Yesterday, I went to watch Transformers Part II (Revenge of the Fallen). Quite Frankly, I must say it was a job well done. Now from the preview, the movie was unpredictable. But the reason for me going to see it was not their preview, but it was their previous product, Transformers Original movie.

Right now Transformers is at #1 in Box Office with 112.0 Million, and I will say the main reason is because they have loyal followers. So in this post I will share why they will have alot of sales in the second movie.

Quality Product

They have a quality product. Their first movie was so good that people rushed to see the second movie. Now second movie in itself was good, but without the first movie, it wouldn’t generate a buzz like it did. So remember if you have known to produce good products, your next product will automatically be trusted. Learn to Gain Trust.

They had loyal followers

Since they have gained trust, they got loyal followers. Who were eager to see the next movie which is why they rushed to see it. The key in series products is to have loyal followers. So whatever you produce, whenever you produce, they will be there to buy it.

Original Plot

One of the main reason why I love Transformers is because of its original plot. Even though the second one was a sequel, it had its own unique touches. You must not forget when making a series product, don’t let it too heavily dependent on the previous post. Leave enough room for people to start from this level.

Hot Girl in the Cover

You think this technique doesn’t work? LOL. It will always work as long as there are men in the world. Megan Fox in this movie got alot of people to go and watch the movie.

Now even though I saw it in theatres, when it comes out in DVD, I will buy it as well because I am a crazy fan of this series. I think if they keep going, they will surpass James Bond and Harry Potter.

You see everyone preaching about blog comments. Today I am going to tell you something that I have been doing for a while. I have been forum posting on a few forums. In some more actively than others. Well in the course of my posting, I realized that my forum posting has actually turned out very well. Not only I am helping others, I am increasing the traffic to my site. I am increasing the number of loyal subscribers.

Now on average I am getting 2739 visitors monthly from Forums!

That is a big accomplishment in my opinion. I think the only reason I got this traffic was because I was being real in forums. I was not trying to make up posts, I was not trying to obsessively link to my own sites. I was simply trying to be helpful. In this post I will step by step guide you through the process of forum posting and getting traffic. I will show you exactly what I did and how I did it.

1) Picking the Forums

You would think that you can comment on any forum and get alot of traffic. Well NO! You will only get traffic from forums that are related to your blog’s niche. This plays an important role in the results that you will get. Do not limit yourself to the top forums. Try to get exposure in smaller forums because there your effort will be highlighted. The advantage of smaller forums are that they are more targetted, and there are only so many users. They will bound to check your website out, but in larger forums sometimes your website along with posts get ignored.

You must remember that you should only pick the forum that have interesting categories for you. Place where you think you can write genuinely. A place where you don’t have a problem sharing your opinion. I personally chose to post at a few forums. Because this way I can be active in these communities.

2) Picking a Username

I think a good username can get you better credibility and exposure. Be original with your nicknames. Use the name that you have been using on all forums. Avoid using your website or blog name. Because then if you link to your own website multiple times, then you would be considered a spammer. And even if you don’t link to your websites, majority of the time people won’t consider you an authority figure in my opinion. So go with something generic. I usually take “smub” because that is my initials. Syed MoizUddin Balkhi. Short and simple.

3) Pick Categories

Often times you would see forums with alot of categories. They will have General Chat, and other BS Categories. My knowledge is in Blogging, SEO, Web Design, and Templates, so I will be in those sections. Reason because that is where most of my audience is. So in forums like digitalpoint, I limited myself to these sections. This way I can get more targetted visitors to my website.

4) Posting and Linking

Mostly, the threads I was posting were support posts, so this way the user on the forum knew that I care. They were checking my website out left and right. Since I stayed under my specialty area, I knew what I am talking about. I was able to help the users and this way they came to my website searching for more help or tutorials. If the question is something that I have already answered on my blog, I would link my post occassionally because if you do this heavily then you will get infarctions. I recieved a few of those in my process of learning. The solution to those were you link to a social media page where your post was. So indirectly you are sending the users to your website.

Another thing I did was I linked to the guest posts that I have made on other blogs. This was also sending the visitors to my site indirectly, and it was raising my reputation in the eyes of the other blogger whose site I blogged on because I wrote good content.

You should also use every opportunity where you can link to your social profile like twitter or some other network. Because this way you will get more followers and users will indirectly come to your website.

The important part that you guys should not miss is that all posts must be helpful. They must raise the level of communication. If someone has already answered the question, and you have nothing better to add, don’t go and repeat the person because that is the most annoying thing you can do in my opinion.

5) Forum Signatures and Avatars

Most people don’t know how to use forum signatures effectively. Why? Because they link to their homepage. Yeah that is ok and is acceptable, but highlight your content also. If you have a post that you think will attract new users, then post that in your signature. I have a post that attracts audiences from so many different sources, 13 ways I promoted my blog to success. I usually link this in my signature.

A problem you would face doing this is that there are character limits in signatures. How can you fit these long urls. This is why url shorterning services are here. You use these url shorterning services to make your url shortest possible. Then you link them. This way you can have more posts in the signature. Remember when the user checks one of your post, they will most likely check the homepage if they find the post interesting.

Next thing is avatars. You don’t necessarily have to have a brandable avatar. Brandable one is nice to have. Don’t put your url all over it. Make it eye friendly. Don’t make it bright red thinking it will stick out because it looks really freaking spammy. Use your avatar well.

You do this process for a time period of 3 months and you watch your traffic grow like crazy. You might be wondering why I hid the link to wordpress support forum. Because this post is ranked really high, and I love the traffic I am getting hehe. I don’t want to share that.

Another thing you might notice about my stats is one is coming from Darren Rowse’s 31 Day Build a Better Blog Challenge Forum. It has only been 12 days since the challenge has started and even lesser than that since the forum has been officially launched. I have recieved 157 visitors as we are speaking, numerous twitter followers and alot more contacts. I recommend you all to join. This is a perfect example of how 7 days of posting got me 157 visitors from a small forum.

If you like this post feel free to share it, digg it, stumble it, tweet it, and most of all share your opinion on forum posting.

Every blogger want to be successful, or as I like to say every blogger have a vision for success. Success is very subjective. For a blogger it can mean a lot of subscribers, tons of traffic, a lot of quality articles etc etc. To achieve any vision of success, bloggers give digg a try. Now whether they succeed or not is out of a question, but they give it a try. Now I talked to a few people, they didn’t know how to function digg. A lot of people are clueless on how else you can use digg other than promoting your own article. So I will give you guys a brief overview of what is digg, and how a blogger can make use of it.

What is Digg

“Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.” (Digg’s About Page) Now in a simple terms, Digg is a place where people submit articles that they like, and if others like it. They vote it also called digging it. The more people digg your article, the popular it gets.

How to make use of digg as a blogger?

• To Stay Updated – A lot of bloggers use digg to stay updated. I am one of those bloggers. I often check out Digg to see what is going on around the world. I mean there is so much going on, you can watch CNN one hour and won’t find out, but you can see digg and you would know. So I use digg to stay updated.
• Get Ideas for Post – Well as I am reading and staying updated with the world. I often find interesting things that I can blog about. Interesting articles that I like and I can share on my Sweet Monday Link Roundup. A lot of tutorials that I can use for myself and post on my blog. So I use digg as an inspiration as well.
• Digg to Connect – It does get a bit hard to connect with anyone on digg, but digg is the way you can find new people. There are so many people that become a fan of yours, and you can add them as a friend. Check out their website and so on. That is why my digg profile page have a few of my important links. Make more mutual friends because they will be the one who see the articles that you digg.
• Advertise your articles – It becomes spam if you submit all of your own articles, but if you submit your own articles once in a while it doesn’t effect you. Although having a power digger digg your article will get you a lot more diggs. But you can use digg to increase traffic on your own site. If you hit digg’s home page, you will get insane amount of traffic.

How to get crazy amount of traffic from Digg?

Digg can bring enormous amount of traffic if used correctly. If not directly from digg, then it will be from Search Engines because people see digg articles rank higher than your own article for extremely competitive keywords, so read the tips below to find out how you can get crazy traffic from digg.

Write a Killer Headline

If you ever take a quick look at Digg’s Homepage notice the way how the titles are constructed. They are not exactly the title of your post. They are different, unique, and most of the times use competitive keywords. Most importantly they are catchy. So write creative headlines. You will not get this on your first time, so keep practicing.

Get a Lot of Diggs

Sounds hard, but it is doable. All you have to do is write a quality article. People who visit your article, and if they like it. They will digg it. If they don’t like it then they will bury it. So the better resource your article is, the more you are likely to get more diggs. Getting a lot of diggs at once is the key to get on the homepage, so you need to spread the word around fast.

Use the Share button. Go to Shout it, and then shout the article to all of your friends.

But if you have more then 200 mutual friends, then you can only send it to 200 at one point. So you might have to manually select them. It can take time, but it is worth it.

Next thing you need to do is ask your friends to digg the article on other social media networks such as Twitter and Plurk. If your article is extremely useful in your opinion, you might as well share it on forums and more people will digg there.

Search Engine Ranking

See how your blog is doing with Search Engines such as google and which keywords you are ranking for. Try to use some of the powerful keywords in your digg title and you will rank high in search engines. Which means high indirect traffic from digg.

Disadvantages of using Digg

There are too many advantages such as high traffic, ideas, serps, connections. But with good there have to be something bad as well. One thing that Digg can really hurt bloggers is beating you for a Search Engine Ranking Position. Digg tend to rank higher then your own article, so if you were number 1. Now digg will take that spot most likely unless your website have more authority then digg. Another problem with using digg is waste of time. Sometimes people get crazy over digg, and the effort of becoming a power digger takes the best of them. People waste too much time digging useless stories in a hope that one story will hit the top page and they will become power diggers. So you can technically waste a lot of time.

Bottom Line

I am telling you guys to begin using Digg. It will bring insane traffic to your site directly or indirectly. It will get you more connections and gain you more readers. Digg is well worth your time if you use it effectively. Remember use it don’t abuse it

BTW: If you like this article then feel free to digg it

As a blogger if you are known only to bloggers then you are a nobody. You only become a somebody once people from other industry start noticing you. People who have nothing to do with webmaster industry. Maybe some one you inspired to start a blog. I will tell you that before social media I was a nobody. Ofcourse, I was well reputed on forums like Digitalpoint, and Namepros. But again those were webmasters. People on these forums have something to do with webmasters.

One thing that I have learned is that it is very lame if you are only known by webmasters. I have been following bigger bloggers like Merlin Mann, and Darren Rowse. Their presence is very widely known. People who are not even into blogging know about them. I have seen even mommy and daddy bloggers naming these two guys as an inspiration. The reason why they started a blog.

So I will share with you how I became a nobody from a somebody by using Social Media.

I started with Digg. Where I was relatively unknown. But I started finding nice articles and getting those in. Even though those articles weren’t my own articles. I was not affiliated with those. Well I added a few people as my friend. Now I have over 520 friends, and I can tell you that over 75% are mutual friends. Does that say anything. It says people who add me as their friend, don’t remove me from their list. These people doesn’t really have to be in the webmaster industry.

So if I really digg, and shout to all these people, imagine how many diggs I can get in a few minutes. Well that is the power of being somebody rather than being a nobody.

When I started this blog, I was popular in the directory industry. Before that I was that kid who have a big proxy network. Before that I was in domaining. So people have been following me since then. I started Balkhis with a bare of 90 – 100 readers that have followed me from the directory industry and previously. Now I am almost hitting 1800 subscriber mark.

The reason for that is that I market myself rather than marketing my product. If I start a website, and start marketing that using social media. Make all my profiles for that. And then end up selling the site. My efforts went worthless. Well It did good for that site, but now again I am a nobody. That is the reason where ever I go, I try to use my name in it. Balkhis for Balkhi, Syed as a combo of last / first name, or I try to use Syed Balkhi as many places. I have been known around for smub (my initials) on a lot of places also. So people can recognize me wherever they see me. Not by the owner of a certain site. While I would like to keep those in my portfolio as well, I don’t want people to know me as an owner of idk.in, and when I sold idk, they still think I am the owner. You don’t want that to happen. So market yourself.

A lot of people talk twitter….[Read the full Post]

No where is the upcoming election a more charged topic then on the University of Florida campus. Walking to and from class, students are bombarded by message after message to vote for McCain, Nater, or Obama. So what make one campaign stand out from another? Why their branding of course.

Each candidate is presenting a message, and a candidate’s effectiveness is demonstrated by how many people this message reaches. The way to make your message stand out and kick someone in the face is to put a unique and new brand to your campaign. Some inventive students at the University of Florida have done just that by creating what they call the ObamaBot.

The ObamaBot greets you with glowing eyes and it’s endearing orange and blue color scheme and rapidly presents you with two signs that ask you to vote early and vote Obama. It is displays like this, flashy and interesting that have helped to give the Obama campaign momentum, at least on the University of Florida campus. If some engineering students can do it, why can’t you?

Branding your site is simple and can have huge returns for your business. The ObamaBot cost less then $300 to make and operate, a similar gimmick may work for your site as well. If you can find one unique thing to brand your site with, to make a difference and make you stand out, why shouldn’t you? This online competition is you against the rest of the world, make sure you bring your A game.