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This is a guest post by Ross Hudgens. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

If you’re going to blog, you need readers. To get readers, the fastest path to acquiring them is by reaching influencers. And to do THAT, the best way to contact them is by e-mail. Why? Because e-mail is the most personal form of communication available for this medium that’s still acceptable.

As much as I’d like to call Seth Godin’s cell phone to pitch a guest post, doing so would probably get me immediately hung up on, mostly because it’s a bit TOO personal for such a request. Conversely, using Twitter or pitching through blog comments isn’t strong enough of a pull to often get what you want – whatever that might be.

E-mail is the perfect balance – flattering but not overboard. Personal but not prying.

The Pitch

So, you want an influencer to do something with your something. You’ve got that something, and now all you have to do is send the e-mail. Once you’ve got the address, it’s time to craft a pitch worth writing home to your mom — and this influencer — about.

The Subject Line

Don’t make this professional or overly pitchy. Don’tdon’tdon’t. The last thing you want is for the person you’re contacting to immediately think you’re selling them something, even if you actually are. First impressions are important, so do your best to open with a subject line that’s not robotic or overly commercial. Because of this, I can’t give you any real recommendations, because every one you create should be absolutely and completely unique. Here are some examples:

For Chris Brogan – “I don’t Trust a Trust Agent”

For Seth Godin – “I loved The Dip! But I hate tobacco”

I don’t even mention what I’m going to pitch them on. Because, if I am pitching them on something that requires some level of effort on their part, I must provide OVERWHELMING ego pulls and entertainment value to counteract this small request.

Dear (Influencer)

Open with their first name, not “Mr. or Mrs.”. Again, this should be a friendly request. If you use Mr. or Mrs., it seems like a business transaction, and is less likely to be taken appropriately. For the highest conversion, you must appear to be their adoring fan – and nothing else. Your pitch must be a reflection of that adoration – for example, a post that talks about their greatness.

The further you move from this, the less likely your pitch will succeed. However, success is still very possible – so maintain that friendliness as much as possible.

The Body

These influencers are busy, so don’t spend too much time singing their praises, but make sure they hear that you’re singing. Use a compliment that is non-standard and flattering – for example — “Seth, you have changed my life. I cried when I quit my first job after reading “The Dip”, but it’s done amazing things for me since – I can’t thank you enough.” If you were Seth, wouldn’t you be immensely flattered by that, even against all the other countless compliments he’s sure to get?

Yes, you would. And you’d inevitably do the small favor this person asked of you, because you’d feel so attached to their compliment.

So open with a strong, non-standard compliment. Not “I love your work”. Make it about two-three paragraphs, and ideally, have it blend into your pitch – meaning they should be related. The more abrupt this change, the less likely you are to get action from the influencer. This is because an abrupt change makes it obvious your intention was not to sing their praises, but rather, to gain their influence.

An example of a good body:

Chris, I saw you speak at SXSW and I absolutely adored your talk. Every day when I wake up I interact with 10 people on Twitter, even before I have a cup of coffee. Trust Agents is like my bible, I have it right on my nightstand – and I loved it so much I included it in a recent post about the Greatest Books of All Time. Thank you so much for putting it out.

URL: http://www.sampleblogurl.com/greatest-books-ever/

An example of a bad body:

Chris, I really liked Trust Agents. Thanks for writing it. I included it on a list of the greatest books ever, you should check it out. J

URL: http://www.sampleblogurl.com/greatest-books-ever/

Notice the difference? One body seems like genuine, authentic praise – the other seems like a pitch that was meant just to be a pitch, nothing else. Saying “I really liked Trust Agents” is something any influencer has heard a million times over for their specific product.

Ex-Post Facto

After the dust has settled and your influencer has undoubtedly adopted and/or Tweeted out your content, you shouldn’t let up. Say thank you, and maintain the same level of authenticity to keep this influencer in your camp – should you need their elite expertise, influence, and/or friendship in the future.

About the Author: Ross Hudgens is a blogger and Marketing Manager at Billy.com. You should follow him on Twitter here.

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Yesterday I received an email from one of our readers, asking on what social media sites he should try to secure his name (which can be either his personal name, or his website/business name, depending on what brand he is trying to promote).

In my opinion there are two that are absolutely a must: Twitter and Facebook. All the others are optional. Depending on the type of business you have some niche social sites might be compulsory too. For instance, if you are a photographer you should try to secure your name/brand on Flickr too.

That being said, if you have time available it could be a good idea to secure your name on as many social sites as possible. This will solidify your brand and enable you to interact with your audience/customers on many different platforms.

There is a web tool that helps with this task. It is called namechk.com.

You just need to put the desired name on the search box and the tool will check whether it’s available on not on around 150 social media sites. You can also use it as a list of the sites where you can go and create a profile, as some of them will also let you place a backlink to your website.

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Yesterday Google unveiled what is considered by many the biggest game changer the search industry has seen in years. It’s called Google Instant, and it basically shows search results in real time, as you type letter by letter. Here is a quote from the official Google Instant page:

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Google is gradually rolling the change around the world, and most people should already be able to experience this feature on the Google.com (English version) page.

The question that has been on my mind is how will this new feature impact website owners. Many other people are discussing this too, so I decided to make a roundup of the views and opinions I saw around the web, with my own take about them.

1. Google Instant will kill SEO (I don’t agree.)

Some people started linkbaiting suggesting that Google Instant will kill SEO or make it irrelevant. I disagree with this view. It sure will change how SEO is done, but if anything this will open new opportunities for the skillful and clever SEOs out there.

Companies will also keep needing help with their SEO and PPC management, so I don’t think much will change in this segment either.

2. There will be less traffic to long tail keywords (I partially agree)

Now that search results are displayed in real time, the keyword suggestions people will see on their search boxes will be much more effective. This means that people will be less inclined to type long and detailed keywords (i.e., long tail ones), so the traffic you’ll get from these keywords will be reduced. I agree with that.

But there is another side to this coin. Google tests revealed that real time results encourage people to make more searches, so this could off-set the previous effect, increasing the amount of traffic you’ll get even for long tail keywords.

3. Popular keywords will become even more popular (My own theory)

Another effect of the keyword suggestions is that popular keywords should become even more popular (as long as they are one of the Google suggestions). Someone who was about to search for “make money online with a website”, for example, will see a suggestion for “make money online” right after typing some letters, and there are good chances he’ll just click there to save time.

4. Title tags will become a lot more important (My own theory)

As you probably know Google uses the title tag of a page as its headline in the search results page. For this reason title tags were already important, but with Google Instant they become even more.

Why? Because your pages will appear in many more searches now, and if you have a catchy title tag you might convince the user to click on your link even if he was searching for something else.

Over to the readers: What do you guys think about Google Instant, and how do you think it will affect website owners?

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This is a guest post by Onibalusi Bamidele. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Every now and then I will see a list of things bloggers should do, but I notice people are not that inclined to do what they are asked to do, while they pay more attention to things they should NOT do. That is why I decided to create the list below. Here we go:

1. You Must Not Expect Results Overnight: This is happening everywhere and that is the major reason why a large percentage of bloggers fail. Many bloggers come online unprepared and with the wrong set of expectations. They think blogging is a bed of roses and they only need to write one or two posts and begin to make money right away. Wrong!

2. You Must Not Ignore Your Readers: Some bloggers start gaining traction fast, and after a while they start to make their blogs gravitate around themselves. That is, they start talking exclusively about themselves, about the things they like, about how cool they are and so on. Big mistake. Your blog is about your readers, not about you.

3. You Must Not Scrape Another Bloggers Content: This is funny but nowadays you will see many new bloggers who don’t even know the basics, and yet they start to scrape another bloggers content. Often times these people won’t even credit the source. You can’t get far with this attitude.

4. You Must Not Expect Success Without Promoting: Many people think blogging is like setting up a shop at the road side and that all they need to do is wait for people to start finding them. Build and they will come, as the saying goes. This unfortunately is not true. Even if you have great content you’ll need to work your butt off getting people to visit your blog and read it.

5. You Must Not Be Another Blogger: This is so common among many bloggers nowadays. They no longer want to be themselves, they now want to be one popular blogger they know. It is like using the “fake it till you make it” strategy. Will it work over the long term? No. So keep it real.

6. You Must Not Fail To Update Your Blog Regularly: You will see some bloggers telling you they want to be a problogger, only to leave their blog without updates for weeks. If you can’t commit to updating your blog regularly, why would you expect people to commit to reading it regularly?

7. You Must Not Ignore SEO: Nowadays, you will see many bloggers not optimizing their blogs for search engines, if you ask them why, they will say they don’t know SEO. The real answer, however, is “Because I am lazy.” Don’t be lazy and learn what you must if you want to make your blog popular.

8. You Must Not Ignore Networking: You should never underestimate the power of networking. As people say, it is about who you know and now about what you know in the long run.

9. You Must Not Have An Unreadable/Unnavigable Site: Many people think blogging is all about your content. No! Blogging is far more than your content. You should work on making sure your site is easily navigable and that readers can easily get what they want without looking twice. Usability is a big factor on the web.

10. You Must Not Throw Mud Around: Some new bloggers that if they attack other people or bloggers, they might create a buzz and increase their traffic levels. This might be true in the short run, but over the long term such attitude will create many enemies and burn yourself.

About the author: Onibalusi Bamidele is a young entrepreneur living the Internet lifestyle, subscribe to his blog for more great posts. He sometimes write at technshare.com as well.

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Over the years I have changed my computer wallpaper many times. In the beginning it was only the default Windows image. Then I started using pictures of things I wanted to achieve. Then I developed the anti-procrastination wallpaper….

Some time last year, however, I started noticing that my desktop was getting cluttered with too many files and folders, and it was becoming hard to find what I needed fast. That is why I decided to create what I call the functional wallpaper. Here is a picture:

The idea is not mine. I believe I had seen something like this either on the web or on some friend’s computer long time ago. You basically create a background image with sections, and then you organize the icons and files inside these sections. For instance, I have one section for general stuff, one for my backups, one for programming stuff, and one for each of my main websites.

It is working like a charm, so it will probably be a while before I decide to change it. If you are having a hard time finding stuff on your desktop too, give it a shot.

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As you probably know there are hundreds, if not thousands of exploits and threats around the web these days. Website based threats usually require an script to run (e.g., Javascript or Java), which means that blocking these scripts is a method to create another layer of security.

In the past I had seen tools and plugins to completely stop any and all scripts from running, but this was a drastic fix, because on some sites and situations you might want to run scripts.

Is there a better solution? Yes. It’s a Firefox add-on called NoScript.

The add-on will block all scripts by default, but you can customize it extensively to make sure you’ll be able to run the scripts you need or want. For example, you can pre-define a list of domains that should be allowed to run scripts, or you can allow and disallow sites and pages on the fly, while you navigate.

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This is a guest post by Justin P Lambert. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

There.

You knew when you put in that pithy final line, just punchy enough to ensure a ton of comments and at least 200 retweets. You sat back, cracked your knuckles, sighed deeply and click “Publish”.

And sure enough, a few days later, you’re looking at 348 comments, 1235 retweets, a ridiculous response on StumbleUpon, and a personal e-mail from Daniel Scocco asking you how you did it.

You know without a shadow of a doubt: that was the best damn blog post you’ve ever written, bar none.

And that’s when it sinks in.

“Oh God. How am I going to top that one?”

Blog readers are an awesome audience, especially if they’re engaged in the conversation, willing to bat your ideas around and really bring some solid ideas of their own to the floor. But they’re a nervous and flighty sort too, sometimes.

Just like any online audience, their attention spans can waver. Their patience can wear thin. Let’s face it:

They can forget you.

So that’s why you’ve put your blood, sweat and tears into cranking out reams of killer content from the day your blog launched! Isn’t that enough?

Well, no.

Killer content is absolutely vital. That’s what brings the readers to you and keeps them coming back. That’s what builds up the conversation and the social media cyclones that can dump insane amounts of qualified traffic on your site over and over again.

It’s what feeds the blogging machine!

But even with the most incredible content out there, the average blog reader can begin to tire of your content if you’re not careful to do one equally important thing.

This one thing can mean the difference between hitting your peak with that “best post ever” and continuing your meteoric rise to blogging stardom. And, sad to say, most bloggers never bother to do it.

Are you ready?

Ask your readers what they want next.

It’s really that simple! Ask your readers what they want to get next from you.

They’re at your blog because your awesome content brought them there. If they’ve subscribed, they’ve invested their most valuable commodity, their time, with YOU and your blog. If they comment, they’re sharing their thoughts and feelings with you on your home turf! If they’ve dugg, retweeted, stumbled or liked anything you’ve written, they’ve put themselves out there as an advocate for you and what you stand for.

So what’s the logical next step?

Find out why. Why do they like you THAT MUCH? Why do they keep coming back? What is it they would absolutely LOVE to see more of? What do they keep wishing you’ll write about that you haven’t yet?

Give them the chance to be heard, and then actually ACT on what they say, and you’ve made an advocate for life.

So, the next time you run into that delicious problem described above, and you’re sitting there wringing your hands wondering how you could ever top that last uber-post… just ask.

They’ll let you know.

About the Author: Justin P Lambert blogs daily about writing, speaking and being awesome at Words That Begin With You. Subscribe so you don’t miss any of the good stuff! Or, join him on Twitter @justinplambert.

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This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. If you want to ask a question, just write a comment below.

Cherran asks:

As a person working online, after the initial revenue goals are achieved, I’m getting a feeling that I’m little bit straying away from the normal world. Even for a small business owner with half of our income, he would need to interact with people face to face everyday.

I’m getting a feeling that we may live in a safe cocoon, far away from the reality.

Have you ever felt this way? If so how do you deal with it? Joining some organizations, working from coffee shops these are some of things came to my mind.

When you work full time on the Internet you’ll definitely be having fewer face to face interactions, especially if compared with someone who works inside a large company. Certainly this is not a positive thing, as human beings are social by nature. But, it is not necessarily a bad thing either.

It can be a negative thing if you are a person who needs or likes to be interacting with other people all the time. There are people out there who simply would go nuts if they had to work all day alone inside a home office.

However, there are many people who don’t mind it, and in this case the lack of social interactions you get from working online is not a big problem. This is especially true if you consider the advantages that such a lifestyle has: the possibility to spend more time with your family, the flexibility regarding your schedule, the time you save because you don’t need to commute, the possibility to live and work from anywhere around the world and so on.

I belong to the second camp, which means that I don’t mind the lack of face to face interactions while I work. It is important to balance things out though. For instance, every week day I get out to practice at least one hour of physical activity, and during the weekends I also go out my friends.

The things you mentioned can also help. For example, there are many people who like to work from coffee shops. Some even rent a shared office space so that they get to interact with other people.

What do you guys think? Do you believe that working online isolates you from the world? Is this necessarily a bad thing?

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Back when I was at the university (around 2002) I went to live in an apartment with three other students. I didn’t know them prior to moving there, but quickly we became good friends. Then one day I was leaving the building to walk to the university and I noticed one of my friends leaving the garage with a BMW Z3 M. Not familiar? At the time it was one of the best BMWs around, with almost 300hp. Below is a picture.

Needless to say I was shocked when I saw the scene. I approached him and said something like “What the heck dude! You never told me you had a Z3 M!”.

Right after that I obviously questioned him regarding how he managed to buy one, since he apparently was just a student. He told me that he made money buying and selling stuff on a site called eBay. I was surprised, but that was it. I guess at the time all I cared about was partying and having fun (I was 19 after all), so I didn’t pay too much attention to my friend’s entrepreneurial endeavors.

Looking back I wish I had acted differently. That is, I wish I had gone to my friend and said something like “OK, you obviously have something working for you here. You figured something out that other people haven’t, with amazing results. I want that too. Would you be so kind to teach me?”

I am sure my friend would’ve been flattered with such an attitude from my part, and that he would’ve done his best to teach me all he knew about the eBay stuff he was working on. I am also sure I would be making 7 figures annually by now if I had started doing online marketing back in 2002….

Why I am telling you this story? To illustrate the point that learning directly from other people who already achieved what you want to achieve is one of the best ways to succeed, and yet few of us do it.

And here is the interesting part: I don’t think that convincing people to mentor you is that hard. You just need to show you REALLY want it, and that you are willing to do what it takes. The easiest way to do this is probably to find someone in your own city or country, and try to build a relationship. You could start it over the web, but sooner or later you would need to take it to a personal level. Invite the person for a beer, ask if you can pay him a visit some day to see his office and the behind the scenes of his websites and so on. You get the idea.

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This is a guest post by Danny Wong. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Writing hasn’t always been a skill of mine. I rarely ever read when I was younger, and still had my father read me books for years after I had learned how to read for myself.

So how did I go from a forced writer (I only wrote things when I had to for school and never for recreation) to an influential blogger?

I started writing for our business blog just because we needed content creators. I was new to this whole Social Media thing, and I could hardly write coherent content, nevertheless quality content. I dreaded it.

We quickly killed my future contributions to the blog because I wasn’t enjoying it, the content wasn’t incredibly beneficial or engaging, and instead I focused more efforts on things I could do to really impact the business.

So I turned to learning how to manage Public Relations because I thought, “If I can’t inbound any visitors to the site and business blog by writing quality content, then let me go out and get traffic from other people’s sites and blogs.”

So I spent a lot of time schmoozing bloggers and writers and then I closed a feature article with a writer on a site called Examiner.com. I thought it was the neatest thing to have such a high traffic site featuring me since it had millions of unique visitors a month. After reading and reveling in the feature article, I saw a Call-To-Action saying, “Write for us” and I thought, “Hm. This seems like an interesting opportunity to build brand awareness through links in my byline and increase my personal brand by just being a (sort of) professional writer.”

The CTA called to me and I answered. Using a referral from the writer that featured me, I ended up becoming the Boston Startup Examiner, and then things just snowballed from there. I starting reading blogs like DailyBlogTips, reading more content on Examiner and other news-oriented blogs, and then starting doing guest posts any blogs that would take my work!

Then I just kept stumbling upon opportunities, and quickly built relationships with lots of editors through my formal PR work and then reached out to them with a guest post ready for their review.

Finally, I started publishing on some of the biggest sites in their niche, like SearchEngineJournal and a local NY Times blog, and then I started publishing on some of the biggest blogs in the world like TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb.

Now, I have a blogger account with the world’s #1 blog, HuffingtonPost, and I have a pretty strong portfolio of writings published in an even stronger set of blogs, which gives me leverage when trying to publish articles on other sites when I can say, “My name is Danny Wong and I have contributed writings to NY Times (blog), HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb and Examiner.”

Just to break down how I went from sucking at writing to writing for some of the world’s biggest blogs:

1. I had a relationship with a writer at a media outlet that had open invitations for writers to join, and spent way too many hours crafting my application writings as well as my first few posts.

2. I was reading more blogs and books, and spent more time writing blog posts that I would never publish just for the sake of practicing writing.

3. I started publishing anywhere and everywhere that would talk to a small-time writer like me, especially one that had some interesting thoughts and experience in startups and entrepreneurship.

4. Some of the bigger blogs I read had published guest posts on their site, so I contacted the first person I knew who was a writer (a relationship I built through my PR work) and asked how I might become a contributor. Sometimes, I was directed to the editor who would then request I submit a post to them directly, or I would have already had contact with an editor who was anxious to see how I could contribute to their business.

5. The bigger sites bit. Admittedly, I did spend several hours writing my first post for each outlet, but it was well worth the time investment because I started the relationship off on the right foot, and then became a semi-frequent contributor.

6. I name-dropped all the different media outlets I had contributed to when pitching myself to publish with a new media outlet, so things just snowballed as I built up my credibility. As I became more credible after publishing posts with more and more influential blogs, the bigger blogs started to pay attention to me and were more than happy to take my contributions.

It took quite a bit of hard work, networking and determination to build up my writing skills and my writing portfolio so now I can proudly say I am a blogger with the #1 blog in the world and write for several of the biggest blogs out there.

What tactics did you use to publish with big blogs and sites?

About the author: Danny Wong is a writer at HuffingtonPost (you can see his column here), the #1 blog in the world, and the co-founder of co-created dress shirts startup, Blank Label.

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