Do You Want A New Direction (Follow My Example)

If you want a new direction, you need to embrace change and be willing to listen to your critics/readers.

Here is my story,

It was pointed out to me that just reposting other people blogs has little value. Having a blog that is only re-posting other people content is the same as being a contemporary news channel. It only works if you are constantly on the edge of what is happening right now. The value is in delivering information (news) as it happens. It is a never ending cycle that cannot be changed. In essence it is just a different job.

My readers were more interested in what I have to say. I submitted a few posts that I had written and they commented how nice it was to "hear" my thoughts.

Well that came as a bit of a shock to me. No, really. I mean I'm not one who is at a loss for words (duh) and usually have an opinion about most any topic. But, the idea that they wanted to hear my thoughts was surprising.

So, in light of this new request, I will be writing my own thoughts and posting them. I promise to do a few things...

I will:

• write my thoughts unashamedly
• write clearly (as I can)
• speak to one topic at a time
• change my mind often
• take both sides of an argument
• argue on behalf of someone I despise
• be respectful of every opinion but not agree with them
• offend some
• engage others
• get out everything that I want to say
• and hopefully start some interesting conversations.
• Respectful yes, accommodating yes, tolerant no.

Constant Excellence is viewed by the world as mediocrity, so I expect to mess up constantly.

I have also changed my other blogs as well. You can find interesting things to read at the following blogs. I will be generating my own content. 

• www.40x50.com - A site dedicated to helping people find jobs 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. @40x50
• largerviewforlife.posterous.com - Ok, so you have found a job/career/business now what are you going to do? @LargerView
• encouragementforyou.posterous.com - Weekly encouragement for Christian job seekers. @E4_You
• theencouragementproject.posterous.com - Weekly encouragement for people who work in ministries. @The_E_Project
• sacjobteam.posterous.com - posting of every job request that is sent to me. Mostly technical project management jobs or related to that industry @andywergedal, @andywergedalNWZ
• whatsupwithandy.posterous.com - quarterly update on my professional life. designed to keep my name in front of my potential clients. @andywergedal

I will still re-post links for a couple of topics but my days of copy and paste other peoples stuff are done.

• andywergedal.pulsememe.com - links to job search and ipad articles
• sideswipad.posterous.com - ipad news and apps (links and youtube videos)

You can still find my huge volume of links and reposts on twitter stream at the following locations.

• @andywergedal My personal account and twitter lifestream (most things end up here)
• @andywergedalNWZ Just News and Links (everything ends up here)
• @40x50 Posts about getting a job from a Christian perspective
• @LargerView Posts about a LVFL
• @E4_You Posts from Encouragement For You blog
• @The_E_Project Posts from The Encouragement Project blog
• @sideswipad Posts about iPad

That is all for now. Feel free to join twitter and follow all these accounts to get all the latest news and encouragement.

Picture by yago1.com

 

Posted via email from AndyWergedal

Establishing A Home Base | Social Branding Blog

Getting discovered through social branding can be a difficult task at times. It takes persistence, a sound strategy, and communication. All of your hard work could be useless, however, if you don’t have a home base.

By home base, I mean a central hub for your content. One blog or website that you can direct everyone to and easily be found on the Internet. This blog is my home base. It’s where I direct all of my friends/followers from all of my social profiles and communities.

Allow me to explain a few key factors about establishing your home base:

Why Blogging is Important

Not everyone needs to have a blog as their home base, but it certainly helps from a branding perspective. If the goal is to get found, it is important to create content. Both search engines and people like content, and the more you put out the more likely you are to be discovered by interested audience members.

Keep It Simple

There is no need to go over the top with your blog. Everything from the domain name you choose to the layout is important and the simpler it is to remember or navigate the better. Avoid complicated or long domain names and sophisticated, vibrant layouts. Make it easy to read your content.

Make It Easy to Communicate

Speaking of keeping it simple, it should be relatively easy for your viewers to communicate with you on your home base. Strategically place social icons on your site and make subscribing to your content easy. Also, make sure it’s easy for people to comment on your posts. Let them be social!

Get Rid of Clutter

I know there are a lot of cool plugins and widgets out there and it can be very tempting to just load up your sidebar with cool features, but try to keep it basic. You can test widgets to see if they’re having an impact on your viewers or not. If they aren’t, get rid of them. Avoid having too many ads too. It’s okay to make money on your blog, but don’t sacrifice all the good real estate.

Register/Claim Your Home Base

Continually try to make it easy to be found online. Register your blog with all of the top search engines and claim your domain on sites like Technorati. Try to make use of any platform that pops up. If it is somewhat popular you can always find wealth in readership there.

Image Credit: onyks

via socialbrandingblog.com

Posted via web from AndyWergedal

Creating a Simple Online Portfolio » Blog | Great Resumes Fast

Potential employers sometimes ask candidates to submit work samples along with their job applications.  It’s important to have work samples available whenever this situation arises.  Creating a simple portfolio for yourself in advance has never been easier.

The type of samples you choose to share will largely depend on your industry.  However, as a rule of thumb, samples should show the range of your abilities from a stylistic and formatting perspective.  If you choose to keep the documents on your personal computer until someone requests them, be sure to give them appropriate titles such as “Newsletter Example” or “Sample Presentation”.  You can attach individual documents to your applications, or you can prepare a summary document with links to many different samples of your work.

Numerous Web sites allow you to upload free documents and share them with others.  Well known examples include Google Docs and Box.net.  These sites provide Web addresses for you to share with others looking at your work.  You can add the links to your cover letter by saying, “For a portfolio containing samples of my work, please go to (link address)”.  You can also organize the Web links by category on a summary document like the one mentioned above.  Additionally, Linkedin allows you to display your Box.net files on your profile.  If you’re submitting applications via e-mail, adding the Web address of your Linkedin profile to your signature can direct potential employers toward the work samples you have available there.

If your work has been featured on your previous employers’ Web sites, bookmark the link for yourself and share it with potential employers.  Having your work displayed in a public forum adds instant legitimacy to the accomplishments listed on your resume.  It’s also a good idea to download documents such as newsletters or reports; and save your own copies so that you’ll still have them if the company goes out of business or takes your work off its Web site.

With so many free document storage Web sites available today, you don’t have to rely on other people to share your work on the Web.  Creating a portfolio is as simple as choosing excellent examples of your work, uploading them to a document sharing site, and adding the Web address of your portfolio wherever you choose.

For a free resume analysis submit your resume via e-mail to info@greatresumesfast.com. You can view professional resume samples and additional career related articles at http://www.greatresumesfast.com/Samples.htm

via greatresumesfast.com

Posted via web from AndyWergedal

reCareered: Why Every Job Seeker Needs To Blog

Blogging ... sounds hugely time consuming and maybe intimidating to those who don't have one.

But blogging is one of the single most powerful things a job seeker can do to advance your job search. Blogging can help candidates across the board, whether you are active or passive, white collar or blue collar, experienced or noob, left brain or right brain. And anyone can do it ... you don't even have to write in order to blog (really!).

Why does every job seeker need to blog? Blogs provide so many ways for job seekers to stand out, especially because so few candidates use these tools.

( Continued ... Why Blog? )

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via recareered.blogspot.com

Posted via web from AndyWergedal

Building Your Personal Brand with Blogging | Personal Branding Blog - Dan Schawbel

Creating a blog and then consistently blogging is still the biggest untapped opportunity well. Use this post as a mini-resource guide for some inspiration to start blogging, or if you’ve started, use this post as a refresher to understand why you are blogging in the first place. Then use the blogging tools to improve your blogging efforts so you can get more ROI from your efforts.

Why a blog?

1) Search engines love blogs:

Search engines love fresh and relevant content; that is why Wikipedia is one of the top search results for so many terms. Every one of your blog posts is an opportunity to rank for “long tail keywords” that can drive very targeted search traffic to you. Think of your blog as an opportunity and search engine traffic magnet. Search engines are in the business of matching search terms with relevant content and blogs are increasingly the home for valuable content.

2) Blogs are link sticky:

Think of the last piece of content that you linked to on the Web. It was most likely a blog article that you found interesting or valuable. Every blog post you write has the opportunity to generate more inbound links for you. An inbound link to your blog post is like a website raising its virtual hand and saying, “this article is really good and I want you to know about it”. Keep in mind that the more inbound links you have to your blog, the higher you will rank for your targeted keywords.

3) You are creating an enduring asset you own:

With every blog post you are increasing the amount of “virtual land” you own free and clear. Think of your blog posts as “virtual stakes” in the ground that have an asset value and you will start to think with a different perspective. Great blogs that have accumulated lots of valuable content have both tangible and intangible value. You own it forever if you want.

4) Increase your opportunities to get found:

Think of every one of your blog posts as a lottery ticket; the more lottery tickets you have the more opportunities you have to win. Winning the lottery can mean getting the job you want, making more money, or just being seen as a thought leader in your space. Whatever your lottery is, each blog post you own is another chance at winning your lottery.

5) It’s all about eyeballs:

Blogs are social tools and can drive more eyeballs to your personal brand. With search engines and social media sharing plug-ins, blog posts are eyeball magnets. Interesting blog content that is optimized has a way of getting found and shared quite quickly, attracting more attention to your personal brand.

Tools to measure your blog’s success:

• Alexa
• Compete
• Comscore
• Technorati
• Blog Grader

Top blogs on blogging:

• Blogtrepreneur
• Copyblogger
• Daily Blog Tips
• Lorelle on Wordpress
• Problogger

Now it’s your turn?

What are some of your favorite blogging resources? Please add them in the comments section.

Author:

Chad Levitt is the author of the New Sales Economy blog, which focuses on how Sales 2.0 & Social Media can help you connect, create more opportunities and increase your business. Chad is also the featured Sales 2.0 blogger at SalesGravy.com, the number one web portal for sales pros, the professional athletes of the business world. Make sure to connect with him on Twitter @chadalevitt.

via personalbrandingblog.com

Posted via web from AndyWergedal

Why You should be Blogging

Blogging gives you the best return on investment when promoting your company, your message, your ideas online. Bar None. Anyone not running a Blog on their site is fundamentally at a disadvantage compared to someone who is. 

The visual above gives some indication into the time it takes to do each of the four primary text-based online content types. Press Releases typically take days to organise, especially if there are 3rd parties involved. News stories typically take half a day to organise since the content has to be extremely precise and fairly formal. Sourcing good media can also take considerable time. Status Updates / Tweets / Micro-blogs are much faster to create but they typically link to external blogs or articles, and do not generate any inbound links of their own.

Blog Posts on the other hand are easy to create and sit at the heart of the world wide web. The beauty of blog posts is that they can be informal, have personality, be rich in opinion or simple statements of facts. They are easy to create so you can create them much more frequently than traditional corporate communications. They are also something that people can follow.

The Blog itself is simply the start. The way the web works today facilitates the distribution of your Blog posts. Affino offers a number of great tools to leverage the posts so that they become the heart of your corporate message:

Search Engines / SEO

Search Engines love frequently updated pages. You can leverage your Blog content throughout your site to provide fresh on-topic content through using highlights design elements.

RSS Feeds / Syndication

All your Blog content can be syndicated. You should use the outbound feeds to seed key sites throughout the web. Users can also follow your latest updates using Google Reader and similar tools.

Newsletters / Content Subscriptions

All Blog content can be dynamically included in automated weekly newsletters or sent out in real-time content subscriptions.

Social Media

Blogs can be instantly promoted on the leading Social Media portals such as Facebook and Twitter. The Social Campaigns in Affino allow you to do this real-time.

Topic Channels

You can create aggregation pages which pull in all the on-topic news for specific topics. Blog content should be at the heart of this since few things come close in terms of the return on time invested.

Wrap-up

Affino allows you to easily create and leverage your Blog, and if your aim is to reach a wider or more targeted audience and to get your message out more effectively then this is the place to start

via blog.contentmanagementconnection.com

Posted via web from AndyWergedal