Hello again, my social networking friend!

Lately there has been much ado about Dofollow, and Nofollow links.  Links are Dofollow by default, but can be made into Nofollow links by adding just a bit of html code.  On the other hand, links in wordpress blog comments are automatically set to nofollow.  Many people believe that making their links Dofollow is a big enough incentive to attract many visitors to their website.  Dofollow blogs do infact attract more commenters, because they want links back to their site, but is it really worth it?

Too many Dofollow links can actually have a negative effect on your webpage’s pr.  I’ve had first hand experience in realizing that.  Back on my old webmaster blog I’d had a list of forums that allowed signature links, but I’d foolishly linked to every one of them!  Since the list was Dofollow lots of people wanted to be on the list, hence more traffic to my website, but there was a downside as well.  My website went down in pagerank, and I got less visitors from search engines.  After I learned the cause I removed the links, and my page rank went back up soon after.

The moral of the story is; having to many links on a webpage has a negative influence on your pagerank.

The Solution: The solution is actually quite simple, let me list a few ways to avoid loss of pr.

• Don’t use the Dofollow plugin which makes your comment links Dofollow.  It may seem like a good idea, but if you get a lot of comments then you’re actually hurting your blog.  Simply leave it as is.
• Try not to use too many links in your posts, only throw in a few when you need to, or you really want to.
• If you need to make a list of links, or you want to as an incentive for your readers, than you can download the plugin “Nofollow Links in Posts“.  This allows you to choose whether each link is Dofollow, or Nofollow.
• Don’t think too much about it, when you’re linking to someone who you’ve learned from, or something you want your readers to see, try not to be stingy about using Dofollow or Nofollow.

Many people hope that after starting their website off it will eventually sell itself. This is possible, but can be a bit difficult for webmasters to grasp. Then, even after the concept is grasped the goal is still pretty hard to achieve. This method will involve a lot of skills when it comes to social networking, and social marketing. So without delving into an elaborate guide without any prior knowledge of social networking, check out these great guides from some of my favorite sites.

1. It Takes a Gathering to Build a Crowd | ProBlogger
   Learn how to get a following on social networking sites like digg.
2. Relationships and Online Social Networks | DoshDosh
   Learn about getting to know your contacts on social networking sites like Twitter and Plurk.
3. These guides don’t cover everything there is to know about social networking, but if you’d like to learn more then you’re only a google search away. Try “how to market using social networking“.

The theory is, that if you have quite a few followers on quite a few social networking websites, and you can figure out how to interlink them all together then you’ll have a self marketing site. Articles will get to the front page of multiple social networking sites, and you will only need to submit to one of them in order to do that. For Example: If you were to submit to Digg, your activity would be updated on your Jaiku profile, and you would get visitors from there as well. A marketing guru I know is putting this theory to the test, and trying to maximize on its effect with his new site Badoozie. With his viral content, and loads of much-needed experience in marketing I’m sure that this site will be successful.

The same goes with your blog posts, you can set things up so whenever you post it automatically notifies social networking sites you are a member of. Sites like Technorati, and other pinging sites are the most basic of information sharing websites. The biggest difference between Technorati and Digg is that Technorati is a search engine for blog posts, where Digg is a place in which the most popular article succeeds (with the right push).

This is the subscribe box at badoozie, optimized so that readers who use social networking sites realize it is easy to submit his articles. One flaw I see is the text Subscribe, which many people still associate with paying for a membership. According to CopyBlogger, you can increase your subscription rate by quite a bit just by altering that text. Try changing the text from Subscribe to something like “Get News from Us By Email“.

The key to social marketing is how you use your words. If you were to do everything in uniform and never do anything new, or say anything new, then what reason would someone have for reading your blog. Even more important, why would they want to share your content with their friends?

A blog without viral content, or proper grammar and punctuation is more than likely never going to get popular. Also, a blog without any content at all is obviously not going to be a good product to market. Wait till you get at least 20-30 posts or so before you start marketing your website. If your first article gets to the front page of digg, most users will think of your site as a probable one-hit-wonder and not subscribe to your RSS.

Once you’ve set your site up to market itself and developed a stable following of loyal readers you won’t need to submit your own articles any more. Your own readers, and friends from the social networking sites your blog is pinging will submit the articles for you. Plus, since you’re automatically pinging sites with the new content on your blogs, you’ll notice a fluctuation of traffic every time you publish a new post.

If you examine some of the sites that are constantly on the front page of digg, and other social networking sites, you’ll see that they’ve put this method to work. Then, you can decide whether or not that type of marketing is write for you and figure out how to do it for your own website!

I just recently purchased a Playstation 3, and while it is definitely alot of fun, it’s starting to cause me some problems.  For the most part, I’ve been quite productive this week.  I’ve published multitudes of articles, gotten a few subscribers, and avoided writers block, up until today that is…  My new game system seems to be causing a bit of a problem with my productivity, and my productivity actually.

I’ve made a chart to illustrate my newly discovered lack of motive.

As you can see, at the beginning of the week my productivity was actually increasing.  Then, later on in the week there was a small dip in my productivity.  This was caused by my incompetency making graphs in photoshop.  The productivity balances out for a short while until it starts a straight drop.  The line starts to slant back to the left signifying that the time before I purchased the ps3 was made less productive by anticipation.

If you want to avoid writers block, and keep yourself motivated to update your sites content.  I suggest that you don’t play videogames, or purchase any impressive new technology to boggle your mind.  Unless of course that piece of technology relates to your website and you can write about it relevantly.

One of the biggest problems I have when writing new articles for LookLinkLove is staying on topic.  I almost always end up writing about something completely different from what I was originally trying to say.  Thanks to computers it’s easy to remove unwanted lines of text and start over, but sometimes you can avoid doing that completely.  There are five different, but equally simple ways to stay on topic while writing a new blog post. If you’re like me and you believe that everyone in the world has at least some level of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) then you might find some of these tools useful.

• Tip 1: Close all windows other than your post window, and your research windows.  Even music can be a distraction sometimes, it all depends on how good you are at focusing.  If you leave windows open to sites like youtube, you’ll probably find yourself watching music videos, or checking out one of those optical illusions your friend sent you through an email.  Then once you get back to what you were writing you won’t really know WTF you were originally trying to say.
• Tip 2: Write down some of your ideas on a piece of paper.  Kind of like the brainstorming you did back in school.  This will give you something to look back at if you ever lose track of what’s going on.  If you want to be even more Geeky, you could write down an entire outline and then your post would practically write itself.  I doubt you would have much problems staying on topic unless you decided you absolutely had to stray from your outline.
• Tip 3: Use Dark Room for a “distraction free environment”.  As described on the website, “Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.”
  I use Dark Room on occasion, but in my opinion it is a little bit too extreme.  It blocks out beeps from any programs like Norton, MSN messenger, and etc… While this could be very useful, maybe you would miss out on something important.
• Tip 4: Close the doors and lock out all intruders.  If you’re a parent then you probably shouldn’t block your toddlers access, but try and stop the people you care about less from bothering you while you write.  When you’re at home, it’s harder to get work done because of the constant distraction that comes from family members and phone calls.  Then again, I’m not saying you should become some sort of recluse either, absolutely not… socialize!

The Most Obvious Tip:

• Tip 5: Review your post before you post it.  Although this is probably the most retarded tip you’ll ever read for staying on topic, it’s also the most effective.  Even though you may not have been able stay on topic while you were writing the post, you don’t want your random ramblings to escape to your blog readers.  While this tip completely defeats the purpose of this article (since it was supposed to tell you how to avoid needing to remove offtopic strains of text after you were done writing) I still think this is a useful tip to add to the list.  No article should go un-reviewed, even if you were perfectly on-topic the entire time.

With sites like Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, and etc… What makes people think that hosting their own blogs are necessary? Features are constantly being upped on sites like blogger, which definitely draws people into using it, but does it stop experienced webmasters from hosting their own blogs? After years of experienced making, optimizing, and marketing websites, the pros and cons of a non self-hosted blog become quite clear. Social media is the biggest factor when determining if your site should be self hosted, or not.

Pros

• Many people simply choose a blog service like blogger because it doesn’t cost any money. Since other blog services like typepad do cost money but have generally the same pros and cons, we’ll leave this positive attribute as just a sort of bonus.
• You can get as much traffic as you want, use as much bandwidth as you must, and your site shouldn’t ever go down. Since your site has no bandwidth limits, you’re free to make the front page of digg, where you might have crashed your site if you were hosting it yourself.
• Uptime is maximized. With a blog you don’t host yourself, your uptime will probably be much higher than if you bought hosting from some whacked out, 3rd world host you thought would be good.
• There are plenty of features, and ways to easily integrate advertisements into your blogger blogs.
• Your pr will go up significantly faster, with significantly less work, just because your domain is a subdomain of a popular website. Which means it’s possible for your work to rank higher on Search Engine Rankings than self-hosted content.

Cons

• Your site is less valuable to advertisers that are looking for pr. Less people want links on blogger sites because they see them as unprofessional compared to blog’s that you host on your own. Also, since your site is running off of a subdomain, the link has less value anyways.
• When you don’t host the blog yourself, you have less customizability of its features. While blog hosts are doing their best to make this statement untrue, it will be some time before you’ll be able to do everything a self-hosted blog can do.
• Your site has less credibility just because you didn’t pay for your hosting. Sorry, but it’s true, I think of sites that are made for free to be almost on par with Barney.

All though it may seem like the pros far out weigh the cons, that’s not really true. All though there is more bullet points under Pros, the importance of the Cons should not be taken lightly. The credibility of your website is of the utmost importance when it comes to the ??????? - PROFIT! factor.

In conclusion, if you’ve got the money to spend on a decent webhost (bluehost), then just do it.

After sifting through all of the comments on my recent article “Inconvenient Truths of the Digg Front Page” I realized that many digg users had already noticed the digg’s problems, and were already looking for solutions.  Though looking wouldn’t be the best way to put it, since most of the ideas thought up were ill conceived, and probably thought up on the spot.  Some of the suggestions could work, but I doubt Digg would change it’s infrastructure after being so successful, for so long.  It seems that the fear of change is still present, even in the internet generation where we should be thriving on change by now.

Some Facts:

• Despite users constantly gaming the system “so to speak”, most of the articles that make it to the front page are quite interesting.  Though there are some/many that would disagree, you have to consider the fact that Digg’ers don’t have to Digg their friends articles.  Even though some people feel a certain obligation to digg shit stories just because their friends (people who they don’t even know) shared it with them.  The fact is, you Do Not Have to Digg Your Friend’s Articles, and chances are… they won’t even notice you didn’t, so No Hard Feelings.
• Some people ridiculously want to remove shouts and friends, while this may seem like a good idea at first, it really isn’t.  If shouting wasn’t allowed, then there would be almost no articles that ended up on the homepage.  Digg would be in a state of constant Upcoming, because there was no push for any certain articles.  Then, the only articles that did get to the front page, would be the sites that had the most readers to begin with.  That means the only stuff you’d ever see would be from sites like Crack, break, xkcd bleh (always forget the order/letters), huffington, and etc…  One could narrow that list down to the sites who have digg buttons next to their posts, because people don’t want to go out of their way to digg articles.
• My stance on Duplicates:  Say, you were to submit an article that you thought was really interesting, and it ended up getting 2 diggs.  One from you, and one from some random guy who happened to look at the first page of upcoming at the right time.  Three days later, someone else diggs that same article (from a different url mind you) and it get’s to the front page.  You have absolutely no reason to believe that person ripped it from you, and if he/she did then so what?  The content you originally wanted people to see has now been seen, you’re just not credited for getting it seen.  That’s why we have users like MrBabyMan, Zaibatsu, Badwithcomputer, MakiMaki, and etc…  They understand how digg works, and how to get articles popular.
• Digg is a huge website, with an almost uncountable amount of users.  With however many articles there are being submitted each day, not using some sort of digg boosting tactic means your article won’t be seen.  It’s plain and simple, though some people argue that they’re able to get to the front page without a single friend, and without ever shouting.  I highly doubt that these words are verifiable, unless spoken of in a long ago sort of past tense.

In Direct Response Too (Some of the Comments on Digg):

• Amazing. It honestly feels like yesterday when you can submit a story and it’d be on the first page of “Upcoming” for atleast 20 minutes.-deltron It wasn’t
• I honestly think the best way to do away with it is get rid of friends and shouts, I really don’t see a point other than shameless self promotion, if you want friends go to facebook or a bar or something, I just don’t think it has much of a place on digg other than to create the atmosphere we are all complaining about. -kawaiirobo Solution: eliminate “friends” on digg. bxblox
  
  Which articles would end up on the front page then?  None, or the ones from sites with big digg buttons on their posts, and lot’s of readers.
• I dunno, it’s very early in the process to say it with certainty, but I think this recommendation engine might change all that. For a while perhaps, anyhow. I don’t think I’ve dugg a MrBabyMan article since the change. The only politcal article on the front page right now is from the Onion and it’s about Bush. Weirdness. That’s not to say that suddenly there’s great content filling up the front page, but it looks like there’s been an impact. -MrTito
  
  With everyone complaining about how Digg is going downhill, I don’t really think there is much of an argument here.  Not saying anyone is trying to argue, but I haven’t seen much of a difference made by the new “Recommended” system, nor do I think Digg is going downhill.  It’s supposed to give you/me the articles that we would deem as most interesting, yet the average digg user (I’m assuming) diggs a wide range of articles, along with most of the front page articles, so it’s impossible to know what I’m really interested it.  Or in other words, I digg interesting things, and interesting isn’t really a category, so how can they suggest it to me?
• If people only submitted articles that they honestly thought were good then there wouldn’t be thousands of articles in upcoming. It would be much easier for people to browse upcoming and chose the really good ones from the few and have an extremely quality website. Instead people submit every website they see in the hopes of getting to the frontpage or to get traffic to their site or a billion other reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not the content is actually good. In most cases the content isn’t good. -Mononuclear This comment truly Miffs me, partially because I know it to be true, and partially because I’m trying to figure out how it’s false.  When i don’t understand things, I start to feel like everyone should act exactly like I do, and that’s definitely not how it works.  So like Mononuclear goes on to say, stop digging crap that not even you find interesting, because nobody else is going to find it interesting either.  For those of you who submit articles from your own website (like me), shouldn’t you at least make sure what you’re submitting is remotely intriguing?  Try to pick only a select few stories of the utmost quality, and maybe digg would be a better place.  You don’t see people like MakiMaki submitting every (let alone any) articles from his website DoshDosh, because he knows they’re not relevant to the general interests of most digg users.
• My question is this: WHAT IS SO AWESOME ABOUT HAVING A STORY YOU SUBMIT HIT THE FRONT PAGE? More specifically, what is so awesome about it that one would, as the link suggests, “try to get over 100 diggs before 24 hours is spent” or spend time building a sizable network of “friends”? Is there a cash prize? Is it just sort of a for-the-hell-of-it game with a validating win?- thekassette Sometimes it’s for sad and lonely reasons. Hence people who want to get articles on the frontpage of digg. Makes them feel special when in reality it’s a worthless accomplishment that nobody gives a fuck about. thedogfatherx (a reply, a good one)
  
  For many people, there is a cash prize, though they are just the recluse internet marketers who you will never have heard about.  For the others, it’s the recognition you get,  popularity, and feeling of signifigance/dominance over others who are incapable of doing what you do.  Also, if you want someone to read something in order to understand the subject, and it doesn’t get to the front page, nobody will read it, and nobody will care.
• Also, this guy’s writing style is really annoying. The little “oh, look how I am self-analyzing my own writing in the middle of my article” thing got old quick. -Neo829
  
  
  PFFFT… Well I do see your point.
• Is the writer of this article a non-English speaker, or just a complete moron? Really, putting an apostrophe in “gets”? Buried due to unbelievable idiocy, which is the more likely explanation, because, well, it’s the internet (and the simpleton’s About page is still the default Wordpress template.) -fonograph Thanks for helping me to better myself
• get a job, or get married, or make the world a better place, or have some kids, or get a hobby, or go volunteer; it’s not that serious.…Nobody said it was
• Fucking digg comment box, bouncing up and down like some shit. Can’t hit the save comment button. arjie
  
  Goodnight

Why this is titled “Inconvenient Truths of the Digg Front Page”. People don’t want to believe the truth when it comes to social networking sites. There are two ways to get an article to the front of digg. The article must either be from a website that has a well established reputation with Digg users, or the submitter must have a profile lavished with friends and be In the Know of the Digg systematics (if that’s a word).  One more simple truth, only jerks with a heightened sense of self importance, and a feeling that they must shield digg users from the truth bury useful content because it is about getting to the front page of digg.

For the past month or so I have been testing out different ways to get to the front page of digg. None of the articles I’ve submitted have made it to the front page, but I consider this a (somewhat) fortunate learning experience. I now know plenty of information on what not to do in order to get a popular article on digg, and I’ve got lots to write about. There are plenty of obstacles you need to figure out how to jump over, and duck under in order to get your article recognized by other digg users.

Each time I failed at making an article popular I discovered one new thing that stopped me from doing so. So in a sense it’s like driving through a narrow maze in a car with no brakes. If you make one mistake you crash into a dead end, but if you memorize the bad steps you’ve taken and make sure not to do the same thing again, you’ll come out the maze without a scratch on your car. Lucky for me, the metaphorical car was free, and I never lost anything but a non-existent point off of my reputation.

First I’ll give you some plain facts, Digg’s attempt at getting the coolest articles to the front page has almost completely failed. Getting an article from your site to achieve popularity requires a viral article and lot’s of skills with social networking. Unfortunately for most digg users, they don’t realize that their presence will never be noticed without an aggressive strategy for success.

Why should you care about getting an article popular on digg? Well, if you can’t think of any reason why you’d really like to have a popular article on digg then you don’t deserve one. Whether your reason be because you want the fame, the traffic it brings, or for the warm feeling you get inside because you think people actually (is that mean? contemplating taking that word out) like you. If you’ve got a good reason to get to the front page, then you do deserve it.

Now, let’s get you geared for social networking so the next thing you submit to digg has a better chance of reaching front page. Then again, even if you don’t get to the front page following this advice, you’ll be headed in the right direction, and it will be easy for you to get past 100 diggs on something you submit. In fact, being able to get past 100 diggs is something I can guarantee, or your money back! (Face-palm for cliche marketing statement).

Use the Guidelines Below in Order to Make Sure Your Article Get’s some Diggs:

1. Build a Popular Profile on Digg
   If you have no friends on Digg then you’ve got no one to share your articles with. Unless you’re really lucky and someone clicks on ‘Upcoming‘ at the right time, nobody will ever see your submission. So go to the front page of digg, and click on one of the users with a front page article. You’ll notice that this person has about 700 friends you can steal, and each one would gladly be robbed in broad daylight. When you add a friend on digg they have the chance to add you back, or leave you as a fan. As long as the person has any friend space left they’ll usually add you back as a mutual friend.

   Mutual Friend: you can shout your diggs to them, and they can shout their diggs to you.
   If You’re Their Fan: They can shout things to you, and you can follow up on the things they submit, but not the other way around.
   If they’re a Fan of Yours: They will receive your shouts and get updates on your activity, but you won’t get their shouts or activity.

   So, go down popular digg users’ lists of friends and add them to your own arsenal. People are happy to have more friends as it helps them out as well. If they don’t add you back in a couple of days, then just remove them from your buddy list and get some new people. Also, make sure you only add active people, not people who haven’t been on digg for over 10 days.

   These mutual friends will help your digg count grow exponentially, and the more diggs your submission gets, the more visible it is to the rest of the community. That means you’ll start getting fans of your own in no time.

2. Your/The Website
   Never submit an article from a website that doesn’t look good, or have any other good content. You may think it’s sad that I say this, but a crappy site doesn’t belong on the front page of digg. Make sure the site with the article you’d like to submit has a decent design, and plenty of other content to keep readers interested. We don’t like the artists one-hit-wonders as a general rule.
3. Multiple Accounts:
   There are certain users on digg that use multiple accounts in order to digg and share their own articles. This method might work a little bit, but it’s against Digg’s terms of service, your accounts will be banned, and there are better ways to make your articles popular. One of those ways being the ability to send shouts to the massive amounts of friends you recently added.
4. Link Bait: (other reference)
   Your ability to effectively title your posts and articles is arguably one of the most important factors in getting to the front page of digg. Any article you’ve submitted that’s titled in a way that makes the contents sound obvious and drab is going to be tossed aside like dry playdo. There I go with the… similes and metaphors, or maybe it’s an analogy. Keep your titles short, make people curious as to what it’s about. If you can’t do that, then you better submit a pretty damn good article, because more than half the people on digg base their vote on nothing more than the title and the small summary underneath.
   
   
5. Lists, Guides, Digg, and Firefox
   I’ve heard numerous things about lists and guides being the two types of digg submissions to get to the front page the most often. With my own experimentation I found this to be quite true. my top submission is currently a list of the top 10 Firefox plugins of our time. Of course I didn’t use link-bait in my title, so I didn’t make it to the front page. Also, digg prefers hearing news about itself and firefox more than anything. So if you write anything about Digg or Firefox, chances are it will do better than a post about how ‘red heads have more freckles than the average brown haired person‘ or anything else less unusual.
6. Oh No, Someone Buried My Article
   Getting buried is probably the worst thing that could possibly happen to your article. For every person that buries your article, the likeliness that your article will hit the Front Page gets a little less likelier (LOLZ?). People happen to love controversial articles, but people on either side of the controversial argument have an opportunity to bury the article because they don’t like it, or they think it’s untrue. Try to keep your articles completely user friendly, and don’t give anyone the reason to bury it. People whose sole mission is to bury all the articles they can should skip over your article because they think it’s so wholesome.
7. Time Threshold
   Nothing more to say than, just try to get over 100 diggs before 24 hours is spent. As long as you can do this you should be well on your way to hitting the digg front page. All the rest depends on how much people enjoy your article.

After realizing these inconvenient truths and utilizing them, you may easily attain a position on the front page of digg, or atleast get over 100 diggs on your submission.

There are times when you won’t really want to take the time to write an entire article for your website. You might be in a state of exhaustion, on vacation, or just extremely uninterested in your blog’s topic for the day. When this happens you need to have a backup plan, and this article I’ve written while in a state of exhaustion will simply have to do. Well, this post isn’t physically your backup plan, but hopefully you’ll learn a method that you like from it and be able to use it in the future.

If you ever find yourself in a situation as annoying as I’m in, you’re going to need to do some planning in order to keep your blog running. Problogger has a solution for his scheduled leave of absence, and I wish I was intelligent enough to think of this earlier. By the way, congratulations to him for his new child.

I will be taking a couple of weeks off now however I’ve pre-prepared two great weeks of content here at ProBlogger for you. It will include a guest post each day from some great bloggers, a series of 10 posts from me on ‘how to let your blog go’ and a few other random posts from me that I’ve written earlier.

It’s very possible to lose subscribers and frequent readers when you don’t post for over a week. So, you should have some posts stored as drafts for whenever you go on a vacation, sporting event, grandma’s house, or etcetera. So whenever you don’t have time to sit down and think about a new blog post to write, you can simply publish an article you’ve written in the past. Whether you set up a complete series for a planned leave of absence, or you have some timeless articles you’ve just be storing for the right moment, at least one of the two is necessary.

Of course a small update about what’s going on in your life during vacation would be great content for a post as well. John Chow frequently posts about his vacations, the food he eats, or things he gets, and still maintains a very successful ‘Make Money Online‘ sort of blog. An example post can be found here. In reality that’s a pretty long post, but if you were just to post a video with a brief description you’d be fine too. In fact, images are probably the best things you could show people during a vacation, as novels generally aren’t as interesting to blog readers as short stories (with lots of pictures) are.

So, make sure you plan out some content before you go off doing something that will leave you unable to write quality posts. Whether you have pre-written content, pictures from vacation, or a video of you receiving a gift (lol), you should be in good shape!

The state I’m in now will probably deem this post worthless, and I’ll end up redoing it later, but that’s what I get for being a procrastinator.