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Liz Strauss gave a masterclass tonight; at least, that’s how it felt to both Frederick and myself. We talked about communicating with your audience, and Liz shared some experiences about open comment nights. We discussed positioning yourself and your blog, and how important personal branding can be.
She told us about feedback loops, and how to use them to listen to your users / clients / audience. She tought us to build our network before we need it, and why and how you should be treating your blog like a business, even if it’s just a hobby. Aren’t you curious yet? Start listening then. You’ll be a wiser man or woman for it at the end of this.
Posted in Podcast | Tagged Liz Strauss, SOBcon | Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Collis Ta’eed is a veteran blogger and co-founded the Envato network of educational sites and marketplaces covering niches like freelancing and web app’s and much much more. Collis’ network of sites reaches hundreds of thousands of readers monthly, his marketplaces are responsible for enormous amounts of income for developers the world over and his tutorial sites are the hallmark how-to repository for much of the web community.
Collis joined us today to share with us the mechanics of growing initial traffic to your blog, differentiating yourself in the market and monetizing your blog. Listen in to learn more about how to go from freelancer to business owner.
In the news:
Plugin picks of the week:
Posted in Podcast | Tagged envato | Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this second part of our interview with Matt (you have listened to the first part, right?), we discuss VaultPress; Automattic’s new backup system. Matt explains the features, pricing. Going from that we discussed hosting and their uptimes.
Then the discussion shifted to the community, and how that’s built. We discussed how to get core commit access, and how Matt’s multiple roles within the community could collide. We got talking about how WordPress got where it came, how good product development is also good marketing, WordCamps around the world, how giving support helps you make better products etc. etc. etc. Best quote: Matt & Automattic are happy plumbers of the web 
If you’re into WordPress, just listen to it live here, or download it to your iPod.
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Joost and Frederick interview the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, talking about loads of things. The entire interview was split in 2 because it was a bit lengthy, so you’ll hear part 2 next week.
In this part we discussed the ’3.org’ project: fixing everything about WordPress that is not WordPress itself, so we discussed WordPress profiles (check Joost’s here) and how they want to integrate those with WordCamps and some of the new APIs that the team is developing and improving. We also touched on what happens / is going to happen to orphaned plugins.
Then going on we discussed the Automattic product line, and where the focus of the 50+ people at Automattic is at the moment, WordCamps and even what’ll be (or might be) in WordPress 3.1, so go on, and have a listen now!
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Matt Cutts is a Software Engineer who heads the web spam team at Google. Matt has been using WordPress for years and feels WordPress makes search engine optimization easier and easier with each update. On today’s show he highlights the fundamental principles of success for blogging with WordPress. And addresses questions like:
- How do I get started?
- What tools do I need?
- Why choose WordPress?
- Which WordPress plugins do I need?
- Do meta tags matter?
- How do I know what content readers want?
- How do I generate unique content – the way Google wants it?
- What about duplicate content?
- Have I been banned or penalized? Why haven’t I been indexed?
- Do 301 (permanent) redirects “lose” any page rank?
Want more? Matt promised to return in the future to tackle more of your questions sometime after his trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro. Meanwhile check out lots of helpful videos on YouTube.
Posted in Podcast | Tagged Google, SEO | 
