I’m very happy to announce that the blog engage weekly word challenge is back. Anyone interested in joining us simply follow the above link and read over how it works.

From the moment we awake until we go to bed our lives are surrounded and filled by this new and overwhelming behavior of social media. I’m not talking in specifics as social media comes in a variety of shapes and forms I’m just talking in general terms.

What we have to do is understand how to use it to our advantage and accept that the world is changing at an extremely fast rate of speed. Opportunities are arising for many people in fields such as News, Marketing, Advertising, Brand Management and so much more.

Let’s face it, you know things are changing fast when you can find the latest news faster by visiting facebook or twitter then you can your local 6 o-clock news. At first businesses were reluctant to invest money and research into these ideas but now corporations are spending millions of dollars trying to solve this social media puzzle.

I have adapted to the new world and I’m standing with open arms excited to learn and grow. I know the potential social media has is huge and I want to be part of this great movement. I also know if ignored I would be left behind wondering what happened and I will not allow that to happen to myself.

Social media is changing the world we live in and there’s nothing you can do but sit back and learn how to adapt. The early adapters will find their selves in a great position to make money and offer the expertise. Take advantage of this time in changing so you can prosper in the future.

What’s your thoughts on the topic? Do you think social media is here to say or is it more of a fad that will slowly fade away. Do you enjoy learning or do you prefer things staying the same? Perhaps social media is the start of something even larger. Share your thoughts and let me know what you think.

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Social Networking is more powerful than ever imagined. For years corporate businesses have underestimated the true power of social media marketing. In today’s article I would like to provide some tips on how to harness the raw power of social networking.

First we must understand; what is social networking. Social Networking allows individuals to connect easily and share idea’s, products, services and or opinions on any given topic or subject. This can be done by using large websites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, BlogEngage or other social media platforms.

Social networks are large online communities with many members that share some sort of interest. This can be news, blogging, sports, shopping or other related activities and interests. This can also be a group of people that build online relationships and bookmark important websites.

Is Social Networking a Fad?

The answer to this is no. Social Networking and Social Media Marketing is the way of the future. More and more people are joining in and engaging social networking activities daily. As you can see from the chart below social networking is growing globally and faster then ever.

Successful Social Networking Tips

Your Profile – Building the most informational and positive profile is of most importance. You want your online friends to know about you as if they had meet you in real life. Use your first name at minimum and also use a real picture. Remember like in real life first impressions mean everything.

Your Presence – Make sure you’re getting noticed. Ad friends on all the popular networks such as digg, facebook, twitter, blogengage and more. Try and find the same friends within these communities and as always try to make new ones. Creating as many connections as you can is vital to your online success.

Building Relationships – Go beyond adding people as your friend. Look into their interests talk with them and get to know them by name. I know it sounds odd but social media marketing is the new wave of meeting people. Get used to the idea of being public with your self in online communities.

Join Discussions and Interact – This can be in forums or on blogs. The important thing to remember is when you join these discussions you must bring good and accurate information. Provide quality feedback and try to help others as often as possible. Being a positive addition to the discussion is necessary so try not to be negative.

Brand Image – Everything you do will affect your brand image. Depending on what your expectations are for this brand will determine what your attitude is online. If you interact consistently with great people and communities you gain authority. As your online presence grows you will eventually create a strong and well branded Blog. Remember don’t fight with your friends try and create a positive solution to all of your issues or concerns.

Creating your online presence will take a lot of time and dedication. Work hard at it as you are technically building your brand. Let me know if you have any other Social Networking Tips for Success. Share your opinions in the comment field below.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

How does it work?

Every Wednesday I go over to Blog Engage a social network for bloggers and I comment on each and every article that is currently on the front page.

The goal is easy but will require your time and dedication. Starting right now from top to bottom I will be reading and commenting on all the articles that are currently occupying the front page our the blog engage social community.

Things to remember

• Read the content entirely before commenting

• Make notes on sections to discuss when commenting

• Make sure to ask an open ended question

• Don’t force the comment if you’re not interested

• Subscribe to the e-mail reply notifications

• Encourage conversation on the blog

If you’re interested and want to follow I’ll be doing it all day until I have commented on all the blogs within the front page of blog engage. You will most likely see my comments on all the articles so feel free to join me in the conversations.

Feel free to reply to other comments being left. Don’t get left out in the cold. Make sure to participate with us. This could be fun and will give us all an opportunity to get to know one another a little better.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

One of the most important aspects is marketing and promoting your blog properly. Picking the right communities to invest your time in can become a daunting task for most of us. I’m not going to touch on how to determine where to market within this article but rather explain why blog engage is your best bet as a blogger and online marketer.

First let me explain what blog engage is.

Blog Engage allows you to submit your Blog Article(s) that will be placed in queue and promoted by our members to the front page. The ideal of Blog Engage is to promote interaction between bloggers by “Engaging” with each others blogs. Interaction that builds up quality comments and interactive discussions.

Over the past year Blog Engage has added many unique features that has helped our community grow into what it is today. We have the ability to track and add status updates. Blog Engage allows members to add each other as friends. When you add a friend you can easily track their submissions and what are voting on.

As you can see from the above picture I have added Blazingminds aka Karen as a friend. Behind the vote button you will see the little star/head indicating this this member is a friend f mine. I will always vote for these articles.

We also allow our members to create groups allowing bloggers with similar interested to see each others articles. You can submit your blog to both the main site and a group during the submissions process.

Blog Engage allows for easy access to submit stories to social networks. Under all articles you will see a share this link that will submit your blog article to your favorite social networks. The benefit is having all the options in one central location.

When adding friends to your blog engage account you also have the ability to see all of your friends activities by visiting the status update section. You will see articles they have recently submitted or commented on. You will also see random status update messaged from friends and yourself.

If you’re interested in joining our blog community please contact us with the requested information and we will be sure to send you an invitation. Our community is friendly and helpful. You will see we are unlike anything currently on the net regarding blog promotion.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

The goal is easy but will require your time and dedication. Starting right now from top to bottom I will be reading and commenting on all the articles that are currently occupying the front page our the blog engage social community.

I want to put together a list of things we should all do to really make this event work.

Things to remember

• Read the content entirely before commenting

• Make notes on sections to discuss when commenting

• Make sure to ask an open ended question

• Don’t force the comment if you’re not interested

• Subscribe to the e-mail reply notifications

• Encourage conversation on the blog

If you’re interested and want to follow I’ll be doing it all day until I have commented on all the blogs within the front page of blog engage. You will most likely see my comments on all the articles so feel free to join me in the conversations.

Feel free to reply to other comments being left. Don’t get left out in the cold. Make sure to participate with us. This could be fun and will give us all an opportunity to get to know one another a little better.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

As time passed and our site was over overwhelmingly spammed and I had to come up with a productive way in order to still have new articles seen by our members but hide the spam in anyway possible. So what I did was I blocked all the upcoming pages, new articles and comments from our visiting members and simply allowed them to only see the articles I decided to publish. I sent a mass e-mail asking all members to update their profile and avatar and if they did I would manually publish their articles daily.

It wasn’t long after I started this I realized it was simply becoming too time consuming. I found myself spending every morning and evening trying to keep up with the submitted content from our members. The front page was being replaced daily and for our members that enjoy the traffic of our front page this was not working out well.

After doing this for about 4 months I found a free module that allowed me to moderate all first submissions on my site once again allowing me to revert back to the old ways using our upcoming page and allowing members to hold the front page a little longer.

URL Structure Changes

This is a rather funny change. I remember when I first started marketing blogengage I was attacked from a forum member at (TBE) the blog experiment she was saying how my site was a waste of time, it doesn’t pass the page rank juice and she would never participate. See at this time I was a huge noob and didn’t know anything about marketing online or do follow blogs. I immediately I went over to the pligg forums asking about this No Follow crap I’m getting in shit for and was told I had nothing to worry about the site was in fact do follow already.

For the first two years of blogengage our url’s would lead using a out.php file and for the record this has been removed. Apparently there was a large debate if in fact the out.php was actually sharing the juice to other blogs blog or not. So to make a point over the last week I found out how to change this and we no longer use this url structure. If you hover any link on blogengage its now 100% Do Follow and uses your url as the referring url and again not the out.php

New Addition of Advertisements

I’m not sure if you noticed (pretty hard not too) but I have added three adbrite advertisements to our social network. Honestly I’m hoping i start making a few dollars to pay for my servers. Right now my costs on blogengage are around 12oo USD per year and I’m trying to cover these with ad incomes. I decided to add adbrite seeing the majority of our users will never click an adsense add seeing you also run them live on their blog. I feel adbrite can offer you unique offers without worry of clicking them.

Well that’s all I can think about for now. If you have any questions or suggestion I’m always open to discussing them.

If you have a blog engage image or decide to add one we will add you to our link love page.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

At blogengage we like to offer our members unique ways to meet their needs. The main goal is to help increase your traffic and blog awareness. We have such unique opportunities and I find them to be most appropriate for all types of bloggers no matter the niche.

I’m always promoting blogengage and if you follow me you know this is a fact. The community grows daily because I’m always mentioning it somewhere inviting bloggers to join and submit their articles. Lets take a moment and see how you can get involved within the community to help build your blog awareness and blog traffic.

The Blog Engage main social site offers bloggers a unique opportunity to do two things. Firstly we offer you the opportunity to submit every article you write helping your blog build quality back links and traffic form other bloggers, secondly we offer a unique opportunity to target and comment on blogs within your niche. As all bloggers know the best way to increase your blog traffic is by blog commenting.

Blog Engage has thousands of members  submitting their content weekly so you will always have fresh and new articles to choose from. You don’t have to spend hours looking for blogs within your niche anymore. Blog Engage offers a solution to the majority of your marketing and advertising needs. This is for the typical and even advanced bloggers.

As we move on and look towards the Blog Forum we see even more potential and opportunity for marketing and branding. We have so many ways to promote your blog using the Blog forum. Let’s take a moment and see if any of the following topics would be of interest to you.

Active forum topics

1. What is your website worth?

2. Blog Roll link Exchange

3. Comment Exchange Request

4. On Page Optimization

5. Join our Link Love page

6. Blog Comment Discussions

7. What is better for SEO hyphens or underscores

8. Find out who’s not following you on Twitter

9. Google Analytic Discussions

10. What’s your bounce rate like?

The coolest thing about the forums is if you don’t like any of these topics we have tons more to choose from. I’m always adding interesting topics to have intelligent discussions about so make sure you stop by and introduce yourself.

Perhaps you don’t think Blog Engage makes the cut for your high quality style of blogging. Well think again not only do we have beginner and intermediate bloggers we also have a fair sized collection of pro bloggers as well. Take a look at our Top Bloggers list and you might be surprised many of your blogging friends are already members.

Well that’s it for me today. I hope to see my readers starting to visit and interact a bit more at blogengage. Please take the time to vote for other bloggers as you submit as well. I imagine they would appreciate it and perhaps even add you as a friend.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Seeing I started blogging 5 days a week (instead of seven) I think I should start to look for some sort of consistent format to use when writing. The reason I stayed away from this consistency is because after a few weeks it gets really boring and we don’t want boring.

In Today’s article I would like to take a look at a few things and first we will start off with the Top Engaged at Blog Engage. This is always a favorite of mine to blog about seeing I get to help my fellow bloggers with a nice back link and I get to plug a link to my social networking site.

As most of you know it’s a new week and the list is already building strong. The Top of The Week starts fast and continues to grow until Sunday. So far it’s looking very competitive with the top Engaged on the week with only 4 Engages.

More importantly we are getting close to the end of the month and this means we will soon be announcing the Top Engaged at Blog Engage Month End. In the mean time lets take a look at who’s holding down the Top 5 Spots.

Top Engaged on the Month
1. Extreme John’s Blog Engage Review
2. Positive Page Rank Growth
3. How to remove your Twitter Direct Messages
4. I Used to Be a Dotcom Millionaire, Well at Least On Paper!
5. Blogging Tips For Writer’s Block

The coolest thing about this list is it’s generated from our users so it’s not like I’ picking my favorites and adding them to the list. If you’re interested in being on the list simply submit your articles it’s a pretty easy process.

On a personal note and if you follow me on twitter you will know I bought a 3g iphone this weekend and I love it. I’m still new and playing around with all kinds of applications. I didn’t want to spend much money so I opt into buying the 8 gig as I think it will be good for what I need.

I might take some time to blog about it but I don’t know well see what happens. Many people blog about it so I don’t see the point to really blog about myself as well. I had to sign a three year contract, the phone was 99 bucks and I bout two accessories. i bought the iskin which is a protective skin made to keep the iphone ion good working condition and a car charger.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

I first started with blogengage back in 2007. The site was small, no semi custom template and looked like an out of the box pligg 9.9.0 beta software system. I was always a fan of  phpbb so I knew if I was going to start up blogengage I also wanted to create a small support and blogging forum.  I also went and created a blog directory on the same domain name a few week into the website.

For the past 2 years my only regret is not expanding on the look of my website. The Forums, The Social Network and the Blog Directory look like different planets. I have no consistency and it drives me nuts! I’m OCD like that when it comes to anything I take pride in. It must be perfect and if it’s not perfect then it must be to the best of my ability.

Customer Service

People get really picky in this environment and are easily offended. I take all e-mails with caution but come on I’m only human and I have bad days too. I try to be prompt and reply to all support cases with definitive answers.

Servers and Costs

I will admit I’m not a rich guy. I purchased a Virtual Server for blogengage and my other websites run from it as well. Eventually I will look at purchasing a dedicated server but right now my funds will not allow it. I just bought a 2009 Kia Sportage and my student loans are killing me.

Design and Functionality

I think overall I’ve managed to provide our community with some cool functions and features to build quality relationships and meet new friends while promoting and marketing their blogs. Blogengage has many features all bloggers can take advantage of. The community is Do Follow and passes all the page rank juice to it’s blogging members. We have a nice top members promotional spot in the top sidebar and I also offer a featured spot for random articles. We offer a link love program and multiple ways to promote your blog using our blog forum.

Growth and outlook

I’m 100% dedicated to blogengage and it’s members. I will Market, Design, Develop and Promote the blogengage of today and make it into the blogengage of tomorrow. With you, as members and  friends we will grow.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

This passing of time brings new and easy opportunities to us as bloggers when marketing and promotion our blogs. Right now across the entire blogosphere lies opportunity t generate and maintain true high quality back links to our articles. For instance lets have a look at my social networking website blogengage. Right now lies amazing opportunity to freely take the top of the week and top of the month positions. These are from a Page Rank 4 Do Follow Social Community.

As you can clearly see the opportunity to grab these links is very competitive. With only 2 or 3 votes on the current links this can make for an interesting month. I’m going to start following this and reporting on the Top Engaged at Blogengage every Sunday and we’ll see who’s actually in the lead and how takes over the position etc… it should be pretty fun.

How to increase your votes

Increasing the amount of voted you get is very hard. It’s important with any social network that you encourage your reader to get involved. For example look at my profile, bbrian017 you can see all my readers here on my blog are voting for me. All I  do is ask them (you) to vote for my articles and you normally do.

If you want that spot you have to get your readers involved. The coolest thing about this social sharing is you start a really neat train affect that ripple across a larger spectrum helping out many other bloggers at the same time.

I hope to see you at the top!

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian