Enkay Blog

Top 100 Bloggers on Twitter

So recently I’ve been trying to perform better on Twitter. A few months ago, I added a nice background with a link to the blog as well as facebook and that brought on a lot of people. I really want to follow people on Twitter and I am sure that there are many of you who are in need of followers so I devised this little plan to help each other. I am going to create a Top 100 List of people in the blogosphere with a ranking based on how many people follow them.

Also, when you submit your Twitter user name to me, I will follow you and hopefully if you show up on this list, then you will get traffic as well as some attention for being on this list. Something we all have to remember is that you have to be a blogger. I don’t want to showcase any celebrities with millions of followers. This list is strictly for bloggers. So if you want to be part of this list then just send me an email or leave me a comment. I prefer you leave me a comment so I can keep track of this, but whichever way works for you is good with me.

I Need Twitter Followers
Aside from the Top 100 List which is going to be my second list after the Top 100 Female Blogger list. I realize that I am going to start updating the Female Blogger List which should come soon as well but aside from that, I realize that I want more bloggers as my followers and that I need to follow more bloggers as well. I have a lot of you on my Twitter page because of the fact that I imported my contact list but I really want to make sure I have everyone, so if I don’t have you on my list, then submitting your name for the Top 100 List will help you do that as well.

Marketing Yourself
Twitter is a great way to market yourself. We all know that we can use an article marketing tool or simply rely on our audience and popularity in order to improve our online presence but having a good Twitter following can really help you in the long run and in order for you to reach a whole new audience. Well, I hope that this list will be able to accomplish that as well as my goal of following more bloggers

Hows That For an Idea?
Let me know what your thoughts are on this. Hope you guys had a good Monday and are looking forward to the rest of the week! Send in those emails and comments!

Why is your blog running so slow?

So after the post on Friday, I decided to do a little research on the load times of some of the popular blogs out there. I even decided to compare results from one of my past posts about speed called “Are you fast enough?” and here are the results below.

I used the iWebTool software and I had to test some of them a few times just because the times for some were unusually high. The problem is that iWebTool now limits how many times you can use the tool but ofcourse, I waited and tried again. Well, for starters, lets take a look at the results from the research from this time along with a column that compares time from the last post from over a year ago.

The Conclusion
As you can see, I didn’t have the information for quite a few of the blogs but for the most part, it seems that most of us have seen a decline in change. What that means is that over a year ago, our blogs would load faster than they do today. I am one of those who saw this decline whereas several others, the best of whom, is JohnChow who improved the performance by over 500%. StephenFung was not far behind with a little bit over 400% in improving his load time.

Out of the performers that did worse than last time were TheUniversityKid and ZacJohnson. This could possibly be a result of different advertisements, maybe an increase in ads or even a new design that is more graphic heavy. It could also be an issue with the servers at the time. In the previous post I mentioned several ways to improve upon a slower running blog and I hope to do the same for my blog and hope to document that for others as well.

Hope you enjoyed today’s post. How do you compare to the rest of us? The tool can be accessed at iWebTool by clicking here. Have a great Monday and a great start to the week everyone! Stay tuned for my next post!

Your Blog Isn’t Being Noticed

Thats right! Not to be rude or anything, but a reader decides within 5-8 seconds whether they want to be on your blog or not. That’s a staggering statistic and that makes me think about how many people I am probably missing out on because of it. There are some things that just turn people off and I hope to discuss them here.

1) Ads – Okay, so I’m not going to knock on JohnChow or anything just because when you’re an established blogger, you can do whatever you want, and your readers will still be supportive. Your readers still have a lot to gain so they’re not going anywhere. What I’m talking about is people who have no business having ads on their blog anyway. These are people who believe in ad space SUPERmaximization. When theres not enough room and LOTS of ads. You can’t do that. You have to have a little white space to appear a bit more organized and clean.

2) Slow Website – Sometimes your website runs slow because of hosting issues and sometimes your blog is just graphic heavy. There are ways that you can help your blog perform better. You can optimize the graphics on your blog to load faster or even switch to a hosting provider that has better, faster servers. Sometimes there are widgets and javascripts running on your blog that also help slow it down. An example of a widget is the Entrecard widget. Tomorrow I will have a post that tests the speed of some of the most popular blogs in the blogosphere.

3) No Design/Customization – It takes a little effort but its good to have a blog that is customized. It helps the visitor know that you’ve spent some time on it and aside from that, even if youre a fairly new blog, it makes you look professional – as though you’ve been around longer. Having a default theme is so 2004. Readers now look for customized themes and eye-catching designs. As a marketing expert for product packaging would say, its not really what you sell, but how you sell it and thats what counts.

I have listed a few things that come to my mind when I wonder what would be the most obvious reasons why readers are turned away from your blog. These go hand in hand with how fast/slow your blog loads. In a few days, I will have a post about what you do in terms of the content you put out that turns away your readers. Hope you guys have a good weekend! Stay tuned for tomorrows post!

Can I Get My Rankings Back?

Before I decided to take a hiatus time and time again from blogging, my rankings were pretty high and I was doing quite well. Now that I am coming back to blogging, I want to see how long it takes for me to get my ratings back. I’m not sure what my exact rankings were but Technorati was in the 150’s or 200’s in terms of authority and Alexa was around 100,000.

Im not a newbie in the blogging industry and this gives me the advantage because last summer, I experienced a similar situation and I had to pretty much start back from scratch. In case, you don’t remember, Last year, I decided to finally purchase enkayblog.com and this meant starting back with no Alexa Rating, no Page Rank and no Technorati. I was able to build everything back up within 2 months.

This time, things will be harder. Why you ask? Well, things are a bit different. It seems as though the blogging industry has slowed down. A lot of old friends are now gone and so that support is missing. Furthermore, the economy has affected some of the bloggers and aside from that, some bloggers have decided to move away from blogging and onto other things. All this makes this time around a bit harder.

What Am I Getting At?
Well, basically what I am saying is what I have preached for several months now – you have to have goals. Setting this goal for myself means that I need to, and will, try harder and harder in order to be where I was, if not better, than I was when I decided to step away from blogging a few months ago.

Why are Goals Important?
Well, in simple terms, goals help motivate you to do better things. They help you to keep at it till you are able to be where you want to be. By having this goal of wanting to reach my previous status as a blog, I will do everything in my power of achieve it. It helps motivate me and remind me of what I want and then it is up to me to do all that I can to achieve that goal.

Can I Do It?
I hope that I am able to do it and this will be a process that I will document slowly as time goes on. I really think that if I am able to put out great content and get the link backs and audience support that I can achieve this goal. How long do you think it will take me? and if you’ve gone through such a hiatus before, how long did it take you?

Starting Back The Blog

I’m sorry to those of you who I have disappointed with my lack of blogging but I am more than glad to say that I am finally back for good. School has started back up again and my internship has finally ended. I look forward to get back to blogging and I have already noticed that several other bloggers had also taken a little break and Im not sure what their reasoning was but it does help to know that it wasn’t just me as I had expected.

Now that things are a bit settled, let me start out by saying hello to a few good friends from the past.

RomanDock – I realize that Nick hasn’t posted in a while and its crazy for me to even think about the fact that Nick isn’t blogging as he once used to. Nick was one of the first readers of my blog over 2 years ago and even though we never really met personally, it was always refreshing to see his comments on my blog. If you see this Nick, you need to come back to blogging, if not, atleast stop by whenever you can and say hello!

Balkhis – Syed had slowed down in the middle with the blogging but he seems to be going strong at it still. Syed has a very successful design company and so slowing down on the blogging might be helping him focus on his design company.

MelvinBlog – Melvin has been a good contributor at the blog and its good to see that he is still going strong with his posts. I really wish that I had the time to devote to my blog as Melvin has been able to do so successfully. I really have a lot to learn from Melvin because of his ability to continue to put out such great content time and time again.

Normal Joe – Normal Joe cannot be stopped. That was my opinion months ago and that is my opinion today. I don’t know if I’m day dreaming or mistaken but I did think that Joe did slow down a bit a month or two ago but he is back up there giving the big guys a hard time!

The Net Fool – Jim over at The Net Fool has also been able to put out good content. There were some slow spots but things have still been on the upside for him and thats good to see. Jim is a student, just as I am, so its good to see that level of output even with all the responsibilities he has.

Saying Hello!
So, I’ve decided to say hello to some of my other blogger friends:
Ben Pei over at Pei Profit
Dina over at Market Leverage
Eric Schechter over at Clickbooth
Franklin Bishop over at FranklinBishop
Abhijeet over at Life is Colourful
ZK over at WebTrafficROI
Tina McAllister over at TinaMcAllister
Freddie Taylor over at FreddieTaylor
Paul Briggs over at SlyVisions
BetShopBoy over at BetShopBoy
John Chow over at JohnChow
Jason over at DatMoney

So, Just wanted to say hello to everyone and see how you all are doing. If I forget you, I apologize. I tried to remember everyone from memory and after a couple months of hiatus, it does get a bit difficult. I hope to be able to give you guys a lot of cool and great articles time and time again and hopefully a few surprises as time goes on too! Have a great rest of the week, its already Wednesday!