Make Use of Online Directories!

Just like any business entity- your continued success depends on your ability to get more people to know about you and your products, services, activities and ideas. It’s no different for your online assets- a steady stream of new traffic can only be good for you.

This is where internet marketing comes in- there are a lot of things you can do to drive traffic into your sites. You can do advertising- which makes for good results, but can be rather cost-prohibitive (whether you go print, radio or online), particularly if you’re still starting up, or if your promotional budget isn’t enough to support it at the moment.

Still, there are more cost-effective ways to get clients to find you and your website. Personally, I’m trying to find all these online directories to list my blogs in- and one site that looks promising is the Asian Business Directory. There are a whole lot of categories- covering pretty much a wide spectrum of possible businesses, and probably a lot more later on as more people sign up for its service.

Nevertheless, it makes good sense to sign up as early as now- get first-mover advantage, and all that. Take a look, for example, under ‘Blogging’- there are only a few entries under that category- about 15 blogs- when there are thousands of bloggers in the Philippines alone that could make use of a little more online publicity.

Remember that directory listings greatly help not only in generating traffic for your website (or blog), but it also helps boost your Google PageRank and your discoverability. And that can only be a good thing- particularly if you’re more into optimizing your site and monetizing it.

Cheers, everyone!

Why Shouldn’t Your Blog Be Your Home Page?

Google has always been my default home page for as long as I can remember.  Lately though, I’ve noticed that when I fire up my Firefox browser, I check out three things right away: mail (on my gmail account), Facebook (alright, so I’m probably marginally addicted…), and Multiply (…marginally addicted to social networking!).

From there, I’d go to check on my usual websites- check out some entertainment news, or the latest music chart movements, or the latest news in gaming- or do some online business like pay some bills or something.

The rest of my day will be spent blogging, and linking references into my blog, or checking out any other variety of social networking and social bookmarking sites from YouTube to Technorati.  I’ve gone to the point of actually spending more than 8 hours a day online- including the time I spend in front of the PC after work- which is to say I’m either playing World of Warcraft or doing even more blogging.

I suppose this is all really about putting some much-needed order into my life.  There’s just so much going on already, and there’s probably much more going on later on, so I suppose I’ll have to make way for new stuff coming through.

So the first order of business is to set this blog “The Life and Times of The Renzie Man” as my home page.  Let’s see how that works out.  Gonna work on getting this blog just a little bit more functional: at least as far as we can fine-tune it- the free version of WordPress doesn’t seem to support some of the things I’d like to have just now.

Gonna put more link lists, and RSS feeds and widgets on the side.  Just to make this an easier springboard to get into other sites. It also means more updates from time to time, probably on a more daily basis.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

Fixing and Re-positioning This Blog.

To be completely honest, I may have neglected this blog a bit- it’s been weeks since I last posted anything here. Mainly because I’ve been working on a few other projects these past couple of months.

The good thing is that is has given me a sort of clarity- an understanding of what this blog is supposed to be in the grand order of things.

I was just reading Aaron Wall’s SEO Book the other day (which is a highly recommended read, if you haven’t checked it out yet), and it sorta gave me an idea of how to go about fixing up my site.

Simply put, I have to consider three very basic things:

1. Who’s my target audience? Or more like, who would I want my blog to appeal to?

2. What do I plan to offer? Exactly what kind of content do I plan to put in “The Life and Times of The Renzie Man?”

3. What makes this blog different from all the millions of other blogs out there?

Those things considered, lemme go ahead and figure out what this blog really is all about. Here we go…

My Intended Target Market.

Who do I want to talk to? I want to reach out to an online audience who’d like to know how it is to live in the Philippines, from the point of a 30-something dude. That means reaching out to all kinds of travellers, locals interested in the bachelor lifestyle, my fellow Filipinos abroad who’d like to have a glimpse of home, and pretty much anyone genuinely interested in me- though I can’t imagine who, and exactly what kind of people those would be :).

What Kind of Content Would Be in this Blog?

This blog is a personal blog masquerading as a lifestyle-oriented piece of work. So while it is definitely something for shameless self-promotion, it aims to share useful tips, articles and opinions along the lines of…

• Bachelor Living in Metro Manila.
• Living Life Easier - Work-life Balance Tips and other useful bits of info to get the most out of our 24 hours a day.
• Workplace Woes and Worries- Don’t quit your day job- but don’t let your life revolve around work either.
• A Healthier Lifestyle- my attempt at losing the extra weight at least.
• Fun in Metro Manila- where to dine out, great spas to visit, local destinations, etc.
• My current projects
• Making money online- a little extra cash is always good, wouldn’t you agree?
• What I’m into- again, it’s all about me.

My Unique Selling Proposition.

The truth is, the blog is all about me, and therefore, I am selling me. This blog represents one of my first efforts in blogging. It is a true online journal of me and my little misadventures, not some blog meant positioned towards a particular niche. Of course I will come up with a concept blog from time to time, or pursue some online project- yeah, I’ll be linking it up here, so anyone who’s also interested can also check it out.

Now that I’ve pretty much figured it out, let’s get back to blogging now, shall we?

Guess Who This Guy Is Playing "Lovestoned / I Think That She Knows"

Okay, I was checking out YouTube just a while back, and went on to the ‘Most Liked’ videos of the week, right? And I check out this clip right here- watch it a bit.

Now, you pop-fans will most likely recognize that as the interlude on Justin’ Timberlake’s massive radio hit, “LoveStoned/I Think That She Knows”. Again, nothing too out-of-the-ordinary, other than the fact that the dude playing the interlude had it pretty much spot-on, and manages to improvise a little bit.

So I go ahead and check out the comments, coz I’d like to leave some, give the guy his props. And then I realize, based on the comments- the dude playing on the clip is John Mayer!

How kickass is that? Apparently, the video clip is hosted on his Youtube account, where he goes by the nick “Mayermusic“. He even left a nice note about the video clip:

Heard this in the car today, wanted to try it out… Collings I-35 through a Roland Space Echo pedal, Cornish NG-2 Fuzz and Fender ‘64 Vibroverb… Looped through a Boomerang pedal.

What a guy, huh? See, I already like John Mayer, but it’s little things like these that make me more of a fan. Keep it up, John. More power.

Check out the official John Mayer website here. Cheers!

I Like AddThis.com!

The following post originally came out in one of my other blogs, “Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!”. Check out the rest of that blog for more insights on the world of blogs and blogging. Particularly useful for you who are just starting to blog, and those wanting to build better blogs. Enjoy!

In my quest to find out how they put little “Bookmark This!” buttons at the bottom of every post on your blog, I have managed to stumble upon (no pun intended) a rather useful service on AddThis.com.

As a blogger, you’ll want the buttons from AddThis.com because of several reasons, all pretty much pointed out on their homepage.

1. It allows for easy bookmarking. Once a reader likes one of your posts, you have a button right there that allows bookmarking on several services- Technorati, Digg, Facebook, MSN Live, Furl, Ask, Del.icio.us, Google, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Yahoo MyWeb, Twitter, and so much more.

Note that I probably haven’t even familiarized myself with some- okay fine- a lot of these services, but let’s leave it at that for now, and get back to them in greater detail later on.

2. It helps promote your site. Sending content to social bookmarking services like those mentioned above helps bring traffic to your site. So, yes, you’d want to do this.

3. It increases your rankings. More traffic means a greater likelihood of people linking to your site, and therefore, higher ranking on search engine results pages.

4. It reduces overall clutter. No need for separate codes and buttons for each bookmarking service. One less thing to worry about, so just keep on churning out good content!

5. It’s easy to install. No shit. If I have been able to figure it out, so can you. Assuming you already have an account on AddThis.com, just click on the large ‘Get Your Button’ button on the home page. Pick the kind of widget you’d want- whether one for bookmarking or one for subscribing to your feeds- and how it looks like.

You go to a page which enables you to put an AddThis button on your blog, and gives you a code to put on your template’s html coding so that all your posts have an AddThis button at the footer of every post.

6. It comes with free statistics. Because sometimes, you’d like to know more on how readers are bookmarking and sharing your content.

7. It’s very reliable. Heck, a lot of sites and blogs already use this service, including Time.com, TechCrunch, ABC, Lonely Planet, Freewebs, Tower Records, just to name a few

8. It’s free! Can’t argue with that, can you?

So if you’re building a blog, go right ahead and sign up for an account on AddThis.com. Get the buttons for your blog, and keep on posting!

Cheers!

Diddling with Del.icio.us

The following post originally came out in one of my other blogs, “Blog. Blogger. Bloggest!”. Check out the rest of that blog for more insights on the world of blogs and blogging. Particularly useful for you who are just starting to blog, and those wanting to build better blogs. Enjoy!

I was playing around with my del.icio.us account the whole day today, mainly trying to figure out how to slap a del.icio.us script at the footer of each post, versus just having one at the side of my blog.

Del.icio.us is a free social software web service for sharing web bookmarks. See, there used to be a time when you’d bookmark your favorite websites from whatever PC y