article titles to be promoted.
   2. Brainstorm keywords for each title..
   3. Now search for new carnivals for each keyword.
2. Were you accepted to any carnivals? Track accepted submissions in Technorati. Simply type in your blog’s full homepage URL in the Technorati search field to see what blogs have linked to you. (If a website links, Technorati will not pick it up.)
3. Automate the tracking process using the Technorati API and custom code. I use the API features in a custom Yahoo! Pipes pipe to first search for any “Cosmos” links to my blog, then filter the list further by only looking at entries with the word “Carnival”. Unfortunately, due to some glitch, this Pipe only works in debug mode. I’ll release it here when it functions properly.

It boils down to this: there are so many weblogs out there that if you start a new one, it might take you a long time to build any traffic. Under normal circumstances, that’s your likely path. But if you start acquiring methods to build your blog’s profile, you can change your fate away from anonymity.

If you have the budget for full-blown SEO services, great. If you don’t, you have the option of doing nothing, or using Kaizen – a philosophy of constant improvement by slow degrees.

There are many things you can do, by degrees, to improve your website‘s authority, popularity and ranking – much of which I hope to discuss on this blog over time. It’s not enough to just have an ambitious editorial calendar or to simply write great linkbait. You also have to promote your website.

One of the best ways to do this is through SMM – Social Media Marketing. There are several types of social media sites, but the ones we’re focusing on in this post allow you to setup a member profile, submit articles, and vote and possibly comment on submissions.

The drawback for wallflowers is that most social media sites frown on people submitting their own articles. You need to make “friends” who have similar article tastes and niche interests, add them to your “follow” list, and hope that they add you at some point. When they do, they’ll watch for what you submit or vote on, and may add their own vote. If you establish real friendships, you can ask them if they’ll submit your articles.

To help yourself towards that goal, it’s good to find articles elsewhere that you feel are high quality, then submit those, hoping people will vote. The better/ more useful/ more targeted the article, the more likely it’ll garner votes and show up on the home page, thus increase your success rate. So it does take a fair bit of effort to use social media, and if you don’t have the time to build a profile, you might have to hire an SMM. But if you choose the most appropriate sites for your niche, SMM is very effective.

Here are a list of the social media sites I use regularly, whether to promote articles of friends, vote on items of mine that others have submitted, or simply to check out what’s new:

1. DailyHub.
   Targets mostly the business and entrepreneuring niches. This site is still in beta, as far as I know. So it does not yet send a lot of traffic. I use it already to build my profile.
2. Del.icio.us.
   General bookmarking site with “save” feature, which amounts to voting.
3. Digg.
   Choose categories wisely when submitting articles, else face the wrath of Diggers. More tech-oriented, but with other categories.
4. Reddit.
   General. Use it regularly or your account will disappear. Heavy on politics and pictures.
5. Smoochr.
   Various categories, including business, entertainment, travel and more. The site is still in alpha, with bugs to be worked out. But build your profile “karma” now, for later promotional rewards. [Disclaimer: I'm part owner.]
6. Sphinn.
   Geared towards SEO/ SEM/ SMM. You can submit your own, but fresh approaches are what the more experienced members want to read about.
7. Stumbleupon.
   This differs from all of the above because you need to install a browser plugin. You “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” a site, “stumble” it by submitting a site, or “stumble” to browse the current entries. Stumbleupon was originally oriented towards promoting sites with visual content and appeal, but now has a considerable number of categories. Neil Patel provides a bit more depth about getting Stumbled.

As I noted above, these are the sites I use. Not all of them may be suitable for the niches you want to promote. If you’re looking for a more comphrensive list with niche sites, check out Andy Hagan’s list of social media sites that actually send traffic. He’s constantly updating the list.

You’ve tackled the relatively small task of devising an editorial calendar for your blog, and know where to find research sources. Now you need a good tool to compose articles with. Well if you spend any significant part of the day without Internet access, the Zoho Writer application now works offline. Type up your documents offline, then synchronize with your account when you have Internet access. What could be easier?

Well, that’s the idea, anyway. For now, the offline version only allows reading of documents, not writing. They’re getting to read/write offline, but it’ll be about another month. You will also need to install a browser plugin that works with IE 6+ and Firefox 1.5+ (including Mac).

I use ZohoWriter every day, but mostly for the word count feature, not for actual composition of an article. It can, however, substitute as an free alternative to Microsoft Word. And it exports to HTML format.

For documents, I prefer to use OpenOffice. For blog posts, I use an older version of the PFF (Performancing for Firefox) extension, now called ScribeFire). This PFF/ ScribeFire is incredible because you have the option of running it (1) in a Firefox tab, (2) in the bottom pane of your Firefox window, or (3) in a separate window. If you’re careful, you can run two instances. Just don’t edit the same file in two places or you’ll be crying.

Note that ScribeFire 1.4.2, released in early August, supports Firefox 3. However, one blogger claimed that it does not seem to post to WordPress blogs. I have not tested it yet as I have no plans to swith from the old PFF version. So if you’re running an older version of ScribeFire or PFF, you might want to do a bit of research before switching to a new version.

If you haven’t heard of Yahoo! Pipes, you’re missing out on an incredibly powerful, multi-purpose Web 2.0 service that you should seriously consider for your blogging research and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) toolbox. Here are just seven reasons to do that.

1. Feed mashups.
   The fundamental purpose of Yahoo! Pipes appears to be the ability to take numerous RSS feeds from endless sources and mashup them up. This includes filtering (which doubles as search), sorting, and data transformation. Of course, since Pipes outputs results in RSS format, you can subscribe to the results of any Pipe. They have subscribe buttons for several feed readers, or you can copy the auto-generated RSS URL.
2. Data analysis.
   At the time of this writing, Pipes just released eight new modules, many of which allow transformation and/or analysis of input feed data. They’ll likely be adding more modules in the future, possibly until the point that Pipes’ operators rivals XSLT – a poorly supported, standard XML querying language. (RSS feeds are a form of XML – eXtensible Markup Language.)
3. Plug and play Web 2.0 logo components.
   Not only can you take the output of a Pipe and send it to a compatible Web 2.0 application, you can pull information into Pipes from numerous Web 2.0 services. There are both custom and generic modules to do this. Or you can simply take the output of a pipe and feed it to an HTML badging, to display a block of snippets on your website.
4. Visual interface.
   Pipe-building is done on an empty, visual canvas, with drag-and-drop blocks that you drag-and-connect up with “tubes”. Pipes is sort of the visual equivalent of XSLT, which requires learning a whole ‘nother language.
5. No need to be a programmer.
   Photographers that I know managed to learn Perl and PHP web programming. But with Pipes, there isn’t any regular programming. There is the visual equivalent of programming operations, but if you understand their functionality, you can learn to string the modules together to do what you need.
6. Complex applications.
   Multiple Pipes can be snapped together like blocks to build complex Web 2.0 mashups.
7. Resusable applications.
   Each Yahoo! Pipe has one of two modes that it can be in: published or unpublished (default). Once you publish a Pipe, someone else can use it, either just to run it, or they can clone it and tweak it to customize. You can also clone and tweak your own Pipes, even if they’re not published. Cloning saves a great deal of time for Pipes development.

Yahoo! Pipes is still in beta mode, so on occasion there’s quirky behavior, unresponsive servers, and changing modules. And yet, it is arguably one of the most powerful Web 2.0 services to date. It’s free, although you do need to be signed up for a Yahoo! Mail account.

Watch this blog for custom Pipes, as well as the occasional video screencast tutorial explaining how to to build a Pipe.

A good email client is a critical part of your toolkit if you’re planning to work online or establish any sort of web presence for your online or offline business. But then, you probably already know that. If you’re a fan of GMail (Google Mail), or just getting started, you may want to subscribe to their new official Gmail blog.

At this writing, there’s only their intro post, but no doubt it’ll spill all kinds of great tips for one of the best web-based email systems available. Veteran web-based email clients from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and others now have a spiffier AJAX-based interface, though GMail is still superior in many ways.

Some Gmail features

Google Mail has a few quirks that need fixing, such as the inability to open email messages in new browser windows/ tabs. However, there are many great features that make up for it:

1. Multi-acount integration.
   Download email from other email account providers. You can leave a copy at the source or delete. The email can be redirected to a specific folder in your GMail account, or stuffed in the inbox.
2. Message threads.This is more old-school than new. Many old pre-Internet mail systems had this feature. If you start a “conversation” and your recipients respond, all of the messages are clustered in a “conversation thread” for easy access. This can be both a boon and a burden, depending on how you use email. For example, if you want to send someone an email but on a new topic unrelated to other discussions, you should start a new thread. Just create a fresh email message instead of lazily responding to their last message to you.
3. Folder redirection.
   Need to redirect email from one or more sources into special folders automatically? GMail makes it incredibly simple. I use this feature to auto-redirect newsletter subscriptions into a folder that I can look over later. Just create a “filter rule”, state any senders addresses, and the folder to redirect to.
4. Wildcard account names.Want to sign up for various newsletters but are wondering if they’re honoring privacy? Use a wildcard name to sign up. (In fact, you can use a unique email address for each signup and create a redirection filter for each, as well.) If you start to receive unexpected email, you’ll be able to track which site has given your email address away. The way it works is to augment your existing Gmail address. So if that’s yourname@gmail.com, and if you want to sign up at, say, greatnewsletters.org, you could use something like yourname+gnl.org@gmail.com in the signup form. The text after the “+” is arbitrary, but make it unique for that signup. The caveat is that some web signup forms may either limit the number of characters in your email address or not be able to parse the plus sign. So this feature isn’t always useful. There are other uses of the wildcard. Consider visiting Amit Agarwal’s Digital Inspiration, which has many great articles on GMail and other technologies.
5. Storage space.
   GMail gives you over 2Gb of message space, which can act as an online backup disk, provided you don’t exceed your Internet provider’s monthly bandwidth. The amount of space actually keeps increasing over time, a feature that a number of other webmail services are also offering. This can be used as a handy way to transfer files between two computers, without having to open up sharing on your hard drives. Just create an email message, attach the file (up to 20 Mb is the official word), then save the message as a draft. Then log into GMail on the other computer, open up the draft, and save the attachment to that computer’s hard disk. The alternative is to
   • (a) use a local network,
     (b) burn a CD-Rom,
     (c) use the file sharing feature on a chat client such as Google Talk or Skype, or
     (d) some other file-sharing service.
6. Multiple accounts.
   Is 2+ Gb not enough for you? You can just sign up for another GMail account. Provided you’re not abusing the usage, Google probably will not mind.
7. Better spam filtering.
   While the quantity of spam being sent to my GMail account is increasing rapidly, the numbers ending up in my inbox instead of the spam folder is decreasing. I can’t say the same about Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, unfortunately. And the “webmail” installation that comes with many budget Internet hosting plans doesn’t seem to trap any spam whatsoever. Believe it or not, GMail does a better job of filtering the spam sent to my Yahoo email address, which I manage from GMail, than Yahoo Mail does.
8. WYSIWYG editor.
   Okay, this isn’t an exclusive, though I find working with GMail’s message editor very much like editing a web page in “view” mode. It’s easy to use and compatible with email clients that can handle HTML.
9. Integration with web services.
   Google has been integrating GMail with their other web-based “Office” software. If you receive, say, an MS-Word email attachment, you can choose to view it either in
   • (a) MS-Word,
     (b) as HTML in a browser window/ tab, or
     (c) as a Google Docs document in a browser/ tab.

   The same goes for PDF files, Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, and no doubt more in the future.

10. Integrated chat client.
    GTalk is the in-client version of Google Talk for GMail. If you have GTalk turned on in your GMail settings, you can actually chat from within GMail to one of your contacts. Some people don’t like the tiny chat window, and only people with GMail accounts can participate (to the best of my knowledge).
11. Integration with MS Outlook.
    If you ultimately prefer a desktop email client such as MS Outlook, which is well-integrated with many other productivity packages, you can access GMail from Outlook (and other destkop clients). However, you lose out on GMail web client-specific features.

There are loads of other features, including all sorts of keyboard shortcuts for power users. Some drawbacks:

1. A message cannot be opened in a separate browser window/ tab.
2. GMail’s rapid popularity has resulted in mail distribution delays of several hours at times.

Aside from these drawbacks, the key thing for business owners to note is that even if you
have an official business email address that uses your website‘s domain name, you can integrate it with a GMail account and manage it from there.