If you’re taking the time to create a blog, it pays to invest in making sure that people can actually find it . . . even if they’re only reachable on their phone.

If you want to reach the people that use Twitter (yes . . . the Twitterati), you should just tether your blog to Twitterfeed. It’s an easy way to automatically twitter your blog’s RSS feed, blasting your friends and followers with updates as they happen. You may recall Twitter from our article Stay close to mother hen. In a nutshell, it’s a real-time messaging service that lets you broadcast “tweets”, or short messages. Unlike Myspace of Facebook, Twitter is meant to be a quick communication (or micro-blogging) platform. Tweets alert the world (well, your Twitter network) of your feelings, thoughts, or intentions.

Here’s how you get started: Sign up for a Twitter account or give Twitterfeed your existing Twitter login and password. Then, login with your OpenID account. OpenID is a service that lets you sign in to multiply websites with a single username, and like Twitter, it’s completely free. Once you are in, give Twitterfeed your blog’s RSS feed address and specify how often it should post your content (once daily is enough for a smaller blog).

Now all you have to do is post a blog article and watch as Twitterfeed alerts all your contacts of the update and gives them a link back to the article.

Few companies can afford to keep a professional copywriter on staff, despite constant need for quality content.

Consider using an on-demand copy marketplace like Helium. Helium is similar to Odesk, the developers community we discussed in It’s a small world. Here’s how it works- publishers submit their article requirements (a brief description of the piece), choose a channel (a specific content category like Travel, Business, or Technology), then specify a deadline, word count, and cash prize amount. Helium uses a rating system to qualify writers, but any member of the community can take a stab at your piece. At the end of the competition, you choose among the submissions and award a winner.

Helium is an ideal solution for the company who can’t commit to in-house talent and doesn’t have the time or energy to sift through freelance portfolios. You choose content a la carte and there is no commitment to the writer who provides the material.

Often, a brand can be distilled down to a single visual cue, like the Nike swoosh or the Apple, um, apple. Every opportunity you have to include a visual identity cue should be seized, and one incredibly easy way to do this is with a favicon. Favicons, short for favorite icon, are the small images that appear in the url bar beside a website address and next to a page title in a browser tab.

You can use a tool like favicon.cc to create your little visual cue in just a matter of minutes. The fastest way to create your brand favicon is to upload your logo into their system. It will convert it to the correct size and format. You may need to do a bit of tweaking to get it just right. You can also animate your favicon by creating multiple designs and timing their evolution.

Don’t let this easy way to connect your URL to your brand identity pass you by.

Not everyone was born with the color selection gene. But that doesn’t have to be a barrier to developing something with great visual appeal.

Color selection can be made much easier with kuler, a web-based tool for creating harmonious color palettes from Adobe Labs. Users can experiment with a rainbow of colors, perfect the combinations, and share them with the kuler community for feedback. And you don’t have to be a digital Picasso to use this application.

To create a theme, access the main marker on the color wheel and rotate like clock hands to set the base of your color scheme. The application will adjust the secondary arms to to harmonize with your color selection based on the governing palette rules (you can set to monochromatic, complementary, shades, etc). To customize your palette, move the secondary arms to a desired location on the wheel or manipulate the actual color values (RGB, CMYK), the hue saturation (HSV), or html code value (HEX). You can import images using the Flickr feature and grab values directly from the picture.

Once your palette is complete, title and tag it, so that palette is searchable, and save. If you choose, kuler will publish your palette; community members can browse the library, rank individual palettes, or draw inspiration from each other’s offerings. To use your palette (or any other public palette) in a design application, open it in an Adobe CS3 software or just the grab the HEX codes.

With minimal effort (and expertise) you can design a one-of-kind color theme. Inspiration is endless and the application is free, so give it a whirl.

While there’s a great deal of data to be gathered from any website, there’s often a distinct shortage of real insight. In other words, sure you can see that people are leaving the site, but you usually have to just guess at the reason why. That’s why it can be important to give you customers different opportunities to provide their opinion or interact on your site.

One way to create just such an opportunity for interaction is to install a plug-in like Firef.ly. It’s a simple chat program that operates on the surface of your website. Visitors can communicate with each other through tiny chat bubbles that can be placed at points of interest. As an administrator, you can be an active participant in the conversation or a fly on the wall, just there to observe.

The firef.ly plugin is easy to install and appears as a simple toolbar at the bottom of your page. From here, chatters can access the site’s chat log or customize their chat persona with an avatar. Chatting is completely opt in and users don’t have to download anything to start talking. You never know what you might learn.

While blogging is no art form, it has evolved into something that can be a bit formal, requiring a title or sometimes both a title and a description. Sometimes, you don’t want to make everything feel like an article. You just want a little corner of the web over which your consciousness can stream.

That’s where “tumblelogs” come into play, like Tumblr. The icon-based interface makes posting text, photos, audio files, and videos a breeze. And unlike traditional blogs, Tumblr features community elements like the ability to follow other Tumblrs (similar to friending on a social network) and receive their updates from your dashboard or via RSS feed.

Tumblr is a free platform, providing audio and video hosting at no additional cost. Users are given a unique name.tumblr.com url upon signup and access to advanced features like custom themes, custom CSS, and custom domains (i.e. you can have a Tumblr log on your own domain). If you’re just looking to hang the answer out there, or just express yourself, this is a great option.

Customers like to stay abreast of the latest developments, whether it’s a new product, feature updates, or general shop talk. Keeping pace can be difficult; updating your website and email blasts don’t offer the real-time connection your customers may be looking for.

Consider using Plurk as a customer communication tool. Similar to Twitter, a service we discussed in Stay close to mother hen, Plurk is a text messaging service that lets you chronicle and share whatever you are thinking or feeling with your network of friends. The daily time line of activity acts as your homepage, pinpointing all your “plurks” and plurks you have received from friends. By creating “cliques”, you can organize and group your friends into networks. So, if your looking to plurk to different customer sets or offer promotions to only a select clientèle, this is a handy feature.

Plurk is a free service and easily integrates with most instant messengers (AIM or MSN), providing more than just a mobile outlet. So, if you’re looking for an easy way to stay connected with your customer base, go ahead and give plurking a try.

Need to boost site traffic? The idea of handing over hundreds, often thousands, of dollars for premium ad space or trading (begging for) links may be keeping you up at night.

Here’s an option. Adgridwork is an open (free) advertising network that lets bloggers and publishers barter their own real estate for advertising space on any of the thousands of sites in the Adgridwork network. You can choose what types of sites your ads appear on, and even monitor campaign progress, like impressions and conversions, through Adgridwork’s free metrics and tracking tools.

To get started, register your website or blog with the network, defining your site by category and any relevant keywords. This helps Adgridwork target advertisements to specific audiences. Once approved, your site is added to the mix and open for serving ads. In exchange, you ads will start running on other sites in the network. Adgridwork uses a simple merit system to reward its supporters- the more ad click-through’s your site generates, the more sites your ads appears on.

If you’re looking for a simple way to generate traffic or just tired of paying for ad services, consider using Adgridwork to promote your site.

Even the greatest rock bands start with a small, local following. If you’re looking for a way to promote your blog and gain some new groupies, keeping your efforts close to home may be the ticket.

Try submitting your blog to a site like outside.in. Outside.in keeps tabs on all the latest stories, conversations, and events happening by neighborhood. Imagine Craigslist for blog content. It’s a great (and free) tool to help you connect with a local scene. To get your content featured, submit your blog feed to outside.in, then use their tagging system to route individual posts to the exact location you mention (or are targeting).

You can link directly to an outside.in Place Page in your post and your story will appear on a Place Page (e.g. Atlanta), the individual neighborhood (e.g. Midtown), and a blog map. Or, include a specific address or Google map link in the body. The more technically savvy can encode GeoRSS data in their feed and outside.in will route your stories accordingly.

Outside.in lets you tap into a hyperlocal audience base. If your blog is barely a spec in cyberspace, here’s an opportunity to put it front and center . . . in your neighborhood.

How can you capture some of the magic of animation without blowing a big hole in your budget?

Minivid is a simple animation solution that lets you create custom cartoon shorts and share them with the world. The site provides a demo for using all the features, but the drag-and drop functionality of this application makes it a snap to create and edit animations in minutes. Fuzzwich has preloaded Minivid with a stable of playful “actors”, multi-layer backgrounds, and music selections. Hit record and position your actors on screen by dragging them with your mouse. Add comment bubbles or choose from each actors available actions menu. For example, the ninja can throw a ninja star or use his sword; another character can grow a beard. You can even change the the scale of the actors or the timing of events by pausing your animation and manipulating all the ingredients in the editing bar.

Check out this nifty little animation we created on the fly:

Fuzzwich publishes and hosts all your animations on their site; animators are given a free portfolio space, where you can share your animations, launch mini cartoon campaigns, or embed your animations in your website or social media site (like Facebook or Myspace).

If you are looking to add something fun to your site or need a free tool for creating branded animations, check out Minivid. Though we warn you, be prepared to lose countless hours playing with this application.

The saddest place on the web? The beautifully styled but totally empty forum. It’s the stark reminder that so often, if you build it, they won’t come.

Now you have an option - try kick-starting your site discussion forum with a paid posting service like ForumsFirst. Their stable of professional writers produce blog commentary and discussion threads on-demand and tailor-made to your website or blog. ForumsFirst offers a variety of reasonable content packages. For those who want to dip their toes in water, a trial blog package only costs $5. You get 12 comments, a minimum of 40 words each, from two registered users. Ready to dive in? The Jumbo package will set you back $225 for 750 comments, from 10-12 registered users, over the course of 15 weeks.

ForumsFirst also offers bookmarking services. For $20, they will add your website or blog to del.ic.ious and other top bookmarking sites. Search engines like Google and Yahoo rely on social bookmarking sites for their vast catalog of user-approved urls. In other words, the more links your site has on del.ic.ious, the better your site will rank in organic search.

If your visitors currently hear crickets when they visit your forum, here’s how to get the party started.

As we discussed in Talk amongst yourselves, there are a number of web-based tools to help you create a dialog with your customers or readers. However, some companies (and bloggers) would rather these conversations take place on home turf. And who can blame them?

Thanks to Yedda’s suite of blogger widgets, you can turn your website or blog into an open forum. Like Yahoo Answers, Yedda leverages the wisdom of crowds in a simple Q&A platform. The twist here is that Yedda understands the most important questions and answers come from your own audience.

The Profile Widget streams all your personal Yedda Q&A’s on your site, letting you share your knowledge directly with your readers, while the FAQ Widget posts pre-selected frequently asked questions and answers from the Yedda community. With the Ask A Question Widget, your readers can ask and answer questions on any topic. Yedda publishes the questions on Yedda.com and rewards you with a link back to your site.

So whether you are looking to add dynamic content to your site or looking for a free tool to help increase your site traffic, Yedda can be a good answer.