I’ve been testing out FeedBurners StandardStats package and it’s a great start for a free stats program. The data seem to be online with Google Analytics and the look and feel is great for the non-techie person.

Starting off, the setup is easy. Just log into your FeedBurner account and activate StandardStats. One click of the button and your done with step one. The next step is to implement the code on your site and I think it could be easier.

Currently, you choose your blogging platform from the dropdown and it gives you the code to add to your template. It tells you where to put it but I think it’s a bit much for average users. For example, you have to put the code in the post-meta loop. Everyone knows where that is right?

With that in mind, I created the FB StandardStats plugin for Wordpress to do all the code implementation for you. It makes it extremely easy for anyone to get the code in the right spot with very little work.

When I built the FB StandardStats plugin I built it to make it easy to add in the necessary code to get the new StandardStats up and running. People mentioned that it worked with FeedFlare but it didn’t hit me until today how cool this plugin really was!

“FeedFlare allows publishers to easily build ‘interactivity’ into the content they create, making it simple for subscribers to tag, email or share their content with others. Publishers can include a variety of services including a live display of the number of comments to each post, the ability to email the author directly and show the number of blogs that link to their item. Publishers can choose to include FeedFlare within the feed itself as well as on their blog or site.”

It first started to sink in the other day when I had to make the updates due to the FeedFlare confusion that may happen when a feed is burned though FeedBurner and this plugin was also installed. But it wasn’t until today that the light bulb when off. If you select FeedFlare items to show up in your blog, the FB StandardStats Plugin displays it!

In case you haven’t noticed, social media optimization (SMO) is the new big search marketing term. I think you’ll be hearing a lot about it this year and thought I’d give you an easy tip to get started.

First thing you need to know is what social media optimization is. Basically, it’s just getting exposure and traffic from social media sites like Digg, del.icio.us, MySpace and many others. For a more in depth explanation, check out the new rules for social media optimization.

What I’d like to share with you is one extremely easy way to get some social media exposure. It’s as easy as photo sharing.

Using photo sharing sites to host the images you use in your blog posts will give your site added exposure on other sites. Some photo sharing sites to check out include Zooomr, PhotoBucket and Flickr.

Flickr is one of the main photo sharing sites. Once you add your photos, they can be found by not only Flickr but also Technorati, Serph, the Flock web browser, Netvibes and other services that integrate with Flickr. It’s a quick and easy way to get in to lots of other sites.

The past few days have been great for the FB StandardsStats plugin. Not only have I been in communication with the FeedBurner folks, it also got mentioned on the FeedBurner buzz blog. That gave the plugin some great exposure and uncovered a few bugs. It’s since been updated and re-packaged and FB StandardStats 1.0b is now available.

The biggest update is how the plugin displays the FeedBurner code. It seems that I was showing it not only on blog posts, but also in the feed. This could cause issues and confusion with feeds burned at FeedBurner. So I added a few lines of extra code to ensure that it only adds the StandardStats code in the browser version of posts and not in the feeds.

Other than that, there were a few download issues that could have come from web server issues or other formatting oddities. I think those are all worked out now.

Ohh and one more, if you get a 404 error when trying to update the FB StandardStats options page, that means that you uploaded the entire directory. The only file that needs to be uploaded is fb_standardstats.php. No folders.

While working on a review of StandardStats from FeedBurner, the only real negative thing I could come up with was the fact that the install wasn’t simple for non-techies. Sure it’s easy for some, but I thought it could be easier. So I created the FeedBurner StandardStats Wordpress plugin.

FB StandardStats makes installing FeedBurner’s stats code simple. No files to edit and no wondering if you got the code in the right place. Simply put in your user ID and the plugin will do the rest.

As a bonus, the plugin can also be used to show FeedFlare links on each blog post.

To Install:

1. Download FB StandardStats 1.0b
2. Upload fb_standardstats.php to the /plugins/ directory of your blog.
3. Activate via the Plugins area in Wordpress’ admin.
4. Go to the FB StandardStats options page and enter your StandardStats ID. Instructions on finding this ID are on the FB StandardStats options page.

That’s it. The plugin automatically enters in the code to the template files and you’ll start getting stats as soon as you get visitors.

Let me know what issues you run across and any success stories too. I’ve got it running on three blogs including this one and it seems to work fine.

Today’s tip is quite simple and easy, it’s merely creating an avatar for yourself which will represent you across the web.

An avatar is just an image. A logo or icon that represents you or your business. It could be your picture, your cat’s picture, a cartoon character or just a cool design. I’d recommend picking one that is original for best results.

Now, when you create your blog, put your avatar on it. When you register at a form, use your avatar. Services like Technorati and MyBlogLog have the ability to upload a profile image and you’d want to stick it there too. There is even a global avatar service called Gravatar that will show your avatar on other blogs that have this functionality enabled in the comments. Ideally you’d want them all to match to build your identity. But mixing a photo and a logo treatment also seems to work well.

What you are doing is making sure that you stand out. When people are browsing other services, they can quickly notice you. Avatars also show a sign of authority as spammers rarely take the time to worry about the minor details. It’s a quick and easy thing to do to catch the attention of others.

One nice feature in Wordpress is the ability to have a feed for each category. It’s all built in and up-and-running in all Wordpress blogs as we speak. It’s just not promoted.

To get separate feeds for each category, just load the category page and add /feed/ at the end of the URL. That is if they have permalinks turned on.

If you want to add the feeds to your template for easy access for your users, you can just replace the category code in your template with:

WP pre 2.1 -
wp_list_cats(’sort_column=name&optioncount=0&feed=RSS’);

WP 2.1 -
wp_list_categories(’sort_column=name&optioncount=0&feed=RSS’);

Now, instead of it saying Category(14) it says Category(RSS) and RSS will link to the feed

A good marketer will want to know how many people are subscribing to each category feed. To do this you’ll need to run over to Feedburner and start burning each category feed. Then put in a 302 redirect to send all feed traffic to the Feedburner feed.

A lot of people on the internet understand that links are an important part of being found in search engines, what they don’t understand is that some links are more valuable than others.

Jane from SEOMoz came up with a great way to say it.

“Some links are Benjamins. Some are Washingtons. Some are pennies that, even after a year, a whole collection of them will only get you a couple of bucks at CoinStar. It isn’t hard to tell the difference.”

So to elaborate a bit lets take a look at a few examples.

Any link exchanges, or sites that except any links no matter what, are pennies. You can do as many as you want, and you can find them pretty much everywhere, bu they aren’t going to do you a lot of good.

Link exchanges and easy submissions to directories in your related industry can be dollars. Since they are directly related, and not just taking any link, they have a bit more value. Just don’t expect to be a millionaire anytime soon.

If you didn’t hear, Performancing’s blog stats are no longer. They sold that part of the company to PayPerPost and PayPerPost returned it. Now no one is taking care of the stats and it’s been closed.

So my first thought was, what do I replace it with? Google Analytics is great, but a bit overwhelming for most people. Mint is one of my favorite stats packages, but costs $30 and I wanted something free for now. Who doesn’t? That’s when I saw Feedburner’s StandardStats.

StandardStats will track and report on blog visitors, inbound traffic, browser usage, OS usage, outbound clicks and much more. I just installed it and I’m waiting for my stats to come poring in.

With Feedburner’s track record with feed stats, I have high hopes for StandardStats. Only time will tell though. Give me a week or two and I’ll report back with my findings. If you’ve been using StandardStats, let us know what you think.

[tags]feedburner,standardstats,mint,performancing,payperpost[/tags]

While listening to the Daily SearchCast the other day, Danny mentioned that OPML has an icon. It was news to me, yet I guess I haven’t really found a need for an OPML icon yet.

It looks much like the feed icon only in blue and you get the whole circle for the logo.

Actually, I think it should have the dot and two outer circles. That way people don’t associate it with Target and it’ll more accurately tie in with the feed icon as the feed icon is 1/4th of the circles.

If you don’t know what OPML is, it’s just a list of feeds pre-packaged in one file for easy portability. It could be a list of 3 feeds or 300. All feed readers should be able to import and export OPML files just like how a browser can import and export bookmarks.

After the success of the feed icon, I’m pretty sure the OPML icon will catch on quite fast. That is unless you put it on a red background and Target yells at you.

[tags]OPML, searchcast, icon[/tags]