Today I was reading a post on CopyBlogger by Dean Rieck on the importance of using email to grow a blog and it struck me how many bloggers still don’t fully understand the power of email as a way to grow their blogs. I’m not going to rehash all of the reasons why email marketing is worth adding to your blogging or even give tips on how to build a successful email newsletter - today I just want to illustrate with a couple of charts why I believe in email marketing. What you see

In this guest post, Neil Matthews from WPDude.com writes about the rise of the blogging service industry, and how bloggers can use their existing skills to enter this lucrative industry. Blogging has moved away from a niche activity to such an extent that it has spawned it’s own service industry. There are numerous activities and companies supporting the blogger. The market is huge, with hundreds of millions of blogs in existence and thousands more being created each day, there is an

This interview was conducted by Monica O’Brien (@monicaobrien) from Twenty Set. As the recession looms on, more and more people are turning to social media and blogs to look for jobs. Jamie Varon (@jamievaron) has generated buzz in the Twitter community with her new website called Twitter Should Hire Me, where she blogs candidly about her attempts to get a job at Twitter. In this interview, she shares her tips on how to use social media to land the job of your dreams, even in a

Everyone wants the truth, right? Ask your spouse or your boss or your employees or your customers… they’ll tell you all they want is the truth. But that’s a lie. We hate the truth. Our reaction to real truth is hostility and fear. Do we really want to hear the truth about why we’re fat, or why we’re broke, or why our kids are under-achieving? Tough stuff to process for most. And yet telling the simple raw truth is one of the most effective attention and persuasion tactics available.

The amount of emails hitting my Inbox makes me feel physically ill. I just checked my ‘All Mail’ inbox in Gmail and in the last 30 minutes I’ve had 100 emails…. and it is the weekend as I write this (off peak). On a single day last week I had 8987 emails - it was a fairly ‘normal’ day. How does one manage this volume of ‘communication’ (I use the word loosely)? Luckily the vast majority of those emails are things I never need to read. Some are

Starting on 1 April (Update: this is now starting on 6th April) I am planning on launching another ‘31 Days to a Better Blog‘ project. I’ve run this twice previously (once in 2005 and once in 2007) so thought that I should continue the biennial nature of it. This year I’m going to run it slightly differently so if you’re interested in participating please read on carefully. Of particular note - this year I’m asking those participating to sign up as registered