And there’s a very good reason why.

We start with a new idea, a single objective that the site is going to achieve. But as we progress with the development, we keep adding redundant bits of stuff, and completely unneeded elements.

So as a result, we create something that ends up being too many things, and having so many features it scares everyone away.

Take the social sharing icons on most blogs for example. Some blogs display a huge stack of sharing icons at the end of every post. Such bloat discourages sharing rather than encourage it. The right approach would be to display only what you really know would work. The retweet button anyone?

Next time you embark on a new project:

Think of what annoys you on other sites: and don’t do it on yours just for the sake of following the tradition.

Look at what you have so far: and re-evaluate its usefulness. Is it what the visitors come here looking for?

Don’t lose focus: don’t try to make your site do too many things. The more focused the objective, the better.

Simplify, not complicate: keeping things simple and intuitive is the way to go. The less steps your visitors have to take to get to the info/tool they need, the better.

Now, I don’t want to get redundant here myself. So I’ll let you mull over the above points.

And please, add your thoughts below.

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Follow me on Twitter | ReTweet this post

What are all those confusing little words you come across in every other tweet? Read on for answers.

Twitter is becoming a culture in itself. Spawning new words, and creating new concepts around its lingo.

Many of us get confused when we first join Twitter and are bombarded with the inside mumbo-jumbo. This post is meant to clear up some of those words. The big ones actually, that everyone else seems to know except you!

Let’s start with the all so common Tweet.

Tweet

Whatever you post at Twitter is a tweet (and thank god not a twit).

RT or ReTweet

There’s already a big fat post on Blogging Bits that explains what ReTweet is and why and how you should use it. But I’ll summarize it here again for those of you who can’t be arsed to read the whole post.

ReTweet is a quoted tweet, a repost. You ReTweet when you quote someone else’s tweet in your tweet.

That’s how most tweeple (oops.. people) use it:

RT @originalposter this is a quoted tweet — this is your comment

Where RT stands for ReTweet, @originalposter is the guy or girl you’re quoting, the following text is the quoted tweet, and the text after dashes is your comments (comments are optional).

#Hashtags

Hashtags are a way to tag your tweets. They are keywords you use to put your tweet in certain topic.

You usually use hashtags when tracking a popular topic. Like if you’re giving updates on FOWD conference, you’ll use the tag #FOWD in your update tweets.

Use hashtags at the end of a tweet, or make a hashtag out of any word inside the tweet to save space (for example: I’m at #FOWD meeting jolly good folks).

DM

DM stands for direct message.

Twitter is all about saying everything in public timeline, but there are occasions when you want to send some a private message. That’s when you use a DM.

Method 1: If you want to send a @Friend a direct message, type it like this:

D Friend This is the message.

D at start is to ensure this is a private message. Friend is the Twitter ID of of the person you’re sending a DM, and the rest is your message.

NOTE: Always use D and not DM at the start of a direct message or it’ll end up in public timeline.

Method 2: Switch to “Direct Messages” tab on your Twitter page, select a person from the drop down menu, enter your message in the input box, and hit the send button.

Tweeps / Tweeple

The peeps or people on Twitter of course.

Twitterverse / Twitterville

Everyone at Twitter. The Twitter community.

Twitterati

The big guys at Twitter. Those with more followers than you can count in your lifetime.

Tword

Any word prefixed by Tw to make it more compatible with Twitter.

———————————

There are a lot more words with TW added at the start, and many more being coined everyday, so it’d be a waste of time and energy to document them all here.

Though you must have gotten a pretty good idea of how a Tword works by now, and you should be able to decipher any new words encountered from now on.

Any other popular Twitter words/terms I have missed? Let me know in the comments.

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Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter while you’re at it.

Courtesy ShutterStock

Many bloggers use Twitter as a platform to promote their own blog. That’s an easy concept, no need to waste our time there. Instead, lets focus on something that is under-utilized by most bloggers: promoting other blogger’s content by “retweeting.”

The art of “retweeting” is best described as taking a twitter message someone else has posted, and rebroadcasting that same message to your followers. When broadcasting this message, you should give credit to the original poster. While retweeting sounds great for the original tweeter (since there is usually a link involved), retweeting can actually benefit you just as much if not more.

How to Properly Retweet

Before we get into the greatness of retweeting, it would probably be a good idea for you to understand how to properly retweet.

The common syntax starts off with the use of a label. My favorite label to use is “RT:” – the label “Retweeting:” and “Reading:” work as well.

Next comes the crediting. You can credit the original poster by simply using the @reply syntax, for example: “@originalPoster”.

Lastly, you should add the link along with a quick note about the link and why it is relevant. Here is a full example of retweeting:

RT: @originalPoster The 5 Best Blog Tips http://is.gd/56f – great tips

Now that you understand how to properly retweet, lets move on to some basic concepts of retweeting.

Only Retweet Content You Find Truly Interesting and Relevant

The natural instinct many of you will have is that if you retweet another individual’s content, then there is a better chance that the original poster will retweet your content in the future. While this holds true (and I will cover that in a minute), you should not simply retweet everyone’s content for your own personal gain. You must be selective when you retweet since the whole point of this practice is to benefit your followers.

Retweeting Provides Value to Your Follower

There is a reason why people follow you, value. If you can provide value to your follower you will not only make that individual happy, but you will most likely attract more followers. Providing quality content is always a great way to provide your followers with value. The first thing that comes to mind is writing up a great blog post, and linking the post in a tweet. While this is one way to approach this concept, it is not the only way. Another way to provide your followers with great content is to link to other relevant and interesting content.

Retweeting Will Benefit Your Personal Brand

Retweeting will most likely build your personal brand as well as your follower’s loyalty. If you point a reader to an external source that is truly relevant and beneficial to them, the amount of trust that individual has in you will increase. The next time you post a link, whether it be to your blog or to another source, the chances of that individual clicking that link are higher than before.

Retweeting Will Help You Build Relationships With The Original Posters

As mentioned previously, the likelihood of being on the other end of a retweet increases as you retweet. Retweeting someone else’s content is an act of kindness, and for the most part bloggers like to return such acts. This isn’t to say that you should expect someone to retweet your content just because you retweet theirs. Again, retweeting is all about providing value to your followers, and an individual isn’t going to retweet a post of yours if it is not top notch.

A Concern: Doesn’t Retweeting Steer My Followers Away From Me?

Actually no. In my opinion retweeting will never lose you a follower or reader (unless you send them to some sort of spam, or even worse you RickRoll them!). Why would someone stop reading your blog or following your twitter because you sent them off to another website? Keep an open mind when it comes to your readers, they are usually smart and good people.

Conclusion

Retweeting is a great way to add quality and value to your Twitter. If used incorrectly retweeting can actually hurt your personal brand and future traffic. If done right, retweeting can help you educate your followers, build your personal brand, increase future traffic, and connect you to other bloggers / content creators in your niche.

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And it feels great!

OK, so if it sounds too preposterous, I’m not really having sex. But according to Michael Martine (aka Remarkablogger) tweeting is as fun and as unexplainable as having sex.

Last night when I read Michael’s unique view about Twitter, I said to myself, what the heck, why not give Twitter a try and find out if it’s really so addictive? So now, I’m officially joining Twitter.

If you are on Twitter, please follow my tweets.

I’ll write a detailed post about my experience on Twitter when I’ve familiarized myself with how things work on Twitter. In the mean time, if you have good or bad things to say about Twitter, please cough ‘em up in the comments!

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Due to the fact that you are only a few clicks away from publishing your thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and rants, you are in a very saturated market as a web publisher.

Every person who has a computer with internet access is potentially your competitor. With the advent of blogs, twitter, and tumblelogs, suddenly everyone is out there to get their share of audience.

So it has become increasingly difficult to find people who are willing to listen to you instead of that other guy. However, if you do something that other guy is not doing, you’ll have a definite edge over him.

And that is: you personally find and approach your audience.

While the other guy waits for his audience to come to him, you go to your audience and introduce yourself, increasing your chance of being noticed.

Here’s step-by-step how you can find, approach, and impress your audience.

Step 1: Finding your audience

Where’s your audience?

In the comments of other blogs in your niche – People who read your fellow blogger will read you too.

In the blogrolls of other blogs in your niche – Many blogs link to their favorite blogs in their blogrolls. I’ve always found interesting blogs and great bloggers through blogrolls.

On StumbleUpon – Most bloggers and other people who want to discover and read new content hang out on StumbleUpon.

On niche social media sites – Members of niche social media sites are particularly interested in keeping abreast of trends and updates in a particular niche.

On niche forums – People who hang out on forums are always looking for interaction, so they make a great communicative audience.

Step 2: Approaching your audience

How do you approach your audience?

Send them an email and introduce yourself – Sending someone a personalized email shows them that you have noticed them and you care about them enough to personally contact them.

Visit their blog and leave interesting comments – You become their reader and they’ll become yours.

On StumbleUpon – Open up the reviews page of a blog post and visit the profiles of all stumblers who has voted for and reviewed the post. Befriend them, leave them a review, and introduce yourself by sending them a PM.

On forums – Respond to their posts, answer their questions, and solve their troubles. Make them notice your presence.

Step 3: Impressing your audience

How to make them your fan?

Link to their blog – Linking to a blogger always makes him feel warm and grateful towards you.

Stumble their content often, or submit it to related social media sites – Do them favors that bring them real benefits.

Share interesting content with them through StumbleUpon ‘Send to’ feature – Share with them something they’ll be interested in. Remember not to send your own content because this way you’ll only put them off. No one likes to be directly marketed to.

In short, find your audience, introduce yourself to them, and don’t let them forget you. Keep doing them favors, and keep reminding them of your blog.

See, there is no dearth of eyes and ears. And most importantly people are willing to listen to you if you give them enough importance. Treat them like human beings, like your friends, and you’ll see how positively they respond.

Your thoughts?

Do you proactively seek your audience or merely sit around waiting for people to drop by your blog?

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Here are some of the results at a glance:

• 20k+ new visitors
• 100 new subscribers
• And 23 new links so far (and counting)

But this is not what I didn’t expect. What I didn’t expect is something else. Soemthing that has a more long term benefit.

Yes I am talking about search engine traffic. Only 16 or so hours after this post got on to del.icio.us front page, I started getting search engine traffic for the keywords in the post title.

The post was titled: “20+ free web design ebooks and guides“, and I did title it with the intention to maximize the SEO benefit. What I didn’t expect was that search engines will pick the post so quickly and put it high up the ranking page for its keywords.

If I had made the title cute, funny, provocative, or interesting but keyword-less, it wouldn’t have received more than the temporary direct traffic from the links. But since I kept the proper keyword in the title, people who linked to the post used the title as anchor text, and the post got more and more credibility in the eyes of search engines with every new link.

Now, as a result, even though the social media traffic is slowing down, a new and constant trickle of search engine traffic has opened up which will continue for a long time.

Moral of story?

Resource lists and linkbaits are created for the sole purpose of getting links. Links clearly outweigh other short term benefits such as a temporary spike in traffic.

Always keep the keywords that describe your post in the title of your resource lists and linkbaits. Don’t give it a meaningless title such as “x resources for these people or this task’. Nobody is searching for ‘resources’. People search for specific things with specific keywords, so be as helpful as possible. Think of your post’s title as a summary of the contents to follow, and describe what exactly it contains.

I’ve made this mistake myself. My first post that reached del.icio.us front page was titled “54 typography resources every designer should bookmark“. Even though I cleverly left a hint in the title suggesting that it was a bookmarkable list, I could have used a better, more search engine friendly title for the long term benefit.

Your thoughts?

What about you? How do you title your linkbait posts?

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I had a post in mind that I kept delaying because I thought my shared hosting plan couldn’t handle the traffic. But since I’ve had many ideas that were taken by other people because I was too lazy to publish them first, I wrote and published this post about StumbleUpon search feature.

The traffic that followed was quite expected. In an hour I had many reviews and thumbs up with thousands of visitors coming my way.

Why was the traffic and great acclaim expected? Simple. Because whenever you write something exclusively about a social media site, in particular if it’s of great practical use, you are rewarded.

So, even though the post itself is quite small, it has got 44 reviews and don’t know how many thumbs-ups so far, making it the most highly-trafficked post on Blogging Bits ever.

The best takeaway point – with great success comes even greater flaming.

I knew that since the post was going to become really hot, I’ll surely be flamed by SU trolls who has nothing but negative comments to add. However, I was curious to see what kind of flame would be thrown my way since the post was actually quite useful, and since I don’t even run ads on my blog, no one would dare call it blogspam.

But the trolls never disappoint you. They always find a reason to find fault with your content.

So, guess what was their excuse for thumbing down the post?

“Boy – you didn’t know about it?” Thumb down.

“I’m amazed people don’t know about it” Thumb down.

Well, you can’t stop ‘em stampeding herds, can you?

What’s been your most popular post on SU and what was it about? Plus, do you get negative reviews on SU often?

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So there is this thing called information overload that threatens to engulf our brains and rob us of our ability to make sound judgments. And there is this internet that helps this giant get even bigger.

If you ask me, this is all bull. Information never comes in such huge quantities that it becomes impossible for us to assimilate it all.

But yes, there is a lot of noise that accompanies the real information and gives us an impression as though it were all endless streams of information.

If you are a regular web surfer, you must have gone through such experiences. You start browsing news sites, blogs, and social news sites and you come across a particularly newish piece of news. You read it on one site and then you move on to the next site. It’s there again. You read it again because it’s written differently.

You move on, but lo and behold, everyone has something to say about it.

Ultimately, you get the impression that there is just too much going on for you to take it all in. And you call it information overload.

But is it for real?

This happens all the time on the internet. Something worth talking about happens, and in an instant the internet masses are busy regurgitating, spreading, and battering it with their full strength.

So this is what it is. The noise overload. Information is still rare, but the noise abounds.

Social media filters out the noise

This is why the wise few have created news and information filters that only let the quality information pass through. It’s called the social media sites.

What I like about social news sites is that they are controlled by the masses themselves. We, the masses, are everywhere, and get to the new information as soon as it’s made available, and post it to social news web sites.

No matter what are your interests, there are social news sites for virtually any topic imaginable. There are even local news sites popping up everywhere, that report what’s new in your town or city.

What I do to get on the top of the information is that I visit the leading social media sites and survey the trends/news/information to see if there is something new worth knowing.

Digg is an excellent place to keep up with the latest happenings in the tech world.

Delicious: about everything that is so cool you’ll want to return to at a later point in time.

Popurls: the most in demand information on the net as gathered by some of the most popular social media sites.

Just some examples.

On more popular social media sites in particular, the community does a great job of voting up the news only from the best sources (mistakes are made, but it’s OK as long as they’re exception rather than the rule).

So if you have been feeling overwhelmed by the information overload, get over it already! Information overload is, in fact, a misnomer.

Embrace the social media to get to the real information whenever it happens, wherever it happens, and spend the rest of your time dong something useful with the information.

Do you agree that information overload doesn’t exist, and that the social media is the best way to reach the information that matters to you?

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The way Stumbleupon works is quite different from any other social media site. Normally, every time you click the Stumble! button, you are presented with a web page on one of the topics you specified earlier. However, sometimes this is not enough. Sometimes you want more control over what kind of pages you’d like to browse through for a particular session.

And this is where the search feature of StumbleUpon toolbar comes in. SumbleUpon search feature allows you to surf through web pages on a single topic of your liking for as long as you want.

To enable the search feature, go to Tools > Toolbar Options > Configuration and check the “Show search/tag box” under the options group “Other“.

When you click OK, you’ll have a nice search box sitting just beside the reviews balloon on the toolbar.

To test if it works, enter a keyword such as “movies” or “marketing” and hit enter. Now every time you click on the Stumble button, you’ll jump to a page about movies or marketing (depending on which keyword you entered).

To return to the normal way of stumbling, click on “All” button on the toolbar.

Smart, right?

Bonus tip: You can also tag web pages using the search/tag box. If you are on a web page about WordPress, enter “WordPress” in the box and hit Shift+Enter on the keyboard. Later, you can find the pages you tagged by clicking on the “Find pages you liked” link on your StumbleUpon profile page.

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Any blog, on today’s web, should create quality linkbait in order to be seen by more than a handful of visitors. The web is unlike all other media. Here, the success awaits those who understand the web regardless of how influential or rich they are in real life.

You must have seen, for example, that blogs run by individuals outrank multi-million dollar companies in SERP’s, and naturally get more traffic, and can potentially earn more money from the Internet than their rich and influential competitors.

Considering the diversity of niches present in the blogosphere, it’s hard to pin down exact topics that always serve as quality linkbait, but there are certain general topics that seem to have a penchant for going viral.

I’ve been looking closely at the trends on social media sites to see what kinds of topics are often voted up and appear again and again on the popular lists. And there are some topics that are clearly more popular from the rest among general geeks. Below are five of those topics that, if used wisely, make for great linkbaits.

Sex

Who doesn’t like sex? It’s the best thing that has happened to human beings during their evolution! No wonder people, especially youth, are attracted to sexual references.

Some tips on creating sex-related content:

• Make a list of sexy wears for geeks
• Highlight top x sexy woman in a specific field
• Criticize the unhealthiness of certain sexual practices
• Cover a news story that involves sex abuse
• List interesting laws regarding sex in some countries.

Blasphemy

In other words, spark controversy. Say bad things about what a major group of people love or respect. OK.. don’t say outrageously bad things, but it doesn’t hurt to play a devil’s advocate once in a while!

Whichever niche you may be in, there is bound to be a figure, an ideology, or a company that has a major fan following. What you have to do is peek under the hood, find the shortcomings of figure, ideology, or company in question, and nitpick!

Here are some ideas:

• Criticize a religion
• Find fault with a widely loved product
• Slam a popular company
• Make conspiracy theories
• Condone a despised activity

Warning: Use above techniques at your own risk as they could really harm your brand.

Unusual images

An image is worth a thousand words, or in our case, a thousand blog posts. Because of their quality of conveying even difficult message intuitively, images tend to go viral more rapidly than any other piece of linkbait.

There are plenty of unusual, funny, and grotesque images on the web that stay unnoticed. If you highlight such an image, or collection of images, with a short commentary, you’ll create a fine piece of linkbait with minimal effort.

Before posting an image, see:

• If it’s funny in an unusual way
• If it’s ‘photoshopped’ but realistic
• If it resonates with a particular social media community you are targeting
• If it’s awe-inspiring
• If it’s of something yet largely unseen and undiscovered

Life-hacks

Life-hacks are workarounds, tips, tutorial, and how-to’s, that make certain aspects of life easy. One of the blessings of the internet is that people can share with one another solutions to common problems, step-by-step walk-throughs of complex procedures, and any tips, tricks, and shortcuts that simplify tedious tasks. Therefore, if devised carefully, a particularly useful life-hack can become an instant hit, and get you loads of links.

Some ideas for life-hacks:

• Refute common myths (e.g. Creativity is a gifted quality)
• Write a step by step tutorial that solves a common problem
• Define a procedure that makes dealing with a certain emotional state easy
• Discover multi-functionality of a commonly used device/software (e.g. WordPress as a CMS)
• Start a new life-hacks blog (everyone and their mom has one these days, and they are all popular. Just get yourself a bunch of productivity books from Amazon.com and start copying!)

Resources

Last but not least, the good old resources. I am sure you have seen those top 5 to top 101 lists of resources on almost every blog. These are called resource lists.

Creating a resource list is not difficult. There is nothing you have to write on your own. All you need to do is a bit of research to come up with a medium sized resource list. The bigger the list, however, the more time you have to spend to acquaint yourself with the subject at hand.

Good practices in creating resource lists:

• Format the list in a unique way (e.g. images aligned to left, and descriptions on the right)
• Categorize the list in different sections, and start every section with a descriptive heading
• Use images in the list to mark new section if the list is fairly big
• Keep the descriptions small and links prominent
• If possible, write your own descriptions

There are plenty of other ways to create linkbaits that you’ll know by observing popular social media sites.

Be sure to share your linkbait techniques with us in the comments!

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