Here’s a successful example of one of my Seeds:

I wrote a seed called Why do you Write? and linked it to my article Why Write on 07 December 2010.  Since planting the seed I’ve already had two buzzes from Chris on his blog Wisdom and Life who wrote the article What’s With the Writing Thing? and from Chrystal on her blog The Self Employed Writer who wrote the article Why I Write.  Chrystal also kindly left a nice comment under my article Why Write.

How does it work and what will it cost me?

Each month you’re given 2 seeds to plant for free, but you can earn an extra seed for every time you buzz two other seeds, i.e. write an article on two other topics and buzz them on the Seededbuzz website. You do also have the option to upgrade to paid subscriptions where you can plant more seeds per month, or do a pay as you go and buy seeds when you need them.  However, (and it’s a big one), the real benefit of using Seededbuzz is the reciprocal nature of the buzzing, after all that’s what everyone wants.  So if you don’t buzz anyone else’s seeds you may find that they cease to buzz yours.  It’s very much a give and take philosophy.

Can anyone join and what do I have to do?

Anyone can join provided you have an active blog, which you regularly update.  NB, the Seededbuzz team will check out your blog before your account is approved.  To register for an account simply visit the Seededbuzz website, enter the brief personal details and blog information requested, sit back and wait for the team to approve your account and then you are ready to go with planting your seeds and buzzing others.

So what good is all this seed planting and buzzing?

Well, simply put Seededbuzz is a great promotion tool for your blog, it:

1. helps to increase traffic to your blog
2. helps you to appear on more searches and social networking references as you’re article is being promoted on other people’s blogs and social networks as well as your own
3. helps to increase the number of comments on your blog
4. helps to increase the number of followers of your blog
5. you get to meet like minded bloggers and share ideas and content together

Another function of Seededbuzz that I haven’t explored is the idea of writing a guest post for another blog, or inviting someone to write a guest post on mine.

Tips for getting more buzzes and standing out from the crowd

Your seeds will have to compete with all the others getting written out there; so here’s a few basic tips to make yours stand out from the crowd.

• Keep it short and sweet – when writing your seed keep it short and sweet, don’t waffle, people are notoriously lazy readers online!
• Get to the point – Make sure what you are asking bloggers to write about is clear and written as early as possible in your seed.
• Ask questions on your seed – Pose some questions to bloggers viewing your seed, get them thinking and hopefully contemplating the blog post that they will buzz your seed with!
• Don’t be too specific – Choose topics that have a wide range of avenues for bloggers to write about, e.g. post a seed about baking rather than baking chocolate sponge cake.  The wider the topic the more likely you are to get a buzz.
• Be original – Look at all the latest seeds, try not to plant a seed that is too similar to an existing one, or at the very least find a new angle on the topic to come from.
• Write about things with broad appeal – Choose topics that a lot of people will have an interest in, e.g. reading, writing, photography, baking, etc.  Worm collecting might be dear to your heart, but it might not get that many buzzes!
• Write what you know – Try to write from a position of knowledge and experience, this will make your seed and blog article more interesting to readers and increase the likelihood of your seed being buzzed, your article getting comments and your blog gaining followers.
• Be clear and concise – Keep your waffle to a minimum, ensure your seed is easy to understand and potential bloggers know what you are asking of them.
• Presentation is key – In your seed and more importantly your blog articles it is important to have good presentation and page layout.  Keep away from lengthy sentences and paragraphs, use bullet points, headings and imagery to break up the blocks of text.  Remember People are put off by large blocks of unbroken text on a screen and may find it difficult or impossible to read.

Time to Buzz Off!

Well I think that’s enough of a free plug for Seededbuzz today, I hope to see more people joining up with Seededbuzz soon.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Wealie x

With a strong community of followers a blog and website thrives and allows you to make it work as an effective mode of communication for your personal and business needs and to allow it to pay for itself through sponsorship and advertising and/or selling your products and services to a wide audience.

So, with this in mind I’ve been busy getting Wealie’s World onto some of the key blog directories: blogcatalog, blogged, blogger, and MyBlogLog.  I’ve also been further linking the website with my key social media channels: Facebook through the NetworkedBlogs App, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and many more.

In the human body, it is the interconnection of the veins and nervous system that let the key organs do their job and interact, the same principle can be applied to your key communication channels, with the linking and promotion being the veins and nervous system.  In order for all our different on-line and social media channels to work effectively and in conjunction we need to effectively promote and link them together.  By linking all our channels together we create a virtual communications network that can tap into all the diverse communities available to us and take advantage of a truly wide demographic.

There are also pitfalls to not connecting together our virtual comms network, with so many potential avenues of communication available to us, we need to ensure that we effectively manage and control the information and messages we are disseminating from the different channels.  Without the bigger picture we cannot ensure that we do not communicate at cross purposes with ourselves, or worse contradict ourselves.  For example there’s always the chance that we will forget to update certain channels and the information contained on it will be out of date.

It’s very easy to sign up with lots of different social media accounts (I’ve done so today with the blogging resources), but if you don’t update and manage them all, they can work against you, just like the website that is out of date by 3 – 6 months can.  By linking accounts and channels together we can minimise the number of times you have to enter information into systems to update your channels, e.g. By linking your YouTube account to update both Twitter and Facebook when you complete certain actions like when you favourite a video, or upload new content automatically means you are just putting in the information once to  YouTube, but a status update will appear on Facebook and a tweet on Twitter.

And last, but by no means least, we must not forget our traditional forms of communication, we still meet face to face with individuals, word of mouth is as important as ever and paper communications are still a reality in our daily lives.  Make sure that all your business literature has the key social media sites and your website address clearly displayed upon them, e.g. the business card and headed paper.  Ensure that your email signature has direct links as well.  When you’re speaking with colleagues, business partners and customers, take a moment to remind them of the different ways they can keep in touch with you on and off line.

Happy communicating!

Wealie