We are all linked

Linking is one of the most important ways to raise the profile of your blog. Social marketing maven, Tiffany Dow, explains it on her blog. She also talks about keywords, and I'll discuss that a bit more in a later post. For now, pay attention to her advice about growing your blog traffic in a slow and organic way through linking to other sites. And always, always link related sites of your own to each other. Linking is so important, within each post, in your signature, and in your sidebars. Create a neat and tidy linked package.

So Sorry?

Picked up on Twitter and so true:

I must delete some of my rss feeds, so I just now decided, any blog that apologizes for not posting, they're out. One gone already!

Don't apologize for not posting. If you must, sneak back in and back-date some posts so it looks like you've been paying attention to your blog all along. Or commit to daily posts for a month so that your blog looks fresh. Then collapse your archives so previous months' don't tattletale about former bad habits.

There are ways and there are ways.

"Bee" a perfect blogger

Pro-blogger and blogging guru, Chris Garrett explains how to "bee" a perfect blogger. Here's good advice for authors preparing their own blogs for an impending blog book tour. Be sure to read the comments, too, because there are plenty of good insights and tips there.

Be sure to bookmark Chris' site and stop by often for the very best blogging help available. He's also on Twitter, and the above-mentioned article was picked up there. If you're not tweeting yet, I recommend it for a quick and easy way to give and get valuable information and links.

A Smashing Idea

Picked up at Twitter, Smashing Magazine offers up fifteen tools purported to make your blogging life easier. Do any of them work? I haven't tried them since the actual act of blogging isn't that difficult for me. But, if you're a virtual gadget lover, this might offer you some tools you'll like, and the article is definitely worth a read. Clear overviews and a clean wrap-up make it worth your while. This eMagazine is definitely worth exploring further.

Thanks, aboutbooks, for the heads-up.

The Perfect Plan

Few things make an entrepreneur's heart sink quite as deeply as the prospect of creating a business plan, and yet that one monumental step might be exactly the thing to ensure success in the long-term endeavor. It doesn't have to be as daunting as it sounds, and it can be downright fun.

The same holds true for blogging. Having a good blog is an important part of your long-term blog book tour success, but you must have a plan so your blog does all that it can and should accomplish.

You can start by answering a few simple questions:

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• How?
• Why?

Arrange them in any order you like, and each day think about one question and it's relationship to your blog.

Today, let's use Who. Look at your blog with an objective eye, and decide if it truly reflects who you are. Who is the person behind the image? Is this an author's blog? Who is that writer? Is your readership seeing you the way you would like them to? Who are you? And what can you say in your next post that will give a clearer indication? How can you change your blog to more closely reflect the personality you'd like to project? Are you all over the map? Sound whine-y? Foul-mouthed? Or do you seem like someone you'd like to meet? With interesting commentary and good writing that makes people come back for more.

If you have time, take it a step further and look at who you're linking to. Do they reflect your focus on the blog? Or have those links just been there forever and they really need a little housekeeping?

Happy August and good blogging!