(Image source: Fotolia)

The content then, is what matters. You can update your existing clients on your latest projects and network with freelancers like yourself. In your Twitter, you may link your followers to your professional blog where they can further explore your work and even better, re-tweet it to their own network. All these can bring you more business in the long run as these people go on to recommend you to potential clients.

Here are five possible ways to make good use of Twitter for your freelance business:

1. Connect with Relevant People

As you would probably agree with me, social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook have definitely facilitated our access to such opportunities to exchange knowledge and insights to an unprecedented level. To effectively utilize such access, you must first connect with the right people to obtain valuable information from. For instance, following the tweets of designers would update you with some of their latest work, from which you may find inspirations or ideas for your own design.

Besides, there will always be things you can modify and improve about your business, be it the design of your work, marketing strategy or even the capacity of your web server. Twitter, being a great tool to network with people of the same field, is your key to refining your business. This is because freelancers like you are now able to share tips and critique each other’s work and approach. Such online relationships, although casual, can do wonders for you by widening your perspective on how things can be done.

2. Draw People to Your Blog

Twittering is a good way to inform your followers on any updates to your portfolio blog. However, the benefit of using Twitter goes beyond the purpose of simple notifications. Each time your followers get informed about your latest work or design, they may also send out a Tweet after checking out your site. This is especially when your work shows extraordinariness and your followers want to comment and compliment about it.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Through a networking apparatus like Twitter, your blog gets promoted exponentially. This way, your blog, along with your awesome work, gets free publicity to more prospective clients. Also, supposing you have set up a Twitter account solely for your freelance business(which is advisable), then those who follow your Twitter are likely to be those relevant people you want to associate with your business. Once these people tweet or re-tweet about it, their followers are also the target audience you would want to promote your business to. In this manner, your blog is advertised freely and specifically to those that matters.

3. Find Prospective Clients

A major component of Twitter is its search function that enables users to search for other users to follow. There, you can search for specific topic or interest and get a list of Twitter accounts for your consideration to follow. If you are looking for prospective clients, then this is great tool for yourself to get acquainted and develop a professional network with other freelancers or potential clients. Strike a conversation by replying to their tweets. It works the other way round as well. Having a Twitter account yourself, people are able to search for you and request to follow your tweets.

Don’t be surprised to receive messages requesting for your freelance services. They might have come across your tweets after combing through potential freelancers on Twitter, saw your work on your site and got impressed. Either that or they might have seen some random tweets of users who were following you and subsequently check out your blog.

In any case, such bi-directional search between yourself and other potential employers would no doubt open up doors to more opportunities.

4. Establish Your Brand

Once you have a decent number of followers, it becomes a must to update them on your latest work so that they get constant reminder of your business. Focus on your specialty from the various services you provide and your followers will know what to expect from your updates. If, for instance, you’re a freelance web designer who is an expert in doing up creative typography for sites, then perhaps you can emphasize on the font design of your latest works in your tweets.

At the end of the day, it’s all about creating that association between what your business does best and your business brand. Once people can tie your brand to your brand’s selling point (in this case, the typography of web design), then you have established your brand well. As your followers consist of existing clients and potential ones as well, it is crucial to build a good reputation for your business and let the good words get spread throughout the entire network.

5. Be the Expert

If you want to get more referrals to clients through the internet, you need to build a name for yourself. To do that, post insightful updates to your Twitter and give your audience what they want to know. Providing meaningful comments on other’s work as well as your own will impress upon your audience that you’re passionate and serious about what you do. Besides, sharing your thoughts about designs is the first step to getting priceless feedback from other freelancers.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Not all of us will eventually be considered as experts simply by giving our personal takes on designs and such. But if you managed to get there, your personal work will be taken more seriously. Your followers would be more likely to tweet the work of someone who is deem as the expert or the leader of the field. The end result is that you’ve earned yourself a good reputation, and that’s great because more people will hear of your work. This includes potential clients for your business.

So it’s pretty much vital for anyone trying to promote a product, service, event, or cause to create a Facebook page. While other social networks (Google+ among them) are making gains, Facebook is still the largest and most popular out there, and that’s unlikely to change in the immediate future (and besides, Google+ doesn’t even allow brand pages yet).

One of the biggest mistakes brands make when creating Facebook pages is to just use the default tabs and default content. They post nothing but self-promotional updates and have no realy ways of interacting with their fans. Basically, their pages are boring.

The answer to this common problem is to make use of all the custom content applications and tabs available for Facebook pages. You can add custom welcome tabs, video tabs, feed your blog or other RSS feed into your news feed, import your tweets, and a lot more. Finding the apps to do all this, though, is a bit trickier.

In this guide, we’ll show you some of the best apps for Facebook pages and how to best use them. While it would be impossible to cover every app available (there are thousands that can be used on pages), this post will get you started.

More related posts:

• Customizing Business’s Facebook Fan Page
• 20 Facebook Tips and Tricks
• Creative Facebook Timeline covers
• Integrate Facebook Open Graph With WordPress

Customizable Tabs

Creating completely custom tabs is the bread-and-butter of Facebook Pages. These apps make it easy to create completely custom tabs for just about anything.

First Impression

First Impression is North Social’s landing page app. The CMS built into the app makes it easy to create, edit, and update the page. It also includes the ability to customize the image and message that get posted when someone shares you page. Pricing for North Social apps is based on the number of fans you have (less than 1,000 fans is only $19.99 per month) and all accounts come with a 14 day free trial.

Welcome Tab

Welcome Tab is Involver’s landing page app. It makes it simple to create a custom branded splash page for your FB Page that invites visitors to become fans.

TabMaker

TabMaker is a free tool for creating custom tabs for your Page. You can create pages in a WYSIWYG editor, making it accessible for non-tech-savvy users. There are additional apps you can add to your tabs, both free and paid.

Social Candy

Social Candy offers content management and marketing tools for creating and managing professional, customized Facebook Pages, with no technical skills required. Subscriptions start at $29.99 per month, though you can try Social Candy for free.

ShortStack

ShortStack lets you create a number of specialized tabs for your Page, including fan-only content, sweepstakes and contests, custom contact forms, and more. They offer a number of widgets for adding functionality to your pages, including Flickr, images, voting, polls, virtual gifts, countdowns, iFrames, videos, and more. Their free account can handle Pages with up to 2,000 fans, and paid plans start at $15 per month.

Tabsite

TabSite is a fan page platform that lets you easily customize your Facebook page. It uses widgets to let you customize the content that appears on your custom tabs. Widgets available include everything from images and text content to YouTube channels, RSS feeds, and contact forms. They offer a free plan with up to 2 tabs per fan page, advertising in the footer, and a limited number of widgets. Paid subscriptions start at $5 per month, and there’s also a full white label option available.

Lujure Social Suite

The Lujure Social Suite offers a number of widgets and apps for customizing your fan page, including iFrames, YouTube, PayPal, Google Maps, Countdowns, Twitter, Live Chat, Tumblr, Real Estate, Skype, Vimeo, and more. Their free plan allows one tab and access to all the applications. Paid plans start at $30 per month and include all the applications, plus an unlimited number of pages and tabs.

Fan Page Engine

Fan Page Engine makes it really simple and easy to design your own custom tabs. They have a drag and drop interface for creating pages, offer “reveal” tabs (fan gates) to increase likes to your page, and they have help videos to guide you in creating your own tabs. Their Basic subscription starts at just $4.97 per month.

Video Players and Tabs

There are a ton of video players and tabs for Facebook pages out there, so we’ll only cover a few of them. If the ones below don’t do what you need, you can rest assured that there probably is an app out there somewhere that does, you’ll just have to do a bit more research.

YouTube Tab

The YouTube Tab, from TabFusion, lets you easily add a YouTube tab to your fan pages. While it’s not free, pricing is a reasonable $10 per year. It’s a very versatile tab that can be easily customized to fit your needs, and is already used by a number of high-profile brands, including DC Shoes, Nissan Japan, and Peugeot.

Video Channel

Video Channel from North Social lets you add and organize YouTube video content directly. You can customize the tab header, add a fan gate so visitors have to like your page prior to watching video content, commenting is optional on videos, and there’s management options for sharing. It requires a North Social subscription, which starts at $19.99 per month.

Video Premiere

Video Premiere is another video tab app from North Social that is focused on showcasing the release of new video by displaying a single large format YouTube video on your page. It includes fan gate functionality, a customizable header, sharing management, and optional on-page comments. It requires a North Social subscription, which starts at $19.99 per month.

Best YouTube Channel for Pages

Best YouTube Channel for Pages lets you display playlists or your channel and will show up to fifty of your most recent videos. The app is reasonably priced at $9.99.

Hubnut

Hubnut is a widget directly from Vimeo. Just create your Hubnut with your Vimeo videos and then paste the code it gives you into any custom tab that allows HTML.

Blip.tv Tab

Blip.tv Tab is another app from TabFusion. This one lets you includes your Blip.tv videos on your Facebook Page. The background image and text colors can be customized, and the app is only $10 for the year.

Vimeo Tab

Vimeo Tab is also from TabFusion. It only works with Vimeo Plus accounts, and includes all your videos and channels. The background and text colors of the app are customizable. Vimeo Tab is $10 for the year.

Contests

Running a contest on your FB page can greatly increase the number of fans you have if you run the contest well and get the word out. There are a number of apps that can help you run a contest or sweepstakes. It’s important to be very careful when running a Facebook promotion or contest, as it’s vital that you adhere to Facebook’s rules, or risk having your page deleted without warning. This is why using a third-party application can be a good idea, as they make sure everything is set up according to Facebook’s rules.

Votigo

Votigo offers a number of contest and promotion apps for your page, including photo and video contests, and a viral sweepstakes app. Both apps are still in beta, and are currently very inexpensive, at only a couple of cents per month.

ContextOptional Contest

ContextOptional offers a Contest app for adding a contest to your page. You can add photo contests, video contests, and essay contests (or a combination of the three) to your page, with the ability for fans to upload their own content and where fans can vote on entries.

ContextOptional Sweepstakes

ContextOptional also offers a Sweepstakes app, which gives you complete control over the design of your sweepstakes tab. You can gate entries with a requirement to like the brand page or provide an email address or mobile phone number. You can also control the number of entries per fan, and collect custom information from each entrant.

North Social Sweepstakes

The North Social Sweepstakes app lets you launch a sweepstakes in minutes on your FB page. It supports fan gates, includes tools for building your subscriber lists, and lets you embed a simple, customizable info-capture form. A North Social subscription is required.

Momentus Media Contest

The Momentus Media Contest app lets you create video, photo, and text-based contests, with winners decided by a judging process that you define.

Sweepstakes & Contests

Sweepstakes & Contests from Friend2Friend makes it easy to set up a sweepstakes or contest tab, including a form for collecting data, photo uploads, and more. Fan gates are also supported, as are newsfeed Share options to help word spread about your page.

Strutta Contests

Strutta Contests lets you create photo, video, audio, or text-based contests quickly and easily. Users can comment and vote on entries, share the contests through Facebook and Twitter, and four conest configurations are supported: public vote, judges pick, public vote for finalists with final winner picked by judges, or judges pick finalists and public votes on the winner.

Blog, RSS Feeds, and Other Imports

Feeding your blog or other RSS feeds directly into your FB page is a great idea. It means your page regularly has new content added, and also drives more traffic to your blog. You can also import your Twitter or other social network feeds directly into your Facebook page, which can greatly simplify keeping your page up-to-date. Some apps let you import the feeds directly to your newsfeed while others give you the option to just have it import to a tab.

Blog Tab

Blog Tab, a free app from TabFusion, lets you include your favorite blog within a tab on your page. You just provide the RSS or XML feed and Blog Tab does the rest.

Google+ Tab

The Google+ Tab, free from TabFusion, lets you import your Google+ stream as a tab within your Facebook page.

Tumblr Tab

Tumblr Tab, from TabFusion, lets you include your Tumblr blog as a tab within your Facebook page. The app is $10 per year.

Selective Tweets

Selective Tweets lets you update your Facebook status from Twitter, just by appending the #fb hashtag to the tweets you want to post. This way you’re not cluttering up your Page’s feed with tweets that may or may not be relevant.

North Social Twitter Feed

North Social’s Twitter Feed app makes it easy to import your Twitter feed into your fan page. It includes a customizable header, easy design interface, and management for sharing options.

Involver Twitter

Involver’s Twitter app syndicates your Twitter feed directly to your Facebook Page’s newsfeed. It requires a free Basic Involver subscription.

RSS Graffiti

RSS Graffiti syndicates RSS feeds to your Facebook wall. It can support multiple feeds and multiple walls, you choose the combination.

Involver RSS Feed

Involver’s RSS Feed app lets you syndicate your blog to the news tab on your Facebook page and automatically pushes updates to your fans’ news feeds. It’s included with a free Basic Involver subscription.

North Social RSS Feed

North Social’s RSS Feed app supports fan gates, have a customizable header, and includes the ability to customize the image and messaging when content is shared by your users. It requires a North Social subscription, starting at $19.99 per month.

eCommerce Tabs

The addition of ecommerce tabs to Facebook is relatively new. Until recently, the only way to sell things through Facebook was to redirect users to a different site to make purchases. Now, there are a number of apps that let you sell directly through Facebook (and, in some cases, other social media sites).

Owjo

Owjo lets you manage multiple storefronts on different social networks through a single interface. It even lets you host your store on other people’s websites by offering a cut of revenue. It’s easy to customize the look and feel of your site, has a completely secure payment platform, and even lets you create product bundles. It’s free to open an Owjo store, there’s no contract, and you only pay once you start making sales (you pay 7% of each sale plus normal credit card processing fees).

BigCommerce SocialShop2

BigCommerce lets you sell on a variety of platforms, including Facebook through their SocialShop2 app. You get a complete store on Facebook with point and click installation, a customizable display banner, real-time product search, and complete orders and returns right from Facebook. SocialShop2 is included free on all BigCommerce plans.

LunarStore

LunarStore, from LunarMods, is a freemium ecommerce app for Facebook that offers payment through PayPal or Amazon checkout and can be set up in as little as 15 minutes. There’s a free plan that has a 5% transaction fee but no monthly fee and allows for up to 50 products. Their paid plans allow for more items (and multiple photos for each item) and start at $19.95/month.

ShopTab

ShopTab is a Facebook app that includes inventory management, support for multiple languages and currencies, and FB share integration. Plans start at $10/month for up to 500 products. All the plans come with 24/7 support and a free 7-day trial.

Ecwid

Ecwid is an ecommerce widget provider that lets you easily set up a Facebook store in minutes. Ecwid can be integrated with virtually any site, including most common CMSs and even sites designed with programs like iWeb. In addition to integrating with Facebook, it also works with MySpace, Blogger, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Ning, and many more. You can use it with a variety of payment methods, including PayPal and Google Checkout, too. There are both free and paid plans with Ecwid, with the main difference being the number of products you can have (the free plan allows up to 100, while the paid plan allows up to 20,000).

Payvment

Payvment lets you set up a Facebook store for free. There’s a free version and two paid plans (starting at $29.95/month), with slightly different features for each. The main advantages paid plans have are that they automate promotion to fans and offer full analytics. All the plans allow for CSV catalog importing, social sharing through Facebook, Twitter, and email, setting of “featured” items, automated inventory control, and much more.

VendorShop

VendorShop is a free social shopping Facebook app with a number of useful features. You can have fan-only discounts to entice people to like you page, and shoppers don’t have to enable any apps to purchase from you. There are no subscription or transaction fees beyond standard PayPal fees to process your transaction.

Newsletter Signup Forms

It’s pretty important for brands to capture information about their fans outside of just Facebook. What happens if Facebook suddenly deletes your page or bans you? You will have lost the contact information of everyone who was a fan. That’s why it’s a good idea to make it easy for your fans to sign up for your newsletter from your page, and to encourage them to do so (exclusive newsletter-only offers are a great way to do just that).

MailChimp

MailChimp offers integration with Facebook in the form of a signup tab, embedding a signup form right on your Page.

Constant Contact Labs – Join My Mailing List

Constant Contact offers Join My Mailing List for setting up a subscribe form on your Facebook Page.

Other Interesting Apps

Depending on the type of page you’re creating, you might be interested in some of the following apps:

My Etsy

If you sell on Etsy, then the My Etsy app lets you add your Etsy store and/or favorites to your Facebook Page, with share functionality for each item. It also automatically posts to your news feed if one of your items is featured on the Etsy home page.

Genbook BookNow!

Genbook is scheduling software that can be integrated with Facebook to let people schedule appointments right from your FB page. It’s a great option for appointment-based businesses like salons, chiropractors, counselors, tattoo parlors, and more. A Genbook account is required to use BookNow.

Schedulicity

Schedulicity is another appointment and scheduling app that lets you connect with existing clients and lets them book appointments directly from Facebook.

PageLever

PageLever is an analytics suite for your Facebook pages. You can measure things like fan growth, mobile fans, comments, and likes, and lets you know which of your posts have performed best. There’s a free trial available, and after that plans start at $34 per month.

FAQ Page

FAQ Page makes it simple to create a F.A.Q. tab on your fan page. Enter questions and answers and it will automatically format them with a list of questions and accordian-format answers.

Poll

Poll lets you create quick polls for your pages. It’s easy to use and effective at collecting user consensus and data. Photos, videos, and links can also be added into polls, making it more versatile.

Conclusion

There are thousands of apps you can use on your Facebook pages, to do just about anything you want. With new support for iFrames, you can even embed entire web pages into your Facebook Pages, with little work other than setting up the initial page. Apps make it easier for non-tech-savvy users to create custom pages, though, and aren’t going anywhere in the immediate future.

What are your favorite apps, tools, and widgets for custom Facebook pages? Leave a comment below to share your finds with other readers!

If you do this right, clearly, you’ll be able to build strong relationships with great people. If you take a more random or less thought-through approach then your mileage may vary, so to speak.

Clearly, contacting everyone whose email address you can get your hands on is not the best idea. You don’t need to be in touch with the whole world. A small group of people who you really want to meet and get to know is more than enough.

Quick note:
This post is a part of a series titled – Networking Guide for Bloggers. Be sure to check back next week for more! If you’ve missed the previous post(s), here are the links:

• Part 1 – Networking for Bloggers: Why It Is Important
• Part 2 – Networking for Bloggers: Setting Your Goals and Rules

Good starting point

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when choosing the people you want to reach out to. First of all, let’s talk the areas/niches those people are in.

There are three main places where you can go to find interesting people:

1. Look into your niche.
2. Look into your passions.
3. Search for like-minded people.

Your Niche

Now, looking into your niche is self explanatory. You simply investigate what’s going on in your niche, and find all the interesting (for whatever reason) people.

There are no rules, someone interesting is simply someone interesting. Once you stumble upon such a person you’ll know that it’s them.

Your Passions

This is an area that might mean exactly the same as your niche, but not always. Consider this example: If you’re a guitar blogger, looking into your niche means going through different websites and blogs, and trying to find interesting authors. But going through your guitar passion means finding other guitarists, guitar teachers, and other people that might have only a presence on Twitter, for example, and not even a website.

Remember, it’s not strictly business, so grading people solely depending on the sizes of their sites rarely turns out well. Even people with seemingly no connections might be extremely helpful for all kinds of advice or help.

Like-minded People

Finally, what I mean by like-minded people are people who share a similar journey to yours. Let’s use the same example. If you’re a beginner guitar blogger, you might consider reaching out to some beginner bloggers in other areas, not only guitar. Also, you might choose to reach out to someone who has already achieved the goals you are trying to reach right now (and they don’t have to be within the same niche as well).

Advice from those kinds of people is often invaluable. Seeing what other people are doing in different niches, and then applying it to your own can give you a real head start before your competition realizes what’s going on.

Different groups of people

OK, we’ve covered some places where you can find interesting people. Now let’s talk what kinds of people to look for. Three categories here: peers, a-listers (E.g. celebrities) and mentors.

Peers

A peer is someone who’s at a similar stage that you are at. In other words, it’s someone who you can share your journey with. There’s rarely anything better than discussing your plans and planning future projects with someone who’s talking to you from an equal level.

How to recognize such people? First, start by searching for some blogs that appear to be getting the same publicity as yours does, or slightly more of it.

Look at things like average number of comments, shares (retweets, likes), PageRank of the blog (you can check this at http://www.prchecker.info/ or by using a FireFox plugin called SearchStatus), Alexa rank of the blog (http://www.alexa.com), number of RSS subscribers (if the blog owner shares this). I know that there are a lot more metrics you can look into, but using just the ones here is more than enough to recognize a peer.

Peers are great for networking. They always keep you accountable, and force you to constantly work on your growth if you don’t want to be left behind. Building a network of peers has a lot more value in itself than just helping you to achieve your initial goals. This is probably the most valuable group of people you should reach out to.

A-listers

A-listers or celebrities in your niche can help you in many different ways. And you don’t even have to ask for that help. In most cases, just the sole act of you doing something for them is helping you already.

For instance, in the blogging niche, the sole act of you working with someone like Darren Rowse on a project bumps up your brand a lot. Even though you might be participating in the project for free, with no actual monetary compensation.

A-listers can also introduce you to many influential people, and vouch for you when it’s really important. Moreover, working with these kinds of people makes you much more experienced, and more knowledgeable about how things are being handled at the top.

Your niche’s celebrities are very easy to find. Probably, you don’t even have to search for them, you just know who it is from the top of your mind.

However, getting in touch with them, and building a relationship is much harder than it is with peers. You have to understand that A-listers are hit from every angle by other people who want to achieve the same thing you want, so getting through the filter is much more difficult.

If someone says no then don’t take it personally. You never should. Just proceed with your strategy like nothing ever happened. Busy people have to say no if they want to be able to do anything in a day, soon you’ll face this situation yourself.

However, depending on the exact person you’re trying to contact you might stumble on different personality types. Just like in real life, some people are great, and some are not. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that every A-lister is a great person, this can’t realistically be the case.

The goal while dealing with celebrities in your niche is to be able to talk to them from the same level, like you’re equals. I know that when you’re just starting out they are popular and you are not, but you are still same human beings, and there’s no point in one of you being treated with less respect. Keep that in mind.

Mentors

Finally, a mentor. Having a mentor is truly a great thing. A mentor is someone who’s much more experienced than you, and hopefully has already done what you are trying to do. Advice from such a person is often invaluable. Especially if you’re stuck at something and can’t find a good way out.

Identifying your desired mentor is not difficult. Simply choose the person you’re looking up to the most. Someone whose actions have always been highly inspirational to you. Someone who’s books/posts/blogs you’ve always been reading.

One more thing to think about is what exactly do you want to learn from this person? What are the first 5 questions you might have for this person? Your mentor should be someone you know you could easily spend many hours talking to on various topics related to what you’re doing.

Once you know who it is, you have to come up with a strategy to get this person to become your mentor (which we will discuss in the next episodes).

Now, your mentor doesn’t have to necessarily know that they are indeed your mentor. For them, you might be someone who they like contacting and talking to or exchanging emails containing various advice.

Also, sometimes you don’t even have to talk to your mentor to get some advice. Sometimes looking up some information on what they did in a similar situation that you’re in (when facing a similar problem), is more than enough to get you going.

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to be able to connect to your mentor and build any kind of relationship. The problem is similar to the one with A-listers – many people trying to achieve the exact same thing you are trying to achieve. So if you can’t seem to reach a given person you might want to select someone else.

Interestingly, getting a mentor is often easier than building a relationship with celebrities in your niche. I think it has something to do with our mindset. We tend to be much more careful and much more respectful when approaching a mentor.

Action time! Now it’s up to you to go ahead and select the groups of people you want to get in touch with.

A simple path you can follow

1. Select a group of 15 peers, either in your niche, your passions or other like-minded people.
2. Select 5 celebrities in your niche or broader niches (in case yours is too narrow).
3. Select 1 mentor you truly want to contact.

These 21 people are the starting point for you. In the next parts we’re going to discuss how to go about contacting them and building those relationships.

Of course, if you want to select a bigger group of people I don’t advise against it, but you might find it a lot more challenging to be able to handle all the initial communication. And you can’t mess that up. Often, if you fail to make some things happen on your side you might burn the contact completely.

Now, let’s get down to business. The next part is all about ways of approaching people. Until then don’t forget to subscribe to get the posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Did you manage to create your own list of 21 people? Feel free to share your opinion and thoughts you’ve had when completing the list.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Some of you may think that creativity is an inborn trait rather than something that can be learned and developed. This may be so, but without a conducive environment for creativity to be expressed, how can we expect to see ideas arising from creative employees? This is precisely what this article is about, to show you ways which you can adopt in the workplace to encourage employees to seek innovation in their work.

More related posts:

• The science of creativity
• Beating designer’s block: Tips to get back your creativity

1. Reward Creativity

If you want to get employees to think out-of-the-box, you need to motivate them with some form of rewards. Moreover, suggestions have to be taken seriously so that employees are willing to come up with more creative ways of improving the workplace. Otherwise, everyone will think it’s a waste of time to squeeze out creative juices for suggestions that won’t be implemented anyway.

To kick-start things up, you can set goals for your employees to think up of some ways of making work processes more efficient. Perhaps each employee can be tasked to provide one suggestion by the end of each week and you’ll assess which idea is the best. This will be followed with a reward for the employee and equally important, implementation. The reward can be tangible ones like giving monetary incentives, or intangible ones like recognition from the organization by announcing the winner to the rest.

2. Anonymity & Confidentiality

Your employees may already be motivated to be creative but have no outlets to voice out their wonderful ideas. While the outspoken ones can always speak to the management about some suggestions they have in mind, others may be too shy or afraid to do so in this manner. Providing a suggestion box or anything similar would grant these employees the anonymity and confidentiality they crave, thereby inspiring the creative spirit that you wish to instill as part of the organization culture.

However, some of the most creative ideas are born out of brainstorming sessions where a group of people discuss and debate about possible solutions to a problem. Having such a private channel for employees to contribute ideas may thus hinder the creative process. Moreover, those who provide the effective ideas won’t get identified and get the recognition they need. It will be wise to balance both private and public mediums for employees to propose their suggestions.

3. Innovation Teams

A more systematic way of promoting creativity in the workplace is to set up innovation teams. Each innovation team will be tasked to come up with ideas on how to improve the work process of a particular aspect. Deadlines are to be set to ensure that the teams present their ideas and be rewarded if they are excellent. When done properly, this will signal to everyone that the organization values work-related creativity.

One catch is that such innovation teams may be seen as too ‘deliberate’ to some employees. Creativity is supposed to be spontaneous; ideas arising from the strokes of genius. Having such teams may make it seem like an extra chore for those assigned to them, and the systematic approach (i.e. the focus on a single topic) may come across as too rigid for creativity to flourish.

4. Support Creativity

Employees may be unwilling to take risks because they do not know whether the organization supports creativity. This is when you need to guide the organization in the right direction, and show that creativity is highly valued. This has a lot to do with how receptive you are to their ideas, and how you make known your intention to be a more creative company.

One reason why employees are not thinking out-of-the-box or coming up with solution that are vastly different from how things used to be done is that they may be afraid of the repercussions of making mistakes. Risk-taking has to be encouraged and be seen as a norm in the organization. Developing a creative culture takes time, but it starts off with management being more open-minded and less judgmental to the suggestions by employees.

5. Diversity Among Employees

How can different ideas exchange if everyone thinks in a similar manner? Employees with comparable backgrounds, qualifications, experience, etc creates a homogeneous working environment. Perhaps having such homogeneity between the employees will facilitate team-bonding and such, but when it comes to workplace creativity, a uniform and agreeable crowd leaves little room for ideas to flourish.

Rather than setting stringent recruitment prerequisites, you might consider giving more allowance in your criteria. Hire staffs from different knowledge and background and get them to mingle around in projects and even company events. Organize more informal settings between employees with dissimilar profiles for the interchanging of thoughts.

6. Positive Working Environment

Sometimes, too serious a mindset can hinder creativity. Having fun during work allows one to be relaxed and that’s where one tends to get inspired with wonderful ideas. Needless to say, a stressful or even depressing work environment doesn’t give one the mood to think of doing things differently. The employee would only look forward to the end of the day.

Psychological studies have revealed that positive mood can spur creativity. The idea is that positive mood awards us with greater flexibility in thinking because our perspectives are widened. We become more open-minded in that sense and are willing to explore alternatives. Knowing such findings now, incorporating fun into the work through team-bonding activities or retreats every once in a while can be a crucial element in injecting creativity in the workplace.

Quick note:
This post is a part of a series titled – Networking Guide for Bloggers. Be sure to check back next week for more! If you’ve missed the previous post(s), here are the links:

• Part 1 – Networking for Bloggers: Why It Is Important

A word on setting goals

“Setting goals is an important part of most of our projects, or at least it should be. Goals are a guidance for us on what path we should take.”

It all sounds nice, and surely is true, but what does it really mean, you know, in plain English? Well, my personal approach can be explained by the phrase: “goals are the answer.”

Here’s what I mean. Whenever I’m starting a new project, the very first thing I do is set my goals. From that point on I have an answer to every question I might stumble upon concerning the project.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

What I do is simple. When faced with a challenge or a decision I simply ask myself what solution is the most in tune with the goals I’ve set and brings me closer to achieving them.

Even though it’s not that obvious at first, setting goals is as important for networking as it is for any other project.

Before you do anything, and I mean anything, you have to know what you’re aiming for and why you’re trying to reach out to people.

Now, I’m not going to tell you what your goals should be – this is up to you. I’m only going to give you some hints and possible ideas that are somewhat common for most people.

common goals of networking

The word goals is pretty vague and it doesn’t indicate what a properly defined goal should look like. In most cases, goals are answers to the question of what I want to achieve in a given project – what my desired outcome is.

In other words, by the end of the day/week/year what is it that you want? And I don’t mean the material stuff.

For example, most bloggers have very similar answers:

• “I want to have an established network of friends (other bloggers) who would promote my content to their own audiences and be willing to publish my guest posts every now and then.”
• “I want to have a group of people willing to participate in collaborative projects with me, and help me with my product launches.”
• “I want to meet some influential bloggers who could introduce me to some of the A-players in my niche.”
• “I want to partner with other bloggers in their launches, and be a valuable ally to them.”

These are all valid goals, and they are surely worth pursuing, but what I would advise you to start with, is dividing all the possibilities into two groups.

Short term goals Vs. long term goals

Long term goals are actually better for defining first because they create an overall image of what you’re doing, and point you towards the right path.

Long term goals are also more general in nature, so you can use them as a base for defining short term goals.

In essence, your long term goals are things you want to achieve ultimately. Short term goals are specific milestones that will get you to your long term goals.

For example, your long term goal might be to get to know 5 bloggers and create a strong enough relationship to be able to publish each other’s guest posts and participate in their promotions in the time of one year. To get to this goal you’d have to create a number of short term goals. Things like: contact 10 bloggers and offer them guest posts within the first month. And so on.

Blogging is rarely a strictly business-like activity and, at the same time, rarely a strictly personal thing. That’s why the most common long term goal of networking for bloggers is to simply make friends. To have a small number of good friends with whom you can participate in different kinds of projects, promotions and other activities.

This sort of relationships can be used both for strictly business projects and some personal, social activities. The diverse nature of blogging itself gives you such possibilities. This is something very difficult to achieve in other fields … try to imagine a similar situation in corporate banking, for example.

Here’s what I advise you to do when working on your goals.

1. Pick your final, desirable outcome.

Making friends, in my opinion, is what works best. However, you can also try more business driven approaches. Like building personal expertise in your niche, or becoming the go-to-person for a given (precise) activity.

Whatever you choose remember about two things: your goals have to be exact, and there has to be a deadline.

For example, “I want to meet some bloggers and publish many guest posts on their blogs.” – This isn’t exact. “I want to meet 10 bloggers from my niche and publish 30 guest posts on their blogs.” – This is.

And, of course, the deadline … well, deadlines are deadlines, I’m sure you understand what a deadline is.

2. Try to define a number of milestone goals (Short term goals).

This is where you try to come up with some steps that will bring you closer to the ultimate goals.

Important. You don’t have to design your whole path, so to speak. Short term goals are exactly what the name says, so you only need to define your goals for the next month or so. When the month ends you simply define another set of short term goals.

Continuing the example above; your short term goal could be to “contact 20 bloggers and offer them a guest post within 30 days.” – This is both exact and has a deadline.

However, before you take your goals and do anything with them you need to learn one important thing.

important rule of networking

I won’t keep you hanging here, so I’ll just say upfront that the rule is this: it’s not about you, it’s about them.

Sorry to be the one to break this to you, but … no one cares about you (except for your mom).

OK, it’s not that harsh. Your friends care about you too. But before they can care about you they need to become your friends. Same goes for your online friends.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

Don’t be amazed that some people simply ignore your emails. It’s just life. Strangers ignore each other all the time. And you are no different. When was the last time you deleted an email from an unknown recipient? … umm today?

Whatever you do, remember that you have to give before you take.

Blasting an email to a stranger titled “great business proposition inside” won’t work in a thousand years. You’d be lucky if out of 1000 emails even one gets opened and read.

Now the funny part, giving just like that, out of the blue probably won’t work either. I’d say that there’s another important step before you can even give – introducing yourself.

Remember when your mom taught you never to take candy from a stranger? That’s exactly the situation here.

So finally, here’s a possible real life scenario: introduce, give, take. Actually, a more accurate one is: introduce, give, give, give, give, take … or something similar.

In essence, networking like we’re discussing it here works just like it does in real life. That’s because it is real life, the internet is just a medium, and there are still people on both sides.

As a matter of fact, you have to be even more careful when asking for something online than you’d be in real life. It’s much easier to refuse or even ignore someone over the internet. That’s one of the reasons why some people prefer doing business over the phone to using email. Saying no to someone directly is much more demanding in terms of inner strength than writing it on the screen.

This all makes the whole online environment much more subtle and uncertain; hence the importance of giving before you can take.

It’s time for action, isn’t it? That’s why the next post in the series is going to be all about selecting the right people to contact. Until then don’t forget to subscribe to get the posts delivered straight to your inbox.

I have one more question for you. What do you think about the idea of introducing yourself before doing anything else? Don’t you find giving something out of the blue to be a little strange?

Not getting the amount of comments that you would like to have? Don’t worry; it may not have anything to do with the content you’re providing. You may be providing quality content and information to readers, but not sufficiently stimulating them to provide inputs to your posts.

Here are a few ways to get your readers more involved before you scrutinize your content for any potential flaws. Full list after jump.

Related posts:

• Marketing your blog
• How to run blogs that I.N.S.P.I.R.E
• Journalism for Blogging
• Improving blog traffics: 5 Must-Have Qualities

1. End with a Question

Sometimes readers don’t know what to comment about. Posting a question about your post will give them an anchor point to what they can talk about. Intuitively speaking, we should place that question right at the end of the post. If your reader has read from the beginning to the end and got to that point, chances are that he or she is interested in what you’ve written. The reader will be pretty motivated to answer your question.

One thing to note is that your question should be as general as possible, unless you want to direct the discussion to a specific point. A general question allows for more freedom in their comments, so that your readers don’t feel constrained and choose not to comment in the end.

2. Ask for Contributions

Another way you can ask for more comments is to get them to contribute to your seemingly incomplete post. This is especially applicable to posts where you organized your content in the form of a numbered list (just like this one). Now, the trick here is to ask your readers to add on to the list. Make them feel that they are contributing to the article by merely commenting their opinion.

A better way will be to end your numbered list abruptly so that it appears to the readers that you need their help to complete the post. Say, for example, you end the list at #9. It seems a little odd (no pun intended) to stop there right? So, you appeal to your readers to help you think of that #10 tip and post it in the comment box.

3. Reply to Comments Promptly

Basic courtesy dictates that when someone gives a certain feedback about one’s work, one should, at the very least, thank him or her. If your reader has a question posed to you, all the more you should answer promptly. This will let your reader feel that his or her comments matter, and that he or she isn’t talking to him or herself.

If you take too long to respond, the reader might have already forgotten about it and take it that there’s no point commenting on your blog posts. The issue here is that these comments are addressed to you, so no one else but you yourself has to reply to it before the reader feels ignored.

4. Reward Insightful Comments

Simply replying when being commented on isn’t enough; sometimes you need a carrot to motivate them to type out what they think. It can be any forms of reward: a contest for the best comment posted, prizes for answering correctly a question posed, or perhaps the promise of writing the next post based on the most interesting comment.

But these are pretty straightforward and overt ways of rewarding commenters, which may come across to some readers as ‘trying too hard’ and put them off.

Well, another perhaps even more effective way is to capitalize on our need for social approval. Making your commenters feel special for posting an insightful comment is a great incentive. They get rewarded with recognition and attention. A perfect example will be that of Facebook’s trademark ‘Like’ button. One reason why we post all those funny and intriguing statuses is probably because we secretly love our friends liking them. Go search around for some plugins that function the same way as the ‘Like’ button for your blog comments.

5. Reduce Barriers to Commenting

Is there anything that might be hindering your readers from posting comments? Do a check yourself and try to post something yourself. Does it go through smoothly? Also, is the comment box easily noticed once you enter the blog as a visitor?

The other thing to look out for is whether visitors to your blog need to register or log in before they can comment on your posts. If this is so, this might be the reason why you’re getting so few comments. Taking that extra step to register in order to comment can be a big turn-off for some readers, so they would rather hold their peace forever.

Make sure to put yourself in the shoe of the visitor or reader in order to know how easy or hard it is to comment.

6. Commenting on Posts in the Blog Community

If you want people to comment, then set a good example yourself! Comment in your own blog and other similar topic blogs in the community. Ensure that you give well thought out comments that relate to the topic in question instead of one-liner generic answers (e.g. “Great Post!”). This is especially so when you comment on other blogs and leave a link to your site. You want to attract readers and the bloggers to your blog and not let them mistaken your comment as a spam.

Providing valuable feedback to a blog entry is pretty much like doing an advertisement for your blog. If you want to garner more comments, one of the most straightforward ways is to improve traffic to your blog. Readers who stumble across those blogs can see what you’ve commented and click on your link to check out yours.

Also, implicitly speaking, the author of the blog whom you posted a comment may feel obliged to return the favor by commenting on your posts. This is particularly so when your comment really strikes a chord with him or her.

7. Shake Things Up a Little

The last point here has something to do with your content. A discussion arises when there is a common goal to work to (e.g. providing suggestion for that last tip in your numbered list) or when there are conflicting opinions. I’ve pretty much discussed the former in my #2 tip on asking readers for contribution. As for the latter, all you need to do is to make your content a little controversial or take sides with a particular opinion of yours.

A blog is more than a news site where you simply present the facts and leave the readers to their own judgments and thoughts. A blog consists of your opinions as well; otherwise there’s little the readers can comment about. These opinions and arguments which you present on your blog should be thought-provoking enough to let your reader react and respond to it, as if to defend their own opinions or even beliefs.

You may feel comfortable sitting on the fence with most of your entries because you don’t want a situation where you offend your readers. Sooner or later though, they may get bored with your lack of opinions. I guess the best way is to feel your way around what your target audience is like, and then adjust your content to the level acceptable to most of them.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

Yet, this convenience comes with a price tag. We should take a moment and ask ourselves what are some of the things we may have sacrificed along the way. That way, we can gain a proper perspective and approach internet with some caution to ensure that we don’t lose more than what we gain.

1. Privacy

This is something all of us internet users are probably aware of, especially if we’re on some social networking site like Facebook. It used to be the case when stalkers have to resort to physical means to stalk their victims. Not anymore now, with our greater reliance on the internet to provide us with entertainment, goods, information, etc. Such dependence usually means we have to reveal bits and pieces about ourselves (i.e. contact details, credit card numbers, our preferences, etc) in order to transact with the net. Privacy gets compromised as a result, and stalkers use that to their advantage.

Even if you resolve not to engage in any social networking sites by not signing up for one, photos of you or any other information about yourself may still end up in Facebook. How? Well, so long as you have friends who are using Facebook or any of such sites, they can always post things about you that are open to the rest of the world. Got drunk at the party last night? Your friend (or enemy) snaps away with his or her mobile device and post it up on Facebook for the pleasure of the entire network.

Besides, you must’ve probably provided your particulars to some internet company as you register for their newsletters, purchase their products online, etc. Who’s to say that the information you’ve given to them are kept confidential? Don’t you ever wonder how you receive random email spams? Cookies are also embedded within sites to track your mouse movements so that they can be analyzed for marketing purposes, or even for the government to track you.

Are we not all under tight surveillance here in cyberspace?

2. Reliability of Information

With millions of blogs and websites out there on the net, one question we often ask is how much is the information they provide accurate and reliable. Given the convenience and low cost of publishing a blog or a website, there seem to be a lack of accountability for what are being published. The ease of modifying your online publication (as compared to offline publications like books and newsletters) makes putting out incorrect information less of an issue to the owner of the site. He or she can always amend the mistakes at no cost.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

Specialized journalists who adhere to the accuracy of the stories they produced are now replaced by bloggers who may not have such practices. The result is that you get a massive number of different versions of the same story because there’s no way to verify it without a trustworthy source (e.g. from a news site). At the worst, opinions can be misinterpreted as facts by readers online who may then go on to spread them as the gospel truth in social networking sites.

As we internet users become aware of the existence of rumors masquerading as truths, we start to become skeptical in whatever we see or hear about be it in Facebook or blogs. This, in effect, creates a generation of cynics among us, who regards internet information as unreliable and shaky at best.

3. Copyrights

While some bloggers write their entries and pay little attention to the correctness of their information, others simply lift them off from other sources and claim it as their own. Plagiarism, as they call it, is rampant in cyberspace. You would’ve probably seen the same content appearing in different websites with no references to the original source. The reason why many seems to be doing it is perhaps because the free concept of the internet has led us to believe information is meant to be spread.

Such ingrained mindset has a similar impact on our perspectives of paying for entertainment. Since the coming of Napster, purchasing for music has become unnecessary for some of us. We could just download the latest albums of our favorite artistes off the net. Then along came the popularity of movies, e-books, applications and games, all of which could be downloaded illegally through file-sharing and bit-torrent applications.

Whether or not you support the free distribution of information and digital commodities like music, copyrights have never ever been so drastically infringed before the internet was available.

4. Genuine Communication

On one hand, internet facilitates communication like no other technology has done so: Emails and chat messengers allow us to be in contact with anyone in the world so long as you’re online. In that sense, internet users like you and I are empowered with an enriched network of unprecedented accessibility. Communication, however, is more than accessibility or contactability. For the sake of connectivity, internet has sacrificed quality and perhaps, genuine communication.

Messages in the form of text can be hard to interpret. Most of us have experienced misunderstandings that arise from the ambiguity of emails or online chats. To make up for the lack of facial expressions and body languages present in real life, emoticons naturally arise to minimize the confusion. Nevertheless, it is still quite hard for one to feel as heard online as when one connects with another in real life. Yet, such quality communications are more and more being replaced by online communication. Again, it has to do with our dependence over the internet.

Shy individuals may hail such superficial online communication as their savior to a better social life. To that, I would say internet provides a good initiation stage for them to know people. For the friendship to progress further, it would still require a physical meet-up in order to truly connect, What happen is that these individuals end up relying on online communication that they become too comfortable with it to advance to offline conversations.

A virtual social life online is still a pseudo one.

5. Work/Life Balance

As accessibility, connectivity and contactability improves with the internet, work expectation increases. Customers expect companies to be available 24-hours a day online, which means that a fully functional website is a must. The implication of such universal expectation is that employees have to access their work emails during the wee hours after office hours. The line between working time and your time becomes blurred.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

Even without the rising expectation of the society at large, the mere fact that internet is accessible 24/7 only means that you can check your emails any time outside work. Your bosses know that for a fact and would use that to their advantage, by sending you work during weekends. Their reason? Everybody’s doing it, so it’s expected of you to follow with the rest of the world.

But of course, it may not happen that way because it depends on the company culture and policy on taking work home. What I’m saying is that the temptation is there in most workplaces to utilize the awesome accessibility of the internet to push work into our personal space. Sometimes even employees themselves want to take work back home knowing that they can do it over the weekend.

If you want to maintain work/life balance, sometimes it’s necessary to draw that line and segregate work time from your time.

One Thing the Internet Will Never Ruin – Creativity

One thing, however, remains un-ruined by the internet and probably will never be: Creativity.

It seems that there’s no end to human creativity. This is especially so when user-generated content is a primary characteristic of the internet. Looking at all the video mashups in Youtube, satirical blogs, podcasts, etc, it’s clear that the internet will evolve along with human’s unlimited creativity. The beautiful thing about the internet is its ability to connect with the world, with everybody inspiring and sharing information with everyone else. Rather than undermining creativity, the internet cultivates and unites the world with it.

Among various aspects of promotion, advertising, search engine optimization, social media, and all kinds of other stuff lies the need of contacting other, fellow bloggers, and being in touch with people in general.

Quick note:
This post is the first and a part of a series titled – Networking Guide for Bloggers. Be sure to check back next week for more!

Networking?

Networking is a fancy term, and one that I don’t especially like, to be honest. It strips the whole experience of interacting with other people from all emotion and personal aspects.

Networking sounds strictly “businessy,” which simply doesn’t give a good impression. Reaching out to others, or even making friends are a lot better terms here.

Anyway, we all know that meeting new people is essential for both our own and our blogs’ growth, however in many cases we don’t know how to make the initial step, in a way that we don’t get burned from the get go.

By the way, sending an email with a subject like “link exchange proposition for X” is not an optimal solution! (Please, stop sending me those.)

Furthermore, getting in touch with other people can be even more challenging for people not speaking English natively (myself included). And even when you are a native English speaker it’s not much easier anyway.

Challenges of networking over the internet

You see, communicating with anyone over the internet consists mostly of writing. Essentially, written communication is just that – written, so things like using certain words, and proper punctuation are especially important.

For instance, when you are speaking to someone in person, your tone, voice, and volume of speech create more than 50% of the message, I’d say, but when you are writing the same message none of these things can be used. That’s why there’s so much room for misinterpretation and misunderstanding. And I’m sure the last thing you want is to sound aggressive or maybe even offensive.

(Image source: Fotolia)

And then there’s the problem of building up the relationship along with time… not asking anyone to marry you too soon, so to speak.

What I mean here is that most of the time, asking a stranger for help doesn’t work. Simply because they don’t care about you. But asking a friend for help works almost every time. How to turn strangers into friends?

Well, the challenge of making new connections online has to be tackled from more than just a single angle, and this is exactly what we’re trying to do in this series.

What is networking?

As I said earlier, I don’t like the word networking. However, I think I’ll continue using it anyway, purely because it’s a single word, and it’s much easier to apply then a two or three word description.

Anyway, networking is not about getting hundreds of pointless business cards during an event. And it’s not about sending hundreds of spam emails in hope that one or two will get a response. So what is it about then?

(Image source: Fotolia)

For me, networking is the art of meeting new people. Both in the real world and in the online there can be multiple reasons why you want to meet a specific person. It can be business, romance, friendship, let’s-have-a-beer, or whatever else. Here, of course, we’re talking blogging and growing your blog. But blogging is neither purely business nor purely social. It lies somewhere in between.

This makes it particularly difficult because in a purely business-like communication you can send an email starting with “Dear Sir, I’m writing to you to propose my blah blah blah.” In a social relation, on the other hand, you can start with “hey dude, how is U today? Wanna meet 2nite? Blah blah blah.” And in blogging neither one of these is acceptable.

Benefits of networking

Big part of this is obvious. The benefit is that you meet other, likeminded people. So what’s the point of meeting new people? – That’s the question we should be asking.

First of all, there are very few blogs or websites that grew into mainstream popularity all by themselves. Most of the popular sites gained their popularity due to the popularity of other sites. By ways of borrowing it.

Borrowing popularity is a fancy sounding term, but essentially it boils down to getting multiple mentions on other sites. It can happen by obtaining backlinks, being featured in interviews, contacting the webmasters directly, or thousands of other ways.

However, one fact remains, no one, not one webmaster/blogger/website owner will mention you or your site if they don’t have any amount of trust in you and what you do.

(Image source: Fotolia)

You see, it’s easy to mention and link to sites that are already popular – those that have a massive amount of social proof working for them. For instance, if you see a new product at Problogger you don’t need to hesitate whether you can link to it or not. You don’t have to be afraid that the product will turn out awful and people will be very mad at you for pointing them to it. You know that Darren produces great stuff, to some degree you trust him, and he seems like a credible person … the social proof simply does its job for him.

But if you stumble upon something new, you find it a lot more difficult to endorse such a thing or even link to it … “what if it turns out a scam?” … “what if the site disappears tomorrow?” and so on.

It all becomes a cycle of death, so to speak. Here’s the cycle: If you’re just starting out you can’t get no one to endorse you because no one knows you because you’re just starting out. So what’s the best way out of this cycle?

Yes, you guessed it – networking. By networking with others you can break the cycle at the point of “no one knows you,” and then, sooner or later, all the other pieces shall fall as well.

Borrowing popularity through networking

Ultimately, once you know some people you can borrow their popularity to build your own, and that’s a big benefit.

Don’t believe me? Try to imagine what a plain endorsement from both Darren Rowse and Hongkiat would do for your business. I mean, the case where they both say “go there and buy.” Of course, getting it won’t be easy, but I just needed an example.

All I’m trying to explain here is that building relationships with other fellow bloggers and website owners is the best thing you can do for your online presence. There’s nothing that will do a better job at keeping you on the radar.

You can work on SEO, social media, advertising and all the other tools, but these are all things that greatly depend on other company’s opinion of you.

(Image source: Fotolia)

For instance, if you build a good position on Google, but one day you get dropped due to an algorithm update, the next day you wake up with nothing. If Facebook or Google shuts down your advertising campaign same thing happens.

But still, no matter what happens you can work with your network of contacts, participate in their projects, do joint ventures, make partnerships, and so on. Essentially, you’re making friends, and I’m sure I don’t need to explain the value of that.

Moreover, by working with other people you’re positioning yourself alongside them. So whenever a complete stranger is considering whether to promote your new product this social proof is something that is very likely to work in your favor.

When people can see that you’ve been working with “Mr. Authority” in your niche then some of that person’s credibility falls on you. Something along the lines of: “if they’ve been working with X then they must be the real deal.”

If you work on this consistently then you can build up your brand in a relatively short span of time. And I’m not saying that anything will get you overnight results here. You still have to be able to put some serious work, but the benefits make it worth the effort.

Is blogging really a strictly online thing?

Even though blogging or blogging as a business seems like a purely online activity it’s not exactly like that. Most of the things happen online, that’s true – you’re publishing your content on the internet, and interacting with other people via various online services, and so on. However, the basic offline world’s principles of growing your venture/business still apply. And the online world didn’t change anything, it just made certain things easier to do.

For instance, the whole concept of networking is nothing new. However, since the internet is around you don’t have to leave your home, and you can connect with multiple people at the same time, but the whole idea still remains the same. And it’s not much different from what your father or grandfather used to do over the phone.

In essence, I think networking is that valuable because people don’t like to do business with companies, or websites … they like to do business with other people. Until you introduce yourself to your online community nothing significant is going to happen in terms of your brand going viral. If you don’t do this yourself no one will bother to take this step for you.

This concludes the first part of the series, next week we’ll have a word on setting goals for networking. Until then don’t forget to subscribe to get the posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Lastly, feel free to tell me what you think about the whole concept. Do you find networking valuable? Which side you’re on – do you think that who you know matters more than what you know, or the other way around?

(Image Source: sakimichan)

The great news is that the DNS blocking feature is finally intended to be discussed by the sponsor of the SOPA bill, which could mean the semi-victory of the Anti-SOPA people. Today, we’re still in the great war, that’s why we want to showcase to you a collection of precious anti-SOPA artworks from the brave people who fought for American’s freedom of speech.

While the war against the SOPA and PIPA hasn’t ended, we can understand more about the SOPA from these quality works, and even share them to the world to let every people stand up to fight for the American’s freedom of speech, and to protect user-centered sites like Google, YouTube or deviantArt from being taken down or censored! Full list of fearless artworks after jump!

SOPA: The Internet Blacklist Bill. First one of the list is the infographic from Stop American Censorship website to help you understand more about the SOPA, and how it will severe the American’s freedom of speech and potentially industry. If you’re an American, join the strike! (Image Source: Stop American Censorship)

SOPA Infographic. Another infographic that focuses more about how SOPA will influence the business and innovation, and ultimately what we can do to stop the SOPA. Be noted that the SOPA supporters could change from time to time though. (Image Source: Business Insurance)

Anti-Protect IP Act. Though the DNS blocking feature of SOPA has been proposed to be discussed, we must remember the similar version of SOPA, the PIPA! Again you can join the strike to bring it down! (Image Source: Neoridgeback)

I Can’t Hear You. So Rep. Lamar Smith is the author of the SOPA, according to the Wikipedia. (Image Source: ChadRocco)

Fight SOPA. Awesome modified version of The Social Network’s movie poster, and the message is the truth! (Image Source: lapdog)

Image Violated SOPA. If SOPA is passed, this is what we will see often in our future. (Image Source: kisa4ever13)

We Hope You Have Enjoyed. Now it’s your time to fight for your freedom of speech, which should have no trial period at all. (Image Source: My[confined]Space)

Access Denied. We certainly don’t want our websites to face this destiny. (Image Source: hogosha-1)

Censorship is no fun. SOPA could be harmful for web business too, imagine what those who hate you and your business will do. (Image Source: BananahMan)

Website Has Been Blocked. “If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to jump off a bridge.” (Image Source: Get Your Censor On)

Feel The Burn. Though it’s funny, it could become the truth if SOPA is passed! Feel the burn! (Image Source: Get Your Censor On)

Google 2012. This is what you get from Google search result if you allow the SOPA to be passed. What could be worse than this? (Image Source: meh.ro)

STOP SOPA Bill. A great number of artists have risen up to fight against the SOPA in the artwork form or text form, as the SOPA could mean the end of the creative industry. (Image Source: sakimichan)

Konachan Says Stop SOPA. Stop SOPA! That’s what every artist should think and do. (Image Source: Marcvilzal123)

Freedom of Speech. SOPA is not the answer for piracy and freedom of speech. (Image Source: 4th-reset)

Life After SOPA. YouTube, deviantArt, 9GAG, all the user-submitted content sites will be in risk if the SOPA is allowed to censor the Internet. (Image Source: ToaJacbobofPsychic)

Stop Before It’s Too Late. With the SOPA, all fan arts will be impossible. (Image Source: Antooncartoon)

Corporotopia 01. A dark comic about how industry players will threaten you if SOPA is passed. You could never trust those who tried to take away your freedom of speech. Follow the full comic after the link jump. (Image Source: alexiuss)

Unprotected IP. How we gonna talk freely if SOPA exists? A simple message could get you sued if big players are willing to, and the comic below shows you the situation, full comic after link jump. (Image Source: 8Biticon)

Stop SOPA Cartoon. All of us will be in jail if the Internet gets censored. No freedom for your speech and works. (Image Source: Tobibrocki)

Freedom Reddit. Brave Reddit has been involving greatly in the Anti-SOPA movement, and this is what every famous site should do. (Image Source: Reddit)

Destructoid Censored. A picture of Destructoid showing that it stands against the SOPA, amusing and bravo! (Image Source: Destructoid)

Fight Fo’ Your Rights. The best way to stop SOPA and PIPA is to join the fight! And this comic will show you how. Full comic after link jump. (Image Source: Loonafictation)

Thunder and the Pack go to Washington. “I decided to show some support for the opposition by creating this little comic in which my hunter, Tunderbrew, takes the pack to Congress to testify against S.O.P.A. Long live Internet Freedom!” (Image Source: wc3troll)

This is SOPA! Except the fact that the Entertainment Industry won’t be as great as the Leonidas, especially with their attempt to block the DNS just because of the possible copyright infringement that might not exist at all. (Image Source: quickmeme)

Shouldn’t Censor. I thought US is the nation of freedom, I could be wrong. (Image Source: quickmeme)

The Worst That Can Happen. A short yet amusing comic that talks about the worst thing that can happen if SOPA is passed… get ready to know. (Image Source: Imgur)

Censorshit. With all due respect, no one likes censorshit. (Image Source: Ars Technica)

Reflection

From the fight against the SOPA and PIPA, we really witnessed the unity and courage of the American people to fight for their freedom of speech, and the great spirit of the people worldwide who helped to raise the concern. Hat tip to all the creators of artworks and those who are still fighting to preserve the freedom of speech, all of you are heroes.

The fight has to go on as like what we’ve mentioned before, the SOPA is not down yet, and the PIPA will be voted on 24th January. So if you’re an American, join the fight for your rights immediately, else you can contribute by sharing this post or these images to every people or everywhere you know. Internet Freedom relies on you to win it back!

(Image source: Shutterstock)

However, for those valued readers who don’t know the story of SOPA, here is a piece of writing showing both sides of the coin so that you make a decision yourself that either SOPA is "securing" the Internet users or "scaring" them away…

Knowing SOPA

SOPA is a term used for Stop Online Piracy Act (officially known as H.R. 3261) for a bill that was floated in October 2011 at the US House of Representatives. The SOPA bill was presented by Representative Lamar Smith in association with a group of 12 co-sponsors.

SOPA traces its roots down to Protect IP Act of proposed in 2008 for preventing real online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property.

According to the official statement, the objective of SOPA is “to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.” In simple English, the SOPA bill empowers the US jurisdiction as well as the copyright owners of a particular website to take legal actions against any other website that they find guilty of ‘enabling or facilitating copyright infringement’ in any way.

The Way It Works

As mentioned earlier, SOPA bill has been proposed to discourage any act of piracy that harms the intellectual property of a US based website or online business. The SOPA bill, if passed, will empower the authority of the US court allowing the Attorney General to seek a court order against the accused website from any part of the world.

In case the court finds the accused website guilty of online Piracy, it will have to face the following consequences:

• Removal of such website from all major search engines like Yahoo, Google and Bing etc.
• Barring of online payment facilitators like PayPal etc from doing business with such website
• Internet service providers will deny their customers from accessing the accused website.
• The infringing website will not be allowed to do any further business with Internet advertising networks like Google AdSense and BuySellAds etc.

In other words the accused site will be sentenced to "online death" for the infringing website depriving it of both traffic and revenue.

SOPA – Securing the Internet Users

After reading the aforementioned consequences, one might think that what would be the arguments that favor the SOPA and prompted its proponents to present this bill with such harsh penalties in front of the US administration.

Here are a couple of favoring statements from the proponents of SOPA.

According to the co-sponsor representative Bob Goodlatte:
“Intellectual property is one of America’s chief job creators and competitive advantages in the global marketplace, yet American inventors, authors, and entrepreneurs have been forced to stand by and watch as their works are stolen by foreign infringers beyond the reach of current U.S. laws. This legislation will update the laws to ensure that the economic incentives our Framers enshrined in the Constitution over 220 years ago – to encourage new writings, research, products and services – remain effective in the 21st Century’s global marketplace, which will create more American jobs.”
(Ref. Wikipedia)

Sponsor representative, John Conyers favors the SOPA bill by saying:
“Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America’s intellectual property are critical to our economy’s long-term success.”[14] Smith added, “The Stop Online Piracy Act helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators.”
(Ref. Wikipedia)

Other arguments advocating the SOPA and calling the infringing websites at "Rouge Website” stress upon its usefulness by highlighting that this act will empower and secure the motion picture and film industry; the industry that creates 2 million jobs and thousands of micro businesses throughout the US.

SOPA – Scaring the Internet Users

By reading up till now, SOPA sounds more like a pretty responsible act that is there to defend and secure the genuine intellectual property and sheer hardwork of US Internet users. However, things are seldom what they seem.

As soon as the bill was presented, the word got out and spread all over the world wide web like wildfire. Millions of Internet users and online service providers were hit by a bolt. Soon different blogs, discussion forums and social networking websites were inundated with anti-SOPA content protesting and highlighting the possible catastrophic affects of this act on the Internet and its users.

Let us have a sweeping glance at a few of these:

Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFF resisted SOPA saying that SOPA will not only hinder the process of free speech but has also warned that Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law.

Mozilla
Mozilla protested by creating a page “Protect the Internet: Help us stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation.”

Yahoo
One of the most intense protests was carried out by Yahoo which has reportedly quit the US Chamber of Commerce over its keen support for SOPA.

Letter to the Senate
The Internet giants like Google, Mozilla, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, AOL and LinkedIn have written a letter of protest to US Senate and House of Representatives, calling SOPA ‘a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation’s cyber-security.’

Other Oppositions
The antagonists of SOPA consider it as an infringement to the First Amendment and call it an "The Great Firewall of America" posing a serious threat to free speech.

Possible Affects of SOPA on the Internet Users

There has hardly been any bill presented to the governmental body anywhere in the world that has not been opposed or rejected by some. However, in case of SOPA, the bill has been publicly discouraged and raged upon by a good number of people from around the world. This opposition is mainly due to the possible effects of SOPA which people can foresee and are worried about. Here are some of the potential threats of SOPA that the protestors have highlighted:

Ice Age of Internet
According to the mechanism of SOPA, it has the authority to blacklist any such website that will be involved in online piracy and infringement. Opponents of SOPA are of the view that the penalties of the bill are so disconnected to the actual criminal act that it will destroy web hosting and e-commerce industry and cause the Internet’s potential progress to halt in terms of investment as well as research and development.

Job Drought
SOPA will be a big cause of killing the source projects that will lead to domain blocking and ultimately depriving millions of people of their jobs. The drastic effects of SOPA on the Internet businesses will result into more lawsuits, decreased investment and ultimately fewer new jobs

Free Speech Shut-up
The basic issue with SOPA bill is that it is unable to distinguish between a commercial and non-commercial use of copyrighted content. Whoever will upload a copyrighted content on websites like YouTube for the mere purpose for sharing will be held liable and will have to face the consequences.

Moreover, as well all know that the series of democratic revolutions that occurred in the Arab countries, known as the Arab Spring, partially owe their success to worldwide Internet content. However, according to the SOPA law, the proxy servers used during the Arab Spring fall into the category of copyright infringement making it a criminal act and eventually hindering the process of whistle blowing and free speech.

I would like to conclude this piece of writing by quoting a saying that “one man’s fortune is the other’s misfortune”. However, in the case of SOPA, the bill will be a cause of misfortune for millions of Internet users and online business owners throughout the globe.

Today, I list 6 Olympic logos from different analyzing perspectives which help us developing inspiration to our own work.

Conclusion

Wassily Kandinsky said "Any work of art is the product of times; the culture of each period of times creates its unique art." The Olympic logos were designed from different period of times which represent different pattern of art and aesthetics. They have certain kind of guiding significance.

Whatever designing tools you choose, it is beneficial for logo designers to analyze through different perspectives, which broaden the mind in our own work. Perspectives are the original source that helps you to shape you designing idea.

(Image source: Fotolia)

How do I know? I see the successful ones over and over again, maybe with a slight tweak here and there, but I know from the consistency that the company has cut through the current information overload and hit upon a strong, clear communication tool.

Here’s the question business owners most often ask themselves: What does a well-designed logo, and the money I’ve spent on it, do for my bottom line? Here are the answers, after jump.

Image

Your logo is your calling card. Think of it as the gift that keeps on giving. Putting a name and a face on your brand cements your seriousness as an enterprise. Researching what your image is going to be and how your logo will sum it up, then spending money on a professional design imparts business respect.

People connect with a logo first, and first impressions are important to your business image. Image is a bottom-line goal for your success and longevity in business.

Access

Some people call it mindshare. It’s a way to get inside your customers’ heads. A logo does that because when it is successful, it connects instantly. Think of your logo as a way to get your customers’ or clients’ attention without having to pitch them a thing and without them having to buy a thing – yet.

A logo doesn’t just communicate a visual image and a name, or a slogan. It communicates and idea, or a philosophy by triggering emotions and mental images in your mind.

(Image source: Fotolia)

We know that mindshare works because so many companies have successfully persuaded people to think like they do with a logo – a swoosh, for example – or a slogan – “Just do it,” for example. "i" is the mathematical symbol for “imaginary number.” But not in the marketplace. There, it translates as Apple products. Whether consumers are Apple customers not not, "i", as in iPad and iPhone, now means Apple in the minds of thousands of them.

Access to customers is vital to your bottom line, and the greater your mindshare with the buying public, the more products you will sell to them.

Trust

The audience you are marketing to is sophisticated. Even children by now have been around the block, exposed to thousands of advertisements, jingles, brand logos and marketing tactics geared especially to them. Kids reflect their parents’ buying power.

A good, consistent logo that accurately reflects what your company and brand are all about builds trust among consumers. Trust goes, again, to first impressions.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Does your logo look professional? If it were at a business meeting, would it stand up straight, look them in the eye, have a firm handshake? If your brand involves entertainment, does your logo reflect that? Is it fun? Is your logo unique? Or does it look like something you put together from clip art and paint programs, an online design farm or logo-generating website – shoddy and cheap? Worst of all, does your logo look like a ripoff of another company’s?

Trust is necessary for your bottom line.

Loyalty

If a logo consistently connects with customers, and if the consumer associates the logo with trust, they become loyal. What’s the difference between one kind of coffee and another, one kind of pizza and another, one kind of athletic shoe and another? Not much really. But I have friends who still order only Little Caesars pizza because they like the little guy in the logo who said “pizza pizza, pan pan!” in the chain’s commercials.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Sometimes the sheer entertainment value of a logo can engender loyalty. But if your logo consistently connects the customer with a good product, you’ll have a loyal customer.

Loyal, repeat customers are always good for the bottom line.

Reward

Buying is perception. Studies have shown that between a bowl of M&M’s that are all one color, and a bowl of M&M’s that are various colors, people will go for the mixed-colors bowl every time? Why? Because the human mind likes variety.

Given two coffee shops next door to each other, one with a catchy, intriguing and pleasant logo, another with a bland, generic sign, which one would you step into? The one whose logo lets you know that you’re going to have a good experience there drinking coffee. The reward your logo brings in getting people to walk in the door and buy the product is great for your bottom line.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Indeed, having the flexibility to present our arguments and opinions in whichever way we prefer is a good thing. Nevertheless, having some form of structure by consulting the fundamentals of journalism is also beneficial to both us and our readers. For one, it makes our blog seem more professional and reliable, such that readers can take our words more seriously. Another is that we can appreciate how our words will be broadcasted to a mass audience and take greater responsibility in how and what we post.

Here are a few things we can take home from journalism, after jump.

More related posts:

• Writing For The Web: Tips & Common Mistakes We Make
• Tips And Tricks For Writing Fast and Professionally
• Useful Tips and Guidelines to Freelance Writing

1. The Inverted Pyramid: Headlines & Leads

The idea of an inverted pyramid is that the most interesting and important information should always be placed in the beginning of your article. This is to facilitate your readers in the manner that they are able to understand the gist of your post as soon as possible, and decide if they want to continue reading or move on. The next most interesting and important information will be presented in the next paragraph, followed by the next until the last paragraph.

(Image source: Fotolia)

What this means is that the headline and the ‘lead’ (first sentence of the article) are the most critical lines that will draw in your readers. Write an engaging and compelling headline and lead and you’ll rouse enough curiosity for the reader to check out the rest. One way to do that is to put something provocative and stimulating to the reader, perhaps by asking a question that starts along the line of ‘Have you ever wondered….". It lets the story relates to them and makes them ponder about it.

2. Brevity & Clarity

This tip can be summed up as such: Get to the point and keep it simple. This means that you should keep your sentences short, and your paragraphs brief. Reduce the number of words by eliminating unnecessary ones. Check if your words are redundant (using too many words to express the idea) or repetitive (reproducing the same words more than required for readers to comprehend). Use simple language; minimize jargons that your target audience may not understand.

Always remember that your role as a journalistic blogger is to communicate ideas to your audience. If you put in more details than it is necessary for them to appreciate your content, attention will be diverted to your writing. This distracts them from absorbing your arguments and points effectively, and this calls for misinterpretations. I’m sure you wouldn’t want that because the purpose of you blogging is to share with them exactly what you have in mind.

3. Distinguishing Opinions from Facts

It may be too easy to blur the line between your opinions and facts when your assumptions are so deeply ingrained in your subconscious. However, presenting opinions and assumptions as facts not only damage the trust that your more knowledgeable readers have over your content, it is also morally questionable to mislead the more naive ones.

Perhaps the worst-case scenario is when you post an entire article based upon an opinion which you assumed as a fact. In other words, you are drawing conclusions on something that is inaccurate and giving your take on the topic. Unsurprisingly, your blog will lose its readership once readers question the reliability of your content.

A black spot on a white paper gets noticed ever-so-easily, so your entries should always be as truthful as possible. The best practice is to maintain a good reputation by ensuring that all your entries have their facts verified before they are even published.

4. Fact Verification

Rumors can be masqueraded as facts in the sea of information on the net, and it’s your role as a journalistic blogger to verify and confirm them. One problem with bloggers is that there’s diminished accountability for what we write when we compare with true blue journalists. Nevertheless, if we make it a habit to always verify what we post as facts, our blog will soon establishes a level of credibility. Such quality will draw in the crowd and make them stay.

(Image source: Fotolia)

One straightforward way to verify is to find the original source of information. Don’t take what you’ve read from another blog as the truth until you’ve seen it for yourself. To better convince your readers that you’ve got your facts right, you may also identify and share the sources in your article. For one, it improves the confidence of your readers over your entries. Another is that you avoid being accused of plagiarism.

5. Editing & Re-writing

Rereading, editing and re-writing your drafts are important recipes for good written pieces. This is where you cut down the amount of words and ensure that your story flows from the beginning to the end. Check for spelling, punctuation and grammar; making such mistakes are pretty much unforgivable for journalists. Get another person to proofread and ask them for an evaluation so that you can improve on your writing.

(Image source: Fotolia)

As with other great things in life, there’s always room for improvement when it comes to writing. Editing and rewriting makes for the road to perfecting your writing skills. Attaining that discipline of habitually checking your work again and again and making amendments will polish up all your final products.

6. Ethics

Journalists realize that their articles can have a substantial impact on the people who read them. They understand that their role is to be objective and be as accurate as possible in providing the information to them. Therefore, they hold honesty and accuracy to the highest esteem and take great responsibility and pride when they write their pieces.

Similarly, our blogs can significantly impact anyone who stumbles upon them. Do you take things out of context to skew readers to a certain personal view? Do you conceal your opinions and present them as facts? If you get sponsorship from companies to write good reviews about their products and services, will you still be truthful and objective in what you will post? These are some of the questions we have to consciously ask ourselves to ensure that we always write with the right intention.

Sure, blogs may not be treated as seriously as official news sources, but remember that whatever you publish can be accessed by anyone with internet connection. This is especially so when more and more people are using social networking sites to share their links and such. You’ll never know the implication your post could potentially have.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Myriad questions require answers, but for the moment web users can only rely on extremely educated guesses as to what Web 3.0 will ultimately be like. Before considering ideas about what advances will be made by Web 3.0, it’s useful to first remind ourselves of some of the core characteristics of Web 2.0.

Web 2.0

How did Web 2.0 advance from Web 1.0? Whereas Web 1.0 was more of a repository and library of information, Web 2.0 placed an emphasis on interactivity and making connections between web users, particularly via social media platforms.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have thrived, establishing strong social and professional links between web users, making it far easier for Internet surfers to find other people possessing the same professional, social and cultural interests.

(Image source: Fotolia)

Web 2.0 has also greatly facilitated content sharing via blogs and platforms like YouTube, while also increasing interactivity with web page content, allowing web users to visit web pages and input their own information. The hugely successful web encyclopedia Wikipedia is founded on this very concept of visitor information sharing and editing.

Technological advancements in cellphones, smartphones, tablets and game consoles has enabled the Internet to be accessed away from the central home or business computer, making the web truly mobile. WiFi in public spaces has also helped facilitate mobile Internet access.

Connecting web users with each other has been the fundamental strength of Web 2.0. Perhaps the most important among the shortcomings of Web 2.0 has been the relative inaccuracy of online searches, which remain based on keyword recognition. Internet experts believe improvements in the accuracy and personalization of online search results will be among the key advances made by Web 3.0.

Web 3.0

Earlier this year, Tom Jenkins, executive chairman of Open Text, conjectured that Web 3.0 is perhaps only two years away. Considering how close Web 3.0 might be, is everybody agreed on the form it will take?

Personalisation and the Semantic Web are key features most internet experts agree will be central to Web 3.0.

Personalization

It’s widely believed Web 3.0 will construct an intelligent in-depth personal profile for each web user, uniquely fashioned from the complete search history of each individual Internet surfer. This will greatly improve the accuracy and relevance of search results, as they will be intelligently edited to conform to the web user’s known likes and previous search history.

(Image source: Fotolia)

This could mean that two different web users entering the same search term will receive different results based on their personal profiles. In short, Web 3.0 will act in a similar way to a virtual personal assistant who knows their web user inside out and is therefore able to make informed suggestions based on a profound knowledge base.

Sites like Amazon use a similar basic form of this program to make suggestions to consumers based on prior search and purchase history. Web 3.0′s programs will be far more technically advanced, pulling information from the entire web to create a portrait of the web user.

Whereas Web 2.0 connected web users to each other, Web 3.0 will connect web users more intelligently to information on the Internet.

The Semantic Web

However, the most widely discussed future feature of Web 3.0 is the Semantic Web. A concept created by Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web as an information sharing interface in 1989, it’s not known whether the Semantic Web will be fully incorporated within Web 3.0, but its basic features have been disclosed.

Aiming to greatly enhance the intelligence and accuracy of search results, the Semantic Web will eschew the inaccurate keyword based searches of Web 2.0 and utilize comprehensive fields of information called ontologies, which will bind together related terms, recognizing the inner relations of terms.

(Image source: Wikipedia)

The Semantic Web will be able to understand web content in its full semantic context, meaning fuller search sentences will yield sharper search results using software agents. The tag culture of Web 2.0 works in a similar way, but the Semantic Web will analyze and compare search results far more intelligently utilizing advanced programs.

The main issue with the Semantic Web is whether professionals will have the time to create thorough ontologies for their web pages. A new IT position may be hovering on the horizon.

Localized Search Results

Another much discussed feature of Web 3.0 is fully localized searches. Improvements in GPS technology will most likely create comprehensive comparisons of personalized search results for web users based on their exact location.

(Image source: Fotolia)

High quality mashups, where two or more applications are merged together as one, will help facilitate this type of service. For example, the combination of Google maps and restaurant reviews will assist the web user to quickly find a good place to eat in their vicinity based on their culinary tastes in a matter of seconds.

The tech savvy web user will already have realized that many of the features touted as being central to Web 3.0 already exist in basic forms.

Web 4.0 and the Future

What lies beyond Web 3.0 for computers? Many Internet experts believe virtual worlds, utilizing the same 3D architecture as the most advanced environments of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games, will become hugely important in the future.

Pioneering virtual worlds like Second Life, in which web users exist as an avatar and can upgrade their virtual presence, have blazed a trail for this exciting type of Internet environment. Second Life enables users to build and trade a portfolio of virtual real estate in the form of server space and make genuine profit from their endeavors. Unlike the economy of the concrete world, Second Life is going from strength to strength.

(Image source: Fotolia)

How long will it be before consumers can don a pair of 3D glasses, enter a virtual boutique, view virtual representations of products and make a purchase at the checkout while conversing with the avatar of another virtual consumer? The signs say not long.

When the onset of Internet TV and the immense plethora of dedicated channels and user created content and environments are considered, the mind truly boggles. Rather than having a blog or social media profile, will we each have an immersive virtual world of our own in the future?

In Conclusion

While a lot of what is being said about Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 is informed speculation, it’s undoubtedly an exciting time for the Internet. Is a veritable revolution in the way we interact with information upon us? For now, web users around the world wait to see if the predictions for Web 3.0 and 4.0 come true, or whether the realities of the next Web phases exceed imaginations and expectations.

(Image source: Fotolia)

All bloggers reach their writing limits at one time or the other. After blogging for some time, ideas just seem to vanish into thin air. All the great topics on your blogging pad have either been flawlessly covered in another blog or you simply have the title, but no content the write.

When this happens, do not tear your short point notebook. Yes, you can change the color of your pen, but hanging the gloves is not an option. You need to bring your sexy back. Below are some ways that will bring the juice flowing and help you come up with great topics for your blog.

Related: Designers: 5 Tips to Get Back Your Creativity

1. Review a book by a foreign writer.

Surprise your readers with a review of a book by a foreign writer. Have you read any books by Tunisia authors? Get a different view of what you are used to. The world is vast and opinions are diverse. You just need to know where to look to draw inspiration from.

2. Review a product/service aftermath.

Every day, products are launched across the Internet; from coaching programs to physical products, services to magazines. The buzz generated a few months prior to their launch usually shakes other players in the same industry. But do the products live to their promise?

Follow up on a product that was launched a few years ago and track its performance. How has it changed? Are the initial business goals still the driving force behind the products?

3. Get inspiration from a different industry and adopt it to your industry.

Your niche may have its unique propositions but the essence of business is the same across all industries. Find out how people are solving problems in different industries and see how it can be adapted to fit your industry. Your readers will thank you for that!

4. Watch a classic western or oriental movie.

The Transformers or Fast Five may get your adrenaline rushing, but classic westerns like Joe Kidd or Dances With Wolves will get your creative writing juices flowing. Sometimes, you need to get back to the 1940s to find a topic to write about.

(Image source: Fotolia)

5. Is Joe writing that too?

Blogsdrop (coined from eavesdrop) often. Blogspdropping is not a sign of weakness. It is keeping up with the competition, a form of blog sport. In Hip Hop, rappers call it “keeping an ear to the street.” Find out what your industry experts are blogging about and bring a fresh twist to some topics they have covered.

6. Social media and Google Alerts are a must.

Use social media and Google Alerts to find exciting topics to write about. Check trending news in Google Alerts and subscribe for alerts on various keywords. Check articles posted in niche groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is especially useful as the majority of the users there are professionals.

7. What would Sun Tzu do in your industry?

Probably start another fight. Get inspiration from a historical figure and adapt it in your industry. Buddha may teach you the importance of taking a break from your work and appreciating the simple things in life.

8. Let your readers drive your agenda.

Get ideas on topics to write about from your readers’ comments on your blog, email, Twitter or Facebook. Some bloggers have a “suggest a topic” button where readers can submit topic ideas.

9. You play soccer? Great, let’s go bungee jumping!

Take a break from blogging in your industry and write something completely different. Keeping up with the latest developments in your industry can quickly wear you down. You run on blood, not diesel. For a break, blog about something completely different.

10. Answer questions.

Check questions asked on Yahoo Answers and Answers.com that are related to your niche and create a post based on them. Join your niche groups on Google Groups and Yahoo Groups and check what people are asking. You can get great blog title ideas from these groups.

11. Table of contents.

Check the table of contents of top selling books in your niche in Amazon or Barnes & Noble to get ideas on what to write. Books sell because of the table of contents, what makes you think you cannot get a winning title from them?

12. Opinions please.

Create a poll about a topic and review the outcome. Ask your readers what they think of a particular subject. It can be about a topic in your niche or a recent news story. Readers do not live your industry alone. There are a lot of things not related to your industry that affect them.

Start a poll and let readers share their thoughts.

13. Take a break outdoors.

Go outdoors to clear up your mind up. Do not forget to carry your notebook. A serene environment is powerful enough to clear your mind and bring ideas locked at the back of your brains. It is what nature was made for. Try something new or finish up projects you left half-way before. A short break from your writing table may be what you need to get a great blog topic.

(Image source: Fotolia)

14. One on one with blogger X.

Interview an expert in your field and share the interview with your readers. Upload the audio and transcript on your website and ask for comments from your readers.

15. Best of the best posts.

Write a “Best of Your Blog” list and highlight articles that were a favorite with your readers. Do this quarterly, semi-annually or annually. You will rekindle the interest of your readers and may get some fresh insight to add to the articles.

16. Who made it in the Top 5?

Review top 5 of your favorite niche blogs. Your ‘favorite’ does not necessarily mean everyone’s favorite. Why should you review a blog that most of your readers already know? There are many hidden blog gems that have a rock-solid following that you can review.

17. Go visual

Make a picture or video blog post of a topic in your niche. 6 photos or slides are enough to make a photo post. Be creative and summarize your posts in the 6 photos or slides. Alternatively, post links to a series of videos that will provoke your readers in the particular topic you are addressing.

18. Previously on post X.

Write a sequel to one of your past blog posts. If you have a lengthy post, don’t give it out all at one serving. Spare some for next time. Just make sure the first post has the gusto to keep your readers yearning for the next installment.

19. Check your scribble pad for past topics.

Every time you want to write something, you probably have a couple of ideas to start with but only the best ends up on your blog. Some of the topics ultimately end up being shelved and forgotten as you struggle to keep up with your readers’ demand for exciting topics. Sometimes, the topics you shelved can be what you are looking for. A fresh insight or controversial view can be all they need to make it to your blog.

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20. What I wish I knew before…

Write about what you have learned during your blogging months/years. Many successful bloggers make mistakes when they are starting out. Whether you enrolled in the most coveted blogging course or were coached by the Godfather of Blogging, you must have made some mistakes somewhere. Blog about the mistakes and how you overcame them.

A blog post about a personal experience is always a good read.

21. Same shirt, different place.

Compare your niche with a different one and show what lessons can be learned from the other industry. There may be differences in the working model but positive lessons can always be drawn from any industry and adapted to another one.

22. Best of the month.

Write a wrap up of your blog posts during the month. This can be a quick summary for readers who missed one of your previous posts.

23. Burst your guns (not for the faint-hearted).

Go on a critique rampage. Disagree with an expert in your field while providing insight on the stand you take. This step should however only be considered when you have a valid reason to disagree. Otherwise, when feedback starts rolling in, you may be on the receiving end.

There you go folks. Next time your creative juices are drained, follow one of the above tips. You are guaranteed to have an abundance of topics to keep your hungry readers satisfied for a couple of months.