Problem with being proactive
Being proactive means doing things without being prompted. This is all fine, but the problem is that there are many times when you have to write blog posts even when you don’t feel inspired. This means you would churn out posts that are not really perfect, which is never good.

Why reactive?
When you have to develop a successful blog, there is a lot that you have to do. But one thing that you cannot miss is top quality content. Face it- the posts you force out aren’t very good. It’s when you get inspired and write down your ideas, when readers are the most influenced. You cannot force inspiration, and the best blog posts come at the time when you are not looking for them. That’s the whole point of writing reactively.

Problem with being reactive
If you write posts only when you feel inspired, you won’t write frequently enough. Plus, your posts would be inconsistent, which is bad for the blog.

So now the problem is… how do you find the best of both techniques? Write inspired blog posts that read and flow well, but do it in a proactively structured way to build a credible blog that gathers a lot of dedicated readers.

Combining reactive and proactive
To be successful in reactive writing, you need to be proactive in all other areas of your work. You have to support the parts that inspire you. Here is how you can do that:

Schedule: To get best blogging results, make sure you write consistent posts. So make a schedule and follow it. Write it down… or better still, publish it on the blog. This will make you responsible and you would stick to the schedule. So from then on, no matter when you come up with ideas or write your posts, they will be published on the decided days.

Pre written posts: You would feel inspired on some days, and some days would be a total waste of time and space. So try to write at least two week’s content beforehand, so that you always have something to put on the blog. This way, if you have a dry spell for a couple of weeks, your blog would still keep going.

Activate inspiration: Make a list of things that inspire you. The list might include some newsletters, blogs, or websites. Visit them regularly to get inspired. In fact, schedule your visit to these sites.

Combine both strategies and get the benefits of both. This will bring consistency to your creativity, and the result would be topical posts being published on time, leading to a better blog. All the best!

Or maybe you have no technical expertise, so you hired a professional to handle the backend. And now every time you need to update the site, you need to pay someone to make a change.

One way to streamline the process is to utilize a content management system. A CMS is basically a one-stop facilitator, making it easier for people who have little knowledge of programming or markup languages to create and control content, edit, and perform a number of important web maintenance functions.

For you and your employees, this means:

• Most updating can be done in-house, cutting web development fees.
• An in-place system where different users can have different roles and responsibilities on the site, giving them only the functionality they need.
• In-house data management and online management will flow more smoothly.
• With coding and technical details covered, the organizational staff can concentrate on content.
• No worries about SEO – most CMS systems include automatic metatagging, keywords, and dynamic text.

Are All Content Management Systems the Same?

Generally, there are three main types for you to choose from, depending on what you think will work better for your business.

Open-source CMS includes things like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. They are free to use, and understandable for practically anyone to set up, but may not have all of the functionality you want and by nature don’t have the kind of support that office technophobes might require.

Commercial CMS is purchased from a company and typically has much better support, documentation, and training, but the key word here is purchased. These systems can be quite pricy.

And finally, there’s custom CMS, where you pay to have someone come in and build a system specifically for your company, with all the little tweaks you want. Though great if you plan on doing something relatively unique on the internet, the obvious problem with a system so specific is that it often limits your support options to the person who builds it. If they go out of business or leave your company, it may be tough to change or update things as you grow.

Once you’ve decided on a system and put it in place, you’ll find that making updates to your website is no longer the chore it once was, enabling you and your employees to focus more on growing your company.

To get started you need only a spark of an idea or a bit of curiosity. Talk about yourself, put it on the Web and join the revolution.

You don’t need a lot to get started. You can use a video camera or a digital camera with movie taking capabilities, an iPhone or an iPad, or you can use your Mac’s built-in iSight video camera. Edit the captured video in iMovie and you’re ready to go. iMovie is Apple’s popular video-editing application, and it runs on the Mac, iPad and iPhone alike.

Your video doesn’t need to be fancy with advertising, a script or a field reporter. It can be more of a home video style with you sitting in your pajamas and eating a bowl of cereal. People want to voyeuristically peek at the intimate details of other people’s lives. Why venture out into the real world when you can broadcast yourself virtually for all the world to see?

Apple’s own iWeb, part of its iLife software suite included with every Mac, with its smooth integration with iMovie, makes it easy to incorporate videos into a website or blog.

Here are some other suggested resources to help you get started with your vlogging career:

Blogger.com is one of the Internet’s leading free blogging tools. You have complete control over the design of your blog. Anyone can view your blog without needing to register.

WordPress is the professional online blogging software with more advanced-level, professional-grade features than blogger. It allows you to label your posts with categories, making it easier for visitors to drill down on a specific subject. It also has advantages for the more technically oriented, with XHTML, CSS and PHP support for greater customization and creativity. The self-hosted variety of WordPress requires space for a mySQL database on a server.

Node101.org is a discussion group with tools and tutorials.

Feedburner (now part of Google) provides media distribution for blogs and RSS feeds, and helps bloggers and podcasters deliver, promote, and profit from their content.

Blip.tv offers free tutorials to help you get your technical skills together and join the community of vloggers. It also offers distribution and interaction, monetization, FTP support and a Dashboard that shows you which videos are of most interest to your audience. Browse its hundreds of channels for an idea of what’s available in the Vlogosphere.

The idea is to give consumers easier ways to edit their videos as well as to share them with others. That can only expand the video blogging market farther than ever before.

You might get the impression that the Mac is the forgotten stepchild of the Internet marketing industry. But did you know that some of the top names in Internet Marketing use Macs?

Tim Arends is the webmaster of InternetMacMarketing.com. A user of Macs since 1994, he has helped purchase, install, maintain and troubleshoot Macintoshes and Mac networks for business for several years. He has sold and demonstrated Macs at a major retail chain and has been a Mac user group ambassador, newsletter editor, and program director for over ten years. He has written about Macs and Mac software for national magazines. Currently, he runs his business exclusively using Macintosh. Visit http://internetmacmarketing.com and get a  FREE 75-page ebook that covers everything you need to know about running your Internet business using a Mac, iPhone and iPad here: http://internetmacmarketing.com/10tools.html.

Spartan golf club by Richard Fonteneau

One plus One by Aleksey Bokov

Imaginary Friend by Yeria Elsafan

Bread & Breakfast by Strudel Design

Circus of Magazines by Olivier Courbet

Help Hand by Alexey

The Waterfront by SML

Who You know by Simon Says

Fork & Knife by Nick Sickelton

Optimistic Beverages by Helms Workshop

illusion by Anthony Lane

Mr. Cutts by Tabitha Kristen

Portrait Photos by Atakan Seçkin

Pencil by Reghardt Grobbelaar

Human by Social UK

Napoleon Sushi Bar by Badvosky

Poker Hills by Alen Pavlovi

Version2 by James Cullen

Code Fish by Mabu

AIDS Taskforce 25 Years by Mikey Burton

Fit by Tinkov

EcoDiva by Ocularink

Coffee by Jan Zabransky

Women Meet Literature by Emrekoc

Horror Films by Siah Design

RIP Steve by Jonathan Mak

Jupiter by Stelian Vasile

Here’s the problem in a nutshell. For example, when I type in a phrase like “line,” I expect a few things. I expect a Wikipedia link within the first three results telling me everything I want to know about lines. I expect that I would be able to find a company or brand named “Line.” I also expect to get a lot of search results that mean nothing. Links I’ve never seen before and will never see again.

What I did NOT expect to find was an article written by me for a guest blog four months ago that I +1’d because I wrote it and, admittedly, it’s awesome. I especially did not expect to find said article when the only thing that it can have in common with my search is one ambiguous word in the title, hardly a long tail keyword.

You might infer that this speaks to the amazing SEO work going over at the site, and while I am certain that it is not any less than the best, I would highlight that my own website, which has abysmally bad SEO and is not being actively managed at all, ranked a close second. What I am certain of is that, given the individual topics of the articles, neither are about lines. One is about email marketing and the other about online poker, and I am certain that neither should have come up on a search for the word “line.” I might expect to see these articles if I searched for something more relevant to the articles, but throwing up meaningless social results in every search, in my opinion, ruins my Search experience.

Until Google makes these changes permanent and mandatory, which they have stated their intention to do, I am DISABLING these new changes by:

Using the Options Gear in the top right to open Search Settings.

Disabling Personal Results.

While you’re here, you can also turn off Instant predictions if it nearly gives you a seizure to type in a search query now.

1. Keep Them Short – For most forms, all you need are three fields: name, email, and a comment box. Web visitors like short forms. They take less time to fill out (duh!). They seem like less of a commitment on the part of the visitor. Granted, web forms need to be longer for offers like a free demo or a free consultation, but those are the exceptions. For most offers and web forms, the shorter the better.
2. Change the “Submit” Text – Instead of “Submit” as the text on the web form’s submit button, have the text say something actionable and something that illustrates on what the visitor is getting once the form is filled out. Good examples include “Download,” “Preview”, or “Schedule.” You want to remind the web visitor that he or she will get something in return for filling out the form, and isn’t just giving away information to get spammed. Go one step further and say, “Schedule Consultation,” or “Download Free Ebook.”
3. Clearly Indicate Required Fields – Most web form software have that little asterisk on some sort of default, so check to make sure that it’s obvious which fields are required, and that those aren’t required aren’t accidentally marked. If the phone number field is marked as required when it’s not supposed to be, that might be scaring a few people away from the offer. If possible, place the word ‘required’ next to the field label, as its easier to see than the asterisk.
4. Remove the Distractions – Get rid of the navigation menu, as well as the “Cancel” button. It’s all just distracting. You want these web visitors to focus on the offer, and to fill out the form. The “Cancel” button will draw people away (it also screams that your form is really long), as will the navigation menu by giving the web visitor other options. If a visitor is at your form, interested in your offer, you want that offer and that web form to be the only options for the visitor.
5. Use Ample Field Sizes – It doesn’t help anyone if the entire email doesn’t even fit in the email field. It not only makes it harder to fill out the form, but it’s also harder for the web visitor to know if there are any misspellings. Misspellings means misinformation for you and the possibility of losing a quality lead.
6. Include a Privacy Message – Or at least a link to your privacy policy. People are much more resistant to giving away their information than ever before. A privacy message or a link to that message adds some trust to your form, and lets web visitors know that their not giving their information away only to be bombarded with unwanted ads and promotions.

Web forms shouldn’t be complicated. They should be easy on the web visitor, while providing good reason for that visitor to fill the form out in the first place. Follow these six simple tips and you’ll not only have more usable web forms, but more people using them in the long run.

What’s the problem, you ask? At a time when Facebook is making privacy more controllable and specifically outlining their privacy policy, Google is taking a blanket approach to their privacy policy. In an increasingly privacy-conscious society, this is going to have severe repercussions from privacy advocates, and that outrage will filter down to ordinary users. This change illustrates Google’s interest in “simplifying” their privacy policy, which essentially means getting away with a lot more than they used to.

A lot of individuals believe that the main crux of this privacy policy relied on Google’s newfound ability to share your data across different services, but I would argue that they are already doing this to some extent. The videos you watch on YouTube may not directly influence the advertisements you see in Gmail, but both affect the advertisements you see in Google Search. It does seem that the level of sharing has been increased. For instance, if you were to search “Zooey Deschanel” in Google, the next time you go to YouTube, you might be recommended a few clips of Zooey on Letterman or from her video blog. Previously, this was blocked by Google’s privacy policy, but no longer.

The real issue will become salient if ever Google updates their privacy policy on the data it shares with a third-party individual, which it could do at any moment. Among the collection of Google services, several of them know your real name, your real address, and they can create a pretty valid profile of the things you like to see and share. If Google ever packaged this data outright and sold it to advertisers, it could mean a huge profit windfall for them and a huge privacy loss for all of its users.

Secret #1: Don’t Stuff Keywords

Yes, keywords are entirely essential to building your website’s rank on search engines. It is important to pick popular and yet less competitive keywords when writing your content. However, there does come a time when SEO goes too far.

Generally speaking, SEO suggests a keyword density of no more than four percent. So if you are following a guideline of writing 500 word articles with a three percent keyword density, you would be repeating a specific keyword about 15 different times. That seems like a small number but when a keyword is mentioned four times per paragraph it results in a cheesy and poor quality article. Not to mention the readers are going to feel like that keyword has been drilled into their head.

This is keyword stuffing; when a keyword is used in extreme excess. It is unpleasant for the writer to write an article like that and even more unpleasant for the readers. In all likelihood, a reader or subscriber probably won’t even read through the whole article. It is best to stick with quality articles and use keywords in titles, first and last sentences, and sporadically through the post.

Secret #2: Blog Often

Blogging should be a regular practice, as it isn’t going to provide a great deal of significance if you are only blogging once every few months. In fact, when you are using search engine optimization, your blog posts should be able to be indexed by the search engines regularly in order to ensure that you are picked up as an updated and relevant blog. A general rule for blogging is no less than once a week, with three times a week most favorable for best results. However, you can post as many times as you wish, with daily posts offering a very influential presence within search engine results pages relevant to your business and current niche followed online.

Secret #3: High Quality, Engaging Articles

High quality and engaging articles should always be posted for a multitude of reasons.  For one, search engines are beginning to see through keyword stuffing and are penalizing sites like these by dropping rank.  Second, keyword-stuffed sites will be much less likely to have return visitors and even less likely to have ads clicked on or products purchased.  Third, when you write quality articles, you can be free to be passionate about your topic rather than figuring out where to stuff your last three keywords.

You’ve got to agree- character design brightens up a website. Also, it gives it a unique identity. Characters have a friendly approach and they make us feel warm and fuzzy. Here are a few tips to help you get the right character design:

Get hand drawn characters
When you design a website, get hand drawn characters as they give a personal touch. It also encourages visitors to leave comments, as the whole aura of the website becomes casual. But make sure you also offer great content. Characters are there to supplement your content, not to replace it.

Detailed character
If you want to justify the presence of your character, it should focus on the purpose of your website. For example, if your company is into logo designing, your character can have a paint brush in its hand. If you are into blogging, your character can be a nerd. This will give a unique look to your website. Plus, it can be your brand mascot if you become a billionaire someday!

Character next door
It’s best to create something with which your audience can relate. People love characters that have human qualities. To be more specific, people love goofy characters. Drawing such a character will not be easy, but it will certainly be rewarding.

Images deliver any message faster than text, so relate your character to your services. Opening a restaurant website? Make sure your character is a foodie.

Simple design
If you have a small and simple website, adding a character will change the entire look and feel of it. An attractive character will divert the attention of visitors and your simple website would look really fancy. I once landed on a website where they had a cartoon character whose eyes followed the mouse pointer. Now when I think about the design, it wasn’t too fancy. But I was busy looking at the character and didn’t notice that the rest of the website was actually pretty simple. At that time it seemed like a really fancy website.

Creativity
Don’t make it a space-filler. Give it a unique identity. Let it steal the hearts of your visitors. It’s not necessary to put the character in the header. You can put it absolutely anywhere. The important point is that it should make your visitors smile.