Reviews

FollowUpThen

I am sure others have better ways to keep track of projects/emails they need to follow-up on, but my way of doing it is to Star the message in GMail, and create a calendar event to remind me. I shouldn’t have to Star a message since it is so easy to search for email within GMail. I saw this video about FollowUpThen via SwissMiss that provides a better solution that keeps my Inbox at zero, and doesn’t clog up my Calendar with reminders. Hopefully, someone else will find this useful, too.

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SocialOomph: Better than sliced bread (for bloggers)

Social OomphIf writing great content was the secret to success for bloggers, I am sure there would be a lot more wealthy bloggers out there. One can never truly know how much great content is getting written out there unless those writers market and publicize their posts. Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, etc. make this job easier for bloggers. The downside to those sites is you can only make live updates – you hit a publish button, not a “publish on…” button. If you have a flurry of ideas that you want to tweet about without sending them out within two minutes of each other, there’s a solution for you: SocialOomph.

 

Like the name says, this site really adds some power behind your social networking skills. There is a lot being offered on this site, but the general idea is that SocialOomph gives you more automated power over your Twitter, Facebook, and Buzz accounts. The easiest way to use SocialOomph is to schedule your updates, either by a specific date and time, or a general “x hours later” when you hit publish. This comes in handy when you have a lot of ideas or links you want to share at once. I can sit down, bang out the updates quickly, set it to publish later on, and then forget about it. Another idea is sending out “Happy Birthday” notifications to people. Set up all the @mentions ahead of time, and never forget to wish someone a happy birthday again (you can duplicate your updates with one click and change the publishing date). 

 

SocialOomph also expands your Twitter account, and makes your maintenance of it much more efficient. There is an option to create an expanded profile for your Twitter account that will appear when people click on the web link. You can include photos and links, making it much more useful to display information to would-be followers than what Twitter allows. When someone does choose to follow you, you can automatically send them a message to greet them through Direct Message, and also follow them. This is a great feature for people that have new followers on a regular basis. 

 

Before I forget to mention it, you can do all of the above with as many accounts as you would like. Send one update to your twenty Twitter accounts, or send all your new followers the same message. With the free account, you can do this for Twitter or Buzz accounts. With the Professional account, you can send the updates to your Facebook status or wall, plus you get a lot more features.

 

One problem that I used to have is creating a blog post, but then forgetting to publish it to Twitter or Facebook. I would end up sending out the link later in the day or several days late. But with SocialOomph, I can link my blog feed to my status updates so they get published automatically. You can do this for any RSS feed you like, whether it be your blog, a Tumblr, a podcast, or create a mobius loop by linking in your Twitter’s RSS feed. This is the most used feature for me, apart from the scheduled updates.

 

There is a lot more available than just that, though. With Twitter, you can schedule Direct Messages and @replies, sync your friends lists between accounts, and even send out one direct message to all of your followers. You can create filters to stop seeing certain words in tweets (like Twilight or Justin Bieber), mute certain Twitter users, or even wipe out your entire friends list to start from scratch.

 

When you sign up for the free account, you have the option to start a 7 day trial of the Professional Account whenever you want. I think this is a great idea. You can take your time to get used to the features of the free account, get comfortable with the layout and commands, and then upgrade to discover the new features.

 

SocialOomph will save you a lot of time and worry when managing your social media sites, so I urge you to sign up today. Let me know what you think of the services, as well, and take their sister product, FollowerHub, for a spin. I will do a write up of this in the future, but FollowerHub allows you to find new Twitter users by keyword, find out who you follow but doesn’t follow you, and much more. 

 

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One Blog You Should Follow (and probably don’t)

One Blog You Should Follow (and probably don’t)

It is quite rare for me to come across a blog that gets my full attention each and every time a new post shows up in Google Reader. It doesn’t seem to matter what the post title is about either. I click on the title, and I’m taken to a post that is full of valuable information that is current and can be put to use immediately. What is even stranger about this blog is that I don’t seem to read about it anywhere. It is within a world of its own in the blogosphere, and its name is ViperChill: viral marketing.

ViperChill is a one man wrecking crew that will knock you flat on the ground each time you read the posts. The man in question, Glen Allsopp, is highly successful, going up the ladder quickly in the social media world, and is now (at the age of 20), purely focused on his websites without a daytime job. He started up and wrote for one of the largest personal development sites out there, PluginID. He sold that blog for a five figure amount, and started writing ViperChill.

For me, ViperChill is quickly becoming that one source for anything to do with affiliate marketing to blog post writing. That blog is one of the main reasons why this one exists. For the longest time, I let my ideas sit in the back of my mind and get left there. As I like to believe, an idea is only good if it’s out in the open. It might as well not exist if it remains only in your mind. After reading ViperChill for a while, I felt the drive to buy his ebook, Cloud Living, and take the plunge into developing my own blog.

One of the posts that caught my attention and pushed me to start writing more frequently, was How I Generated One Years Worth of Content Ideas in One Hour, and You Can Too. Apart from one of the longest blog post titles I had ever seen, I was in doubt that you could possibly get that much content developed in so little time. After reading through the post, however, I realized how doable this really could be. It was something I had struggled with in the past. How do I keep the content going strong? I don’t have the mindset to keep being philosophical and “emo” like I was as a twenty-something. Reading this post gave me plenty of ideas to keep me going strong for a while (if my daughter allowed me the time to actually write, which is a whole other problem).

Some of the content on the site is geared towards making money, getting your site optimized for search terms (SEO), and marketing your website or blog. I’m more interested in how to develop my content and get it read, but if I were younger, I could see myself following the path of Glen (or Murray at Murlu). Knowing that success and wealth is easily within reach if you have the time and passion to develop content would appeal to the younger generation. Reading ViperChill will be a great start for those people wanting to do more with their site if that’s the direction they want to head in.

For the rest of us, the casual blogger, there’s some other great links on the site. The link today that inspired me to write about ViperChill was 2,897 Words on How to Create Viral Content (The Key Element Behind Every Successful Blog). In the post, he details the importance of blog post titles, with different examples to show what works and what doesn’t, plus how to develop an introduction, the middle, and ending a post with a powerful statement. I wish every blogger would read it and use the advice he gives, because there are some rather poorly structured posts out there that do have valuable content contained within them, but it’s difficult to extract it. The tips he provides are something I aim to do with my blog, and I’m hoping to improve my writing significantly over time.

Here are some other favourite articles of mine from the site:

One thing you will notice after you follow ViperChill is that the amount of posts written in a month is extremely low. It’s rather unfortunate that he doesn’t write more often, but at the same time, it allows the reader plenty of time to digest what is written and to look forward to the next post. I always look forward to his month-end reports about the traffic he is receiving. Seeing his blog become more popular reminds me that blogs do start at the bottom and slowly climb up the ladder in terms of readers. Reaching his numbers may be out of reach for me, but may very well be attainable for someone else reading this.

ViperChill is a great asset for bloggers, new and old. The posts are so rich with content, each one is like eating a five course meal. Each paragraph will leave you hungry for the next, and by the end, you will want to devour more. That is the real driving force in getting subscribers for your blog. Write great content, but leave people with wanting more.

ViperChill is the leading example with this mantra, and will inspire you to start writing now.

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