We can all name a few blogs that would be categorized as huge successes.  But they didn’t get that way overnight.  Each blogmaster was very deliberate when it came to the steps they took that eventually got them to where they are now.  So, what can you do to put your blog on the path to future success too?  Use these tips to begin building a successful blog today.

1. Be true to yourself
 Write posts from your heart.  Be personal.  While a lot of posts are meant to be informative or instructional, that doesn’t mean you can’t put your own touches on them and use first person language (ex. I, me, mine).  The most successful blogs are those that are both professional and personal.  Let your readers get know you through your blog and you will have a better chance of success.

2. Make it useful
 Most of the popular blogs are popular because they are useful.  Yes, there are some phenomenons, but for the most part readers subscribe to a blog because the posts are helpful and increase their knowledge on a topic that they are interested in.  Approach every post from the reader’s perspective.  How realistic is my how-to post?  Is this new information that readers haven’t heard before?  Your goal is to be the know-all, end-all blog in your particular niche and the way to do that is to post dangerously useful content.

3.  Social media-ize your blog
 Bluntly put: you can’t afford to NOT take full advantage of social media.  It’s so simple to use and can have a good return on time-investment if you regularly use it.  Use Twitter to push your posts and interact with readers, and get on Digg, delicious, and StumbleUpon.  In addition, the power of networking with other bloggers should not be underestimated.  Find the big, well-established blogs in your niche and send them a link to a post of yours (only if it’s AMAZING and their readers will find it very interesting). Keep in mind, that 99% of the time, you won’t hear back from them because they get hundreds of spam messages and emails like yours every day.  However, you may just get lucky once or twice which is all you need!

4.  Use attention catchers
 Attention getting images and titles should become best practice for your blog.  Usually your image and title is what the reader sees first.  If they aren’t compelling enough, they won’t read any further and perhaps move on to the next blog that’s similar to yours.  However, if you have a great image and title, that brings you one step closer to winning over a new reader.

5. Interact with your readers
 When a reader takes the time to read your post, digest it, and leave a comment, that’s pure gold.  You don’t want to leave them hanging out to dry!  Since a blog is really just a big conversation, take the time to read your comments and respond to them.  Whether you reply with  a quick “thanks for your input!” comment or answer any questions, this goes a long way with readers and will keep them coming back for more.  In addition, don’t forget to respond to those following you on social media channels.  If a follower replies to one of your tweets, make sure you respond.  People want to get to know the mastermind behind the blog, so show yourself through your interactions!

Now that you have these important tips under your belt, you can begin your journey to a successful blog now!  The best way to learn is to try these steps and see which ones work best for you and be ready to tweak and hone them to fit you and your blog.  You too can create a popular blog.  All it takes is a little discipline and deliberation.  Happy blogging!

About the author:  Julia is a writer passionate about health, fitness & blogging. When she’s not running her dog she can sometimes be found writing about Smartlipo, cooking and a myriad of other topics.

There are many interesting, surprising and bizarre incidents that took place in the lives of our celebrated internet entrepreneurs and internet companies. This post is a quick compilation of interesting incidents in 2010 related to internet entrepreneurs.

Kanye West Performs At Twitter Headquarters

This one takes the cake away for being among the most amusing things that happened in 2010. When people set up a Twitter account or create a new Facebook fan page – they begin to belt out their updates. Kanye West went a step ahead in the July of 2010 when he performed at the Twitter headquarters.  The mammothly successful internet company also put up photographs of Kanye West’s visit on its company Twitter Office Flickr page.

This was no big deal for him though. Earlier, Kanye West also stopped by the offices of Facebook in Palo Alto, California, to preview several brand-new tracks for a roomful of rather awestruck Facebook employees.

Google Releases List Of Strangest Searches By American Users

Google tabulated a funny list of the strangest searches of the year, based on its American users.

They are:

— Can a horse have OCD?

— Am I bipolar or overachiever?

— Why are Americans afraid of dragons?

— Ninjas are better than pirates

— Why is a raven like a writing desk?

— Why does Brian Wilson dye his beard?

— Should I marry him?

— I wish I could speak whale

— Why couldn’t you stand on the sun’s surface?

— Why does my baby grunt?

Italian Woman Places Charges Against Virtual Facebook Burglar

Do you call yourself a Facebook addict? Well, then you might be in for some tough competition. In a bizarre case, Paola Letizia has filed charges against an unknown user for breaking and robbing a house, the one which exists not in the domain of physical reality but inside a Facebook game in the virtual world. The hacker had cracked her password and stripped the virtual house inside the game “Pet Society”. Paola Letizia had decorated the home for her virtual cat, which to her relief has been left behind, and the list of stolen items indicate a loss of $140. The case has been handed to the National Post Office for investigation.

Steve Jobs Proves He’s Human

Photos posted on  the popular tech blog – TechCrunch created ruffle when Apple demi-god, CEO Steve Jobs was spotted in San Francisco hotspot Flour + Water over the weekend. Soon there were many parodical stories that did the rounds of the internet. One of the best that I found was that of – eSarcasm. They are a must read if you have a good sense of humor!

Mark Zuckerberg’s Girlfriend Demands A Contract

After graduating in spring 2007, Priscillia Chan finally took the Facebook job in July 2010 and moved to California. Not that she was an easy hire: Zuckerberg’s long-distance sweetheart demanded a contract specifying one date per week and 100 minutes of alone time, minimum, before agreeing to move out West.

Hope you enjoyed the post!

Twitter is an asset to internet business. In any business there are three important parts – customers, your company and its competition. Twitter as a social media, can help you in all of these three aspects. It can help you update yourself on your competition, what your clients are talking about you and in your brand management.

Here is a more detailed explanation of how Twitter can help you in your business:

Keeping Track of Competition

You will have other companies in your industry who are competing for the same customers as you. Twitter will help you look for other people in your field and follow them. Keep track of them and see what new initiatives are making them tick and what is not. It is very important you track your competition because inaction to their progress can backfire on you.

Keeping Track of Clients

Follow clients who have used your services or are clients of your products. This gesture in itself will make them fans of your customer feedback. By following their tweets, you can understand what is important to them. Tailor your products and services accordingly and it will be very helpful in the customer satisfaction of future clients.

Keeping Track of Yourself

Apart from tracking of your competition and your clients – Twitter is very good to keep a tab on what people are talking about your business. You can search Twitter for your company name or products. Check if people talk about it and what they say. Is it good? Thank them. If it is not, get their feedback. What is lacking? This is also known as brand management. Twitter can come in as a very effective brand management tool.

How do you use Twitter in your business?

Twitter is much more interesting than the 140-character tweets that we update. There are so many interesting services that have rolled out since the Twitter craze began. In this list I have only added the free Twitter services, however there are also some paid alternatives that offer much more powerful insights.

Here is a list of 6 interesting Twitter services you should check out. Enjoy.

TwitterGrader: Those of you who are obsessed with checking their influence on Social Media can make use of Twitter Grader. Twitter Grader is a free tool that allows you to check the power of your twitter profile compared to millions of other users that have been graded. You just need to  type in your Twitter username. This service also allows you to see how long a user has been using his/her Twitter profile.

Twitturly:  It helps a user track the links on Twitter and displays the hot URLs. Which means you get to know about the most popular links that are being talked about on Twitter. Each time that you send a link to your followers on Twitter, Twitturly takes a note of it and applies your vote to that URL. They do this with the help of their spiders.this service can track all the URL-shortening services and correctly trace the actual URLs.

Twitturly only shows the 100 most popular URLs over the last 24 hours. So check out their home page.

Monitter: You can monitor the activity in the Twitter community  for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying. This service can be very useful if you have a brand or company that you want to check for feedback. It is a pretty powerful Twitter service and it is free.

TweetStats: This service can help you get a graphical representation of the Twitter stats including your average Tweets in an hour, day, month etc. It also gives you intelligence on Who you retweet most, Tweet cloud, Twooshes and much more.

Firefox Twitter: Use this Firefox addon service to keep up with Twitter while your browse the web. Firefox is an extension that adds a tiny icon to the status bar. It notifies you when friends post tweets and has a text entry field for posting your own tweets.

TwitPic: This is a very popular service which is used by celebrities and average Twitter users alike. You can post photos to TwitPic from your phone, from the site, or through email. All popular Twitter clients have built-in support for TwitPic too.

Before you exit this post, you might also like to check out 10 Useful Twitter Addons For Firefox. I hope the services listed in the post are interesting for you.

Do you have any interesting links to suggest? Add a comment, thanks!

Startups, whether internet based or not need a name. This is where this post will come in handy for you. Choosing a great name for your startup which will help you with online presence is an uphill task. Entrepreneurs should focus on choosing such a name for their startup that can help them brand easily on the web. You cannot ignore the web anymore. The name of your startup must be able to create a brand online without conflicts.

So here are 5 practical tips to name your startup so as to to suit the internet.

Try to convey what your company is about: Your startup name should be able to give a hint to others at what it is about. Totally made-up names like “Xerox” etc. may be used but using words that are present in the English vocabulary will make it easy for other to remember your company. This is the first fundamental step to choose a name for your startup so it can perform well online.

Make sure you get the “.com”: Pretty obvious, and yet not so. There are many entrepreneurs who would settle for a “.net” or “.org” along with their startup name. This is an absolute no, you need to get the “.com” extension for your startup’s name, so choose accordingly. The reason is that most people would type in your company name and hit “Ctrl+Enter”. So be careful about this.

Brand Your Startup Online

Make sure you get the trademark: Getting a domain name registered under your name and earning a trademark right for it are two different things. So when you get a “.com” extension domain name that suits your startup make sure that you also get the trademark for that name so as to avoid conflicts with another brand that is already using it!

The Facebook Page should be available: 500 million users on Facebook, that is one Facebook user for every 14 people. Check on Facebook that your Facebook fanpage user is not taken. Try visiting http://facebook.com/yourname and see if there’s something there.

The Twitter handle must be available: Last but not the least, the Twitter handle must available. Period. Don’t play with hyphens or numbers. It is your brand and you need a simplistic Twitter handle that flatly represents your company name. That is the way to go.

Once you check on these points, an entrepreneur can finally be sure that his chosen name for the startup can be active on the internet as well. Which is becoming increasingly important each day.

Mark Zuckerberg has truly made it to the top of the hate list of many traditional entrepreneurs. Just as they were coming to terms with the wave to take their business online, Zuckerberg hits them with Facebook. And all of a sudden the social media scene becomes an unavoidable aspect of entrepreneurship.

I could throw a few numbers to show you how quickly social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are growing but then I am sure most of you are already aware of it. It has been covered in newspapers, magazines and many publications.

This new rage of social media marketing on Facebook requires the following out of an entrepreneur:

• Create a Facebook fan page for their business.
• Promote it via blogs and (or) Facebook ads.
• Post latest updates, offers regarding your business online.
• Interact with your fans.

The task of connecting with your customers online has become a necessity rather than a choice. Because the internet marketing offers you the following distinct advantages to better your competition:

• What your customers think about you.
• What customers think about your competitors.
• Understand trending of your customer demands.
• Connect with your customers personally thereby creating higher loyalty.

Due to these factors, traditional entrepreneurs who tend to ignore social media tools like Facebook and Twitter take a bad beating. Because their more adaptive competition gets all the connection with the customers at these social hubs. This is why social media marketing has become a nightmare for entrepreneurs who like the old-school way of working.

Another serious issue many traditional entrepreneurs face with social media tools is the deficit in technical knowledge and the way these social tools work. For example, if you need to customize the Facebook  fan page with new tabs then you need to be adept at Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language).

Social Media and Entrepreneurs

In the end what needs to be understood is that Social media marketing is a real-time method to connect with people. And entrepreneur have a much higher chance to grow faster than they expected using these social media tools. It can be worth the time and money you may invest into your social media campaigns.

If you wish to follow successful entrepreneurs present on Twitter then this post will provide you with a list you can build upon. By following other internet entrepreneurs you can learn a lot from their tweets and connect with their methods of functioning.

This post will be updated continually so perhaps you can bookmark this page for future reference. Here is the list of internet entrepreneurs you can follow on Twitter. Enjoy!

Neil Patel:

His blog’s tag line – “I’m Kind of a Big Deal” had me rolling with laughter. Neil is a successful internet entrepreneur who has been  the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. Through his entrepreneurial career Neil has helped companies such as Amazon, AOL, GM, HP and Viacom.

Neil’s Blog : QuickSprout

Neil’s Twitter Handle: Neil Patel

Evan Williams:

Evan only calls himself as the co-founder of Twitter but he is also the brain behind the most popular blogging platform for newbies – Blogger (Blogspot). In fact, Evan is the man who made the term “blog” so popular. One of the most awesome internet entrepreneurs.

Evan’s Twitter Handle: Evan William

Michael Dunlop:

Michael is the founder of two hugely popular flagship blogs – IncomeDiary and Retires@21. He has achieved a great amount of success in creating money making blogs online. Michael is among the most successful young internet entrepreneurs.

Michael’s Twitter Handle: Michael Dunlop

Dr. Bob Parsons:

Bob Parsons is the founder of the world’s largest domain name registrar – GoDaddy. He has a very high net worth. He was in the military before he began his hugely successful internet business.

Bob’s Twitter Handle: Bob Parson

Gary Vaynerchuk:

He started off as a phenomenal blogger in the wine niche. Today he is a sought after motivational speaker and author of Crush IT. Gary is an amazing successful internet entrepreneur.

Gary’s Blog: GaryVaynerchuk

Gary’s Twitter Handle: Gary Vaynerchuk

Michael Arrington:

This man left his job to become the founder of the TechCrunch blog. Today, TechCrunch is the number one Tech blog. TechCrunch covers internet start ups and latest in technology news serving over 1.5 million page views per month.

Michael’s Twitter Handle: Michael Arrington

Harsh Agrawal:

Harsh Agrawal is a professional Blogger who writes at Shoutmeloud.com. Other than that he runs a successful blogging network and provides Blogger to WP migration services, Thesis customization etc.

Harsh’s Blog: ShoutMeLoud

Harsh Twitter Handle: Harsh Agrawal

There are many other prominent and interesting internet entrepreneurs out there. We invite you to comment and suggest others that should be included. (This list is not in any ranking order.)

Here are 15 tips to improve your blog instantly. These 15 tips will help you improve your SEO, design, traffic and quality of your blog in very less time. It so happens that we always have the scope to improve a blog to a level higher. No doubt, it takes time and patience but maybe these quick tips to improve your blog will be useful for you. Enjoy!

Improve Your WordPress Blog Instantly

• Keep your blog design as simple as possible.
• Use excerpts on the home page of your blog.
• Add a Facebook Like box widget on your blog’s sidebar.
• Make your WordPress blog a Do-follow.
• Eliminate unwanted trash from your blog.
• Spy on your competition‘s SEO strategy and improvise accordingly (no, it isn’t unethical!).
• Work on quickly improving your Alexa rank.
• Find a good CPC/PPC ad program for your blog.
• Rewrite or update your About page.
• Choose the correct keywords to improve SEO and remove the unwanted repeating keywords in your meta-tags.
• Stop looking stupid on Twitter or other social websites.
• Become an interesting writer.
• Get to know your audience much better using the Google Analytics webmaster tool.
• Get a good Gravatar for your online image.
• Last but not the least, treat your blog like a company i.e. an internet business if you are really interested in improving your blog and making it successful.

Hope you liked the post. Please comment below.

Bloggers are always trying to increase their number of Twitter followers. Twitter can become a great source of traffic for those who have worked hard on building a huge followers base on Twitter. In the case of celebrities, they automatically end up with thousands of followers regardless of who they follow. But since you are reading this post, I take it that you are not a celebrity. So how can you increase your number of followers?

Here I have discussed 5 ways in which I have personally increased my number of Twitter followers:

Retweet:

Never underestimate the power of a retweet. Most bloggers are badly in need of traffic. So when someone retweets their content, it is really a worth a lot to them. It is definitely priceless for me when people retweet my posts! So I have noticed that retweeting another bloggers post is also a great way of getting them to follow you. Many may also want to reciprocate to you by retweeting your content as well.

Follow Others:

This is the fundamental tip about Twitter that everyone misses out. No doubt, it feels really cool when you have hundreds of followers without you following anyone back. But, you have to be realistic. Why would anyone follow you when they do not get any benefit from it? There are thousands of others like you who provide the same or better information to them. So, you should consider following back people who follow you. At the same time, you should also follow people who are interested in the same things as you are. Most of them will follow you right back.

Get Into A Conversation:

When you talk on Twitter then it is not a personal conversation. All your replies are visible to the followers of you and your conversing person. So those who are interested in networking in your field will follow you.

Un-miss-able Content:

Compelling content has always been a great source to increase your Twitter followers. If you post articles that are really awesome then people will want to keep up with you. I have personally found a spike in followers whenever I have post a great article. Many readers do not prefer email subscriptions etc. so for them Twitter is a great way to keep up with your blog content.

Twitter Badge:

This is a pretty basic tip. Implement an interesting Twitter badge on your blog or website where your visitors can see it. For example, I have made use of a flash Twitter badge on my blog. The badge is distinctly visible which allows me to convert a lot of my visitors to Twitter followers. Some other bloggers make use of Twitter icons which they might place in their sidebar etc.

Do you have any techniques to increase your Twitter followers? If so, let everyone know below.

Social Media is the latest buzz to create traffic to one’s blog or website and indeed, many have shown that it can be a successful model for good amount of traffic. However, what we don’t know is that which of the social media’s are those that cannot be ignored. While some social sites can be ignored or neglected. If you are a blogger who is looking for a professional way to generate traffic i.e. generate traffic for free then these social sites are a must to be updated.

List of 8 Social Media Sites That Cannot Be Ignored By Bloggers:

1) Technorati – Technorati Authority, Technorati ranking – they all matter a lot, to advertisers and also to the visitors. This can boost your reputation apart from generating huge amount of traffic. Always try to get your site voted as a Technorato Favorite – it is totally worth it.

2) Twitter – I really don’t need to tell you much about the capacity that Twitter has to improve your traffic. So don’t ever ignore Twitter. Put all your post updates on Twitter.

3) Digg – The most popular place to post all your links for webmasters, I love Digg personally. The pure ease of updating and the volume of traffic that Digg generates is awesome. Never forget this social media to promote your blog.

4) StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is another smart way you can promote your posts, but it requires you to be a little active. If you can be an active Stumbler on StumbleUpon then it is another traffic gem.

5) Facebook – Facebook is becoming a growing presence on most blogs,with many bloggers generating fans for their site via placing the Facebook widget on their blog pages. Sharing your posts on Facebook can get you traffic, but need not always be targetted.

6) Mixx – A popular social site, where you can give in your links. It has a very interesting feature of creating your own custom page that displays only the most popular content that currently is linked by Mixx.

7) Delicious – Another social media site which is similar to Mixx, StumbleUpon and Digg.

Yahoo Buzz – It has been found to be effective by some. Although some find it not that much effective. But if you have a group/network of peers who blog then you can get updates your friends and see what they buzzed up – vice versa.

Whethere you want to use all of these social medias to promote your blog or use a few of them, make it a point not to totally ignore the potential that they have. Atleast ensure that all your blog updates are posted on at least three of the above mentioned sites.