Telling It Like It Is

Telling It Like It Is Has a New Look!

I mentioned recently that Telling It Like It Is would be getting a new theme and new host. Well, this is it! What do you think? This new theme is called Silver Light, and I like the clean, simple, content-oriented look, rather than having a site loaded with cutsey images in the header etc. There is still some tweaking to the theme and sidebar going on, so please “pardon our mess” while everything is put into its proper place.

I know I mentioned before that I planned on using the Visionary Magazine Theme, but due to my lack of knowledge and/or inexperience with coding, I decided to stay clear of anything remotely complicated that would require a great deal of time spent on editing and coding.

Creating and having quality content for visitors and  subscribed readers is by far the most important thing to me, and I believe this new theme focuses on content quite well.

On a side note, I’ve received quite a few emails from regular visitors and subscribers asking what social networking sites I frequent so they can “friend” me and chat on a more personal basis than just in the comment section.

Here’s a list of where I can be found online.

• Twitter

• Facebook

• MySpace

• StumbleUpon

What do you think of this new theme?

Posted in Blogging, Personal on January 12, 2009

Tags: Tags: facebook, Myspace, social networking, twitter

17 Comments »

Twitter For Bloggers

If you haven’t yet discovered the benefits of using Twitter, I highly recommend you take a leap of faith and begin using it right away, as Twitter is an extremely effective tool to help you build personal relationships with other bloggers. Bloggers are constantly being reminded about using social media networks to get to know other bloggers on a more personal level as a way of networking with like-niche blogs, and Twitter is one of the best ways I have found to accomplish this.

I’m not going to provide a long, drawn out Twitter Tutorial here for those wanting to know “What Is Twitter?” and other basic information for Twitter newbies, because there is already a plethora of information on the subject, so I will simply explain how I’m using Twitter, with a few links and a video to help you understand why you need to become a Twitterer today.

It’s important for bloggers to understand that there is a right and wrong way to use Twitter, so before you rush off to sign up for Twitter and begin following other Twitter users, take the time to educate yourself on how to use Twitter properly in order to avoid the pitfalls and faux paux others have experienced that have cost them some followers.

While I do agree that building relationships with like-niche bloggers is very important, I also believe there is great benefit in stepping out of our own niche and getting to know other bloggers that can inform and teach us things we may not have known before. Although my blog niche is about parenting and relationships, I’m a blogger that continues to learn new things every day about effective blogging techniques, so why not build some online friendships with those I’m learning from even though their niche is different than my own? Twitter provides me the opportunity to do just that in real-time, as opposed to just commenting on blogs, in or out of my niche.

Promoting my blog posts on Twitter has also increased the number of visitors, comments and subscribers to my blog (Hello to all of my new readers!) by using TwitterFeed, and interacting with other Twitter users on a more personal basis. One of things I enjoy most about Twitter is providing links to discovered blog posts from using StumbleUpon (or other social networking sites) for my Twitter followers to enjoy.

I’ve often said that you must “give to get” in regards to social networking and building relationships with other bloggers, and Twitter provides ample opportunity to promote each others content and share advice, asking and answering questions, and so much more. Building relationships with other bloggers is not “all about you”, so it’s important to have a balanced view of self-promotion so as not to degrade the quality of Twitter and turning it into a selfish RSS aggregator.

Pay special attention to the 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter, as you will be amazed at the many ways people are using Twitter and reaping the benefits from it. Since becoming a Twitter user, I’ve made contact with someone locally with helpful information in my efforts to change careers, and another Twitter user has found extraordinary business leads and subcontractors for her business and so can you.

Twitter In Plain English

Who you choose to follow on Twitter is entirely up to you, whether or not you stay within your niche or if you simply seek out Twitter users that “tweet” whatever interests you, which is how I select who I follow. Don’t delay any longer, get Twitter! Oh, and if you’re interested in following me, I surely appreciate it.

Posted in Blogging, Friendship, Relationships, Reviews on March 14, 2008

Tags: Tags: build web traffic, how to twitter, social networking, twitter, twitter tutorial, ways to use twitter, what is twitter

8 Comments »

Archive Posts Meme-Tag, You’re It!

I’ve gotten pretty far behind in responding to various meme’s that I’ve been tagged with, so I wanted to be sure to get busy with this Archive Posts Meme that Hungry Mother tagged me and others with recently.

Archive Meme Instructions: Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you’ve written. … but there is a catch:

• Link 1 must be about family.

• Link 2 must be about friends.

• Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are… what you’re all about.

• Link 4 must be about something you love.

• Link 5 can be anything you choose.

I think this is a great way to circulate some of the great older posts everyone had written, return to a few great places in our memories and also learn a little something about ourselves and each other that we may not know. Post your five links and then tag five other people. At least TWO of the people you tag must be newer acquaintances so that you get to know each other better….and don’t forget to read the archive posts and leave comments!

My Favorite Family Post- “Taking A Bite Out Of The Sandwich Generation“, where I discuss the trials and tribulations of having had my elderly father in-law living with us.

My Favorite Friends Post- “Don’t Be That Girl” where I mention a friend of mine who has evolved over time into a that girl.

My Favorite About Me Post- “Sometimes Kids Can Drive Parents Nuts” not only shows that I practice what I preach on my blog, but I’m also a Tough Love advocate. Oh heck, I can’t leave out my “Too Young To Be This D*** Old” post, it was just too fun to do.

Favorite Something I Love Post- “Social Networking For You Whiners” because I love giving helpful tips about things I’ve learned along the way.

Lastly, Favorite My Choice Post- “Are Parents Helping or Enabling Their Adult Children?” because far too many people in society don’t understand that there is a difference between helping vs. enabling our children. I get a lot of search engine traffic to this post as well as continued questions and comments from parents struggling with their personal situations at home.

Now, who to tag for this one? Hmm…

• Meg at Dipping Into The Blogpond

• Kevin at Change Your Tree

• John at John Is Fit

• Linda at Exceptional Dental Practice Management

• Sephy at Sephyroth

• Snos at Snoskred-Life In The Country

• Daisy the Curly Cat

• Kacie at Cents To Save

• Mandy at Texas Medical Freak

• Ben at The Ben Spark

What?! Something wrong? Oh, you’re noticing that I linked to 10 blogs instead of just the five indicated in the meme rules, eh? Well…not to worry. Sometimes a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.

Posted in Blogging, Friendship on February 8, 2008

Tags: Tags: archive post meme, difference between helping and enabling, don't be that girl, helping and enabling, meme, social networking

3 Comments »

Social Networking Tips for All You Whiners

I think if I read one more blog post from someone whining about not getting any blog traffic or trouble getting your blog noticed, I think I’ll scream. Let me pull out my violin for all you online social networking whiners and play you a slow sad song. Boo-Hoo, Waah! “I want traffic, You want traffic. We all want blog traffic!” Well, so what! What are you really doing about it?! And don’t tell me, “I leave comments” or “I Stumble and give a thumbs up and reviews” or “I Zoom blog posts” or… (insert your personal favorite whine). Well guess what? So is everybody else! Now what are you going to do to stand out from the rest? To get your blog noticed, you must learn how social media marketing works and how social media optimization is vital for any website or blog.

Let me ask you social networking whiners a question: What does your blog offer that would make anyone want to visit, comment, subscribe or link to your blog? Who are you anyway? Does anyone even know you or know that your blog exists? I know, you’re probably going to tell me that you write fabulous articles/posts that are very helpful to others, and you just want people to know about them. Yeah okay, yawn. Well, I’ve got a little secret for you; so do I and many other bloggers. Now what? If you want to keep whining about it, go ahead and take a few minutes and get it out of your system, then pay very close attention to what I’m about to tell you.

Social Media Marketing

You can join all the free social networking websites that you want, but it won’t do you one bit of good unless you actively participate in getting to know your fellow bloggers on a more personal basis. Commenting on other blogs is certainly helpful to some degree, but just running from one blog to the next dropping comments in hopes that you’ll get noticed, just might get your comments filtered as spam.

Joining Entrecard, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, BloggingZoom, Bumpzee, Stumble Upon, Digg, Sphinn, and all the others won’t get you noticed unless you actively participate. I laugh out loud when I receive messages on BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog saying “Thank you for visiting my blog”, when I have never ever been to their blog. They’ve just ensured that I will never drop by their blog (at least not on purpose). I’ve even gone so far as to edit my email notifications of messages received on both BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog due to the high number of spammers.

Business Social Networking

The key to social networking or business social networking comes from building personal relationships with other bloggers, even those that are not in your blogging niche. Does John Chow know who I am? Probably not, why should he? I’ve commented from time to time on his blog, but I only do so if I feel I have something to add to his post, which is often few and far between. Does Darren Rowse or Andy Beard know who I am? Maybe, but so what. Why should either of them care about my blogging about relationships and parenting children and teens?

One sure-fire way of getting noticed is by taking the time to write a personal email to another blogger discussing how you were personally benefited by one of their posts, or perhaps even discussing or suggesting an idea for an upcoming post. Rob from 2Dolphins.com recently emailed me asking me my thoughts on the affects technology has on children today, thus leading me to write my post “Technology and Children – A Wake Up Call For Parents”. Had he not emailed me with those questions, it may not have occurred to me to write what turned out to be a very popular post.

Get Your Blog Noticed with Blog Links

Freely linking to other blogs or specific posts that help further develop and expound on your own post, without expecting anything in return, is by far what has worked best for me in increasing traffic to my blog. It will help get your blog noticed. Whenever I find a post that has valuable information I know will be of benefit to others, I bookmark the page and link to it in an upcoming post. You have to “give to get”, but doing so with selfish motives or expecting a reciprocal link later on down the road is ridiculous. Does Stephan Miller and Dane Morgan know who I am? You betcha they do! Get Blog Noticed!

Some people initially thought of as “controversial” or “downright intimidating” get noticed because they are actually very nice and helpful when needed, answering questions and giving helpful advice. Some bloggers may see a question you’ve posted, then write a detailed explanation in answer to your question, even being kind enough to link to your post. That not only creates attention, traffic and links, but also helps develop personal relationships amongst fellow bloggers.

Increase Blog Traffic to Blog

Actively participating in a variety of blog carnivals, or an occasional meme, can help increase blog traffic and links to your blog. I’ve seen some so-called meme’s where the blogger doesn’t actually link to anyone they’re writing about, so how is that supposed to bring attention to your blog? Give to get, give to get.

While you’re making out your New Year’s Resolutions, be sure to include taking steps to build personal relationships with other bloggers, and may this year bring you the increased attention and traffic you so desperately desire.

Further Reading:

Twitter For Bloggers

Posted in Blogging, Friendship, Relationships on January 1, 2008

Tags: Tags: social networking, stumbleupon, twitter

36 Comments »

Blogging Zoom Launches New Social Networking Site For Bloggers

Quite by chance I stumbled upon Courtney Tuttle’s blog, where he and his buddy Vic Frangui have just launched the social networking site Blogging Zoom. As I read the details of what this new social site is about, I became very impressed. Some reviewers are comparing it to Digg and Reddit, but that remains to be seen, in my opinion. If you have all the traffic you need, this post isn’t for you. If you have no interest in banding together for the greater good of everyone, please close the window now because this post is 100% about making a truly united effort to make blogging better for every person involved in it. And, it’s completely FREE. Here is how Courtney Tuttle describes what this new venture is designed to do:

1. Give bloggers the opportunity to submit every post written to a place where they can benefit from professional SEO expertise. For those of you that struggle to get search traffic, this alone can help you to grow exponentially. This entire system will be based on the fact that we will promote your individual posts. Before you start worrying that we will be charging for this, stop right there – this service will be 100% free.

2. Provide a social hub where bloggers can share ideas, learn to better themselves, and receive deserved, huge bursts of traffic to their quality content – without the competition from the big sites that currently have 8,000,000 different advantages on us. This organized, group attack will help every single one of you to get a bigger and well-deserved audience.

In order to achieve both of those goals, we have created Blogging Zoom – a tool built by bloggers as a coup against mainstream mammoths and site networks that stand in the way of our getting what we deserve:

Explaining what Blogging Zoom can do isn’t going to be that easy. It has some similarities to other services and more importantly has some key differences that tip the scales in the bloggers’ favor.

Upon first glance, you will notice that the front page of Blogging Zoom looks and acts similarly to Digg. We felt this was necessary to give bloggers the opportunity to get huge bursts of traffic to their content. That doesn’t mean that BZ is Digg 2, because it isn’t.

Key Factors That Make BZ The Mainstream Assassin

• Bloggers are not penalized for submitting their own content, in fact they are encouraged to submit all of their content. BZ allows you to add as much of your content as you want to a site that will get incredible amounts of traffic. Users will still vote for, or zoom, content and with enough zooms your content will be published front page to maximize traffic to your blog.
• If you’re not a blog, you’re out. There will be no competition between bloggers and huge news sites that already dominate search engine results and are indexed 100 times per day by Google. What happens if CNN submits an article to Blogging Zoom? Buried hahahahaha.
• We will use our SEO expertise to expose your content to search engines. This is the key factor that takes BZ 10 levels higher than anything else out there. The only thing even close to BZ in this aspect is Squidoo, but Squidoo doesn’t give you the potential to receive massive traffic bursts that can generate hundreds of links and thousands of visitors.
• Blog search engines like Google Blog Search and Technorati index spam like it’s premium content. Hopefully everyone is as tired as I am of competing with spam, because it’s a freaking joke. Since BZ is driven by bloggers, spammers will be reported, their work deleted, and their accounts banned.

Bloggers Coup Against The Mainstream

Lately I’ve realized that bloggers haven’t been working together. Google slaps us and ranks huge sites, networks, and even spam sites in front of us. Digg penalizes us for submitting too much of our content. Technorati ranks us but indexes spam in front of us.

The way I see it, if more of us are going to beat the odds that are stacked by the ton on top of us, it’s time to band together. Blogging Zoom was created by bloggers as the tool that can take a major chunk out of the search market, and deliver quality traffic to bloggers everywhere. I can tell you this, I will be promoting BZ like nobody’s business because it’s time for bloggers to be heard.

Together We Can Be Heard

We can create a massive resource that gets your content and mine ranked highly in Google for almost every competitive term. Together, we can take over positions that in the past were held by only the biggest internet gorillas. We can send thousands of visitors to quality content and ban spam that gets in our way in other mediums.

The more bloggers we can let know about BZ, the better it will be for every single one of us. What are we going to do? We’re going to get every blogger from here to China to Malaysia to Antarctica to everywhere else to help turn this tool into the coup that makes the mainstream media shake at the foundation. With enough help from bloggers everywhere, we can put this this thing into outer space.

If you want to help raise bloggers from the dust, it’s time to take action. Register at BZ, start submitting your content and zooming. More importantly, copy this post and put it up on your blog. We need to use every resource we can to get the word out to bloggers everywhere. That means Digg, Stumble, Sphinn, and every other site we can.

Let’s start the revolution.

Posted in Blogging, Friendship, Relationships, Reviews on November 5, 2007

Tags: Tags: BZ, courtney tuttle, digg, reddit, social networking, social networking for bloggers, technorati, vic frangui

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