The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

I never expected to win. Really I didn’t.

Jordan Cooper ran a competition on his (hilarious) Not A Pro Blog blog, the competition was “Regift & Win $500“, where to win you had to come up with the best joke relating to technology. Mine was simple, really unfunny, yet I won.

The prize – 2 Months Paid Subscription to Problogger.com forums. A prize that was won by Jordan on a competition on Erica Mueller’s blog. As well as an hour’s comedy coaching with Jordan. However, if I was to regift it, I could win $500.

So here we are, a Gospel According To Rhys Competition!

Rules

The rules are simple – simply write a comment below to enter. You get 5 further entries if you are a registered member the Gospel According To Rhys Newsletter. However, the comment must be an answer to this question:-

“What has been the worst gift you’ve ever given or received?”

The winners will be announced on my Birthday post (March 4th) in a contest organised by random.org.

The Prizes

The prizes for this contest are long & numerous:-

• 2 Free Months on the Problogger.com Forums (from Erica Mueller)
• 1 Hours Private Comedy Coaching for Bloggers (from Jordan Cooper)
• 3 Months Advertising on The Gospel According To Rhys (from me)

The Regift Element

With a massive disregard of duplicate content rules, I’ve copied this verbatim from Not a Pro Blog’s original post:-

Now, this is where the fun stuff starts happening. The contest isn’t over yet. The person that wins the above joke contest has a choice of two options:

1. Accept the prize of two months paid membership at the ProBlogger forums.
2. Regift the prize in their own blog contest and get entered into a drawing for $500 cash.

What’s the catch, you might ask? Well, here are the ground rules if you choose #2.

• You must regift the prize on your own blog within two weeks of winning.
• The winner of your contest must be given the same choice: Accept or Regift.
• That blogger must continue under these same guidelines as laid out here.

Every regifted prize winner will get one entry into a random drawing for $500 cash.
If the “chain” is broken and anyone accepts the prize outright without regifting it…
The contest is over and no one wins anything!

I will be keeping track of the prize transfers from blog to blog on the bottom of this page.
Everyone can then “play along from home” and see what happens in the course of this year.

This process of regifting will continue until December 17, 2010 (which just happens to be National Regifting Day) where all the bloggers who have participated in the regifting will have their names put into a bucket. The $500 winner will be chosen at random live on UStream that day by yours truly.

Suggested protocols for regifting participants:

On your blog contest, please include a link to this post so others entering will know the rules.

Also, please include a link of the blog you received the prize to regift. (if possible, all of them!)

Support all blogs this prize appears on. Remember, if they don’t regift it, you lose out!

Finally

Both my prize & Jordan’s Prize can be accepted or regifted if you want, it’s only the membership prize that you must regift to keep the $500 prize going.

Good luck! Any questions please leave a comment below.

A little bit of a treat this week, as I’ve got the first guest post in about 3 years! Say hello to Rebecca Kellogg, who is a Southern California based copywriter. In this article, she’ll share her thoughts on how you can improve your writing with Social Media. Enjoy!

Using Social Media Can Help Your Writing

Aside from connecting with others and “building your brand,” social media offers an interesting side benefit: It can improve your writing.

Writing, like many other skills, is something you can get better at with practice. When you use social media to interact with people, you are practicing (and likely improving over time) your ability to write in a conversational way.

Social media gives you an easy and informal test ground to hone your communication skills.

Winston Churchill is said to have practiced the best bits for his speeches multiple times on family members and guests. He’d try out various lines and anecdotes and practice delivery.

You can do the same thing!

Next time you’re sending a Tweet or doing a Facebook post, see if you can tweak the idea in your head a bit before you are posting it. Think about what you wanted to write, then see if you can alter it slightly to make it even better.

Watch. Your “real world” writing will start to improve as you work on these “mini-writing” pieces.

I have now given you the power to feel virtuous about spending time on social media. You’re welcome.

“But Rebecca,” you ask. “Do you have any pointers about HOW I might tweak my social media quips to make them more interesting?”

Why yes. Yes I do. This brings us to . . .

One Copywriting Principle Can Help You Be More Interesting On Social Media Sites

Let me tell you about writing headlines.

Have you ever seen those Twitter accounts that seem to post nothing BUT headlines? The ones I’ve seen seem to fall into two categories: (a) Spam or (b) News services.

If you’re reading this, I imagine you keep a social media account that is at least somewhat personalized (or that you are a spammer who wants to make his social media accounts more conversational).

So you probably post updates about your life, your plans, etc. and seldom make use of the “headline” tone of voice or sales blurb-style of socializing online.

But there is something we can learn from the headline-only accounts. The sole goal of those accounts is . . . to get you to click through. They want to grab your interest.

And isn’t your goal in social media to attract interest and build up your personal brand?

To that end, let me introduce you to “The Four U’s” of headline writing. These serve to draw the reader in and make him want to read more. Incorporate one or more of these into your social media activities, and see how it affects your posts.

1. URGENCY. In copywriting, this means we try to get people to take action. In social media, you might substitute “urgency” for “immediacy.”Write vividly of your present moment. How to do this? Use details that add color and draw our attention to you. Help us focus on you, now. Remember that guy that tweeted his wedding vows? He is an example of this.
2. UNIQUENESS. Uniqueness is a great one-word synopsis of the already brief mantra “be yourself.” How can you play up your uniqueness?Talk about the things that make you YOU—hobbies, interests, things you mull over in your brain. The guy that tweets stuff his 70+ year-old dad says is pretty unique.(Side Note From Rhys: This is key if you’re retweeting articles! By offering your own spin on what you Retweet (such as making the headline funnier, or more urgency, or a quick opinion, you’re being unique!)
3. ULTRA-SPECIFICITY. Want an easy way to create subtle humor? Be very specific. “Saw 4 geckos on the train today” is more interesting than “Noticed wildlife during commute.”
4. USEFULNESS. Tell the reader useful things you’ve learned. Share links to things you find interesting or helpful, or give a synopsis if you can write it briefly enough.Share how to solve a problem. Whether a new movie is enjoyable with a date. Or even how to write great quips for social media sites using copywriting principles.

Rebecca Kellogg is a copywriter based out of Southern California. She writes copy for businesses and also writes magazine articles. Visit her blog at www.rebeccakellogg.com.

With the popularity of Wordpress, it stands to reason that plugins are often duplicated, functionalities are copied & ideas are swapped. You only need to look at how many plugins integrate social media buttons in the Wordpress Plugin Repository to see how functionality is repeated.

One such area of plugins is ad management, with thousands of ad manager plugins available. Whilst I had one installed for the age longest time (Ad Rotator), it wasn’t perfect, requiring constant setup & maintenance. With the relaunch of this site in July, I wanted something that offered me plenty of functionality, but little or no maintenance.

Asking around, I was recommended OIO Publisher, a premium wordpress plugin.

OIO Publisher is a wordpress plugin that allows you to set up zones of advertising on your blog. These areas can then be sold independently of each other or in groups. Adverts can be targeted also on a per page or by a per IP address basis (which is stupidly complicated, something which I’ve not yet needed, but it’s there).

One thing that annoyed me with Ad Rotator was just the lack of automation, it annoyed both myself & one of my advertisers when I was away for an extended period & the advertiser couldn’t get the advertising live on the site. Not such a problem with this, from an advertisers perspective they click on the “Advertise Now” link, fill in details, upload a banner, pay with paypal and that’s it. The blog owner approves it from the wordpress dashboard, the advert then goes live for the length of time specified by the advertiser.

The advertiser can also set up a subscription, so that they’ll get the advert automatically renewed at the current rate – this is something which is great, as very few “free” add ons out there that manage this. If they’re not subscribed, then they  get a warning email that there advert is expiring – in fact emails are sent out quite a lot for this, making sure you don’t miss anything. If they choose not to subscribe then the advert is removed.

Being the site owner, you can also add your own adverts for a period of time (good for contests or banner exchange), as well as set up default advertisers should nothing be sold. Furthermore, the amount of different types of ad creatives you can have is huge – you can even manage paid posts & text links through this, and because you are separate from any advert network, you keep 100% of the income.

Purchasing the plugin also gives you access to the OIO Publisher marketplace, allowing you to list your blog as accepting advertising. This again is a nice feature, allowing you to sell advertising to companies that wouldn’t have seen your blog otherwise. The plugin author has stated he’s building up a network of advertisers for this marketplace, and there’s not much activity. Nevertheless, from that site alone, I’ve paid for the plugin a few times over.

It’s not perfect, one problem I have found is that have problems setting up advertisers for times not specified by the site owner (I’ve 1 & 4 week plans, I wanted to give a contest winner a prize of 8 weeks, and I’ve been unable to), and the default banner for “Advertise Here” is ugly, very ugly (it’s a text link), but other than that it’s a great plugin, as well as an ad server – you can use the plugin from within wordpress on Non Wordpress sites, and affiliate manager (you could earn money selling my ad space, but I’ve not set that up yet!).

OIO Publisher is available for $47, however if you use the coupon code given to you on any of the links on this post, you can get a discount of between $5-$15. I would thoroughly recommend it to manage your site’s advertising revenue. To purchase, please click the banner below.

(Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links)

Twitter is a great place to hang out, network & promote your blog, but like any successful service, it can be prone to bots. Rather, it is prone to automated twitter accounts posting spam.

Spam is bad, but automated twitter accounts aren’t necessarily. A number of great twitter accounts (such as the National Rail Enquries Twitter Account) are automated, as there isn’t a need for it to be anything but – why create work for yourself? I propose that you create a twitter account purely for your blog posts. Why? Well, a number of reasons.

• It secures your brand - If your blog takes off, people will snap up Twitter usernames associated with it. Capture them first before they do.
• It allows you to promote your post twice without pissing people off - Your main twitter account (the one you network with) can retweet your automated twitter account, rather than you retweeting yourself. It does look a little better, plus you promote both your post and your twitter account.
• It disassociates you from your blog (in a good way) - Whilst you will be the person behind the blog, it’ll help build the brand around your blog. If you ever sell your blog or move on, you can give a twitter account away, so the blog will continue to be successful even without you.

So, how do you create a useful twitter account for automated posting of your blog? Here’s what you need to do:-

1. Sign Up For a Twitter Account

First off, get a twitter account. You can sign up here. Note down the username & password – you’ll need it for the next step.

2. Download Twitter Tools Plugin for Wordpress

We will use a plugin called Twitter Tools by Alex King for this tutorial. Download & Install it using your chosen method of installing wordpress plugins.

3. Set Up Twitter Tools

To set up Twitter Tools, click on Twitter Tools under the settings menu in the wp-admin. A screen like this should appear:-

Insert your Twitter Username & Password into the boxes & test the login. Make sure you switch the “Create a Tweet When You Post” & Default to Yes, and the Tweet prefix to what you want. Make sure other options are switched off – you don’t want the creation of blog post of your tweets. Save, post & check your twitter accounts.

4. Integrate your Favourite URL shortener to Twitter Tools (Optional)

A number of popular URL shorteners can be integrated with twitter tools. I can’t go through the setting up of these – most use an API key which can be gained from your account on your URL shortener. Here’s some of them at least.

• bit.ly for Twitter Tools
• su.pr for Twitter Tools
• tr.im for Twitter Tools

Try it yourself! Set up a Twitter account purely for your blog. Here’s mine you can follow for my blog – @gospelrhys. What’s yours?

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

I read a blog post over the weekend on Men With Pens. In it the author argued that Blogging is Turning Into a Sweatshop, with people working their butts off for little or no money. I’ve been doing this blogging thing now for over 7 years, and really I’d be lucky to make a year’s wages in my 7 years if I was to quit now. I’m not really too bothered, as I do get a lot of pleasure from blogging. Also, I am a firm believer in alternate forms of building income, and surely the fact that running a fairly successful blog for 7 years shows for something to potential future employers, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I understand that not everybody feels the same, and a few bloggers are questioning the fact that they are giving away all this free content, with very little return. Personally, I think the fact they’re questioning it shouldn’t be an issue. Nobody is asking them to be a blogger, so if they don’t like it, leave, or if it’s worth it, continue with guest writers, paid guest writers.

However, if you work for free on your blog, you shouldn’t work for free on other people’s blogs. Freetards have annoyed me recently, and here’s why.

I’ve done a website for somebody as a freebie, a friend (at the time) who I built a pretty good Wordpress blog, with 3 hours of training on how to use it. It lay dormant for a year, during which the friendship between myself & the person in question broke down. The first I’ve heard from him in a year was a text earlier today asking how to access the website, as they’ve “forgot”. I’m apprehensive in doing so, so much so that a “google it” email will be sent if he pushes.

I’ve also been marking a few comments as spam for people who have been giving personal attacks because my wordpress plugins won’t work on their setup, despite emails trying to sort it. At the end of the day, I’m only one person working on the plugin. I can try to help,  but I will only do so much for free, please understand that.

I’m a firm believer in what Aaron Wall has said on his website – that he cares more for money than links, so much so that there’ll be a bunch of things I’ll be working on with my plugins in the next few months, to hopefully streamline or eliminate a lot of the technical support requests, I’m actually genuinely excited for these, so I’ll be happy to support a lot more after this.

Will they be paid for support? Maybe. After what Gaping Void said not so eloquently in a tweet: I’m not paid to write software, but I should be paid for answering your problems.