The first advantage of widgets is that they are easy to install and use. You don’t have to be a software designer in order to install a text widget on your site or blog. The second advantage is that most widgets can be customized in size, color and style to fit your blog in an elegant way. In this post I”ll recommend a few content-related widgets, that add relevant content to your readers in addition to your own original content:

Twitter Search Widget – There is no doubt about the impact tweets have on the web. over 50M users tweet daily billions of tweets, why not share the relevant ones for you with your readers? Instead of adding a twitter widget of your own tweets, add the search widget and cutomise it to your blog topic.This example is a search widget on ‘Ipad’

The widget can be adjusted with theme, color, size and number of tweets shown. I would recommend using this widget with a search related to the topic of your blog, or a topic concerning current events related to your blog, and maybe even changing the topic of search on the widget from time to time, giving your readers a glimpse at the most relevant tweets.

TimesWidget – The New-York Times also has a great widget for your blog. NYTimes, the leading print and online newspaper lets you enjoy its RSS feed through a great widget(still beta).

This widget enables you to add the NYTimes feed customized to your topic. Pick the subject relevant(can pick more than one), sports, business, technology or others from the list and add it to your site, letting your readers have online access to fresh and relevant content right out of the NYTimes.

Google AJAX Search API for youtube- Not exactly a widget, but I found this cool API that could be suited for a few blogs. I can’t say every blog should have this, but blogs more on the fun side, or writing about media, can use this youtube API as a widget on their blog.

It can be placed in a horizontal or vertical layouts to suite your site. In this example I placed the AJAX with Monty Python’s Youtube Channel. As mentioned about the twitter search widget, here also recommended to change the channels every now and then.

There are many more widgets, these are just a few examples I found useful, and even eye catchers for readers. Don’t add too much to your site, but try to find a few widgets that could give value to your readers.

HootSuite is a web application that can be used for managing multiple accounts in multiple social networks. The most obvious is Twitter. You can manage many Twitter accounts, which makes it useful if you’re promoting many businesses in separate accounts.

I’m certain you aren’t impressed. There are loads of web applications, such as Brizzly, which enable multiple accounts, and lots of desktop applications such as Tweetdeck. The main advantage of HootSuite regarding Twitter is the ability to schedule tweets.

Scheduling of tweets is enabled for manual tweets as well as for automatic ones. Instead of instantly tweeting about all your blog posts, you can set HootSuite to have a minimal period of time between tweets. This is good for not coming too strong – a concept we’ve discussed over and over again, such as this post about befriending too soon in Facebook.

This way, your followers will see sporadic tweets even if they are automated. Yes, there’s an auto-tweeting plugin for Wordpress, but HootSuite can schedule, spread the tweets and also append different words to the links. This makes it much more friendly to your followers, giving also the automated tweets a personal touch, which is so needed in a world of too many Twitter Autopilots.

LinkedIn, Facebook and more

HootSuite isn’t only about Twitter. You can use it to control status updates in your Facebook profile, your Facebook pages and LinkedIn, the leading tool for business networking. I wonder if they’ll support Naymz in addition to LinkedIn.

Another feature that is available is an option to link it to Ping.fm which opens up more social networks, such as Yammer, MySpace, FriendFeed and more. I find this unnecessary, as you can easily lose control and lose the personal touch.

Does Twitter bring traffic?

That’s a good question that receives long discussion all over the web. While you can separately measure the traffic in your websites, HootSuite takes a different approach of measuring the clicks on the tweets themselves. You can see clicks by tweets, web pages and more.

I found that repeating the intro “New blog post” for automated tweets from blog posts tend to receive less clicks over time. Playing with different intros seemed to gain more traction. More click mean a better connection with the people who follow you, and a better chance of enlarging the network via retweets.

As aforementioned, HootSuite doesn’t have anything revolutionary, but it has a nice package of features. An excellent example for a trivial but useful feature is the “Hootlet” – it enables instantly tweeting about a webpage you like. Trivial? Sure. Exists elsewhere? Sure. Useful? Yes.

No big flaws

When preparing this review, I ran into this review on Twitip. Apart from the interesting review, many commented with criticism about the ow.ly shortening tool. This is the tool that HootSuite uses for shortening and for the useful stats. During my research, ow.ly worked flawlessly. So there;s no significant downside in HootSuite.

All in all, it’s a useful tool for networking, free to try and free to use.

The first and not recommended option for Twitter users when promoting content is manually tweeting every time you post a blogpost, video, podcast. This is not recommended, especialy when most bloggers post more than once a week at their blog, FaceBook, LinkedIn,etc. and upload a video to YouTube every now and then. You would usually like to tweet on most of that. Luckly, today you can add your Twitter account to most of the existing platforms.

Some of the more simple examples are:

1.Wordpress Twitter plugin – There are many plugins for WordPress that tweet automatically every post you publish. The one I am using currently is Easy retweet.
2.Linkedin – A short time ago LinkedIn added the option to synchronize your LinkedIn status and tweets(th anks guys!) . This is how it will appear

3. Youtube Channel – You can add your twitter account to your YouTube channel, and post automatic tweets with every new video you upload.

4. Tweetdeck - One of the more popular applications for the web and mobile devices. The latest version supports multiple users on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

However, although I recommend all these tools and methods, it is also recommended to keep a balance with your tweets and status updates on Facebook and Linkedin. Most people want and need the personal touch –  people would like to hear more than just your last published posts. Try to balance your tweets with a few personal thoughts, link to others and combine tweets about your activity. That part of it could be your last post or video. Another option is setting up a different Twitter user for your business – this way you’ll post only business related tweets and links.

After all that said and done, you can also follow this blog on Twitter here, or follow us personally – Yohay or Doron

Operating and managing your blog’s social media activity can be a lot of work, and it might not be so effective if not done right. Many tools offer badges, widgets and toolbars for blogs and websites, I found the Wibiya toolbar very effective and well designed. We implemented it both on this blog and on Sortfix’s blog.

First of all the Wibiya toolbar has a simple step-by-step plugin installation wizard-

After installation, you can decide which applications to add to it, all done through Wibiya’s site. For Sortfix we decided to implement the company’s Facebook fan page, Twitter account, Flickr and the Youtube channel. The added value here is letting your readers enjoy rich content, only one click away (posts, video, images and tweets), in one place without overwhelming them with information-

The toolbar appears at the bottom of the webpage without interfering with the browsing activity. It enables users to communicate, share and be exposed to more content the site has to offer. I also enjoys the fact that you can use less widgets on the sidebar and keep a more clean view to the page and let the user experience more of your content without leaving the page. Wibiya also has a friendly admin page to manage apps, and view stats.

The only thing missing in my opinion, is a connection to linkedin. Hope will be added soon.

While bloggers that see incoming traffic to their site from another blog will notice they received a link, not everybody is addicted to the statistics of their site. An automatic pingback or a manual trackback send a comment to the specific blog post that got the link, tracking back to the site that sent it. This is a common practice, that enhances the interconnectivity – networking.

Read here more about networking through blog linking.

The latest version of Wordpress, while having lots of great features, stopped sending these notifications. Scheduled posts also stopped appearing amongst other problems.

Luckily, this excellent platform has a large community of people that care about it. A patch appeared quite fast. Dennis de Bernardy posted a patch here. It instantly solved the problem. Thank you Dennis!

Stay tuned for the regular schedule of networking posts coming up later on.

FXStreet is a big forex portal. They have a large audience, many contributors and many business partners. Their CEO, Franscesc Riverola has a blog that is updated almost daily. This is an excellent tool to communicate with readers and business partners.

Riverola takes networking through his blogs one step further: he frequently publishes detailed statistics for the site. While he currently has good numbers to show off, this approach isn’t common in the forex industry and isn’t common at all.

Being too closed and secret has its prices. You would find it hard to communicate with someone that has a lot to hide, and that shows suspicion. Speaking with someone who is constantly looking over his shoulder will also make you suspicious and nervous.

So, I find openness to be a good thing. A positive, open attitude usually prompts the same reaction, and makes networking easier – more trust is earned when you are positive.

Still, Riverola’s approach is quite unique. In most businesses, there are a few secrets, a few things that you won’t expose at all or at least not immediately. Companies that have a website as their main asset usually hold the stats close to them, and will only expose them only to trusted business partners. If they do expose them to the public, they’ll cherry-pick specific numbers and be very creative about it.

Riverola’s numbers fascinate me, as I’m also in the forex publishing business, through Forex Crunch. While I salute his approach, I don’t show all my cards. Am I wise to have some secrets, or is my attitude too conservative for the 21st century?

Adding a fellow blogger to your blog roll is a big step in your relationship with the person. When you add such a link, the link appears in all of your blog’s pages, and every casual user will see it. This is much more significant than linking to the blogger in a post.

It should be reserved to cases when you’ve already done serious networking with your fellow blogger. Some people will analyze your blog and will even think that you are close business partners.

Let him know

So, when you have deeply considered this step, and made the decision to add someone to your blog roll, you might discover that the other side didn’t notice. The reason is purely technical: a pingback isn’t sent. When you link from your post to another post by writing a link post or a by “linking by the way“, a pingback is sent. If your fellow blogger hasn’t blocked pingbacks (or trackbacks), a link back to your post will appear on his post.

When you link from your blog post to the whole blog, your associate might see the reference in his incoming links (although not many people follow this section) and will see some traffic. Incoming traffic will be seen in the other two cases as well.

But when you add him to your blog roll, it might not be seen in the incoming links section. In addition, the new link on the sidebar isn’t always seen by your readers, and won’t ignite instant traffic to your fellow blogger.

So, I would recommend following up the event of adding to the blog roll with a short email. A short email saying that you appreciate your recipient’s blog and added him to the blog roll will do. Adding to the blog roll and and following it up will add value to your relationship, and is an excellent act of networking.

Asking for a link back? This is a sensitive issue. If you feel close enough with your associate, you can ask him for that. If you’re not sure, you can still give it a try. Writing something short like: “I’d be grateful to have my blog on your blog roll as well”, can be a polite way to ask.

This completes our series of post about networking via links in blog. Apart from these four methods, do you know of other ones? We’d be glad to hear.

1. Setting up a website can cost as low as $150: there isn’t a bigger mistake for a business than this one, especially for small and medium businesses. In many cases, a business website is the ‘Front Cover’ of the business and your reputation. This is where most of the new clients and costumers first encounter your product. That ‘Front Cover’ of your business should reflect the quality of your product. You don’t have to spend a fortune on it, but have a professional do the job, plan wisely what your site should consist of, make sure the design is friendly, and that all the features work properly(links, payment, video’s, ads etc.). This still isn’t a big cost, and it is of great importance. Isn’t it worth paying a little more on your website?
2. Social media is a waste of time. I will start by how NOT to use social media (Sent by Shooky Galili) It’s rarely heard that social media is a waste of time. I can relate to businessmen who say the haven’t any spare time to be active on social platforms. I don’t think a business owner should be active on more than 3-4 social websites. It can be difficult to keep track. The key here is to start with a small modest blog, where you can update on new products and news. All that with writing no more than one 200-word post a week. Some businessmen such as lawyers already have a substantial amount of content written, and can start by posting it. After the blog is up and running, you can link it to your facebook, twitter and so on. Step by step is a good method to step into social media. An interesting discussion about this issue is happening right now at the Social Media Today group on LinkedIn.
3. Offline Advertisement is dead. Although social media and online advertisement are taking their share in advertising budgets, offline media such as newspapers, radio and TV is still part of our lives, and businesses should consider them as part of their marketing campaigns. When focused on local costumers, radio and local papers still have influence on the market. With local radio stations and papers you could complete your campaign and reach more clients in a relatively low cost. It turns out there is even much to learn from radio. Read more about it on digitaltonto by Greg Satell
4. Online Networking and Offline Networking are two completely different stories. The truth couldn’t be further away from that. On social media, email, conventions and even birthday parties, people behave like…people. Most of us enjoy meeting new people, knowing them and having some kind of a relationship (business, romantic, community..) .  If you meet someone face to face, you first want to know who you’re meeting and what common grounds you have. Then, if it seems reasonable enough for both side, a connection can be made. Online and social media aren’t that different. Our previous post about befriending too soon on Facebook guides you what to ‘do’ and what  ‘not do’ on social media.

I’m sure there are many more myths we all encounter daily. I would love to hear yours, and post them.

Linking to the whole blog means linking to the home page. The main drawback of this method is the lack of focus. Your readers aren’t directed to specific content but to a person.

Another issue with such a post is that there’s a chance that your gesture may be received as flattering – a stronger approach than you intended to do.

Writing a post praising the person you wish to connect will probably intimidate him, and will make the a follow up by email quite hard.

Even so, there are a few cases in which such a link will work well:

1. A new blog: If your fellow blogger just started a new blog, you can write a short post about this event, link to him, and wish him good luck. The context of the new blog will make your out-reach more comfortable, and may earn you points with that person.
2. Mentioning a meeting with the blogger: Similar to the case of “linking by the way”, you may mention the person you’ve met at a convention (or elsewhere) and link to his home page. This method also makes the “big” link more smooth.
3. List of bloggers: If your fellow blogs about a specific topic, and you’re writing about it, you can mention his name (with a link) at the bottom of the post, using text such as: “Bloggers who also write about these matters are: …”. Putting his name alone in the list might be a little too strong. Adding another name or two will help.

I’m sure there are other examples in which you can link to the whole blog in a way that will be moderate. The goal is to reach out and network, not intimidate. Networking is never instant.

Further reading: the introductory post about Networking through Blogs – 4 Ways of Linking. One more post to complete the series…

Don’t miss opportunities – When does that big opportunity come? You could never know. In order to avoid missing opportunities, there’s only one thing to do. Take part in activities related to your business and personal life as mentioned here before. Any occasion or person you meet, could easily become a great opportunity  for a big client or  a new contract, or finding the perfect candidate for a job your hiring for.

Then again, some meetings just bring up too many bad memories

Don’t force your  business – Your product is great, I’m sure of that. But try to understand the event you’re participating in. Timing is everything (along with a good product,creative  marketing and some luck…). Sometimes you might just have one opportunity to introduce yourself to someone relevant to you -  don’t blow it. If you speak about your business in the wrong place, you might be considered rude and maybe even boring. From my experience, always introduce yourself first as a person, an individual. Don’t talk about your business straight away. People like to connect with people, not companies. Start by a short introduction about yourself. People will remember you but they will seldom remember a company name. If people will remember you it doesn’t matter which business it is, They would be interested in YOU.

Don’t beat yourself when you’re wrong – We all make mistakes, and we learn from them. You tried to introduce your business to a potential investor and failed. Well, these things happen. When you’re unsuccessful, a few things should be done. First of all, go back and trace your moves. What went wrong? Was it the PowerPoint slides? Were you under-prepared? Understand what can be improved for the next time. Now that you are ready to try again, do it as many times as possible. You failed making connections in a convention? Go to a dozen more. You approached potential costumers and it didn’t work, try doing it better, and this time approach a hundred costumers more.

Never, but NEVER, work ‘on the fly’ – It’s nice being spontaneous when it comes to going out, not for your business. Although networking is not a science as accurate as rocket physics, you can plan your moves wisely. Decided on going to a convention to make new connections?  Wonderful! Is this convention in your field of work? Is there a better one soon? How costly is it? You must ask yourself these questions. Otherwise you will be spending more than you can afford of your time and money.

Don’t underestimate the power of online networking – We wrote here about LinkedIn, blogs and other means of social networking. These tools are already important enough for businesses, and will become even more dominant in our lives. Even if your business is completely offline, you need to start changing it. Be sure your competitors are working on it as we speak. Learn where your line of work is exposed on the web. Learn which blogger writes about your industry. Bloggers write almost about everything, from technology to foreign-exchange , Graffiti and even Hummus. Take a few hours a week and find the places interesting for you on the web and be active there, for reputation, costumers, colleagues and in short Networking.