Photo courtesy cnmark on Flickr.com.

Why does the timing of a blog post depend on various or different factors? The best results of your blog post will depend on your definition of success. What is your goal for the blog post? Why are you writing this article, this content, and posting it on your web site’s blog? If you haven’t already, you first need to determine why you’re posting this blog post. I realize that there really is a chance that you are blogging just because you want to blog, but nowadays I would say that about only 3 percent of blogs actually contain blog posts just because someone “wanted to blog”. That leaves about 97 percent of us who have another goal: to gain more traffic and visitors to our web sites (or our blogs), and ultimately convert those visitors somehow. You want to convert your blog’s visitors into:

– buyers of your product or service
– regular readers of your blog

After all, that’s logical. You want to reach out to as many people as you can ultimately interact with them somehow. You want to reach out to people who have not heard of you or your company before. But when is the best time to post a blog post so that you get the maximum benefit of posting that blog post? Again, it really depends on your ultimate goal and the actual content of the blog post.

Breaking News – You do not have to be a “news agency” to post “breaking news” on your blog. If there is a news item in your industry that is important and people will talk about it, then immediately post it on your blog. Make a blog post about it and then, if necessary, go back and edit it again (and even more than once) if necessary. I cannot tell you how many times I have benefited (right here with this blog) from posting something that was newsworthy that people in my industry care about. By posting quickly and getting the word out (by using social media sites), others will notice and they will link to your blog post. Your blog post will rank well in the search engines (hopefully), and people will Tweet about it, Share it on Facebook, and even write blog posts about the topic and link to your blog post. The best time to post about breaking news is immediately. Do not wait until you have written a “perfect article” about the subject, it will be too late. For breaking news in your industry, there is no “best time” except for “5 minutes ago”.

One additional benefit for posting breaking news quickly is that your blog post could show up in areas like Google Trends, which will bring traffic to your web site both directly from Google Trends but also from the search engine itself: you could rank well for a highly searched-for keyword phrase.

Company Announcements – When you make official company announcements, you first need to coordinate them with your PR (public relations) agency. Usually the best time to make an official blog post is right before your press release goes out. I would say that you would want to post it a few minutes or even a few hours (or up to an hour) before your press release is distributed. Why? Most likely you will want to make sure that your blog posts coincides with the press release, and then when people see the press release and then look for the announcement in a search engine you’ll want your blog post indexed. Make sure that you post the blog post before you make the press announcement so that other web sites, when looking for information to link out to, they will find your blog post. Bloggers and media outlets don’t tend to like to link out to press releases unless that’s the only reference out there: and most likely, if they’re writing about the company announcement, someone else will: so make sure that your own blog has information about the topic. That way there is a good chance that others will link to your blog post.

As for a “best day of the week” and “best time” for company announcements, I would tend to follow your PR firm’s lead: usually they are done first thing Monday morning or even Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Friday is generally [b]not[/b] a good day for press. However, if you are looking for another advantage, and you’re rather small, holidays or weekends or even Fridays might be better because they are typically “slow news days”. So, you may want to take that into consideration.

How To Type and Informational Blog posts – If you have a general “informational” or “how to” type of blog post, then most likely you will want to post it around 10:00am or “first thing” in the morning, generally on a Tuesday or Wednesday. In the case of a “how to” type of blog post, it is better to post it in the middle of the week (people are still going through emails first thing Monday morning and not “sharing” stuff on the social networking sites yet). So, for a “how to” type or general “informational” type of blog post, posting it when people are most likely to read it or come across it is the best time. When you make a blog post, I recommend immediately sharing it with others on as many social bookmarking and social networking web sites as you can. If you are able to do that (or have someone do it for you), then you are at an advantage: the search engines generally will pick up your blog post fairly quickly and rank it well: and when it ranks well there is a good chance that others looking for similar content will link to it or share it with others when they see it.

Also, if your blog posts mentions a company (or your company) by name in the title or prominently in the blost post, the blog post may end up ranking well for that company name: and it will show up in the “recent blog posts” area on Google Finance. You may receive additional traffic to your blog post (and maybe some more links) if you show up in Google Finance.

So, the best time to post “how to” and informational blog posts is going to be mid-week, during the day.

When not to post a blog post?
There are several times, if you will, when you should not post a blog post. I generally recommend promoting your blog post (in some way), like tweeting on Twitter about it. Tell your Twitter followers that you just posted a blog post. Hopefully by now you’ve linked your social media accounts together, like linking your Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, blog feed, and other accounts together. If you are not in a position to immediately help promote your blog post once it’s posted (start promoting it with 4 hours), then I wouldn’t make a blog post and then go home for the weekend.

If you have an important company announcement, then I would not post it over the weekend or on a Friday or even at the close of the business day. Unless, of course, you have some sort of need to wait until the stock market closes or some other company financial reason.

There are good times to make a blog post and then there are bad times to make a blog post. I have literally posted thousands of blog posts over the past several years and, by trial and error, I’ve learned that you should not write a great blog post and then post it on a Friday afternoon. No one will be around to read it and start helping you spread the word about it. And, nowadays, writing the blog post is only half the battle. To be successful, you have to promote it.

What’s more important here, though, this is the first time that FTC rules have covered bloggers. This is significant because the US Government is actually acknowledging bloggers as being a source of information that apparently needs guidelines. It’s another step in the “acceptance” of blogging and blogs–which is a good thing.

Here is some information from their press release:

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

While this is certainly news to bloggers and an interesting turn of events, it is important to note that the Federal Trade Commission did NOT say “how” bloggers must disclose the fact that they have received a freebie or a payment. So, if you are a blogger, then you might want to read my post about the different ways that you can disclose that it it is a paid post (without actually saying that it’s a paid blog post).

The Federal Trade Commission says that their commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines. What is important to note is that these are guidelines:

The Guides are administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves. In any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.

Penalties are actually rather steep in nature, the fines for not disclosing paid posts are now up to $11,000 in fines per violation.

The rules take effect December 1st, 2009.

What is not immediately apparent to me is whether or not older blog posts are included in these requirements.

As a blogger, online marketer, writer, and a shameless self-promoter, I am always on the hunt for content and ideas for creating online content. I totally agree with whoever coined the phrase, “content is king”. I have to admit that sometimes I get writer’s block or, as I like to call it, “promoter’s block”. Whatever you call it, sometimes you just need a place to start, a place to enter a keyword phrase to get started. I finally found that place, called KeywordSmash!, a free keyword research tool that lets you search every major online keyword research and content source you could imagine. And yes, it’s completely free to use.

KeywordSmash is pretty simple to use. Enter a keyword phrase and it lets you choose a category, such as:
- Offers (sites where you can make money)
- Keywords (keyword research websites)
- Trends (what people are talking about)
- Demographics (Google Insights, Compete.com, Alexa data, etc.)
- Ads (pay per click ads)
- Social Media Sites (what people are talking about on the social media sites)
- News (Google news, Yahoo! news, etc.)
- Discussions (forums, message boards)
- Articles (article sites)
- Images (pretty pictures)
- Video (videos)
- Public Domain (Wikipedia content, US Gov content, Creative Commons)

After you pick a source (or several sources), click on the “search” button and it will automatically find content and related content for you from those sources. For example, I recently used the tool to search for the keyword phrase, “search engine optimization”:

I clicked on the “news” button for all of the latest news on search engine optimization. This way, I was able to quickly and easily find all the latest news articles on that topic. If I was writing a blog post or had a blog about search engine optimization, then I would probably mention what’s going on today in the search engine optimization industry.

Let’s take this a bit further, though. Let’s say that we really do have a search engine optimization blog and want to write about that topic. First, go to KeywordSmash! and enter the phrase. You might first click on the News tab and see what people are talking about. You might mention and link out to other news articles. That could be one blog post for your blog, perhaps even a daily blog post. Updating your blog on a regular basis will get readers and the search engines coming back every day for more content.

Next, let’s do some keyword research to find out about other topics that are related to search engine optimization that you could write about. Check the keyword research for the phrase “search engine optimization” and you’ll see what people are searching for. You might even write about one of those keyword phrases that you find, maybe write one article about each keyword phrase.

Trends are also very helpful for content ideas, on KeywordSmash you can search these all at once, with one keyword phrase and one click:
- Google Trends
- Google Insights
- Blogpulse
- Twitter “twist” (this is way cool, especially if you have a Twitter account like I do)
- SEOmoz
- Yahoo! Buzz
- AOL search
- eBay Research Labs

If you look for your keyword phrase, you’ll quickly see what people are really talking about this month, this week, and even today. Certainly if you’re a blogger then you will get plenty of ideas of what to write about (or blog about). Sure, you could go on over to Twitter and look at the “top trends” and write about something, but why not take it one step further and really do some research to see where the traffic is?

If you’re not actually selling something right now (you’re not an online business or you’re not writing for an online business) then you might want to use the “Offers” search at KeywordSmash!, which lets you search for offers from these companies:
- ClickBank
- Pay dot com
- Aff Spy
- Offer Vault
- Associate Programs
- Affiliate First
- Affiliate Scout
- Affiliate Seeking
- Amazon.com

You first have to sign up for these services and become an affiliate to get your affiliate code number or “affiliate ID”, but they’re generally free to sign up. The idea is that you write a blog post (or an article, or put a page on your site) about a keyword phrase or a topic and then you “mention” a related offer that your readers might be interested in. If they click on your link and visit the site and purchase something then you make money. Some bloggers write all day long and include “affiliate offers” in their blog posts, getting you to purchase something so they can make money from their blogs.

However you end up using KeywordSmash!, I’m sure that you’ll find it useful, just like I did. I have a few ways that I’m using it to help me in my daily marketing activities, and I’m sure if you try just one keyword search you’ll be hooked on it just like I am.

Let’s say that you’ve written a great blog post and you want it to “stand out from the crowd” so to speak… and have a chance of other people finding out about it, right? Especially if it’s a very timely blog post with some sort of breaking news or something that you think can “go viral” or get others to link to it and talk about it, maybe even on Twitter.

Along with Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and other social media websites, Google’s blog search can even bring in some great traffic to your blog. And it’s a great source of links: many bloggers use it to find other blog posts to link to when they’re doing their research for a blog post. Did you know that Google recently updated their blog search algorithm? You might take note of something that Google’s Jeremy Hylton recently said: “One important changes is that we’re processing new links much faster, so the post that breaks a story and gets a lot of links is more likely to become the lead story.” So, just like I’ve been saying for a while now, the first to get the marketshare of links is going to be the winner in the long run, not only in blog search but also in the organic search engine rankings.

So, after you’ve written the perfect blog post, here is how to promote the perfect blog post, in several pretty easy steps:

1. Go on over to your Twitter account and tweet about it. Tell others that you’ve just written a new blog post. Tweet something like “New blog post: How to Promote Your Blog Post http://tinyurl.com/r478xa. If you’ll notice, I’ve included a link directly to the blog post. I like to tweet about the new blog post because it’s really kind of a courtesy tweet to all of my followers. If you give them a “heads up” and a link directly to the blog post, there’s a chance that someone might want to submit it to one of the social networking sites.

2. Go to Mixx.com and submit it. It’s important to get your blog post indexed quickly and to get a link to it quickly, as soon as possible after you post your blog post to your blog. I prefer to add it to Mixx because mixx.com is one of the few social bookmarking websites that do not use the “nofollow” tag. Links supposedly “count” there, and the link will get crawled pretty quickly.

3. Make a list of alternative headlines (titles) for your blog post. This is extremely important, especially since Google has been cracking down on duplicate content more and more. They’ve even been looking at the social bookmarking sites. If the same title appears on 12 different social bookmarking sites, with the same exact description, would you count every single site as a link to the blog post? Probably not, it’s a form of duplicate content. I prefer to make at least 5 different titles of the blog post, all of them different than the actual blog post itself. So, for this blog post, here are some possible titles:
Promoting the Perfect Blog Post
Promote Your Blog Post
Promoting a Blog Post
How to Promote Your Blog Post
Promote Your Blog Post after Writing It
Always Promote Your Blog Post

Later on, when you promote your blog post on different social bookmarking sites and mention it to others, you’ll need to make sure that you use a different title or “headline”. You never know which version will catch someone’s eye, and you don’t want to be caught for “duplicate content”.

4. Make a list of alternative descriptions. Just like the title or headline of the blog post, you will need a unique description for your blog post when you submit it to the various social bookmarking sites. You can use an excerpt from your blog post (usually it’s about 2 or 3 sentences long). Make some longer than others, though, and that you’re using different ways to describe your blog post. If you can sum it up in one sentence, that’s great. Some social bookmarking sites let you submit longer descriptions than others, so having a very long one and copying and pasting some of the text and removing other sentences might help. I usually use notepad to write the descriptions, and I always make sure that I am not using “quotes” or ‘apostrophes’ in the description because those characters can get messed up pretty easily.

5. Make a list of appropriate tags. Many social bookmarking sites will allow you to add a few tags to the submission to categorize it. If you’re wanting it to rank well later on for a certain keyword or keyword phrase, then make sure you include that phrase in your list of tags. I prefer to use a few generic ones like “business”, “internet”, and “blogs” and then a specific tag that includes a keyword or keyword phrase.

6. Once you have your list of alternative titles and descriptions, you have a few choices. If you really want the blog post to have a chance of “going viral”, then you need to start working your network. Hopefully before now you’ve networked with several of the top “social nerds” out there, and they hopefully owe you a favor. Contact them and ask them if they wouldn’t mind submitting it to (a specific site). I usually ask different people to submit it to a site. I’ll ask one person to submit it to Digg, someone else to submit it to Reddit, etc.. It’s also very helpful for them if you include the URL, title, description, and tags so they can simply “copy and paste” it. This all ensures that they all won’t submit it with the same title and description.

If you aren’t expecting the blog post to “go viral” on the social media sites, then you might consider just submitting it yourself to as many different social bookmarking sites yourself. Whatever the case, promoting it on as many social bookmarking sites as possible is going to get more links to it: which will help the blog post rank better in Google blog search as well as Google’s organic search engine rankings. Web pages always tend to rank better in the organic search engine rankings when they have links going to them.

7. Use a site like Social Poster or Social Marker to help with the submissions. I prefer to use Social Poster since it helps me fill out the forms and has most of the social networking sites I prefer to submit to, but I do use Social Marker from time to time, as well.

8. Submit your blog post to these social sites, using different titles and descriptions, not necessarily in this order:
- Digg
- Propeller
- Reddit
- Del.icio.us
- Stumbleupon.com
- Indianpad.com
- Technorati.com
- Diigo.com
- Wirefan.com
- Simpy.com
- Folkd.com
- Blogmarks.net
- Corank.com
- Megite.com/discover/
- Facebook.com (not for ranking purposes but for ’sharing’ purposes)
- Mixx.com
- Dropjack.com
- A1-webmarks.com
- Buddymarks.com
- Jumptags.com
- Bx.Businessweek.com
- Sphinn.com

There are certainly a bunch of others to submit to, or ask your friends to submit to, and some are appropriate for certain categories of blog posts (for example, Sphinn is good for SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media “how to” articles), while Business Exchange is great for business-related articles.

9. Promote your blog post by linking to it. Not only can you get social bookmarking links to it, you might consider writing another blog post somewhere else and linking over to your original blog post. Certainly that would be easier if you have more than one blog, but you could also ask other bloggers that you know to link over to it or see if they’ll accept a “guest post” (most will if you ask them), and it could be a follow-up to your blog post or even on a related topic. Again, you’ll want to use the social bookmarking sites to get some links to that blog post that then links over to your original blog post.

10. Tell friends about it, even those who don’t use social bookmarking sites or Twitter. We all have our list of friends that aren’t techno nerdy internet geeks that hang out online all day. Send a quick note to your list of contacts, like your brother, sister, mother, father, aunt, uncle, neice, nephew, neighbor, everyone that you know has an email address. And don’t forget your best asset here, the relative that always forwards those pesky emails to you, the emails like “don’t microwave water” and “how cute is this puppy” emails. If you’re really observant, you’ll notice that when people forward those viral emails to all their contacts, they never “blind carbon copy” (BCC) people, they will just forward to everyone they know, leaving everyone’s email address there so everyone can see everyone else’s email. Harvest that list and send out an email to all those people, telling them that you’ve just written the perfect blog post. If you’re lucky, they will send it to everyone they know.

Is there such a thing as the “perfect blog post”? Probably not. Certainly I’ve seen great blog posts over the years, and I have even been lucky enough to have more than my share of blog posts that ended up being popular. I have news for you, though: a blog post does not have to “go viral” on some social network in order to be the “perfect blog post”. In this blog post, I’m going to tell you exactly how to write the perfect blog post. And you don’t to be an incredible writer to do it.

What Makes a Blog Post Perfect?
That’s really a good question to ask yourself. I have been thinking about writing this blog post (about the perfect blog post) for a while now. Probably at least a year. And, finally I think I figured it all out. It really does not have anything to do with the topic (although it can help at times, especially if you are breaking some news or something on your blog). The perfect blog post really has more to do with the formatting and how you write it. If you follow along with me, you can write the perfect blog post: one that will actually have a chance of “going viral” if that’s what you want. If you don’t care about “going viral” on a social network, then that’s just fine: your readers will end up sticking around for a longer period of time, and actually reading your blog posts rather than just reading the blog title and then moving on.

Okay, So How Do I Write the Perfect Blog Post?
It’s really pretty simple. There are “elements” that you really absolutely positively must include in every single blog post. And, I highly suggest that you write your blog post in a certain “order”. By following this order and including these elements, you don’t have to be a fabulous writer in order to write what I call “the perfect blog post”. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Do some research. Google is your friend. Decide on your blog post’s overall topic, what you are going to write about, and search for it. If it’s about a company (one of my favorite things to write about), then search for the company name. Go to their “about us” page. You may able to include some raw data about the company like how long they’ve been in business, what they do, who their management team is, and soforth. If you’re writing about an organization, you may want to do the same thing: you will need some overall information about them to include in the blog post.

2. Start Writing Just go ahead and start writing. In the first paragraph, you need to write something that draws the reader in: make them want to read more by asking them a question. Make a snotty remark about something. And whatever you do in that first paragraph, you absolutely positively must tell them what you are going tell them. In this blog post, I did just that: I told you that I am going to tell you how to write the perfect blog post.

3. Include a Photo or Graphic No matter what the blog post is about, you absolutely positively must include a photo or graphic “above the fold” (towards the top, so the reader doesn’t have to scroll down to see it). You have about 3 seconds (maybe less) to thrill them. If all they see is a bunch of text, then they will move on to another site. Don’t let that happen. Include a company logo, a funny photo, or even some sort of graph if you have to. You can even include a screen capture of a web page. If I can’t come up with a funny photo for the blog post then I usually resort to a screen capture (I use the screengrab Firefox add-on). I save it as a .jpg file and I usually use Shrink Pictures to reduce the width to about 350 width so it fits in my blog post. As you can see on this blog post, I’ve included plenty of “pretty pictures” for you to look at. It’s best to use more than one graphic in your blog post. I like to use at least two, or even more. After writing hundreds of blog post, I have found that not only do people like photos, the search engines may even reward you for having a graphic in your blog post.

4. Tell them. In number two, I mentioned that the first paragraph should include something important: you tell them what you’re going to tell them. Well, this is your opportunity to tell them what you’re going to tell them. In this blog post, this is where I have my list of things that you must include in the perfect blog post. It’s a list in this case. But, it could be other content. It could be an actual review of a product. It could be a few paragraphs of what a new website does. It could be a lot of things. But, most importantly, it should include the findings of the research that you did even before you wrote the blog post.

5. Include Outgoing Links. Don’t be a link hog. If you’re talking about something, if you’re telling your readers about a website that you like or even about a company or something else that you can link to, then link out to that site. It won’t hurt you or your ability to rank in the search engines. Your visitors will love you for it (they can go check out what you’re talking about), and I have found that it really helps if you link out to a “trusted source”. In this blog post I have a few outgoing links: one of them is Google. When in doubt, link out to the Wikipedia page that describes what you’re writing about. You could actually find the word “blog” somewhere in your blog post and link out to the Wikipedia page about “blogs”.

6. Wrap it All Up. Put the bow on your gift. Your blog post is a gift to the world, it’s something that you’re telling people about, it is something that will help them in their daily life. The perfect blog post is useful. The perfect blog post is something that includes information about something. When the reader reads it they will say to themselves, “Gee, I didn’t know that before.” At the end of your blog post, include a paragraph of information that tells them what you told them. Recap your blog post. Give them an overview of what you told them. Tell them where to go after they read the blog post. Give them a link to a website if that’s appropriate.

I know that there’s probably a lot more elements that you could include in your quest for the “perfect blog post”. And, depending on who you ask, you will probably get a lot of different responses. In this case, though, I told you about my version of the perfect blog post in a way that’s not too specific: I believe that it doesn’t matter what topic you write about: just make sure that you tell them what you’re going to write about, tell them, and then tell them what you wrote about. And, if at all possible, include a few photos or graphics (or embed a video) into the post “above the fold”.

Legit News Photos for Free. Om Malik has the scoop on PicApp, where you can get legit news photos for free. It’s an interesting service, but I actually prefer to use something like the Voxant, a service that actually pays you for views of the latest news. I like free stuff, who doesn’t, right? Well, it’s even better if they pay you. Here’s sample content from today from Voxant, about the Republicans who have been instructed to blog, blog, blog:

In an interesting post, Louis Gray says that “The new company profiles on LinkedIn are a gold mine for reporters who want to get data beyond what the PR guys may want to dish out.”.

Henry Blodget asks if Facebook is hot today and going to be dead tomorrow, like AOL. I guess Henry forgot about the post that I wrote a while back, saying that AOL is really going to be TMZ, which is hot now.

There is not much time left to sign up for evernote for free. downloadsquad has all the scoop about it.

TechCrunch talked about how mytopia, the new casual gaming network works with all sorts of other stuff. Monday it will release the same games across the major Web and desktop widgets: iGoogle Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, Yahoo Widgets and Windows Vista Toolbar Widgets, says TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld.

According to Cnet, Google wants to fill in the TV white spaces. Google is “planning a conference call with journalists on Monday to discuss a company filing with the FCC regarding the use of unused portions of the TV spectrum band, known as white spaces.”

OK, well, that’s not quite the number of updates that I thought I would make today, but five is quite enough. So, to fill up some additional space on this post (bold, right?) let’s again see what Voxant has to offer today:

CNN Markets Domain Name but Fails to Turn It On
Yes, you’re reading that right. CNN bought iReport.com for $750,000 and according to sources they’re actually running commercials or telling people watching CNN to go to iReport.com. I haven’t personally seen CNN mention iReport.com. In any case, apparently the marketing department failed to tell the IT department to actually change the DNS and make the site live. OOPS! Take a look at the screen capture below:

So much for getting the iReport.com website live. Last time I tried, I had a domain name purchased and up and running with content within 15 minutes. At least you could redirect it with a 301 Permanent Redirect to CNN.com in the meantime… Sheesh! (Or, better yet, CNN should redirect it with a 301 Permanent Redirect here to the iReport exchange page.)

Oilman Todd Friesen Leaving Range Online Media
Todd Friesen has announced that he is leaving Range Online Media and going to Visible Technologies. That’s big news in the Search Marketing community.

11 Must Read Social Media Blogs
SEO 2.0 is out with a great post about 11 social media blogs that you need to read. What’s interesting is that I, too, am seeing that many blogs are now changing their focus.

Match.com Goes Grey Hat
Courtesy of Mr. Wolf, Match.com has noticed that there’s a bunch of old-style text on the homepage of Match.com. Wow, that sure does bring back memories of SEO circa 1997.

Watching Sphinn
Maybe it’s just me, but someone has too much time on their hands if you’re spending time watching Sphinn. Sure, it’s useful information to have, and I probably will use the data that they’ve outlined here. I, like the other SEOs, like Sphinn. I guess if you’re going to sphinn something then you ought to be doing it on Thursday.

I actually like to work more simply, so to speak, rather than use the more than 15 tools that Michael uses. Personally, I have identified five website programs or websites that I use on a regular basis to get things done. Here are the top 5 things that I like to use on a regular basis to get things done:

1. The telephone Yes, low and behold this is probably the tool that I use to get things done. Although many people tend to use email (yes, that’s my 2nd tool), I find that actually picking up the telephone will get things done; especially in a society that relies so much on other tools. Pick up the phone and request a link from someone and you’ll get their attention.

2. Email I only list this one because I use it often and categorizing emails and leaving the important ones in my inbox helps me get organized and get things done.

3. Dayminder I just bought a new one today (first real day back in the office after a long bout of being home sick for a while during the holidays). I use the Dayminder to create lists of things I absolutely must get done before I leave the office every day. When my laptop got stolen a while back I learned that you just have to have stuff down on paper. And I try to make a copy of my weekly schedule for my wife so she knows what the schedule is each week.

4. Firefox I have just too many Firefox add-ons to list here. Perhaps that will be another blog post about my Firefox add-ons. There are some productivity add-ons that help me tremendously, such as the screengrab, the imacros for Firefox, and Snap Links just to name a few of them. I would also add WordPress to the Firefox category…because I’m always blogging in Firefox using Wordpress.

5. Social Poster I don’t know what I would do without socialposter.com…just a very cool neato tool to help me post to the social networks, login, and comment as necessary. Social Poster has a pretty decent list of social networks to submit stuff to, and there are actually a few that I’d like to see added: such as Searchles, Plime, and, of course, Mixx.

Well, that’s my major top 5 list of the top five websites and tools that I use daily. I chose to feature five of them here because most likely you’d like to hear about the best ones; not about the useless ones that aren’t really tools. I could go into a bunch of more sites that I occasionally visit to get links or other tools and bookmarks that I have in Firefox, but really–they all are specific for certain tasks and don’t apply to everyone.

Since Michael Gray was so thoughtful to bring up this subject and remind me that I needed to make yet another useless blog post on my blog then I thought I’d go ahead and ping a few other people like Andy Hagans, Dosh Dosh, Tamar, and Jim Boykin and see if they’re willing to share, as well.

So, without delay, here are the top ten phrases/quotes of 2007:

The most memorable quote–even by my high standards–is the one said by Andrew Meyer:

“Don’t tase me, bro.”

Andrew Meyer, a senior at the University of Florida, yelled this when he was pinned down–and being tasered by the University of Florida campus police. Andrew Meyer had been protesting a speech by Senator John Kerry. Not surprisingly, there is a Wikpedia entry about the incident. Mahalo also has an entry too.

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.”

Lauren Upton, a South Carolina contestant in the Miss Teen USA contest, said this when asked why one fifth of Americans can’t find the United States on a map. Many people laughed and made fun of Lauren Upton and the video was circulating on Youtube.com.

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, said this while speaking at Columbia University in New York city, New York.

“That’s some nappy-headed hos there.”

Don Imus, a radio personality, said this about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. Don Imus ended up being fired and his radio show was halted–he’s now back on the air.

“I don’t recall.”

Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General of the United States, kept repeating this phrase when he faced the United States Congress’ questions about the firing of U.S. attorneys.

“There’s only three things he (Rudolph Giuliani) mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11.”

Senator Joseph Biden said this while speaking during a debate.

“I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating.”

Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader (who happens to be a Democrat), said this–he was referring to Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States.

“(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom.”

Senator Larry Craig said this while explaining why his foot touched the foot of an undercover police officer. Both were in an airport men’s room.

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Joseph Biden makes the list again. The Senator was referring to his rival Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama when he said this.

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.”

Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, said this when referring to the Bush administration.

How is it that many of the memorable phrases of 2007 were said by politicians? Personally, my favorite one is “Don’t Tase Me Bro”. By the way, yes–that domain name is registered.

These are not in any sort of order, just the order that I’ve been compiling them or came across them:

Wendy talks about the top 10 most influential dads in the blogosphere, and I’m amazed that I’m not on the list. That’s okay, maybe next year. Wendy points to Mark Frauenfelder from BoingBoing, Robert Scoble from Scobleizer, and Guy Kawasaki to name a few.

Top 10 Facebook Stories of 2007

I was going to try to write this one, but Justin Smith at Inside Facebook beat me to it with their list. Among the top ones are “Facebook launches Platform, intends to become “social operating system”", “Facebook Platform becomes the most viral software distribution system ever”, and “Facebook user base, traffic numbers soar”.

Now this one is funny and I just had to stick this top 10 list in here. Classic. The title says it all: The Top Ten Stupid Criminals of 2007. The Duct Tape Bandit, well, is just funny.

I just have to mention this list because, well, I’m going to be following these in the future…might make some good domain name choices, as well. I wonder if any of those names are taken? Well, I’m sure by the time you read this they’ll be registered. Here’s a few from their list:

– Continued Globalization
– Securing the Extended Enterprise
– Global Greening
– Virtualization and On-demand Computing (a.k.a. Computing as a Service)
– Telepresence

The folks at Verizon Business have put their thinking caps on and come up with the Top 10 Hot Trends in Technology for 2008, designed to help CIOs kick the new year, and the start of their fresh resolutions, off with a bang.

And, finally, the Top 10 Most Underappreciated Metrics To Track in 2008. Yes, well, it’s about 2008 but hey, you need to start looking to the future, right?

Rohit Bhargava does a great job of inbound links, direct URL access, and RSS subscribers are underappreciated metrics. Personally, I still think “Organic Keyword Referrals” are still underappreciated–at least the ones that convert.