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Sometimes I’m surprised on how a blog post can become suddenly successful while others, even if potentially more interesting, stay buried in the archive of my blog.

One example for all is my recent post about Apple iPhone vs Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. In a couple of days, it received more than 3000 uniques views mainly coming from Google Search. Other similar posts, where I tried to compare two or more hot mobile phones, ended up performing similarly.

That being said, how to make a blog post successful and bring many visitors to it? And, secondly, how to make it so successful that it remains on top of your list of blog posts in terms of unique visits? Here are three simple tips.

1) Choose the title carefully. If you choose your title very close to the one you guess people will use while searching on Google, it’s bingo time. For example, I verified that the format “X vs Y” for hot products of the moment is definitely a winning choice. My post “Apple iPhone vs Nokia N95” has been the daily most read post for many months and it’s still in the daily top 10. Moreover, make sure you have the latest plugins to manage SEO installed. In my Wordpress installation I use “All in One Seo Plugin” and it’s working very well, in particular for the so called “title tags“.

2) Spread the word everywhere. Make sure that any social netowork you are subscribed to is notified as soon as your post is published. Make sure an automatic Tweet is posted as well as your Facebook status, for instance. Many people come to my blog by just clicking on the URL shown in my FB status. Sometimes this leads to a massive burst of visits but doesn’t make your blog sticky. If you care about a certain post more than others, update your status on social networks like Twitter, Linkedin and Plaxo with a link to your post and every hour make sure to update your status with the same message… I can assure it brings an interesting amount of visits (taking for granted you have many contacts in those networks…).

3) Engage people who leave comments to your post. Starting a discussion about your post is always a very good way to keep the visitors’ attention very high. In addition, try to involve people sending emails to a couple of key bloggers trying to make them refer to your post in their own blog posts.

Bonus - 4) Blog about something hot. In times when people are searching for specific information on Google (new hot products announcements etc.), make sure you blogged about that (if it fits with your blog subjects and guidelines, of course). It can quickly become a popular post and you couldn’t ever imagine it could happen.

There is nothing really new in the tips above but I guess many new bloggers don’t really pay attention to the #1 which, in my opinion, is the most important. Do you have other tips to share? Leave a comment!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, luca filigheddu

I apologize if I’m not that responsive in getting back to you or if I don’t promptly follow up on news that you send me. I’m just at home on “vacation”… Well, not really, since my wife is working in this period and I stay at home with my sons… 21 months and 2 months old… Available time is close to 0, sorry.

I’ll try to catch up as soon as possible…

Technorati Tags: Blogging, luca filigheddu, vacation

My blog hit Techmeme, as the main source of news, not less than 3 or 4 times. Last one yesterday, thanks to the announcement of the iPhone giveaway taking place on Hictu.com.

Today I noticed that my blog has not been listed on Techmeme in regards of the BT - Ribbit deal, even if my blog has been the first to post about it. I’m usually late on news, but I thought it was a great news for the VoIP community and an important confirmation of the rumor of the past weeks.

Despite this, it was not enough, since I linked to the press release which appeared on the Financial Times, maybe not a relevant source of information for Techmeme.

So, even if you are the first to post an important news like that, it seems that if you don’t link to a “trusted” source of news according to Techmeme (according to the Techmeme Leaderboard), you won’t appear. If I would have linked to one of the blogs which appear on Techmeme now, I do believe I would have appeared as well (everyone there posted after my post)

So, what’s there behind the Techmeme’s algorithm? Gabe, any comment on this? I really would like to get your opinion and information about this.

Here is another interesting post about this subject. Mine wants to be just an example, I wonder how many cases like this occur i.e. how many news/comments you loose.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, gabe rivera, luca filigheddu, techmeme

I’m happy to announce that Hictu, the first video micro blogging service launched on June 2007, has been released today with a new and improved version 2.0.

This new Hictu brings a ton of new features to end users plus a major restyling aimed to improve the overall user experience of the “video conversation”. A main video strip has been added on top of the main page where different videos from different Hictuans appear randomly.

In addition to that, we think that with Hictu it’s very important that any user could see it in a different way and use it according to their feelings. For this reason, there are different Hictu home pages, representing different ways to see Hictu and to use it.

For example, Hictu can become your speaker’s corner as well as a way to declare your darkest vices or brightest passions, or maybe to tell the world your view about the meaning of life… what does really matter for you? Tell us through a video on Hictu and look at people who join the conversation and leave video comments to your video. It’s gonna be fun.

Speaking about features, I would like to give you a brief overview on what’s new here. First of all, the posting interface has been optimized and you can now easily choose what kind of post you want to publish, whether it’s text only, audio, video from your webcam or a video taken from YouTube or Google Video.

In addition, the mood has been added. You can reinforce your post with a nice icon representing you mood, something related to important concepts like “rich presence”, additional information on your status, more than the post only.

Features like the Twitter cross-posting and the Jajah calling capability are always there. You can easily configure those services from the “Settings” tab. You can also import your Twitter friends and send them messages directly from within Hictu.

An interesting feature is the ability to add video comments to your blog or website. You can configure and customize your Hictu widget from the Widget tab and insert the generated code directly on your site. People will be able to write comments, post videos and so on, even if they are not registered to Hictu.

A new specific plugin for Wordpress is available too, in order to make the integration with the most popular blogging platform as easy as possible. Think of leaving realtime video comments as well as YouTube or Google videos. You will face a completely new experience and definitely expand the audience of the conversations taking place on your blog, since everything will be public on a specific channel on Hictu too. This means that also people not visiting your blog can join the conversation and their comments will appear on your blog too (for those who are familiar with that, something similar to what happens with services like disqus). Expect bugs… But we will solve them immediately

This is how the conversation looks like on my Wordpress blog posts:

and here the same on Hictu:

I was forgetting: to join Hictu 2, you need to get an invite from people who are already registered. Sign up is currently closed and will be kept closed for now. If you need an invite, just leave a comment to this post and I’ll send you one.

Do you want more and you are a developer? A comprehensive set of APIs is now available to developers to integrate Hictu in 3rd party services or applications. You can post videos from other applications or even create mobile applications to send videos directly to your Hictu account. To get more information, just send an email to api@hictu.com.

Another important thing, the last one, something that I really care, is that Hictu has been built by a bunch of engineers and developers that we are very proud of

Technorati Tags: Blogging, hictu, luca filigheddu, micro video blogging, microblogging, video comments, video conversation, wordpress, wordpress video comments

Some thoughts of Andy Abramson about blogging and transparency. Worth a read.

Technorati Tags: andy abramson, Blogging, luca filigheddu

I’m noticing that when I use an offline blog posting editor like Ecto for Mac, I write much more than when I use the Wordpress 2.5 web based editor.

I have to say that the WP editor is really fantastic, they did a great job with that and I’ve been using that since the official release of WP 2.5, but at the end of the day the offline editor, with all the useful shortcuts that I can use, make me much more productive.

Is anyone experiencing the same?

Technorati Tags: Blogging, ecto 3, luca filigheddu, wordpress 2.5

I’m unsubscribing to any blog which doesn’t provide readers with FULL feed. If your blog is offering a summary only, be aware that I’m not reading it anymore.

Nothing personal, but if I had to jump to any website because I cannot get the full content through RSS, it would be a timesink and my time is much limited. 

If you think giving partial feeds is good for you, please read here, here or here. You are likely to change your mind.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, luca filigheddu