Register Your Blog with Blog Engage

In my last post, Top 5 Blog Topics I mentioned how I am a member of  the Blog Engage community and I urge other bloggers that are interested in promoting their blog to do the same.

In this first screencast, we will visit the BlogEngage.com website and I’ll show you how easy it is to sign up.

New Benefit - Google AdSense

The second video, explores additional benefits of the BlogEngage website and a major announcement from Brian, owner of the BlogEngage website that you simply do not want to miss!

I’m more than happy to answer any of your questions and after you join the community, please let me know so that I can vote on your posts.

You can follow my Blog Engage List on Twitter http://twitter.com/Ileane/blogengage. If you’re a member of Blog Engage and don’t see yourself on the list, let me know I’ll add your tweets. I also recommend that before you get started read 10 Tips for Better Blog Engage Results from Extreme John and check out Brian’s list of articles from Share the love, who’s talking about Blog Engage.

Smooches!

UPDATE: Blog Engage has seen a surge in activity recently including several new members and mentions:

Shvoong review

Whatawebsite review

Alexa Ranking

Read More…

Hmmm. Let’s see, I’m wondering, what should I blog about?

I’ve been researching several topics recently with the help of Addict-o-matic and here are my options:

1. Page Rank
2. Netvibes
3. StumbleUpon
4. Forums
5. Commenting

I recently created another blog on Posterous but I wasn’t really sure why I would need it. To fill you in on what Posterous is, the tagline from the homepage: “is the dead simple place to post everything. just email us.” And after all, my tagline and the purpose of this blog states:

I’m here to learn, to teach and to connect!

Therefore, I consider adding another blogging platform to my social media arsenal, as a golden opportunity to share the experience with my readers.

Let’s explore how to build the ultimate “Perfect Tweet” together; shall we?

In order to be “the greatest” and go viral this tweet should:

The Greatest

1. Go out at the best time of day
2. Reach the perfect audience
3. Get a high number of retweets for a blog link
4. Gain new followers

Why is Twitter so hot?

On the Website Babble Forum someone mentioned custom Twitter backgrounds and it sparked an interesting exchange amongst us babblers. Here’s some insight on the topic.

Twitter is a great way to increase blog traffic, stay in touch with friends, meet new people, and build popularity for a brand. Usage of Twitter has skyrocketed and currently it is reported that there are over 6 million registered users which might double by 2010. And with literally hundreds of Twitter 3rd party services and applications that can accessed via the web or your cell phone it seems there’s always a new tool being introduced to enhance your Twitter experience.

How Do You Line It Up?

Twitter backgrounds are regarded as your introduction to what I like to call Twitterville. You want to make a positive “first impression” and possibly influence people to follow you.

If you use PhotoShop, RC Concepcion of Layers Magazine has an excellent tutorial on PhotoShop User TV episode #205. Don’t have PhotoShop? Then take a look at this article I came across on from Smashing Magazine called Effective Twitter Backgrounds: Examples and Current Practices. This article demonstrates the basic layout and pixel width of the Twitter home page and ways to avoid overlapping the background design with your tweet stream. I actually followed the layout rules in the article to create my Twitter background. It took me about an hour because I keep going back and tweaking it so it would be just right. I was all excited and ready to pat myself on the back.

I asked my friend to and take a look at my shiny new background. She really rained on my parade when she said – “I’m using Tweetdeck – I never see anyone’s background…”

So I rushed to open Brizzly and then over to Seesmic and sure enough, no backgrounds. I guess I never thought about it before then. Just, take a look at your twitter stream to see where the tweets are coming from. You’ll only find about 2 or 3 that are from the web (and I bet one of them is from me).

Twitter Backgrounds are for the birds!

I truly hope you didn’t spend money on a Twitter background before you read this post, and I hope you didn’t spend an hour (or more) creating a stellar background in PhotoShop like I did. Look at the bright side of things. Having a perfectly aligned twitter background does not make people follow you.  Here are some examples of very popular Tweeples and how their Twitter backgrounds appear on a standard 15-inch monitor.

I don’t try to stay ahead of the curve, sometimes I just do.  About six years ago I did some science research.  To be exact it was on February 1, 2003 when NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere killing all seven crew members (may they rest in peace) and altering my outlook on life forever.

You see NASA and the media continue to say how the foam hit the shuttle, and I know it’s just a matter of semantics, but what actually happened was that the shuttle hit the foam.  Subtle difference I know, yet for me an all too important one. This distinction (and the event) sparked a hidden passion inside of me and a desire to learn more.  It was on this scientific journey, this quest for knowledge, that I encountered Professor Walter Lewin and his lectures on Electricity and Magnetism.

The Image Widget

Two features were recently introduced for WordPress.com users. For those of you that don’t know the difference, I’ll just call it FREE WordPress.

The first feature I’ll talk about is the Image Widget. This widget lets you add a static image to the side bar of your blog. When I looked into this I found out that the image needs to be one found on the web and needs an extention that you typically find for images like .jpeg, .gif, .png etc.  I was rather disappointed because I wanted to post an image from my computer, not from the web.

So I gave it some thought and then it dawned on me – I can put this widget to use by adding a Twitter icon which links to my Twitter account.

Follow Ileane on Twitter

Check it out over on the right. Might not look as great as some of the others I’ve seen on PAID WordPress blogs, but it gets the job done. The link has been clicked 5 times since yesterday which is more than the link I’ve had on my Contact Page for over a month.

Someone posted a seemingly endless list of Twitter apps on their blog, yet there is a new one to add the list and its called Buzzom. Take a look at part 1 on my introduction to Buzzom.

In part 2 of Twitter Meets Buzzom I preview a few of the features that I find most useful.

Please share your comments with me. Remember, Ms. Ileane Speaks, but I listen too!

Smooches!

Learning Online

I currently have a 30-day free pass to explore the entire software training library at Lynda.com. If you’ve never heard of Lynda.com, just trust me this is a HUGE deal.

See here’s the thing, the web is over-flowing with a plethora of amazing websites promising to make you richer, smarter, skinnier, closer to God or to simply help manage your tweets. They all seem intriguing enough but unless I find out that the services offered are FREE, I am totally not interested. Like the old saying goes, The Best Things in Life Are Free.

I’ve known about Lynda.com for a few years now, and if you go to the site you’ll see that you can poke around and view a smidgen of content from each module without paying the $25 monthly fee.  And now that I have access to view all of the tutorials I am soaking up knowledge like a sponge.

WordPress is intuitive

The first module I viewed on Lynda.com is WordPress.com 2.7 Essential Training with Maria Langer. I’d previously watched WordPress tutorials on YouTube and on WordPress. tv and I find the platform very intuitive and user-friendly. I assumed that viewing this module would reinforce what I already knew and perhaps explain a thing or two that I was curious about. I ended up adding tons of new blogging skills to my arsenal and I’m sure you will also. So without further delay, here’s the list of 5 WordPress Secrets You Need to Know.

1. More tags
2. The Kitchen Sink Button
3. Adding or Inviting other users
4. Understanding Pingbacks
5. Editing Images

I’ve known about blogging since it became a cyberspace phenomena over a decade ago, yet this is my first blog.  I figured out that what I needed was an internet guru or an evangelists to inspire me.

Web Analytics

Before you start thinking that this is a religious post let me give you some examples.  One of my favorite bloggers is the self-proclaimed Web Analytics Evangelist for Google Avinash Kaushik. Avinash has lots of great video tutorials that explain why you need web analytics in the first place and how you can get the most out of using it. I realize that his  video presentations are what initially captured my attention. I must be a visual learner, because I won’t even subscribe to a podcast unless it’s a video podcasts. I’m also fond of Avinash because he turned his blog into a book and all of the proceeds are donated to charity.

When it comes to gurus I have four that I watch faithfully every week.

Mr. Excel

One is Bill Jelen Mr. Excel.  He stands head and shoulders above the rest because he will explain any and every feature available in Excel that you could possibly imagine and if you go to his website you can download his books for free.  That is something so rare that it cannot go without mention.

The other three gurus are all rolled up into one funky, little podcast called Photoshop User TV. The Photoshop guys are very talented and you can watch the podcast just for laughs.

Photoshop User TV

They give step-by-step instructions to help you manipulate images on a whole different level then what you might expect.  But in contrast to Mr. Excel they don’t give many books away for free.  Don’t get me wrong, they have a contest or two every week and the winner gets a free magazine or a subscription but their book sales punctuate every podcast.

Yesterday Word Press gave me a glimpse of the blogosphere guru I’ve been longing for Timothy Ferriss. I watched this awesome video Blogging Without Killing Yourself that gave me insights and a fresh approach to blogging.

Tim Ferriss

I might end up finding some other blog evangelists in the coming weeks, but I’ll never forget Tim because he was my first. I also found out that he has a talk on www.TED.com called Smash Fear, Learn Anything and I now I’m truly hooked. Tim is author of bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, he’s credited with coining the phrase lifestyle design, has over 57,000 tweeps, and he is on the list of 20 People That Started as Bloggers, Who Are Now So Much More.

I’ll blog more about www.TED.com Ideas Worth Spreading, in a future post because I think you’ve had more than enough of gurus and evangelists for today.