We only get one life, so it’s important that everything we do jives with the overall direction of where we are going. It’s easy to get lost in so many small projects and not dedicate enough time for any of them to properly flourish.

It’s a trap I’m particularly susceptible to, as I have far too many interests.

I wouldn’t say this is a new realization for me, but as I approach my 40th birthday, I must begin to take action to address this shortcoming.

As such, I have a bittersweet announcement to make: going forward, this blog is going to be in read-only mode. I do not plan to publish new content on it.

A few, mostly logistic, points about this:

• Blogging-wise, I’m going to consolidate by writing new content on my programming blog. Both programming and blogging related.
• The existing articles will remain on this web site.
• I’m not shutting down the mailing list. I will use it to announce the occasional sale, a new format of my book (there is an audiobook coming soon), and if I were to write a third edition in a few years. Subscribe if you’d like to receive such updates. You can also subscribe to my tech blog instead as I will announce major happenings around my book there too.
• If you loved my book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.

Thank you so much to everyone who followed along over the years. Please consider keeping in touch.

The post Consolidating appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Today, I’d like to share with you a series of quick tips on how to become a better blogger. 

I will not focus on micro-optimizations like changing your call to action from blue to orange. Instead, I’ll concentrate on the major wins.

Tip 1: Find out who your readers are

Try to gain insight into who your users are so that you can understand what kind of problems they face and how you can help them.

Tip 2: Make your posts as useful as possible

The guiding light for your writing should be bringing as much value as possible to your readers. This is why knowing who they are and what problems they face (aka Tip 1) is so important.

When you are writing a post, ask yourself, who is this useful for? Am I solving a real problem here?

Tip 3: Focus on a topic

It is tempting to write about everything that interests you, but in my experience, one achieves the greatest amount of success as a blogger when focusing on a particular topic.

This makes sense when you think about it. People discovering your blog thanks to a particular article are likely to be interested in articles on the same topic.

Tip 4: Make it obvious what you are all about

Related to the previous tip, not only should you focus on a particular topic, but you should also make it obvious what your blog is about.

Use your domain name, site header, sidebar, anything really, to get people to immediately understand the subject matter of your blog.

Don’t leave people guessing.

Tip 5: Be vulnerable

Although you want to be an authoritative voice, don’t forget to be human, honest, and even vulnerable.

In the same vein, feel free to share your doubts, questions, and even tales of what went wrong. It won’t likely damage you.

Quite the opposite, it can really help you and your blog to be more relatable.

Tip 6: Be bold and opinionated

While you should be honest and even vulnerable, don’t be afraid to also be bold and opinionated.

If you are passionate/certain/serious about something, have the courage to boldly show it.

Tip 7: Don’t mock anyone

The easiest way to get people to dislike you is to waste time mocking others.

You can criticize people, but if you come across as a bully, you’ll lose nice people in favor of those who thrive on drama and gossip. Not a worthwhile trade.

Tip 8: Write at least once a week

As with all endeavors in life, the more you write the better you’ll become at it. Especially in the beginning, practice as much as you can fit in your schedule, and make sure you publish at least one article per week.

If you run more than one blog, consider consolidating (something I’m now considering myself) so as to increase your output frequency.

One blog that publishes three articles per week is apt to have a far better outcome than three blogs, each publishing once a week. 

Tip 9: Create series

Consider writing small guides and other longer content that can be split across a series of posts. These tend to do well in helping you grow your following.

People who liked the first part of a tutorial are likely to want to read the rest. Make sure you prompt people to subscribe via email or feed (though less adopted these days) to receive updates on the series.

You can even do reoccurring series where you write a given type of post ever so often. For example, a weekly round-up of articles within your niche that have recently caught your eye. 

Tip 10: Write epic content

I know it takes a lot more time and investment but, as I mention in my book, nothing is as rewarding to readers (and Google) as epic content. Content that is radically useful and extensive, covering a given topic with a great deal of attention.

You can think of these types of posts as guides or mini-books of sorts. I’m talking about 3,000-10,000 words. Chances are, you won’t be able to publish a post this size every week, but if you do pen entries in this size range periodically, you are likely to grow your blog much more quickly.

They are also backlink magnets, as other people are more likely to link to your epic content than they are to your smaller posts.

Tip 11: Read other bloggers

The best way to improve as a blogger is to study those who are successful at it. Use your feed reader to subscribe to the best bloggers in your niche. Read what they write and how they write.

Feel free to incorporate those elements that jump out at you into your own writing. Also, staying abreast of sites in your niche is a great way to help ensure that you don’t run out of ideas for topics to cover on your blog.

There you have it. 11 tips that can truly transform your blog. The hard part is putting them into action. Not because they are complex – indeed, they are quite simple. 

However, simple isn’t always easy. You will still need to put in the hours and work required to succeed, but doing so is certainly possible.

The post 11 Tips for Becoming a Better Blogger appeared first on Technical Blogging.

This is my review of Missinglettr, a service I love and swear by. If you are short on time, the TL;DR is that it’s a great service worth using to promote your blog on social media.

Contrary to popular belief, social media has not replaced blogging. Social media is huge but blogging is still an excellent tool to create an audience, advance your career, and content marketing to sell products (to name just a few).

The problem with posting your blog posts on social media once

As I cover in my book, social media is complementary, not a replacement for blogging. You should promote the long content you produce on your blog on your social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

The trouble is that you’ll typically only do it once per post. And guess what? These social media platforms will only show your status update including your blog post to a small percentage of your followers/friends. So let’s say that you are fairly popular and have 4,000 followers on Twitter. When you post about your shiny new article, Twitter might show it to, say, 20 people.

If they really engage with it by liking and retweeting it, then the post will have a wider reach on Twitter, otherwise, only a small fraction of your followers (and an infinitesimal percentage of the rest of Twitter) will ever see it.

Some content might have a short lifespan. For instance, a sale that will end at midnight or in a few days. The overwhelming majority of your content, however, will be evergreen or have at least a year’s worth of life in it.

So it’s a shame that it’s only shown to a handful of social media followers.

Repeatedly sharing on social media is tedious

The obvious solution is to promote the same blog post on social media multiple times. Sure, you’d want to space it out a little and not post the same article every single day, but it’s a great way to expose your blog content to more of your followers.

This approach maximizes the number of people that will come to your blog from social media, without aggravating anyone. After all, social media algorithms will not show your posts to the exact subset of followers each time and you are not promoting the same post every day.

Furthermore, if you don’t post too much on social media in general, this will help your social media properties look a little more active, making them more appealing to prospective new followers.

The problem lies with doing this in practice. If you try to do it manually, you’ll burn out quite quickly. Let’s say that you have 10 articles that you want to promote regularly and that you want to post each article 10 times. You are looking at writing a different description for each, adding the right link, perhaps a different image (if your post as multiple)… 100 times.

Let’s say that you publish 10 articles in 2 months. You are now tasked with handling another 100 social media posts while in the middle of posting the existing 100. It quickly becomes untenable.

Missinglettr comes to the rescue

Missinglettr has been a godsend for me. I try a lot of social media tools every year. The majority I find somewhat useful and then quickly forget about. They are useful to an extent, but I don’t really extract enough value out of them to justify investing time let alone money.

This is not the case for Missinglettr. It’s the most useful social media service I use and I’m so glad to have come across it.

What Missinglettr does is take your feed and creates repeated, spaced out social media campaigns from your posts. You have full control in determining what these posts will look like and say, as well as how frequently they’ll be posted.

I use it for both my Programming blog and my Plant-Based diet blog and it has brought me thousands of extra visitors to them.

How Missinglettr works

For each site I added to Missinglettr, I connected their respective social media properties. For example, I connected Programming Zen to my Twitter and my LinkedIn accounts, while I connected Plant-Based.org to its Twitter account and Facebook page.

Every time I publish a new post on either of these two sites, a draft campaign will be generated on my behalf on Missinglettr and I’ll receive an email to approve, make changes, or reject it.

First, a series of hashtags will be autogenerated from the content. I usually end up keeping some, deleting others, and adding a few, sticking to 5 hashtags or so in total. These hashtags will appear beneath each social media post for this particular post’s campaign.

Next, you’ll get to customize how each post will appear on social media. The description, image, or image made out of a quote extracted from your post are all customizable by you, but they are also automatically generated to save you time.

So if you don’t like the quote image on Day 14, you can flip through other quotes extracted from your post, or enter your own. Or you can switch to an image instead.

The embedded Tweet below shows an example of a quote image:

By default, Missinglettr gives you a good mix of quote images and images extracted from your post, but again, this can all be customized to your liking.

The tweet below shows one instance in which Missinglettr picked up a photo from the post:

Usually, I only need to do minor changes. You can change the length and frequency of the campaign, but in my case, I set my social media posts to go live on Day 0, 3, 7, 14, 30, 90, 180, 270, and 365 of the post being published. As a result, I get nine pre-populated social media posts that I can either approve or customize and then approve.

This is extra traffic on autopilot, while still ensuring that the content on social media is presented in the way I approve of!

Statistics are provided for each campaign while they are in progress and once they are completed so that you can see how effective they have been in reach your existing social media followers and new audiences.

At $7 a month (if paying annually, otherwise $9) this is a no brainer and I would highly recommend it to any serious blogger.

The post Missinglettr Review appeared first on Technical Blogging.

This is just a quick heads up about a flash sale of my book. I realize most of my usual readers have already bought my Technical Blogging book, but if you haven’t, now is the right time to do it.

My publisher is making it available at a 40% discount for a few days, whether you buy the ebook, printed book, or both as a combo.

Just click here and use the coupon code turkeysale2019 at checkout. The sale starts on Thanksgiving and has been extended to include Black Friday as well.

Oh, and if you buy (or have already bought) my book and have questions about your own blog, I’m your guy.

The post My Book is on Sale for Black Friday appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Pay attention. This is important. This first paragraph serves the purpose of grabbing your attention and explaining what the post is about. In this case, describing itself throughout. Think of it as a template of sorts.

This header introduces the subject

This header introduces the subject I’m going to discuss over the next few paragraphs. Namely, the importance of headers.

Paragraph breaks and headers prevented this post from being a wall of text.

Visual breaks are important because most readers skim a post online. Headers like this one anchor the user as they scroll. Bold words can also serve the same purpose, but don’t overdo it.

This first header is where the premise of the article is further developed. I introduced it with the title, clarified further in the first paragraph, and now, in its own dedicated section, I can expand on it.

The rest of the post will literally describe itself, stretching self-referentiality without, I hope, becoming unintelligible.

As meta as this post is, I’m injecting myself, the author, into it to make it less impersonal.

This header takes the reader somewhere

With the premise developed, this post needs to go somewhere. Every article should tell a story. Everything you write, even technical posts, should narrate a tale or arc of some kind.

I was in the shower thinking about my next post. What could I write about? Then it hit me. Somebody must have flushed a toilet. The idea and the scalding water hit me at the same time. I should write about the structure of posts by writing a post that describes itself.

A post about nothing, Seinfeld would have called it.

Paint pictures with words. Ok, me in the shower is not the picture I really want to paint. Inject humor in your posts.

Literal pictures on top of literary pictures are also a good idea.

Don’t forget to include relevant quotes:

I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Quotes offer:

• Validation about what you’re claiming;
• A different perspective;
• Indirect clout via association;
• Amusement to the reader;
• A visual break.

The last trait is also shared by bullet-point lists.

This is the conclusion

A conclusion should summarize what just happened, allowing the reader’s brain to quickly recap the information it processed.

The recap for this post reminds the reader to start with a strong title that captures the essence of the post. Telling them to enthrall the user in the first paragraph, before introducing what the post is about. Without forgetting to mention why they should care.

Then this post used headers to guide the user’s attention as they scrolled. Offering a visual break and separating the post in mini-sections.

Images, sparingly used bold, bullet points, and quotations all enriched this post and provided further visual respite.

Speaking of images, this post included a small anecdote and used its headers to complete an arc describing how the post itself is structured.

Injecting humor and the author’s personality, elevated the post from a mere thought experiment to a masterpiece reminiscent of Shakespeare.

Closing your recap with a joke or some self-deprecating humor is okay.

Once you’re done with your recap, invite the user to comment and share their thoughts below. Finally, if so desired, bid the user goodbye.

Until next time.

The post This Is a Post About Itself appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Blogging has given me a lot over the years. A job, extra income each month for well over a decade, the downpayment on a house, many freebies, to name just a few.

Still, when I look back for a moment, an unusual benefit sticks out. I’m talking about the gift of connection.

Maybe, it’s the busy way of modern life. Perhaps, it’s because I moved around a lot throughout my life. Or maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t say that it’s particularly easy to form meaningful connections in this day and age.

Though, I suspect I’m not alone. Consider this joke on Twitter.

I find that quite funny and relatable.

Yet, blogging has allowed me to connect with so many people over the years. Many became professional connections, several online acquaintances, but a few actually become good friends. Geography is still an issue, mind you, but the friendships are real nevertheless.

Now, I’m not telling you to start a blog or resume your existing one for the specific purpose of making friends. (Though, there would be nothing wrong with that.)

Instead, I’m suggesting friendship that goes beyond professional networking is a possible, even likely, outcome. And I consider that a great benefit for bloggers.

The key is to be approachable. Letting people know you can be reached by email or whatever channels you prefer. Respond to comments and interact with those who engage with you.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the amazing people reading your words unbeknownst to you. Over time, some may become invaluable friends.

The post An Unusual Benefit of Blogging appeared first on Technical Blogging.

As I previously announced, I began experimenting with YouTube. In this post, I’m sharing some statistics and thoughts from my first month.

As a reminder, I launched three channels:

• Tony on Tech: about programming, technical marketing, and technology;
• Antonio Cangiano: about self-improvement;
• Take it Outdoors: about the outdoors and my hobbies.

Views, Watch Time, and Subscribers

Everybody loves concrete numbers, so let’s start off with statistics for each channel.

Tony on Tech

In the past month, this channel had a total of 843 views and 1,746 minutes (29.1 hours) of watch time. It grew from 0 to 40 subscribers. I published a total of 5 videos. By order of views, they ranked as follows:

1. Kindle vs Kobo. Which ecosystem should you choose? [366 Views]
2. How to Choose a Technology Stack for Your Projects (4 Things to Consider) [256 Views]
3. Why You Should Learn to Code [82 Views]
4. Introducing Technical Blogging (2nd Edition) [95 Views]
5. How to get a job as a programmer: Specialize! [44 Views]

Antonio Cangiano

My self-development channel had 1,998 views and 1,375 minutes (22.9 hours) of watch time. It grew from 88 to 93 subscribers. [1]

Of the 6 new videos I published, the most popular were:

1. How to Become More Productive By Blocking Distractions! (7 Tips) [72 Views]
2. Going back to Keto (and New Plans for This Channel) [54 Views]
3. Short Term vs Long Term Mindset [51 Views]
4. August 2019 Weight Loss Accountability [18 Views]
5. Set your future self up for success [16 Views]
6. Why You Need a Personal Mission Statement [12 Views]

Several of my existing videos – which were randomly published over the years – outperformed these new ones. I’m not surprised given that a couple of them have 40K views or so to date.

Interestingly, I published a handful of videos from my Tony on Tech and self-improvement channel on IGTV (Instagram’s version of YouTube) and they tend to get 100-200 views each on average.

Take it Outdoors

My outdoor/hobbies channel had a total of 4,837 views and 8,165 minutes (136 hours) of watch time. It grew from 0 to 15 subscribers. I published 4 videos:

1. The Story of a Broken Man (An Ode to Those Who Love Fishing.) [4,572 Views]
2. Nanuk 909 vs. 910 Plastic Cases Unboxing and Comparison [133 Views]
3. Akaso V50 Pro vs iPhone XS Max (4K Raw Footage Comparison) [123 Views]
4. Storing Knives and Guns in Nanuk Cases (Nanuk 909 vs 910 Follow Up) [29 Views]

OK, these are just numbers and they don’t paint the whole picture. So let me give you some preliminary thoughts.

Thumbnails and video length matter

Across the board, the majority (80%+) of the traffic to these videos came from external sources. In other words, YouTube’s own search engine and algorithm didn’t do me any favors.

The video that did the best, was an adaptation of a theatrical piece I translated from Italian. It pulls at the heartstrings a little and as a result, it did decent on Reddit and was picked up by a couple of foreign sites that tend to share feel-good videos. That helped increase the view count to a few thousand.

YouTube tends to be biased towards content with a high degree of engagement and view time. So they prefer polarizing content, longer content (at least 10 minutes), and content with high Click-Through Rate (CTR). (Basically, when your video shows up in a search or recommendation, how many people click on it?)

The take-home lesson here is to shoot for 10+ minute videos and have attractive, bold thumbnails with very legible text. Take a look at my first thumbnail and at my latest.

(I have been experimenting with a great web app called Visme to create thumbnails with better CTR. I like it a lot so far.)

Still, my thumbnail-fu has lots of room for improvement. I also need to start shooting longer videos.

I want to mention that I noticed a slight increase in subscribers once I added a Video Watermark in the bottom right corner, inviting people to subscribe.

Definitely, add this if you have a channel.

Improvements and Limitations

As a non-native speaker who is not exactly flattered by the camera, I’m at my most vulnerable on video. I enjoy making videos but I find a million flaws in them.

From how I pronounce certain words to how I look on camera. I also noticed that speaking off the cuff, I will do mistakes which I immediately catch while reviewing the video. Unlike text, you can’t easily edit them out. You either live with them or go back and reshoot a portion of the video.

I obviously do better when I prepare a script and read it for the camera, instead. This is to say that I foresee some improvements in this department, especially if I start using a script more consistently, but there are some inherent limitations as well.

Then there is the audio and video quality itself. You can read about my equipment in this post about the gadgets I use on my Programming Zen blog. I don’t think I have made massive progress on the video front (though perhaps its quality is acceptable) but I believe I made some progress in terms of audio.

Compare the audio quality of this early video with my latest one.

I don’t feel like I have quite the right settings or postprocessing workflow in place, as my highs tend to be too strong (and annoy the hell out of me), but the Zoom H4N Pro and Countryman B3 lapel microphone combo has certainly improved my audio quality.

My videos also lack animations and fancy graphics. It’s either me speaking on camera, or some kind of stock footage/presentation mashup with my narration on top. The latter tends to do better than the former. A true testament to my striking handsomeness.

Value vs Effort

Yes, your thumbnail matters. Yes, video length matters. But fundamentally, it’s about your content and your presentation. Your views are a function of the value you provide, rather than your effort.

Presentation challenges notwithstanding, I think I can provide more value than I have so far. I clearly have not figured out yet how to create popular videos given my, for lack of better words, limitations. I will have to continue to experiment and see what works. I’ll be sure to report back.

For reference, my most popular blog post published in the past month had well over 10,000 readers, which makes videos with a dozen views feel rather underwhelming.

However, I’m reminded of the advice within my own book about not getting frustrated by the lack of early results. I haven’t cracked the code. Yet.

Along the same line of following my own advice, I plan to be a little more strategic with my content. So far I’ve just winged it, by publishing whatever videos came to mind. I plan to start using some of the SEO tools I already use for blogging a bit more.

Focusing on two channels

At the time of my announcement, I mentioned that I had probably bit off more than I could chew. I was right. Two blogs plus three channels require a lot of content.

Producing and editing video is also very time-consuming. This isn’t my full-time job so it’s something I just do during the evenings and weekends.

This is a reminder for fellow bloggers not to take on too much. Focus on one thing at the time. It’s hard for me to do as I have many interests, but focusing is likely the only thing that will lead me to achieve a degree of success on YouTube.

Amusingly, having to produce so much content led me to spend very little time outdoors and on my hobbies. So I ended up having less content (and ideas) for my outdoor channel.

So a month in, this will be my first cut. I’m going to focus on Tony on Tech and my self-improvement channel. I’m not shutting down the outdoor one, but I will only occasionally publish a video when I have something to show. It won’t be a regular weekly effort.

Instead, I’m going to focus on the other two channels and I honestly believe I’d be better served by only focusing on one (likely Tony on Tech). But for now, I’ll give both an honest go.

Conclusion

All in all, the experiment hasn’t been overly successful to date, but I don’t consider it a complete failure. Some videos did okay and the subscriber growth of the Tony on Tech channel is not terrible.

Still, I need to experiment more to find what works best for me and my channels.

I expect to post future updates on this experiment, so feel free to subscribe (below) as well as to the channels themselves, to see how things pan out.

I’ll make sure to share more tips on what works, as soon as I find out. Stay tuned.

1. Technically, my Antonio Cangiano channel has been around for over a decade, but it wasn’t a coherent effort. I tossed a few random, and I do mean genuinely random, videos up over the years. And many of them managed to attract traffic in the thousands. Go figure.

The post My YouTube Experiment: First Month Statistics and Thoughts appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Occasionally, I receive emails from people asking me about blogging. Now that the second edition of my blogging book is out, the volume of emails has only increased.

A common theme I see is people creating a blog, posting as often and as much as they can, only to run out of steam. Lots of work for dismal results.

Common questions are:

• Is blogging dead?
• Is blogging still relevant?
• I published N articles and made no money. How come?

There are other questions, of course, but these are the most common ones. These are not dumb questions.

People have legitimate reasons to be frustrated with their blogging efforts. One such email included a very relatable quote:

I spent 4 hours writing a 2348 word essay. It was read by 78 people. Maybe fewer, as I too visited the page.

Can we really blame her for being frustrated?

The fundamental problem is that a lot of people treat their blog as the product. Your blog is not the product. Let me repeat it, louder, one more time for those in the back. YOUR BLOG IS NOT THE PRODUCT.

Yes, blogging is still alive. Yes, blogging is still relevant. But blogging has also changed drastically. Most of the conversations that blogging used to spark have largely moved to social media.

Blogging is still amazing… but it’s not the product. Blogging can still change your life… but it’s not the product. Blogging can make you money… but it’s not the product.

If blogging is not the product, then what is it? Blogging is an incredibly useful tool. Specifically, it’s a content marketing tool. It can help you reach the people you need to reach and expose them to your product.

So what is the product then? The product can be you and your career, your business, a book you wrote, or something else that has value and for which you charge money.

If you treat blogging as the product, you’d be very disappointed to reach only 78 people, and be hard-pressed to make any money from it. Even if a quarter of them were to click on, say, your ads, it might not be worth your 4-hour investment in time. And trust me, such a conversion rate is extremely unrealistic.

78 prospective employers when you are looking for a job is not so bad, though. Well worth the four hours of writing. 78 prospective clients for your freelance business, could lead to thousands of dollars down the line even if only one of them were to sign up. 78 prospective readers of your book, might lead to quite a few extra sales.

If you treat your blog as the product, you’ll often need 100K+ people a month to extract any serious value out of it. If you have a product, even a small group of people who are the right fit for your product can change your life.

Reading my book will teach you how to ensure that the numbers are larger AND you’re leveraging them to promote the right product.

The post Your Blog Is Not the Product appeared first on Technical Blogging.

In my book, I advocate posting to social media several times a day. If you only share your blog posts and random thoughts relevant to your industry, you’ll quickly run out of steam.

The secret is to share both your own content and other useful resources as you come across them.

You’ll want to increase your odds of encountering said useful third-party content. Just as you will want to make the process of sharing that content as painless and automated as possible.

It’s still important to have a degree of manual interaction with each platform to create genuine connections with other users. Just be careful to not let it become a time sink.

Discovering content worth sharing

The best way to come across great content to share on social media is to pay attention to what other people in your industry are sharing. Follow relevant people on social media and rebroadcast (retweet/share) their best content. Become a human filter of the greatest, most useful content for your industry.

Participate in online communities relevant to your industry. Programmers will, for example, find luck in communities such as /r/programming, /r/webdev, Hashnode, Dev.to, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, and so on.

Listen to podcasts and subscribe to YouTube channels by influencers within your field.

Finally, take advantage of good ol’ RSS feeds. Subscribe to a variety of blogs and publications to have fresh content to share.

I’m partial to Feedly for reasons that will become clear later in this post, but any feed service or client will do. You’ll want to install an appropriate browser extension. This way you’ll be able to subscribe to sites you find interesting, with just one click. In my case, I use Feedly Subscribe Button for Firefox.

Use Buffer to queue up articles

There are a gajillion social media tools. I like the simplicity of Buffer. It allows you to queue up content you intend to share on a multitude of different platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn).

It also handles the scheduling of content in the queue, so that it’s not shared all at once. This ensures a constant stream of fresh new content for your followers, without long periods of radio silence.

Once you install the Buffer extension for your browser, you’ll be able to quickly add any page you wish to your social media queue. You simply click on the Buffer icon in your toolbar while visiting a post or page you intend to share.

It removes the inertia of having to manually share updates across platforms, making you more likely to do so in the first place.

Other tools are alright as well, but if you don’t have a favorite yet, I highly recommend giving Buffer a try.

Automate Your Social Media with IFTTT

You’re now sharing your own content, retweeting/sharing from the best influencers, and using the Buffer extension to share useful resources directly from your browser.

If you want to take it to the next level, you could automate the process of adding to Buffer articles from your RSS feed client. This is where Feedly and IFTTT come into play.

IFTTT allows you to automate certain actions when a certain trigger is executed. In our case, you’d want to define an applet within IFTTT, that involves both Feedly and Buffer.

You’d set up a Feedly-related trigger that adds a given article to Buffer. In my case, I decided to create a Social board in Feedly. Whenever I add an article to that board, it gets shared on social media via Buffer.

There are two catches. The first is that Feedly requires a paid account for this integration to work. The second one is that Buffer can only connect one social media account within IFTTT. So if you have Twitter, LinkedIn, and a Facebook Page in your Buffer, you’ll have to choose which one will post the articles you add to the predefined board (e.g., Social).

In my case, I chose the Twitter account within Buffer.

The advantage of connecting Feedly to Buffer, instead of connecting it to Twitter directly (bypassing Buffer altogether) is that posts get scheduled. This way you can select, say, 10 articles within Feedly in the span of two minutes, without immediately posting all 10 to your social media account, overwhelming your followers.

Doing all this still takes some time, but automating your social media posts goes a long way. It really shortens the time and effort involved from when you encounter something interesting to you sharing it on social media.

With a bit of discipline and a few minutes each day, you could easily become a must-follow account.

The post Automate Your Social Media Posts appeared first on Technical Blogging.

My publisher, The Pragmatic Bookshelf, offers an interesting perk to its authors. It shows us real-time statistics for direct sales. Channel sales (e.g., Amazon) are not included in these reports but it’s still a useful tool to guesstimate overall sales.

Looking at the direct sales subset to date, the numbers are encouraging. So much for the waning interest in blogging!

Holding Your Book Is a Great Feeling

The book is finally in print and this week I received my complimentary author copies.

It’s always a great feeling to hold the final product in your hands after investing so many hours in a project.

When I received them, I grabbed a copy and immediately opened a random page and started reading it. I had a wow, this is actually good moment. I know the book is good based on early feedback, but I tend to be a perfectionist and hypercritical of my own work.

Yet this edition feels right. From the cover (which I prefer over the dated first edition) to the actual content and how it’s formatted in the book.

I’m Starting a YouTube Channel

Following my own advice in the book, I decided to get a little more serious about video. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but for one reason or another, never did.

I’m happy to announce a brand new YouTube channel I’m starting, called Tony on Tech. The plan is to use this channel for both technical and marketing topics. Hence, you can expect videos on programming, tech, content marketing, and social media.

If any of these topics interest you, I recommend that you subscribe now (use the bell to get actual notifications from YouTube).

In a way, video is not the ideal media for me. I learned English in my twenties, so I speak with an accent. Unlike carefully crafted words on paper, when I speak on the fly, I’m more likely to introduce a few mistakes here and there.

Yet, I like being able to make a stronger connection with my audience by expressing myself through video. I also believe that video is going to become more and more critical in the future. Always go where the audience is and give them content in the manner they prefer. And most people binge watch video content.

My First Video Is a Promo for the Book

A nice side effect of me experimenting with video is that I’ll get to share everything I learn about producing and marketing through video with you.

Incidentally, my first video for this channel is a promo video for my book. I find this video very unpolished, but it’s a starting point. The good news is, I can only improve from here, audio and video quality wise.

(If you are the very generous and forgiving kind, a like would be very much appreciated.)

I Will Share What I Learn About Video

Truth be told, I’m sort of running an experiment in which I’m launching three channels (perhaps biting off more than I can chew).

Specifically, I’m launching a new channel for my hobbies (related to the outdoors). Plus, I’m revamping my existing personal channel, which will be about self-improvement.

It’s not an approach I would recommend to others, but there are some benefits and a method to this madness. I’ll get to see how the techniques I employ to grow these channels affect different channels on various subjects.

It’s sort of a race between the three channels and it’s possible I won’t keep all of them forever if one manages to take off in a major way.

Subscribing to this blog (and the channels) is the best way to stay up to date with this video experiment and my future comments on the subject.

Thank you, everyone, for your amazing display of enthusiasm towards this new edition of my book.

The post New YouTube Channel and Promo Video appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I’m happy to announce that the second edition of Technical Blogging is now in print. It took several months to reach this point but the book is finally here.

Where to buy it

My publisher’s website offers the option to order a DRM free ebook (in PDF, .pub, and .mobi format) as well as a paper version. Even better, if you order both at the same you will receive a discounted price.

Check out the free excerpts that the publisher put out to get a feel for the book and my writing style.

It’s also available for pre-order on Amazon, should you prefer to buy it there.

Why should you buy my book?

Every day I encounter people who have much to offer to the world. Yet, their voice is never heard. Nobody knows about what they’re working on, their contributions, or their brilliance.

The main problem is that being good is necessary, but not sufficient, so to speak. You might be great, but if nobody knows about you, your opportunities are going to be limited.

My book will teach you, step-by-step, how to receive recognition for the work that you do. Blogging and social media can offer you countless benefits. Think growth, influence, and even money. My intention is for you to maximize these benefits.

Those who follow the plan that I present in my book and put it into practice will achieve significant results. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

I read the first edition, what’s changed?

If you haven’t read the first edition, you can safely go ahead and order the second edition now.

The question becomes a bit more challenging if you read the first edition.

This is not your college professor doing cosmetic changes to push out a new edition of a textbook. I spent more time writing this updated edition than I did writing the original from scratch.

Yet, this is an update and not a new book. The structure of the book remains roughly the same as the first edition. Roughly because there were some structural changes.

I included a chapter on time management and personal productivity. I added many tips (shy of 100) and collected them in an appendix. My SEO recommendations have been updated to the latest best practices. And I extensively expanded the social media strategy chapter.

In truth, I ended up writing a lot of new content throughout the book. I think I updated pretty much every page.

The blueprint I present in this edition is definitely more focused and streamlined. I spent less time focused on ways to monetizing a blog. In the process, I actually carved a clearer path on how to make money from your online presence (if that’s a goal for you).

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a better, more polished version of the book.

If money is not super tight for you, I would encourage you to invest in this second edition. Both SEO and social media have changed quite a bit in the past seven years, since the first edition. Otherwise, consider simply following the first edition to the best of your abilities. Outdated as it might be, it will still offer you some guidance.

What’s next

Now that I completed the book, I’m excited to revamp my own blogging on the three main blogs that I run (I sold my math blog a while ago). A newly launched personal blog on self-development, a programming blog, and this blog on technical marketing, of course. Stay tuned.

Finally, my heartfelt thanks to everyone who already purchases the 2nd edition. I’d love to hear your take on it anytime.

The post Technical Blogging, 2nd Ed. Is in Print appeared first on Technical Blogging.

After several months of work, I’m happy to announce that the second edition of my Technical Blogging book is finally in beta and available for purchase here.

If you haven’t read the first edition, grab this second edition now. This version is virtually complete (minus one chapter on social media) and it will give you a blueprint to achieve your goals by sharing what you know. I believe it has the potential to transform most people’s careers.

Differences from the First Edition

If you’ve already read the first edition, you might wonder if it’s worth updating. I’ll be very straightforward with you. This is not a rewrite or a brand new book. It genuinely is a second edition. I think of it as a more polished version of the existing book. It removes all the obsolete content, replacing it with my latest, most up-to-date recommendations.

A lot of the existing content is still there, but I think this edition is much more focused on the goal of getting you to take viable action. In fact, I added a Take Action section to each chapter to summarize what you’re supposed to do after reading its content.

I added a larger number of tips to each chapter and collected them all in a final recap appendix. I also added a chapter on productivity and time management, that some folks may find very worthwhile on its own.

Re-reading the book, as I edited it, I was surprised by how relevant most of the content still was. So I didn’t get rid of the existing good stuff (though I tried to further clarify and improve the existing text when applicable).

However, there were quite a few things that made the first edition obsolete and no longer something that I could comfortably recommend to people, six years after its publication.

Blogging in 2019

This second edition fixes all that and I’m proud to publish an updated book on blogging in 2019. At a time when people might think of blogging as dead, I’m releasing a book that can be your secret weapon for 2019. I honestly believe this can be a game changer for most people.

In a recent post, David Heinemeier Hansson (of Ruby on Rails and Basecamp fame) wrote on his blog:

Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, as we all discovered the benefits of social media and aggregating platforms, but we think they’re about to swing back in style, as we all discover the real costs and problems brought by such centralization.

— DHH in his post Signal v Noise exits Medium

I couldn’t agree more.

As soon as the book is completed, I look forward to implementing much of the advice from my own book myself, as I shift my focus from writing the book back to blogging. I’m genuinely excited about blogging in 2019 and sharing what I know with all of you.

If I’ve piqued your interest, feel free to investigate the 2nd edition here. You’ll find the table of content for the book, as well as some excerpt to help you judge whether my book is your cup of tea. As always, if you have questions, feel free to reach out to me here or via email.

The post The Second Edition of Technical Blogging Is in Beta appeared first on Technical Blogging.

A couple of days ago I was giving a presentation on chatbot building and the business opportunities that they represent (also the subject of a free chatbot course I created).

I was very fortunate to have an engaged audience that asked many great questions. One of which is particularly relevant to this blog. An attendee asked, “What is the impact of chatbots on SEO?”.

What’s the impact of chatbots on SEO?

My answer was that chatbots are so new it’s unlikely Google has already put algorithmic changes in place that are specifically targeted at chatbots.

All we have to go by are the SEO rules we already know. From these rules, we can deduct the likely impact of chatbots on SEO.

Google does not interrogate chatbots like a human would, in order to crawl their content. So you should have the same information available on the site in traditional pages as well.

Provided you do that, chatbots are a net positive because they increase engagement and time on page, while lowering bounce rates.

All great signals of a quality site, which Google will reward with better rankings in the result pages.

How do you future-proof your blog for Google?

The question, and the answer I developed on the fly, led me to consider the more general question of how to future-proof sites against Google’s constant algorithm changes.

Google fine tunes its algorithm with minor updates hundreds of times per year. Once in a while they’ll roll out major updates that drastically change results and in the process impact millions of site owners.

You might be familiar with classic updates such as Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird.

We can predict the future with a higher degree of accuracy if we first study the past.

The general trend that Google has shown over the years has been “serving the end user”. They have increasingly rewarded sites that provided value to the user, and penalized those that did not.

For example, Google loves long content because it is more likely to provide the answer that the user is looking for, or to inform them thoroughly on a given topic.

When users click on a result and stay on the site for a long time, it’s an indication that the site has something valuable to offer to the user.

Speed helps the user. A responsive design that works well on mobile phones and tablets helps the user.

Artificially repeating the same keyword the user searched for 50 times on the page does not help the user in any way. This so-called “keyword stuffing” approach worked when Google’s ranking algorithm was much simpler, but today it’s something that will actually penalize your site.

Do what’s best for the user

Your North Star, and the only way to future-proof your blog against Google’s algorithm changes is to do right by your readers. When making a choice that could affect rankings down the line, ask yourself, how will this help my users?

It would be very uncharacteristic of Google to penalize you for helping your users further. If anything, you are likely to be rewarded to a greater degree for this, as the algorithm becomes even more intelligent and refined.

At any rate, it’s the right thing to do, so do it anyway and trust that Google will take notice in the future.

The post How to Future-Proof Your Blog Against Google’s Algorithm Changes appeared first on Technical Blogging.