April 2008 – Nate Whitehill

PageRank Update Underway?

Some of you may have remember that when I first started my blog back in January of 2007, I was awarded with a PR5 during my first PR update. Unfortunately, when the Google PageRank slap hit everyone six months ago, I was bumped back down to a PR4.

Today on I read on Courtney Tuttle’s blog (nice blog, Courtney 😉 that Google is undergoing its quarterly PageRank update. I decided to verify this for myself by checking a few blogs in my Google toolbar. I am happy to report that my blog jumped back up to a PR5. This is a another nice surprise from Google because less than two months ago, I was awarded with a Google authority listing for my name.

Every blogger can do things to increase the chances of them receiving a higher PageRank update. Almost a year ago, I wrote on article on how to prepare for a PageRank update.

How about you guys? Have you noticed a change in your PageRank? Usually, the update takes a few days to be accurate across all Google data centers.

For more information on this mysterious force of Google, check out this Wikipedia article on PageRank, which interestingly, outranks Google’s page about PageRank.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step

Guest post by Mr. Achievement – Stanley F. Bronstein

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step
– (Lao Tzu)

I recently saw an excellent movie called Rabbit-Proof Fence. The movie is based upon the true story of 3 young Australian aborigine girls who were removed from their families because they were of mixed heritage (their father’s were white and their mothers were aborigines). These girls were taken over a thousand miles from their home to the other side of Australia. They were to live in a camp where they would be trained, based upon the goals of a government bureaucrat who thought he knew what was best for them. Continue reading The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step

Twittering Up a Storm

It seems like everyone these days is now Twittering – the micro blogging platform in which people “follow” each others’ updates via a live, instant message-like chat stream. You will see my recent Twitter updates on the top of the sidebar on the right-hand side of my blog.

I first started Twittering in November of 2007 when UBD attended the Blog World Expo. I used Twitter to keep my readers up to date of what I was doing while we were in Vegas at the expo.

At that time, not many other people were using Twitter and I had less than 10 followers. Now, in the past week, the number of people following me on Twitter has more than tripled!

What accounts for such a rapid increase in the number of Twitter users and followers?

I have no idea! Twitter is simply becoming more viral by the day. Way too many of my homeboys and homegirls are now using Twitter.

About a week ago I told John Chow to get on Twitter, and within a few minutes he was signed up and following me. In the past week, John now has almost 500 people following him on Twitter.

Many people seem to think Twitter is just useless bantering, but I have started to see its benefits. For example, Twitters allows you to:

Keep up to date with what your friends and colleague are doing
Be on the cutting edge of breaking news – for example, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington posts tidbits of upcoming news which have not yet appeared on his site
Keep you readers updated of your new blog posts using the Twitter Updater WordPress plugin
Share interesting stories or websites you have found with your followers
Start conversations with people whom otherwise you may never talk to
Network and become more well-known within online communities
Ask questions and receive answers from the people who follow you

I asked John, “Is Twitter just useless chat or do you think it allows you to better keep in touch with your readers?” This was his response:

Twitter is like having one big mega chat room. It can be a huge time waster or a good marketing channel depending on how you go about it. I got on twitter as a marketing move and I’m trying very to keep it from being a time waster. It’s VERY HARD!

I have noticed that as more of the people I know have started twittering, I have become more a more active Twitterer myself. In the past week, for example, I have updated Twitter (a.k.a “Tweeted”) over 70x… Compare that to less than 10x in the previous 5 months.

Writing a quality blog post takes significant time and effort, but with Twitter, you only have 140 characters to post, so no one is expecting a novel. A good “Tweet,” as they are called, may simply be a link to a cool blog post, or a question/answer to a problem a fellow Twitterer is having.

I highly recommend Twitter to anyone who is looking to network within a community and potentially increase new readers for their websites or blogs. I know that I will be using Twitter more over the next few months to stay in contact with my readers and also to network with people. I have even started to receive quite a few “follow” requests from many people local to me in Scottsdale, Arizona.

So, what are you waiting for? Follow me on Twitter!

Meet Stanley Bronstein – Mr. Achievement

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog, but a lot of that has to do with how extremely busy I and the rest of UBD have been over the past month.

I want you to introduce you to a new friend of mine, Stanley Bronstein.

Stanley is not just a successful attorney and CPA, but also a professional motivational speaker and published author. Widely known as “Mr. Achievement,” Stanley’s mission is helping people position themselves for success. He is about to release his third book on achieving success, “Achievement IQ: The Laws of Positioning.”

Stanley recently started his blog on personal development in the hopes of connecting with people online to help them achieve more success in their lives and careers.

Some of Stanley’s best posts so far have been:

For his new book, “Achievement IQ: The Laws of Positioning,” Stanley drove around the country to interview some very successful and remarkable people. He chronicled his journey through dozens of hours of audio and video, with much of the current material being available for free on his website.

What are the Laws of Positioning?

The premise behind the Laws of Positioning states that:

The most successful people and organizations tend to have four traits in common:

VISION – They recognize details and opportunities that most others do not see, thus putting themselves in a position of readiness;

ATTRACTION – They put themselves in a position to attract opportunities;

READINESS – They put themselves in a position to be ready to take advantage of those opportunities once they do come their way; and

ACTION – They take action upon those details and opportunities in a manner that most others would not, thus putting themselves in a position to be more successful than most.

Stanley has only been blogging since February, but he has already managed to crank out almost 60 posts. I highly recommend that you check out Stanley’s blog if you are interested in learning how to position yourself for success in both your personal and professional lives. Visit Stanley Bronstein here.