Over the last 6 years I was the proud owner of the XPS600 but yesterday I went to load it and the PC wouldn’t load or boot it kept shutting down on me.
I started replacing parts like the video card, hard drive, cd and dvd rom but nothing worked. I did some research online and it turns out this is a known issue for my pc where these caps blow out and my mother board dies.
So here I am with 2, 22 inch hdtv screens, 500 gigs, 4 gigs ddr2 ram 2, 256 SLI 7600 Gforce vid cards and no mother board. I talked with the IT guys here in our company and due to the age of my P4 3.2 gig processor I was best of looking at buying something new.
Like a kid in a candy store look out I’m on a shopping spree. There’s not many things I like to have the best of in life but when it comes to technology I’m the biggest geek you’re ever going to meet. I like fast computers as you can tell from my last purchase. That XPS600 was the bomb in it’s day.
So the question of the day is what did I end up buying. After doing research online I wanted to buy something that would give me speed, performance and the power to run some good games if I ever felt like gaming again. To be honest ever since I owned blog engage I haven’t done any gaming at all and my priorities have totally changed.
I’ve been a customer of Dell now for over 6 years. I must admit it was rocky at first with the XPS support just being createdand all but after about a year the support was simply amazing. Yes communication issues are still in affect but Dell is very good for fixing your issues even if it means sending a tech professional to your home. I never had many issues but at one point I did have a tech come and see me with zero cost.
Seeing the overall positive experience I had I decided to buy another dell product. Mind you I’m getting married in august so I couldn’t spend too much without getting killed. Seeing I have the monitors I could save myself some pretty decent money. After looking at what Dell had to offer I decided to go with the following.
STUDIO XPS 9000
Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz), 64bit, 6GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz – 6 DIMMs 750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive, ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5.
Over the last two years I have written many articles regarding blog engage. More specifically I always tried to teach our members how to market using blog engage to benefit them and their blog the most.
Today I’m going to bring you one the largest articles ever written on blog engage and how to use it to your advantage as a blog marketer. I’m a big fan of marketing and social media as you all know and perhaps this is what has made blog engage so successful.
First I want to make sure everyone understand the point of blog engage. The idea of our community is so basic sometimes people look for something that isn’t there.
“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.”
So in general you submit your articles daily as your write them and if our members like it they will vote for you. When you receive enough votes (always changing) your story will be published by me or our soon to be power users to the front page. If your story doesn’t get enough votes it remains on the upcoming age until it does.
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 they 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 makes it’s easy for you to socially share with other bloggers and it’s at the convenience of once direct place. See the image below as I circled the share this button.
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 trying to use a forum to promote and advertise your blogs it’s of most importance to remain professional and to promote using the appropriate forums. Today I want to discuss how we can use the blog engage blog forum to our advantage when marketing or promoting our professional or personal blogs.
When done correctly this forum can provide a decent amount of web traffic. If you post the correct questions leaving a link back to your blog our visitors will normally follow. Hence building back links and generating web traffic.
This is an amazing section to increase you web traffic. This is a free opportunity to introduce your blog to our members. Don’t be shy come and visit the forum to show off your log.
Asking for a blog review really is an amazing way to get traffic to your blog. In order for people to say what they think they have to visit your site.
The Blog Engage Chat can be used to post your most recent blog articles or to simply say hello to our members. We sue to have the chat displayed on the forum index but found it took away from the main forum activities so we moved it to it’s own page.
Depending on how much time you have to market your blog social networking websites geared towards bloggers might be for you. See what happens here is a social website specific to a bloggers allows you to pick and chose the blogs you want to comment on individually and or by category.
Building quality comments on blogs can generate you free traffic and develop relationships with other bloggers. Adding a useful comment to another bloggers blog has been found to be the most unique and targeted way to make a scene in the industry.
Where do I find new articles?
I welcome you all to a social network that I started specifically for bloggers, Blog Engage. What happens here is you can sort by so many ways and this allows you to target your traffic and blogs you comment on.
Don’t find yourself posting comments on out dated and dead blogs. Simply visit our website and you can sort by category or newest to oldest. This ensure the blog articles you read are new and again relevant to your niche market.
You can sort the blogs by accessing this section of the main website.
The sort functionality allows you to see and easily link to the most popular for the year, month, or week and allows you to see what’s hot right now and what’s new. The social networking part of this allows you to stay into contact with fellow bloggers, vote for each other and demonstrate how loyal of a reader you are.
What blogs should you comment on?
There are 2 main factors when determining what blogs you should be commenting on. For one you need to look at your interests. The comments you leave should be useful and therefore should be something you have an interest in. Secondly you should comment on blogs within your blogs niche. This way if anyone follows your comment url you can ensure it’s relevant and the follower will be interested in what you’re writing as well.
3 Rules of Engagement!
1. Don’t post worthless comments. Ensure you have quality information and you are adding to the topic and not taking away from it.
2. Leave positive feedback regarding the topic and what other bloggers have written as comments. Try to engage everyone into your comment.
3. Don’t make controversy unless you know for sure what your saying is true! There’s nothing worse then being wrong on your own blog.
We will review your account and upgrade it so you can write for the blog
Write your post, save it and it will be reviewed and published
Market your blog and yourself. Every blogger gets an about him or her section at the end of each article. Your name is a link back to your blog.
Allowed Links, Twitter, linkedin, facebook, etc…
Introduce yourself to the community – New to blog engage and feel lost? Take this opportunity to introduce yourself and your blog to our community. tell us a little about your interested, blogging habits and more.
Promote your blog engage group – Have a group created but don’t know how to advertise it? Trying to get more bloggers with similar interests in your group This is the perfect way. guest blog about your group, introduce it to our members and invite them to join.
Exposure for your blog – Maybe you just started your blog and your looking to get word out about it. Guest blogging is a great way to tell a larger established group of readers as your post will usually include a plug about yourself and your blog. Just be sure you are guest blogging on a blog that relates to your own blog.
Exposure for yourself – Maybe your interested in getting your freelance writing skills notice, or your knowledge on a specific topic. Like I mentioned in your plug you can introduce yourself and give a way for others to get in touch with you.
A link back to your own blog – It is generally acceptable to include a link back to an article you wrote previously on your blog as long as it fits in the article and offers the reader value. At the very least your plug will include a link back to your blog offering you another valuable incoming link.
Our marketing Videos
Some information is out dated but still worth watching.
I know it’s going to take sometime in order to accomplish all of what I ask but I must admit we have had such a strong and positive start it looks good from here on out.
I know it’s hard to keep up with everything that is going on with blog engage because you all have your own blogs but it’s really important we try and stay connected to fully understand the purpose behind our internal changes.
Today’s article is going to be a very basic reminder or even update to some of the changes that are happening within the community. These changes help and benefit all our members and will only make our community stronger and smarter than the rest.
I know we have already had questions on how the voting works and why stories aren’t going to the front page after 10 votes. Hopefully this article will answer all your questions. I no longer guarantee an article will be published based on votes and it will never be that way again.
What’s taken into consideration when publishing articles?
Total amount of votes
Community participation (votes, comments)
Article submissions V.S total votes for others
Website design
Quality of the content
Updated profile picture and data
Main reasons your article didn’t get published
No Blog Engage Image
Duplicate content
Poor Design
Pop up ads
More ads then content
Little or no content within the article
Website name in story title
No updated profile or profile picture
How to improve on this?
Add the blog engage image
Consider changing your current template
Remove some ads
Write more characters within your article
Remove website name in story title
To ensure the quality of content I make all bloggers pass these minimum expectations. If you do not pass your content will remain on the upcoming page until promoted by our members over time and or manually removed from our website.
Your account will not be deleted.
I get a lot of questions about inactivity and inconsistent blogging habits. It seems many of our members are afraid their account will be removed if they are not active. This is incorrect and your account will NOT be removed for inactivity.
If you are active you must vote for other bloggers. If you haven’t logged in for a month or more you don’t have to worry about being deleted. I’m also asking active members that are submitting their articles to vote for other bloggers and to be active.
Rule #1
At minimum you must vote for the three times the amount of articles you submit. If you do not follow this rule from here on out as mentioned your account will be deleted and banned. So if you submit 1 article you must vote for three others.
Rule #2
I’m asking our members to start removing their blog or website names from the story titles when submitting to the website. I know this will take some time getting used to so please try and remember.
Please ask any questions you have here and I will update this article with the answers. Let’s work together and make blog engage the best online social media marketing community on the web. I don’t see why we cannot accomplish this.
It’s us who make this community work, it’s us that vote for each other. Let’s make blog engage better for each other.
Thank to everyone for your dedication and commitment to our social network. Please help us promote by proudly adding the blog engage image in your sidebar.
Over the past two years I can say without doubt we have seen some amazing articles regarding SEO, Search Engine Optimization submitted to blogengage.
I was looking in that specific niche this morning and decided I wanted to see what articles were the most popular over the past two years.
The top articles within that niche are very competitive seeing SEO is an extremely popular topic amongst our members here within the blog engage community and in general within the blogosphere.
We have some very talented bloggers posting their tips and tricks they have learned over many years of blogging and SEO research.
Today I would like to share these articles within one nice central location that brings all the best of our SEO articles into on topic. I link directly to all the article so if you have time please visit and comment. Give some feedback and who knows you may just end up learning something.
Take our time and have a look over all of these articles. You will find many tips and tricks needed to rank high in the search engines. All of these articles are written by members here in the blog engage community so please do support the cause. If you can post a comment, tweet the story and vote for it here on blog engage.
SEO is hard and without the proper articles to read who knows if your’e doing it correctly. Take advantage of these great articles and make your blog rank better within the major search engines.
Thank to everyone for your dedication and commitment to our social network. Please help us promote by proudly adding the blog engage image in your sidebar.
Everyday I awake the first thing I think about is blog engage. One of the most exciting elements of blog engage is the unknown regarding the content that will be submitted and has been submitted.
I look forward to reading your blog articles everyday. I’m anxious to see what awaits my attention in the blog engage community.
I think we have an amazing community of bloggers here and when I visit the first three of four pages of upcoming articles it’s proven to me time and time again.
I open 5 or 6 stories at a time in Firefox’s tabs and look at each and every article that is submitted into our community. Even if I know the blogger is of good quality I still go and visit their website. I enjoy doing it and in fact I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I’ve learned how to blog from many of the members here in our community. I watch you grow and learn from their mistakes and from the success and achievements. Without you our blogging members I would have never started blogging.
I never knew blogging was so big before I started blog engage. Over the past two years I have realized more and more people blog. I even found out that people I knew in my day to day life actually blogged.
I must admit at times I feel like giving up. I’m the type of person that needs other people’s involvement to make it all worth while. Perhaps this is something you never knew about me. When I write an article I like to get feedback. Everything I do here at blog engage I do for you guys.
I’ll tell you what keeps me going and it’s When I read blog engage articles written by our members. I know I’m helping people come together, perhaps even making something unique happen in the blogosphere. I love this community we have developed and I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback regarding it.
I know at times I can be demanding but you have to understand it’s only to better the community and has had nothing to do with you personally. Please be patient with me, don’t take anything personal just work with me to help make blog engage a better place to promote for all bloggers.
If I offended you during the past two years of our operations I’m sorry. In no way was this my intention. You have to understand it’s not east successfully running a social network, blog, career and personal life. I would like to welcome you back, I would like to offer you a personal invitation back into our community.
As each day passes we learn from our mistakes and we try to make a better tomorrow. This is what I do each and every day here at blog engage and that is why I believe we have only gotten stronger and larger as a community.
Thank to everyone for your dedication and commitment to our social network. Please help us promote by proudly adding the blog engage image in your sidebar.
What a better way to push into the rest of the week with an article stating the top 5 reasons you’re not making money with your blog.
I know we are all trying to at minimum cover the costs of our websites. This can be associated hosting, design, marketing and other costs that come with owning and maintaining our blogs.
Let’s face it were not all John Chows and Darren Rowse’s and were not making close to what these guys are claiming to generate as incomes on their blogs.
One thing I can promise however is to help you figure out why you’re not making money with your blog and suggest ways you can fix this.
Not enough blog traffic
Let’s face the facts about making money online. In order to generate high income we need traffic everyone. The more traffic your blog has the more money you’re going to make. What we need to look at is how we can increase your blog traffic and in return increase our overall earnings from your blog.
Social Networking
Article Submission
Forum Marketing
Paid Advertising
Building Relationships
Increasing the amount of visitors you get to your blog will also increase your over all earnings you generate. You must increase that blog traffic. So start marketing your little heart out and try to get that traffic up. Seriously this is the number one key to making good money from blogging.
Ad Placement
Placing your ads is more important then you could ever imagine. I know it sounds odd but having your add in the face of your visitor is so important. How else are you going to grab their attention. Above topic titles, headers and top sidebar locations are the key to increasing the income earned from your blog.
Search Engine Optimization
I know may of you already do this but perhaps some people don’t. You have to optimize your website for Search Engines. This will not only increase your traffic but increase your overall earnings and CTR (Click through Ratio). When visitors land on your blog from a Search Engine Google is smart enough to target ads specific to their search terms and your page’s content.
Marketing and Promotion
Similar to the first reason your’e blog wasn’t making money Marketing and Promotion is very important. This is more specific to your marketing activities as opposed to where you want to market. You must get out and market your blog. Submitting your articles to sites like blog engage, digg, reddit, or any other community that brings in traffic is so important.
I also suggest offline marketing. If you can buy t-shirts, car stickers or business cards just do it. Every little effort you make to market and promote yourself will increase your overall income generated from your blog.
To Many Ads
Take a look at your blog and examine your current ad placements. Perhaps the reason you’re not making money is because the blog is just to busy. You have to bring attention to your ad placement. When you have to much going on people simply dismiss the ad read the content and leave your site.
So go look at your blog and ask yourself; if I was to visit this site would I see that ad or would I be too distracted? If you think you might be distracted even for one second I’m guessing it’s a 100 percent chance your guest or visitor will be also. Take out some of your ads and try to focus more on your main add placement.
Have any other advice or suggestions let us know by commenting below.
As blog engage continues to grow we have to remember without the help and dedication of our members we wouldn’t be where we are today.
I have spent many days and nights marketing and promoting blog engage trying to encourage bloggers to join, submit and engage with other bloggers.
To be truly successful we need the help and support of all our blogging members. We need you to tell your friends about us, we need you to help market and promote. I’m not asking for much simply a suggestion to your blogging friends to check out our community or perhaps even a simple blog article about out community.
I work hard to ensure the quality of content within our website. We have a lot of great bloggers and members that share content daily. Helping blog engage market and promote is like helping your friends market and promote.
All members have the ability to invite friends. You simply click the link on the main page and upcoming page that says, Invite your blogging friends to our community. That will take you to a page where you enter their e-mail for the final registration process and set up.
So if you know anyone within your specific niche and would like to invite them please do so. We are always interested in new meeting new members.
Let your friends know on twitter that you have blog engage invites to any blogger that is interested in joining. If you’ve been a member for more then 2 years and haven’t blogged about us I think it’s about time. We need our stronger bloggers to step up and let their readers know about blog engage and how beneficial it is for bloggers to john us.
Write a blog article – Tell your blog readers why you enjoy blog engage. Let them know the benefits of using our community. Describe to them why you joined and perhaps a reasoning for them to join as well.
You most likely disagree with the title of this post. You’re ready to argue that social media is only just beginning. But bear with me and hear me out… the end of social media as a singular disicpline is coming to an end.
Currently conversations about social media often miss the bigger picture. We talk about the tools, the strategies, and the viral nature of social media marketing. What we’re missing is the fact that all media is becoming social.
We have a Nintendo Wii at home. We also have a disc from Netflix that we can pop into our Wii and stream movies instantly. As I was browsing the titles, I noticed that they had been rated by other users and that I was able to rate them too. So the technology is cool, but the social nature of it is even cooler. I’m watching movies recommended by other people, and I’m recommending movies myself. And this is only the beginning.
The world has seen a couple of revolutionary moments when it comes to the sharing of ideas, but three stand out as epochal and pivotal developments.
The invention of print media with the printing press.
The invention of mass media with radio and television.
The socialization of the web.
The reason I skipped over the invention of the internet itself is that when websites first started going live, they were essentially just another form of mass media, like radio or television, but more accessible. But the phenomenon of social media, however, is taking us forward and backward at the same time.
Social media is a reversion back to the days when word-of-mouth was the only way to spread news, before newspapers existed. It’s also a surge forward into the future and our ability to map connections and relationships between people, creating introductions to new ideas that could never exist before.
Social media is about to come to and end. That doesn’t mean your marketing or blogging career is over, but rather will be more enhanced since you’re obviously an early adopter. Just be ready for the shift when everyone catches on to what you already know. Media is best shared socially.
For the last 9 years I have been in love with the most amazing woman. We have never been able to get married due to financial restrictions. When I was working Elizabeth was in University, when she started working I returned to College.
You can imagine times were tough and we didn’t have much money. Finally we have both completed our education and will be getting married August 6th 2010. I wanted to share this great news with all our members.
We are accepting any donations that blog engage members would like to contribute. I figured since we had such an amazing community they would probably like to help us afford this amazing day. Hey let’s face it I have known many of you now for more then 2 years.
Contributions are not mandatory in anyway and would be out of respect fro myself and my fiance. This would help us pay for this great event without stress or other worries that come with getting married.
Anyone that contributes to our wedding ceremonies and includes their postal address will be sent a formal invitation to this most exciting event.
I send a big thank you out to all the members that will be helping us on this amazingly great day. I know many of you personally and have considered you all as friends.
Holly Jahangiri (59)
bbrian017 (33)
Abhi Balani (26)
Kris Edison (21)
kirapermunian (18)
dragonblogger (16)
Hajra (15)
Andreea Fanita (6)
Lennart Heleander (6)
Mariam Cisse (6)