Make Money from Blogs

I have always believed in keeping the titles of my blog posts short and sweet, but then I started discovering something. I have an automatic process using Twitterfeed to update my blog posts to my Twitter account, and using Networked Blogs to update my Facebook Fan Page. On Twitter, what I found was that with my short beautiful title, only that much amount of the title was showing via the Tweet. Now, this is configurable, and you can set for the update to pick up the following text of the post if the title proves inadequate, but considering that people can find your blog post via Twitter search, and many more services which pick up Twitter posts, you should work to make sure that you have a title that looks sharp, and yet has enough text in it such that it can get picked up from Twitter posts. Craft your title so that on reading it, somebody can immediately see it as the answer to their question.
For example, if you consider the above title, the blog title could have been “Benefits of keeping a long title”, but I decided to keep a longer version of the title, as you can see above. When this shows up on Twitter and Facebook, somebody viewing it can immediately make out that the need for this title is because of social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook.
Now, to get the exact correct title everytime that also contains the desired keywords will take some time and effort, and I am ready to make the required effort, it it means that I am able to get a title that causes benefits in terms of users coming to my blog from Twitter search. Usage of Twitter is only increasing, and it is better to spend time to learn about how to optimize ones usage of Twitter.

February 8th, 2010 | Tags: Automatic Update, Characters, Length, Post, Title, Twitter | Category: Content, Facebook, Fan Page, Optimize, Post | Leave a comment

The previous post (link) had started out with an analysis of the differences between a Facebook Fan Page and a Facebook Group, and based on that analysis, and comparing with your need, you would need to figure out which one is more suitable for your needs. Here is the concluding part of that article:
1. Groups can send messages to their members as long as members are less than 5,000, while Page Admins can send updates to any number of fans
2. You can directly update content from your blogs and other areas such as Twitter by using applications such as RSS, Networked Blogs, etc, while Groups need manual updates – this if you want your blog posts to automatically appear on Facebook, then a Fan Page is the way to go
3. You can promote your Fan Pages through the use of targeted ads, something not possible with Facebook Groups. Through ads, you can get a large number of fans
4. Groups allow a far higher degree of control over who all can join the group or not, including ensuring that members need to be approved before being allowed inside, while the level of control in a Page is far lower

In short, it seems more like that Groups was something that Facebook was supporting earlier, but the focus is now moving over to a Facebook Fan Page being the area that will have a higher focus.

February 5th, 2010 | Tags: Facebook, Facebook Fan Page, Facebook Group, Fan Page, Group | Category: Facebook, Facebook Group, Fan Page | Leave a comment

Well, there is no easy way to determine the right answer for the last question above – “Which is better”. I know that most people detest an answer which starts with “It depends”, but it is true in this case. It depends on what you are trying to promote, what is the level of response and involvement you are looking at, and so on. So, let’s do some evaluation of the differences between a Facebook Fan Page and a Facebook Group.
1. The way that Fan Pages and Groups are setup (including their privacy settings) are different. Fan Pages, when they started out, were modeled after the concept of they being the representation of the fans of a artist, a musician, a rock band, and so on. A group allowed the administrator to set higher levels of privacy, including this being secret, and was more like a club.
2. Groups are meant for a more closer or intimate level of interaction, such as being able to see who the administrator of the Group is, being able to view the profiles of the group members, and so on. On the other hand, you can hide the name of the administrator of the Fan Page, and the profile information of members is also hidden. As a result, a Fan Page allows a viewer to maintain privacy while reading the information on the Fan Page.
3. Groups cannot have additional information added to the pages through applications, while Fan Pages allow you to extent the functionality through the use of external third party applications. As the number of such applications increases, this becomes more important.
4. Groups are not available to non-Facebook users, while Fan Pages are visible to non-Facebook users, letting a greater number of people get access to these posts and find these results through searches.
5. However, since the apparent involvement of users with Facebook Groups is greater, any update sent to the group is displayed more prominently on the user’s profile in the case of a Group rather than in a Fan Page
6. The level of statistics provided in a Fan Page is far greater than that in a Group, and if you are interested in doing a number of statistical analysis of your readers, then a Fan Page will be more useful.
(to be contd..)

February 4th, 2010 | Tags: Benefits, Facebook, Facebook Fan Page, Facebook Group, Fan Page, Group, Promotion | Category: Facebook, Facebook Group, Fan Page, Feed | Comments (1)