Capping off a busy week at Mashable HQ, we bring you a massive list of social media resources you may have missed. We’ve got 38 of the most interesting features and tools published over the last week or so in case you were, you know, outside during the summer.

Have a look through our social media resources for the Origin of Twitter’s ‘Fail Whale,’ some great Twitter visualizations, or why WikiLeaks and the mainstream media still need each other.

Our Tech and Mobile resources include some amazing Konami code Easter eggs, great (free) WordPress themes to use, and a game plan for keeping BlackBerry relevant in the battle for mobile dominance.

For our entrepreneurs, we’ve got tips on how to self-publish anything, great Twitter lists for C-Suite execs, and a guide on how to structure your startup. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Looking for even more social media resources? You can find this guide every weekend, and check out all of the lists-gone-by.

Social Media

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• 5 Things the Internet Will Do for $5 [VIDEOS]
  Who would actually advertise to do anything for the cost of an overpriced coffee? We found out with this little social experiment on the website fiverr.com.
• The Origin of Twitter’s ‘Fail Whale’
  We spoke with Yiying Lu, the designer of Twitter’s iconic error message about her influences, the future, and why she hates the term ‘Fail Whale.’
• 11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates
  Here is a list of 11 free services for scheduling social media updates, either across multiple social platforms or just for Twitter.
• 5 Free Ways to Never Miss a Twitter @Reply
  We’ve found five free web-based Twitter services that will let you know via e-mail every time you are on the receiving end of an @mention or @reply.
• A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Blogging
  How did the blogosphere grow from thousands of personal diaries into a network of media empires? The history of blogging is as interesting as it is complex.
• 7 Days on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters
  Many people use Craigslist to find roommates or jobs, but there’s another function: Sex. Check out this social experiment to see what the ‘Casual Encounters’ culture is really like.
• 10 Free and Fun Twitter Bird Icons for your Website
  Finding the right Twitter bird icon for your site can be a challenge, especially if your budget is bird seed. We’ve found 10 fabulous and fresh freebies for you.
• HOW TO: Follow Mashable Staff Online
  We try to meet our readers where they are at and create a place where conversation can take place. Now we want to give you glimpse behind-the-scenes of Mashable and its staff.
• 5 Fab Twitter Follower Visualization Tools
  If you’re interested in seeing what your Twitter followers look like as a keyword cloud, on parade, or even on a mug, check out these cool tools.
• 10 Great Geeky Tattoos [PICS]
  So, you love your tech and the web, but do you love it enough to permanently brand yourself with logos or related imagery? We’ve found ten people that do.
• Why WikiLeaks and the Mainstream Media Still Need Each Other
  The latest leak from WikiLeaks signals a seminal change for investigative journalism and next-gen whistle blowing – and mainstream media still plays a key role.
• Top 16 Unusual Foursquare Badges
  We talked to Foursquare’s Lead Designer, Mari Sheibley, about the stories behind 16 of the most unusual badges in their collection.
• 5 Social Fundraising Alternatives to Facebook Causes
  When it comes to social fundraising tools, Facebook Causes often comes to mind first. In reality, it’s just one of many tools available. Check out these alternatives.
• 8 YouTube Channels for Unique Music Performances
  We found some hidden gems in YouTube channels devoted to music. Look through to find sample channels and vids featuring the likes of Phoenix and Tom Jones.
• Why Online Education Needs to Get Social
  Social websites and real-time news channels are exploding in popularity, but online higher education has been slow to adapt. Here’s why college courses need to tap into the social web to stay relevant.
• A Brief History of 9 Popular Blogging Platforms
  The web is comprised of millions of blogs covering every topic imaginable. Here is short history of some of the most popular self-publishing platforms.
• Why Hulu’s New Dance Show is a Game-Changer
  Hulu’s new dance show, The LXD, is a game-changer in the way that web series and the arts are presented online. We spoke with the show’s creators about their concept and process.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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• 5 iPhone Apps to Help You Learn to Dance
  From ballet, to salsa, to tap dancing, with a little help from the iPhone and these five apps, your feet will be moving in no time.
• 10 Cool Konami Code Easter Eggs [PICS]
  Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start. If you like unicorns, rainbows and bacon these sites with Konami code Easter eggs will make your day.
• 5 Energy Efficient Office Gadgets
  Once you’re ready to get yourself on track to being energy efficient, check out these five energy efficient office gadgets to help you start saving on every level.
• 10 Cool Tech Toys for Kids [PICS]
  While you may have played Hungry Hungry Hippos, today’s toys are much more sophisticated and tech savvy, and even a little creepy. Here are 10 of the hottest.
• 5 Awesome Optical Illusion Videos
  Using nothing more than our eyes’ and brain’s perceptive weaknesses, these clever videos will trick your grey matter and leave you amazed.
• 10 Geekiest Apple-Flavored Cakes [PICS]
  To satisfy your sweet tooth (and geekiness), we’ve hunted down ten particularly fine examples of Apple-themed pastry. Enjoy!
• 4 Ways BlackBerry Can Stay Relevant
  To maintain market share in a world of increasing iPhones and Android devices, BlackBerry will have to get back to its roots and forge a new mobile direction.
• 10 Ridiculous iPhone Accessories [PICS]
  We take a light-hearted look at 10 totally unnecessary iPhone accessories that only the true gadget-addict would consider a good investment.
• 10 Beautiful and Free WordPress 3.0-Ready Themes
  If you’re looking for a theme that works great with WordPress 3.0 out of the box, check out our round-up of free themes with superb WordPress 3.0 support.
• 10 Pieces of Gorgeous Geek Jewelry [PICS]
  The geek collective is nothing if not creative, and some of that creativity can be seen in the treasure trove of geek-themed jewelry available. Here are 10 excellent examples.
• 10 Free Web UI Kits and Resources for Designers
  This post covers 10 of the best free web UI kits, resources and stencils to kick-start the early stages of your next web design project.
• 5 Innovative Tech Camps for Kids and Teens
  New tech camps offer some of the coolest and most innovative programs around. Take a look and see all the ways your kids could be engaged next summer.
• 10 Incredible iPhone Photographs
  We’ve collected 10 amazing landscape snaps by iPhotographers from around the world — both pro and amateur — to bring you a gallery of gorgeousness.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

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• 10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring
  Social media monitoring of your brand image can be a complex process. Here are 10 pointers to heed when investigating your options.
• How Small Businesses Will Use Social Media in the Future
  In order to peer into the future, we took a step back and tried to build cases based on the evolution of trends and some successful small business examples.
• HOW TO: Legally Structure your Startup
  Whether you’re the next big thing in social gaming or organic knitwear, each startup eventually faces the same gnawing question: How should I legally structure my business?
• How 12 CEOs & Founders are Leveraging Web Video
  With all of the talk about how CEOs are getting social, we were curious to see how many CEOs are also branching out into web video. Here are 12 that are making a real impact on their brand.
• 15 Twitter Lists for C-Suite Execs to Follow
  To get you started or to beef up your current inventory of Twitter Lists, here are 15 great ones for C-suite executives to follow.
• 3 Social Sites for Demonstrating Your Business Acumen
  Sites like Aardvark, Quora and LinkedIn cater to the business professional seeking out knowledge or educational resources, and they are great for demonstrating business expertise.
• HOW TO: Self-Publish Anything Online
  These sites and services can help you create and brand just about anything, from books to clothes to software, and even food.
• How Online Retailers Can Leverage Facebook’s Open Graph
  Facebook’s Open Graph presents retailers with unprecedented ways to drive sales through recommendations. Here are some things to consider when tapping this data.

(Via Mashable!.)

Whether or not you agree with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that the age of privacy is over, you can likely agree on one thing – Facebook privacy settings are not easily deciphered.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve sufficiently protected what you share on Facebook, then ReclaimPrivacy.org has a bookmarklet to help you be as private as you’d like.

The bookmarklet (essentially a snippet of Javascript that executes from your browser bar) assesses your Facebook settings in a number of different areas. It looks at personal information, contact information, friends, tags and connections, known applications that leak personal information and whether or not your friends can accidentally share your information. It also checks whether or not you’re currently sharing information via the controversial “Instant Personalization” that was unveiled last month at f8.

The site and bookmarklet are the creation of software engineer Matt Pizzimenti and is completely open-source and hosted on GitHub. According to the website, ReclaimPrivacy.org will “never see your Facebook data” and will “never share your personal information”. The scanner operates entirely on the client side in the user’s browser, it says.

To run the bookmarklet and see how private you may or may not be on Facebook, simply follow these directions:

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmarklet
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.

You can also become a fan of Reclaim Privacy on Facebook. The site, which is hosted on Google’s App Engine, was down earlier today because it had used up all of its bandwidth, so Pizzimenti has added a donation box to help cover bandwidth costs.

(Via Read Write Web)

This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. If you want to ask a question, just write a comment below.

CaptiousNut asks:

I’ve been blogging for 5 years but have never really, until last week, looked into ‘professional strategies’ to increase my traffic. I am using Blogger, and it looks like no one else is using it.

Am I handicapping myself with it?

I have been saying that getting your own domain name is a must for a long time, but many people still ask that question, so let’s talk about it once again. More specifically, let’s list the three main reasons why having and hosting your own domain is important.

1. You don’t really own your Blogger blog.

If you read Blogger’s ToS, you’ll discover that you don’t really own the blog. You do own the content you’ll write there, but the domain and the platform are properties of Google. The first consequence of this if that if you violate any of the service policies your account might get suspended and you’ll lose your hard work.

The second consequence is that you won’t be able to sell your blog, should be become popular and profitable one day.

2. Having your own domain gives you credibility.

Since Blogger is a free platform, you’ll find all sorts of blogs there. Sure, there are some good ones, but the majority is low quality, and you’ll have a lot of spam blogs that are created just to manipulate search engines, too.

As a result most people get suspicious as soon as they see the .blogspot on your domain name. That is why having your own domain will give an immediate dose of credibility to your site.

3. Hosting your own domain gives you more flexibility.

When you host your own domain name you’ll have complete control regarding the software and the setup that will be used there. You’ll be able to use simple HTML pages, to load a CMS like WordPress, to add special scripts and so on.

As your blog grows you’ll find that this flexibility is vital, as it allows you to expand the scope of your site and generate more traffic and money.

Would you add any other reason as to why getting your own domain is vital?

(Via Daily Blog Tips.)

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

Google may have finally figured out social media, even if there have been some major slip-ups in the way. The implications of that realization could dramatically change social media as a tool and as an industry.

On Tuesday, February 9th, Google launched Buzz for Gmail, a service for sharing thoughts, multimedia, and your social media feeds with your friends utilizing Gmail as the conduit. The result: over 160,000 Google Buzz posts and comments per hour.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Google didn’t launch a small addition to Gmail — no, it has dropped a nuclear bomb whose fallout will permanently alter the social media landscape. I could never have predicted that it would become so popular so fast when I first learned about it.

Why? Why has it grown so rapidly? Why has it riled up such strong emotions on both sides? Are the privacy issues going to permanently damage Google? And most of all, what does Google Buzz mean for Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the social media world?

I’m going to tackle all of these questions and more in this week’s in-depth column.

Google Buzz’s Skyrocketing Usage

Google has only released two numbers so far: there have been over 9 million posts and comments in about 56 hours, amounting to around 160,000 posts and comments per hour. That’s even more impressive if you consider the fact that most users didn’t get Buzz until Wednesday the 10th.

The other number: over 200 mobile check-ins per minute, nearly 300,000 mobile check-ins per day.

Those numbers are simply stellar.

Why Have Users Embraced Buzz?

It’s a question that has both simple and complex answers: why has Google Buzz taken off as a service (thus far) in ways that Orkut, Google Friend Connect, and Google’s other attempts at social media did not?

Let’s start with the most obvious one, and one I think was a brilliant move, despite the privacy issues: it’s wired directly into Gmail. With a flip of a switch, Buzz gained tens of millions of users. With the Buzz tab just directly under ‘Inbox,’ the service creating its own unread count, and Buzz emails flooding inboxes, how could people not try it out?

The embrace goes deeper than that, though. I asked the Mashable Buzz community the following:

‘Why do think Google Buzz has gained traction so quickly? What’s the #1 reason you find yourself using Buzz?’

Here are some of the responses we received that I believe really sum up Buzz’s popularity:

- Adrian Eden: Ease of use and simple interface

- Eyal Herlin – it just works for me. i like the zero effort setup and the making of connections easy

- Sheldon Steiger – #1? It’s embedded into Gmail. After that, it seems to be exposing me to people and subjects that were not readily visible in the other networks.

- Roy Ruhling – On a scale of 1-10 for ‘socialness’ of social networks Twitter is about a 3, Facebook is about a 4 and Buzz is about a 9. It honestly and truly connects people from all over the world instantaneously

- Daniel L – The main reason buzz is growing so quickly is because it is easily accessible to Gmail’s large and already established user base. Normally, Gmail is the one site i always have open because it has my calendar, my to do list, and my chat all in one window. Because of this, i always see when i have new Buzz, and i will tend to check it and respond. This is the #1 reason i use it — convenience.

Summary: Easy to use, accessible, convenient, closer social circle, moves in real-time, engaging…

Google’s got a monster on its hands.

Addressing the Privacy Issue

One of the obstacles to Google Buzz’s growth — and a major point of criticism — has been the privacy issue. Since it’s linked directly into Gmail, people can figure out your email address. Since it auto-followed your most emailed friends, people could figure out your email habits.

All of these issues are legitimate, but here’s the thing: Google is responding with lightning speed. Yesterday the search giant made some serious privacy tweaks, making auto-follow into auto-suggest and giving you the ability to completely kill Buzz if you so choose.

In a few months, few will remember these privacy snafus. Just as people have forgotten about the Facebook News Feed fiasco and other Facebook disasters, people will forgive and forget about Buzz’s initial privacy concerns.

In that sense, Google will get the best of both worlds: it has seeded Google Buzz with people and content via the auto-follow and automatic opt-in features, but it won’t feel the heat for privacy issues due to the recent changes to both. It may have been unintended, but it was savvy.

The Potential Impact on Twitter and Facebook

If Google Buzz is here to stay, what does that mean for the two kingpins of social media, Twitter and Facebook?

If you don’t think both companies haven’t had constant meetings over the potential impact of Buzz, then you are kidding yourselves. There’s no way both companies don’t have people analyzing scenarios and Google’s plan for its social media wunderkind.

To analyze the potential impact of Buzz on both services, lets look at the key questions for Twitter and Facebook, and some possible answers:

Q: Will Buzz Kill either Facebook or Twitter?
A: No. There’s probably nothing that could kill either service. The user bases are too large and passionate for that to happen.

Q: Could Buzz slow down the growth of Fb/Twitter?
A: Absolutely. Imagine that 15 million people are spending 15 more minutes in their Gmail inbox because of Buzz, whether that’s browsing what their friends are saying or creating their own posts. There are only 24 hours in a day, so that time has to be taken from somewhere.

Yes, part of that time is being taken away from tweeting and facebooking. Even if it just means one less status update per person per day, that adds up to millions of updates lost to Buzz.

The effect could be a lot worse. We just can’t know yet.

Q: Could Buzz become bigger than Twitter?
A: It already is:

While we can’t pinpoint an exact number, Twitter has probably around 18-25 million users worldwide. Heck, let’s say there are 30 million to be generous. Gmail has over 38 million uniques in the U.S., and that was back in September 2009. Worldwide, that number is simply larger.

Yes, there are far more tweets than comments/posts on Buzz right now, but beating those engagement numbers isn’t out of the question for Buzz.

Q: Could advertisers and brands switch some of their dollars and focus from Facebook and Twitter to Buzz?
A: With millions of people using Buzz, how could they not?

Buzz is already taking a chunk out of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media services. That’ll only grow as brands and advertisers better understand what they can do with Buzz and its millions of users. Buzz is equivalent to throwing a giant super magnet into a room filled with nails.

Predicting How Google Buzz Will Play Out

Not only can you expect Facebook and Twitter to respond with their own features and partnerships, but you can expect developers to shift their focus as well. Remember last year when there was a Twitter app gold rush? I do — as the service skyrocketed, countless developers embraced Twitter’s API and built amazing apps on top of it. Facebook had the same experience when its platform first launched.

Now it’s Google’s turn. Buzz is an open platform, meaning that developers will soon be able to create new apps for Buzz — everything from iPhone apps to analytical services will be built on top of it.

Now if Google wanted to really shake up the developer ecosystem, it could offer ad revenue share for Buzz apps and its own app store. Gmail advertising is already well developed, and if you haven’t noticed yet, Buzz already has Google ads being placed against it. Offering apps the ability to quickly and easily monetize within Google Buzz could really take away from development resources being placed towards Twitter, Facebook, and mobile platforms.

If Buzz can keep up the momentum, everyone from publishers (like ourselves) to developers to Fortune 500 companies will have to pay attention to the conversations happening on Buzz. If this thing can drive traffic or put a big brand on its toes because of a buzz that goes viral, then there’s no telling how far it will go. Oh, and Google’s only just begun with this thing — more killer features are in its immediate future.

The social media landscape has been permanently altered. To ignore Buzz would be a costly mistake, because Google has finally created the definition of a game-changer.

(Via Mashable!.)

Factors on Generating Traffic to Your Blog: “

Over the last few weeks I’ve had three conversations with readers regarding different sources of traffic.

In each case I had a number of email exchanges with each blogger (all on the same day) and ended up laughing to myself at the common theme but extremely different opinions being expressed by each of the bloggers.

In each case the bloggers had strong opinions (and experiences to back those opinions up) on what type of traffic was ‘best’ and how to get it.

1. In one case the conversation started with a blogger telling me that I focus too much upon social media traffic and not enough on traffic from search engines. Their niche didn’t work with social traffic but with search traffic they did best.
2. In another case the blogger told me that they’d been told to forget about search traffic in their niche and work more on building traffic from other sites and to convert it into ongoing traffic with newsletters.
3. In the last case a blogger told me that in their opinion the best type of traffic was social media traffic and they didn’t see the point in newsletters.

I was reminded through these conversations just how many different valid approaches there are to blogging. I also came away with a few thoughts that I thought I’d jot down here on the topic of driving traffic to blogs.

1. There are Many Valid Sources of Traffic

The above chart shows just 8 of many sources of traffic to a blog. As I write this others are already springing to mind (for example some bloggers run paid advertising to drive traffic to their blog – others get it from banner exchange programs). The reality is that there are many potential sources of traffic.

2. The ‘Best’ Source of Traffic Varies from Niche to Niche

As I thought about the 3 bloggers I was chatting to above it struck me that each had found great sources of traffic but that they were each operating in very different niches.

The first blogger who had written off social media was in a niche that people were simply not using social media for (I won’t reveal the niche as I don’t have their permission but it was a very very niche focused blog). Perhaps they could have driven a tiny bit of traffic with social media but for them Search was a much better place for them to invest their time.

3. Different Sources of Traffic Will monetize differently

Another important factor to consider is that some sources of traffic will monetize ALOT better than others. I’ve found that search traffic can work very well with AdSense for example (it depends upon the niche and intent of the reader). People arrive on your site searching for specific information, read your content, see an ad that relates to their search term and click on it.

RSS readers on the other hand don’t tend to convert for AdSense as they tend to be loyal readers and many don’t even click through to your site to read your content. RSS readers (and social media traffic) however can convert really well for affiliate promotions or selling your own products to.

4. Traffic Patterns Change over the life cycle of a blog

As a blog matures its sources of traffic often quite naturally change.

There’s no typical one size fits all pattern to this but at first the traffic might mainly come from other blogs or forums where you comment – or blogs where you guest post – or articles that you write. In time you might start to see more traffic from RSS or newsletters as a few people subscribe. Perhaps then some traffic will come from other sites who link to you (people who subscribe via RSS might have their own blogs) and from social media. After a while your search engine ranking might kick in as a result of the links from other sites and your guest posting and article writing and you might start seeing Google traffic. Once your blog is more established you might start seeing social bookmarking viral events that spike your traffic.

Again – this is not going to be the pattern for all blogs but in time traffic will naturally start to come from different places – the key is to try to leverage it for ongoing good (trying to get your blog to be sticky rather than just having one time visitors) and to work out how to convert that traffic for the goals you have.

5. Bloggers should be open to different approaches

While each of the three bloggers had discovered great lessons and good sources of traffic for their niches and the life cycles of their blogs – I was left wondering in each case whether the bloggers were being a little too closed off to different sources of traffic that perhaps could have added to the overall mix of traffic.

I see a lot of SEO type bloggers write about the worthlessness of social traffic for instance. One common comment that I get from some SEOs (definitely not all) is that social media traffic can’t be monetized. The reality could not be further from the truth. It won’t always convert but it certainly can. For example I know in each of the E-book launches that I’ve done in two niches that I’ve seen significant conversions from Twitter traffic.

On the flip side of things I hear some social media focused bloggers write off SEO and say that it works itself out and you don’t need to optimise your blog for search if you just produce good content. While there is some truth in that (good content does tend to generate natural incoming links to some extent) with a basic understanding of principles of SEO and a few minor tweaks a blog can rank much better in search engines without compromising the integrity of the content.

I guess what I’m getting at is that if you get exclusive about the type of traffic you are after you could actually be limiting the potential of your blog’s incoming traffic.

6. Too many Eggs in One Basket Can Be Dangerous

I used to be very focused upon search traffic in my early days of blogging. I worked hard to optimise my first blogs for search and got to a point where I was making a full time living from the ad revenue I was getting almost exclusively from Google. As a result I got a little lazy in some of the other areas – I didn’t work to convert readers to be loyal with newsletters or with prominent calls to subscribe to RSS, I didn’t build too many relationships with other bloggers to generate referral traffic and I was very inactive in social media (although it was much more limited back then).

As a result when Google decided to adjust their algorithm one day and my rankings dropped (and almost completely disappeared) in their results I lost almost all of my traffic – and as a result almost all of my income.

I was lucky in that Google readjusted their algorithm a couple of months later and I regained a lot of (but not all) of that traffic but in the mean time I looked for and found a ‘real job’ – and more importantly learned an important lesson about the power of having more than one source of traffic.

That experience was the beginning of me doing a few things that included working harder on capturing readers as subscribers (email and RSS), networking more with other bloggers in my niche and getting more involved in promoting my blog in other places (mainstream media, social media etc). My hope in doing all of this was to build up other sources of traffic so that if Google ever switched off my traffic again (temporarily or permanently) I’d at least have enough traffic to survive.

Google still does send me around 40-50% of my traffic (it varies a little from blog to blog) but I’m in a position now where I could survive for an extended period if it all disappeared (not that I’d like for that to happen).

7. The Importance of Personality and Being Yourself

I’m sure there are other factors that are at play that might be worth considering when looking at traffic. One of these (that I’m yet to fully think through) is personality type.

For example a lot of my my technically thinking friends seem to enjoy the challenge of SEO a little more. They love experimenting with and testing what happens when they make small tweaks to different aspects of their blogs. They’re constantly testing different setups and do quite well from it. I am not technically minded and find their attention to detail very very unusual (and so far from where that I’m at that I feel like I’m from another planet).

Other friends are perhaps a little more social by nature and as a result seem to do well on Twitter.

Others seem to do better by applying their freakish ability to write blog posts that get tonnes of links from other sites and which do brilliantly on social bookmarking sites..

Others are networkers and spend a lot of time interacting with other bloggers and site owners and tend to get links and traffic that way.

Others just seem to be brilliant at building community on their blog and as a result retain almost everyone who ever comments and build new readers from those people telling their friends.

I guess the lesson here is to be yourself and work with your strengths. Of course you don’t want to let your strengths dominate so much that you ignore or become lazy in areas that you’re not as strong in – but do follow your natural abilities and leverage them as much as you can.

Remember that there is no wrong or right way to generate traffic for a blog. If you were analyze the sources of traffic on many top blogs you’d find quite different factors at play!

(Via ProBlogger Blog Tips.)

WordPress is arguably the most popular and the best blogging platform out there. You might have installed WordPress on your site, but you might be scared to experiment with WordPress worrying that you could break your site and WordPress.

Experimenting is one of the best way to learn new things and if you break your site, you probably might not want your visitors to see the fault as it might leave a bad impression. So, it is necessary to have the ability to learn WordPress and try new themes, plugins and other items without putting it online where people can see.

So, the best solution is to install WordPress locally on your computer. It will save you quite a bit of time since you can just put your files inside your WordPress folder without having to upload it to FTP. You can do anything you want with WordPress without a worry which surrounds you when you put it online. The possibilities are endless. Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to install WordPress in localhost using XAMPP. I hope it will become a great use to you.

1. Go to the official XAMPP website. We are going to use XAMPP as it is one of the best Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. It is very easy to install and use.

2. Select your operating system and which format you want to download. You can either choose a zip or a exe format. I would recommend the .exe file. There are also portable version such as XAMPP lite, but using XAMPP is just fine for what we need. There are also add-ons available such as Tomcat, but it but they’re not necessary for our use, may be something you want to experiment with at a later date though!

3. Open the installation file and you will be presented with a window. In, the destination folder, choose your destination. ‘C:\’ is recommended. Click install to start the installation (Won’t take more than a minute or two!)

4. When the installation is almost done, an MS-DOS window opens, You might think you have to type a bunch of codes, but that’s not the case. This window just helps you set your preferences. The answers are just yes and no.

First question it will ask you is whether you should add a desktop shortcut. Type ‘y’ for yes and ‘n’ for no.

5. The second question it will ask you is whether you want to locate the XAMPP paths correctly. Type ‘y’ for yes. I would recommend saying yes because XAMPP usually locates the paths correctly for you, much easier!

6. The third and last question it will ask you is whether you want to make XAMPP portable or not. You can choose which ever one you want, but i would recommend saying no if you aren’t going to be making use of the portable functionality (We won’t be in this tutorial) because it makes it easy for us to see the path such as C:\ and easier in the browser.

7. After this is done, XAMPP starts configuring and you will see this appear in the window. Press Enter and XAMPP will have been correctly installed in your computer.

8. Go the the destination folder you gave (such as C:\) and look for ‘xampp-control’ and open it. Now that XAMPP installation is complete, it is time for us to start using it.

9. You should see this open up. This helps us specify which services we want to start.

10. Click start on ‘Apache’ and MySQL. They are services required for running WordPress. XAMPP uses port 80 as a default port, so if you have any issues, try making sure no other programs are using the port (Skype occasionally tries it). It will say ‘Running’ next to the modules if they are started. The others don’t need to be started.

11. To check if XAMPP is working, open your browser and type ‘http://localhost/’ and you should see this. Yes! we are good so far. Choose your language for the list.

12. After that, you should see a page saying that you have successfully installed XAMPP on your system. Hoora!

13. Now that we have successfully installed XAMPP, it is time to get WordPress. Go to wordpress.org and download WordPress. Extract the folder.

14. Now, the steps get critical. Make sure that you do these steps carefully or the installation of WordPress probably won’t work. Go back to XAMPP folder (C:\xampp) and go inside a folder called ‘htdocs’.

15. This is where we are going to put the WordPress folder. Copy the wordpress folder that you extracted and put it inside the ‘htdocs’ folder. Note: Make sure that when you copy the WordPress folder, not the folder above it such as ‘wordpress-2.9.1″

16. We need a database for WordPress so that we can install it in our computer. Go to your browser and go to localhost (http://localhost/) and click on phpMyAdmin and you should see a page like this.

17. We need to create a new database for WordPress. Look for the ‘MySQL localhost’ section and you should see some boxes, and on top it says ‘Create new database’. That is what we need.

18. On the box on the left, your will enter a database name. You can name it whatever you want. I will call it ‘wordpress_test’. Then, on the next box, your will see a list of options. Scroll to the end and select ‘utf8_unicode_ci’. We are going to use this option because it supports expansions and ligatures. Click Create.

19. You will be notified that the database ‘wordpress_test’ has been created.

20. Now, go inside xampp/htdocs/wordpress (for example C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress) . Then, we need to setup up wp-config. This is to configure wordpress to fit our database, username etc. Many people are familiar with this step.

22. Rename the ‘wp-config-sample.php’ to ‘wp-config.php’ so WordPress will recognize your config file (Depending on how you’ve set up Windows, the .php may or may not be displayed. If wp-config-sample doesn’t show it visibly, don’t add it on to the wp-config when you rename it). Open the file you have just renamed (wp-config) with your favorite text editor (e.g. Notepad, not Microsoft Word!).

23. Now you will need to change these parts of the wp-config.

24. So, inside the DB_NAME to the right you will see ‘putyourdbnamehere’. That is where we will put our database name. Delete the putyournamehere (without deleting the apostrophe) and put ‘wordpress_test’ (remember that is what we called our database in phpMyAdmin).

In the same way, put ‘root’ in the DB_USER part. Then on the next part (database password), leave it blank, since we haven’t set a root password for our MySQL.

We will also not change any part of the DB_HOST because localhost is what we want and it is already localhost. This is just a test site, so no other configuration is needed here. Now, we are done with the configuring. It will be easier to understand what I am saying by the illustration below.

25. Save and close the file (wp-config.php). Next, open your browser and go to ‘http://localhost/wordpress/’. Hooray! It worked. You will see this screen and once again, many people are pretty familiar with this process. Put your blog title and email and click ‘Install WordPress’

26. Success! You will be notified that WordPress has been installed. You will get your username and random password. Copy the password and click ‘Log in’.

27. You are now in the login page. The username is admin and paste the password. Don’t worry about memorizing the password as we will change it.

28. Success again! We are in the wordpress dashboard. The very first thing you might want to do is change the password. On the red bar, click on the ‘Yes, Take me to my profile page’.

29. Scroll down and change your password, then update profile.

30. Yes, now you are all set. When you go to http://localhost/wordpress. You should see your blog with the default theme Kubrik.

31. You are done. There are a few other things I would like to remind you. In the XAMPP Control Panel , Apache and MySQL have to be running. You don’t need FTP to change stuff in wordpress. Just go inside xampp\htdocs\wordpress and change everything there. For example, if you want to add themes, just go inside wordpress\wp-content\themes and put your themes there.

32. There you go. That wasn’t too hard. You can now master WordPress without worrying about breaking your website and you will also save some valuable time. Go celebrate!

Then, come back and you are free to experiment with WordPress any way you like. Try out new posts, themes, plugins and explore the wonderful world of WordPress.

If you have any problems or want to ask a question, feel free to comment below. I will try my best to answer your questions.

I would also appreciate it if you commented what you are going to use WordPress in localhost for. I hope you enjoyed this post!

(Via Pro Blog Design.)

Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic.

Content
1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas.
2. Write the definitive guide to something. Spend time making this awesome.
3. Release a manifesto.
4. Release 2 manifestos.
5. Interview cool people. People like talking about cool people.
6. After your articles are indexed in search engines, break them up into smaller articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com (and other article directories).
7. Or just pay someone to submit the articles for you.
8. Write a list of all the cool blogs and people in your niche.
9. Check out the most popular content on high trafficked blogs. Create similar content but applied to your own niche.

Facebook

10. Start a page.
11. Make that page awesome.
12. Start a group.
13. Make that group awesome.
14. Create a Facebook app for your blog.

Fundamentals
15. Wait. After you’ve taken action it can take a short while for traffic to arrive.
16. Be patient. Some bloggers may seem like overnight successes, but if you look back in their archives, they’ve been creating content for a long time.
17. Motivate yourself.
18. Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
19. Have an interesting story and overall purpose.
20. Embrace the Law of Reciprocity. Everything you give will come back exponentially.
21. Make blogging easier.
22. Take action every day. Just get one important thing done every day and eventually you’ll start getting traffic. The more you do each day the faster your blog gets traction.
23. Find people with blogs at a similar level to yours and help each other out.
24. Turn off your computer, do some cool stuff, turn on your computer again and blog about it.
25. Understand the importance of context.
26. Be consistent. You don’t need to blog every day but try to stick to at least some sort of schedule.
27. Make it a numbers game. Decide upon a definite plan of action (eg. 20 blog comments per day, 1 guest post per week etc) and stick with that.

Online Video
28. Create videos and distribute them through tubemogul.com
29. Or for wider video distribution trafficgeyser.com may work for you (expensive though).
30. Respond to YouTube videos with your content.
31. Include your full blog address at the TOP of your video descriptions.
32. Take your time with devising video titles and tags.
33. Convert your video to multiple formats, with slight editing changes, and upload it to video sites multiple times, targeting different keywords. The content remains the same but you can test what videos and titles work the best.
34. Buy the accounts of popular YouTubers and then add your blog address to the descriptions of their videos.
35. Start the first live show in your niche (Ustream, Justin.tv and LiveStream are popular choices). Make sure you record the shows too so they can be distributed as a podcast later on.

Other Blogs
36. Be the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs. But still provide value.
37. If you can’t be the first then comment anyway. But try to be the first.
38. Stumble and Digg cool blog posts you find and let the blogger know via a comment. If you have something worthy on your blog, they’ll probably reciprocate.
39. Use google.com/blogsearch to find fresh blog posts and then leave intelligent comments.
40. Link to blogs of a similar size. They’ll notice and then good stuff may happen.
41. Write a guest post for a large blog. You may not always get published, but when you do the traffic spike will be significant.
42. Write a guest post for a small blog. You’re more likely to get published and build relationships with the next wave of A-List bloggers.
43. Write some more guest posts. Can’t hurt, that’s for sure.
44. Join a blog network.

Paid
45. Start a StumbleUpon Ads campaign.
46. Get reviewed.
47. Buy some ad space.
48. Send out a press release.

People
49. Attend relevant meetups.
50. Tell your friends and family about your blog. Have them tell everyone they know.

Podcasting

51. Start a podcast and submit it to the iTunes directory.
52. Convert audio files to video files (just use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) and send them out via tubemogul.com
53. Submit it to some other podcast directories.

Search engine optimization
54. Write linkbait.
55. Have any video or audio content transcribed and posted to your blog.
56. Register your domain name for 10 years.
57. Take advantage of sites scraping your blog’s feed by interlinking posts. Simple way to get deep inbound links.
58. Use Thesis.

Social networks
59. Join every social network you can.
60. Or, just join a couple and be really active.
61. Become active in relevant ning.com communities.
62. Convert blog posts to PDF files and submit them to Scribd – include your blog url in the description and document itself.
63. Add your Scribd documents to relevant groups.
64. Submit your best posts to blog carnivals.
65. Join relevant forums, add your blog address to your signature and start posting intelligently.
66. Sign up at ping.fm and use twitterfeed.com to auto post your latest blog content to a bunch of social networks.
67. Create lists on Amazon.com
68. Write reviews on Amazon.com
69. Better yet, create video reviews for Amazon.com
70. Answer relevant questions on Yahoo Answers, leaving your website as the source.
71. Or on Mahalo Answers.
72. Or even through LinkedIn Answers.
73. Start your own Slinkset, and feed your RSS feed into it automatically.
74. Submit your site to alltop.com
75. Write an article aimed at Digg (okay, that article won’t help much).
76. Also, befriend one of the many Digg powerusers.
77. Create a new thread on a forum and write up a really great guide with no self promotion. Simple way to be seen as an authority figure and to elicit comments on your writing (don’t forget that signature link though!).
78. Submit your content to dofollow social bookmarking sites.
79. Or have Bookmarking Demon do it for you (certainly a bend in ethics though).

StumbleUpon
80. Become an active stumbler to understand what stumblers like.
81. Friend people who stumble your content (they may just want to stumble more in the future)..
82. Have other people initially submit content (or “Discover” it as it’s known).
83. Place a Stumble button in your post template.

Su.pr
84. Sign up at su.pr and use it for all your short url needs.
85. Post content to your Facebook and Twitter stream.
86. Install the WordPress plugin to automate the process.
87. Identify the times that result in the most clicks and schedule tweets for them.
88. Setup your blog as a promoted website.

Twitter
89. Include hash tags (#tagname) in your tweets.
90. Search for your niche and answer any questions people have.
91. Place a Retweet button in your post template.
92. Follow relevant, popular, and interesting people.
93. Send @replies to relevant, popular and interesting people.
94. Tweet links to your content at multiple times during the day.
95. Love a product from a company that’s on Twitter? Review it and they may just notice and tweet about the review. It’s happened to me.
96. Sponsor some tweets.
97. Find cool people in your niche who live nearby and organize a tweet up (a meet up where you invite anyone on Twitter).

WordPress
98. Install All In One SEO Pack.
99. Automatically ping lots of ping services.
100. Create a theme, include a link to your blog in the footer, and then release it for free.
101. Create a plugin and release it for free. Add a link to your blog within the admin area. If it’s a good plugin people will love you for it.

(via Daily Blog Tips)

Ever wish your RSS reader worked more like a Twitter client? Or even FriendFeed, where updates just appear in real-time? Well, that idea has been gaining ground for some time, and it just got a whole lot more appealing now that WordPress has announced support for RSS Cloud.

RSS Cloud takes advantage of the cloud element in the RSS 2.0 specification. Actually cloud has been there since RSS 0.92, but no one paid much attention to it until Twitter and others ushered in the idea of a real-time web. The cloud element is used to deliver push notifications to your feed reader.

That’s essentially the reverse of how RSS readers work right now. At the moment, most popular RSS readers poll sites to see when they have new content. Another, slightly better method is to wait for a ping from your blog to let the RSS reader know when new content is available. But as WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg notes in the announcement, ‘getting every ping in the world is a lot of work… RSS Cloud effectively allows any client to register to get pings for only the stuff they’re interested in.’

The result is that new posts from your favorite blogs arrive much faster using the RSS Cloud method. As Marshall Kirkpatrick writes over at ReadWriteWeb, the difference in wait times is like ‘the difference between checking your e-mail every once in awhile and using a Blackberry to get new e-mails pushed to you as soon as they arrive.’

Sounds good, no? More news, delivered faster. Well, the bad news is that there’s really only one feed reader that currently supports RSS Cloud — Dave Winer’s River2. However, with WordPress now implementing the cloud element in its feeds, some 50 million posts a week are potentially accessible to cloud-enabled feed readers, which should be more than enough to tip the balance in RSS Cloud’s favor.

Of course there are some competing specifications, like pubsubhubbub or FriendFeed’s SUP proposal, which both do something similar to enable push updates.

WordPress has already said that its working on other ways of pushing notifications to news reader, including pubsubhubbub, so while you may have to wait a while before your favorite reader enables support for RSS Cloud and others, the WordPress announcement has certainly added incentive. And, hopefully, it will give RSS readers a much needed kick in butt — let’s face it, RSS readers aren’t exactly hotbeds of innovation right now.

Indeed Dave Winer is trying to get popular Twitter clients to support RSS Cloud. If they do, they could well end up supplanting RSS readers as the way most people get their news.

We’ll just have to stop calling them Twitter clients and start calling them what they should be referred to as: news clients.

(Via Webmonkey.)