My Blog Guest

HOW TO: Create a Master Feed of All Your Guest Posts (and Publicize It)

Master RSS feedIf you guest post as much as I do, you are (1) probably guest blogging too much and (2) already losing track of what, where and when.

My guest posts are usually the best of what I can. It’s unfair to this blog readers if I am not sharing my best articles with them. Besides, sharing your guest posts on your own blog gives you much more:

  • Link to your guest posts to give more exposure to them;
  • Share your guest posts with your loyal community and readers;
  • Create your guest posting portfolio for your clients and partners to check.

At MyBlogGuest.com one of our PRO features allows our users to automatically share all their guest posts via a customized widget (you can see the sample here in the right sidebar).

Besides, one of my old posts shares two more wicked ways to share your guest post on your blog.

This post adds to the above tips: let’s try to create a master feed of my main guest accounts and publicize the feed here! Read on: HOW TO: Create a Master Feed of All Your Guest Posts (and Publicize It)

HOW TO: Force Facebook to Grab the Best Image from Your Page (WordPress)

Facebook thumbnailWhen you “share” a page on Facebook, you will – in most cases – have the range of various image thumbnails to choose from. More often than not, these thumbnails will be random, to say at least: banners from the sidebar, commenter’s Gravatar photos, etc. Obviously, you can always choose the best image, but will your readers do the same?

What is more, when a reader “likes” your article (which most users are more likely to do as that’s just so much easier), there will be no option to choose the thumbnail and your post will be placed on that user’s Facebook stream with an absolutely random and (in most cases) irrelevant image.

How much more interest could you great article result in if it *always* had a great and relevant thumbnail to go with the update?

Unlike Google Plus (which is much smarter at marking up the page and grabbing the most relevant information from the page), Facebook should be clearly “pointed” to what should make it to the update. Like it or not, it benefits you (in the first place) if you spend an effort to explain your page in a language Facebook understands.

For the lucky WordPress bloggers, there are a few plugins that will help you point Facebook to the best image to go in your Facebook “likers’” updates: Read on: HOW TO: Force Facebook to Grab the Best Image from Your Page (WordPress)

Meet MBG Tracker: The Simplest and Cheapest Way to Monitor Your Backlinks

Backlink trackerOne of the most frequent issues we have faced at our guest blogging platform is the deleted / “nofollowed” links (or articles). Imagine the disappointment: you have spent time and effort creating a good post and had it placed at a good blog to then discover that your author byline (together with your links) or your whole post was removed. Unfortunately, this can happen very often for various reasons:

  • Blogs can get neglected, domains expired (with the new owner creating new content for it);
  • Blogs can be redesigned (and the author bylines may be forgotten);
  • New “SEO” plugins can be installed and all blog external links nofollowed (I can’t imagine who could recommend bloggers installing these stupid plugins and why, but that does happen very often!)
  • etc. etc.

While we of course don’t guarantee all the guest posts will remain intact for the life being (we are community after all, we only help to connect; we can’t promise anything like that won’t happen), we do our best to alert our users if any of the articles or links were removed and even help them handle the situation.

Here’s how the MyBlogGuest Tracker was born. It tracks all links in the guest posts placed through the Articles Gallery and alerts the authors if anything strange is going on (for example, the site is down, redesigned, etc).

The author can then go ahead and contact the blog owner, and in most cases the problem is fixed very quickly. Even if the article was removed on purpose (for any reasons) and the blog owner refuses to put it back, the author will still be able to use the removed article again and let other blog have it (this way the content creation effort won;t be wasted).

We have had great feedback on this tool and decided to launch it as a standalone app.

***So welcome my next little project: Guest Blogging and Link Tracking Tool!***

The tool is brand new, still in alpha but you can go ahead and play with it. Mind that the tool does require considerable hosting and development costs, so it’s paid but very cheap (for now all we really need is to cover expenses). Read on: Meet MBG Tracker: The Simplest and Cheapest Way to Monitor Your Backlinks

Is Google Making us Illiterate?

Is Google Making us Illiterate?The following is the guest article by Dan Almond, at Piranha Internet, a  Preston SEO Company. If you want an awesome guest article like this, join our guest blogging platform MyBlogGuest.com

Since 2004 Google has been in widespread use, and there are now generations of people who have grown up using Google on a daily basis. These are the same people that have grown up in an age of technology, using mobile phones and specifically SMS text messaging. It has long been argued that text messaging has negatively impacted people’s ability to spell and use grammar correctly, particularly in formal writing.

Google is similarly positioned to exert such negative influence and I’ll attempt to show how it could be doing using an example from the world of retail. Read on: Is Google Making us Illiterate?

Content Scam Alert: Using Foreign Characters to Make the Piece Look Unique

Content scamManaging a huge and active guest blogging community is exciting. I never stop discovering new and new things.

In fact, the scam I am going to share today isn’t new at all.

It’s been around for ages, but considering I’ve been involved in the content marketing for quite some time and have never seen this before, I’ve figured it may be new to you as well.

If you accept guest articles or outsource content creation, you’ll be as surprised to hear about this scam as I was. It’s almost impossible to catch!

The scam is not easy to explain, so let’s start with a short exercise: Read on: Content Scam Alert: Using Foreign Characters to Make the Piece Look Unique

5 *Quick and Easy* Ways to Re-package Your Content into a Viral Image

repackage content into image This is not the first time I am doing a post on content re-packaging in different forms and types. Thus, I have already shared why giving your great articles a new life is so effective for content marketing:

✔ It brings traffic to your old content (and reanimates your old linkbait);

✔ It lets you share your guest post at your own site creatively;

✔ It brings links to both old content and its re-packaged version (which means at least twice as many links);

✔ It spurs your creativity and lets you test different types of content link bait (without the need to create new content and conduct any additional research).

This post looks at one type of content re-packaging: turning your old content into an image (and thus allowing it for download and easier spreading). Read on: 5 *Quick and Easy* Ways to Re-package Your Content into a Viral Image

The Evolution of Three Home Pages: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

Facebook Twitter Linkedin evolutionI haven’t watched MySpace or Digg evolve, however I can proudly say that I’ve witnessed the three other giants develop: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – and moreover, I’ve been an early adopter.

It’s fun to look back one day and remember how it has started and unfolded. It’s impossible to remember and describe everything that has happened in one post but at least we can watch their designs evolve. The three sites have much in common:

  • At the beginning, the home page had to explain the concept;
  • The sites are total mysteries for the outsiders (unregistered users);
  • They are all user-generated and have been growing (in terms of features and options) together with the user base.

I have got nostalgic and collected the screenshots of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn home page designs through the years and compiled them into short presentations. Enjoy!

Update: Looks like Slideshare decreased the quality of the screenshots (they are a bit blurred in full-screen view), so please preview there and download the original presentations here: Facebook evolution, Twitter evolution and LinkedIn evolution (all .pptx files)

Read on: The Evolution of Three Home Pages: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn