6 Ways to “Shoot Up” Your Blog

Blogging Tips December 31st, 2007 Say Something (1)

Time to let your blog shine, dust it off and let others marvel at it…
Go to Google and execute a cursory search on “Ways to improve your blog”, and the quest will likely return hundreds of results, all of which seem to originate from existing blogs. Visit several of these blogs and scrutinize carefully what you find. Unfortunately, the blogging community is falling to the rear of the websites in terms of attraction and usability. The six major arguments brought out below tend to emphasize the problems that bloggers face and the best approach to correct these troubles.

Blogs do not have to surface in a dissimilar aspect then do the websites, after all a blog is merely a platform, which facilitates people to publish content online. A blog symbolizes a personal online journal that is posted on the internet and updated on a daily basis. In actuality, the blog is fashioned after a personal notepad. So here are some, not so unknown, ways to shoot it up and get some traffic & subscribers.

1. Comment Like Crazy on Blogs
Pay a visit to other similar blogs. Make several mental observations of their pros and cons. Are they more successful then yours? Study and compare your blog with theirs during each visit to the related blog. Be an active supporter of other online blog communities. Most blogs will allow readers to leave their own comments. If you have something interesting to say about somebody else’s blog, then do it, being sure to add a link to your blog in the process.

Do not believe for one minute that you must keep your writings to put on your own site only. Feel free to place them on other sites as well. The presence of your entries on another site may be just the thing to wet someone’s appetite and cause them to visit your blog. Comment frequently to get your name and URL out to the others in the blogging community. However, do not post comments just to post your link. That is obnoxious and does not do good things for your image.

2. Write a weekly “Cream of the Crop” Post
Bring out the best of your blog. It does not have to be you only that writes your blog entries. If you have a guest that has stated something of interest whether it pertains to you or not then make it a note to let others know it was a great idea. Include them in your “Best of Post” area. It will pay off in the end as people find that is the best way to judge a blogs contents while at the same time it will broaden your blogs audience. If another blogger within your community posts an interesting comment, then link to it and respond by adding your own comments. Keep in mind the Track-backs do bring fresh traffic to your blog.

3. Utensils Are Where It’s At
There are so many tools or widgets designed for bloggers to help get traffic.
The web is loaded with ”utensils” and ways to spice up your blog. Stickiness is always a way of grabbing the attention of other bloggers as well as to gather additional readers. Installing a graphical user interface item on your blog for which the visitor can interact is certainly one way to increase reader participation.

4. Give Your Blog Some Character
Above all, try to create a pretty blog. If your blog is pallid and boring, people simply will not have a very good time interacting with it. Ensure that the fonts you select are readable, and go easy on the flashing banners. Avoid the popup ads when possible as well as the giant bright text as these are most certainly annoying to your reader and will send him surfing the net elsewhere. Your blog should be highly visible and as attractive as possible when viewed in all browsers.

5. Rock Your Personality 
Chat with your visitors and get to know them. You must really get to know your readers on a more or less personal basis. Begin by telling your friends of your blog. Do not automatically assume that they will find you but rather you must direct them to your blog. At the same time, tell your friends to pass the information on to their friends also.

6. Give Readers What They Desire
Maintain themes for your blog based on your readers’ desires. If you are even remotely serious about the health of your blog, you should consider whipping your existing theme into shape or even creating a new one that’s well designed in terms of look and code. Your chosen theme will play a great part in the success or failure of your blog. There are many free themes available, which would blend in well with using a specific theme based upon the day of the week.

When possible install a traffic analysis gadget on your blog to learn about the patterns of your visitors. Be sure to be diligent when responding to a comment that readers may post on your blog. Be sure to answer all directed e-mail promptly. I think, these measures will help you to improve your blog considerably!

6 Tips for Easy Reading Blogs

Blogging Tips December 29th, 2007 Say Something (0)

Each writer has to cultivate their own method of effective writing and over time become a master of their own characteristic style. Their writing however must be straightforward and easy to understand while being simple to read. With these basic traits in hand, you can surely rake in the compliments without having to possess the skills required of a modern novelist. “Cuz believe me, I ain’t no great writer!” < I was being sarcastic.

Be PreciseMaking use of those extra lengthy paragraphs and plugging in the spacious words does not really work out well when writing for the blogging community. Most of the blog readers do not read and absorb the phraseology contained in a blog like they would in a stylish novel. Instead, most bloggers will rapidly skim the through the data in an effort to hastily extract each and every bit of important information which may be contained in the blog.Developing an effective and successful blog does not have to be a drudgery nor should it become your lifelong work for twelve to sixteen hours each day. In a nutshell, blog writing should be nothing short of practical day-to-day writing. Nothing elaborate and nothing too carried away. We look forward to providing you with a few straightforward hints aimed to helping make your blog easier to read.

1. Keep your Blog Appearance Pleasing, clutter free
When setting up your blog be sure to keep your colors proportional. By this, I mean make the font color seeable with the background color. The combination should be easy on the eyes and require no squinting to read. Closely associated with color is the font. Choose a font that is easy to read and above all avoid the fancy fonts and those that are similar to scripts.

Keep your navigational scheme simple and easy to use. Do not try to confuse your visitors or you won’t see them come back. Do not plaster ads all over the site in the hopes that someone will click on it and you will make money – it does not work that way.
Lastly ensure that your page looks good regardless of the browser you are using and the screen resolution for which your monitor is set for.

2. Make Your Headlines Crazy Catchy
When a visitor first arrives at your blog the initial thing they perceive is your blog headlines. The age-old saying about the importance of first impressions has never been truer. When you create, your headlines make sure that they are as descriptive and appealing as you possibly can make them. The objective here is to catch the readers attention immediately and then to keep it. Always be on the look out for new and different entry techniques to add to your arsenal of ideas. Writing effective and catchy headlines is a skill in itself that all bloggers should perfect.

3. Be Honest & Direct
Do not force your reader to spend his day reading halfway down the page in order to understand the drift of what you are trying to convey. This information should clearly be presented within the first paragraph and then further developed as your writing continues.

4. Scrutinize
Provide your reader with a little extra help in getting through your commentary swiftly and proficiently by smoothly guiding them to the heart of the article you have written. Use some bold accenting being certain to provide logically break points for lengthy posts making them into more bit size chunks. Be careful though that you don’t overdo it.

5. Is Your Spelling All Wet?
Above all else do not misspell words – there simply is no excuse these days. Use your spellchecker to initially review your document for the proper spelling of all the contained words however be forewarned. Spellcheckers are not foolproof and are notorious at making their own assortment of errors. Rely more upon your initial training and honed skills at word checking rather then the word processors spelling checker. Give your complete script several cursory proofreads – One before checking the spelling and one again after the spell checker has been used.

6. Give These Paragraphs Some Breathing Space
You should make generous use of bullets to get your point through to your reader. Your blog visitor will be able to read much quicker and he will appreciate your thoughtfulness at helping to get him over the reading and allowing him to move on. He is definitely likely to return since he realizes in advance that he can cover more ground at your blog then the one down the street.

I hope these little notes are of some use to you in making your blog easier to read. In conclusion, do not just write to convey information to your reader – follow these simple rules and write so that the readers can actually READ IT!

What is “RSS” and “RSS subscribers”?

Internet Business December 27th, 2007 Say Something (0)

In today’s internet café’s everyone talks about “RSS” and “subscribing to RSS”.

The question is - just what is this thing they call RSS?

To get underway with understanding RSS, you have to first realize that RSS can stand for several acronyms, the most common of which is “Really Simple Syndication”.

The Function of RSS

Regardless of what RSS is designated to mean, it has the same function – to distribute data from an assortment of websites to your personal computer on a real time basis.  It is a straightforward technique to enable you to keep in touch on either your favorite news features or various specialized subjects, which are of interest to you, while avoiding the hassle of browsing aimlessly through the internet for this information.

With RSS feeds, as they are called, you can anticipate that the desired content will be delivered directly to you without experiencing the clutter within your email mailbox. These feeds are instantaneous and generally take only moments to arrive at your machine producing real time headlines and stories for which you have requested or subscribed to.
RSS is typically written in the internet coding language called XML. XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. If you look closely, you will notice that the web sites that offer RSS, the feed button posted on the site something’s have the letters XML printed on that button.

Necessity of RSS

Why would anyone care to use RSS? RSS allows you, the computer and internet operator to receive directly the live web feeds on your personal computer. It will select the latest information for which you have signed up for and send these headlines from the different internet sites to your computer for your immediate viewing.

In simplified terms, it means that in place of you having to visit several dozen websites in an effort to find the information you want, the information will simply come to you. This information can range from news, weather or sports, your favorite blogs, to data being shared from a websites owner to his registered users.

An important additional use of RSS could be the spread of emergency data transfer. Suppose, you live in a hurricane prone area, you could easily subscribe to a local or federal website that will monitor and then notify you when a hurricane warning takes effect.
Always important with the things happening nowadays.

Versatile Subjects for RSS Subscribers

News is always a good subscription to apply for, as the news can be broken down similar to that of a newspaper, into several different areas like music news or celebrity update. Possibly your feed is about events in your state or important emergency data from the federal government.

If you race automobiles or ride motorcycles, fly aircraft or any other hobby, you are sure to find that there is a RSS feed associated with that activity. It is there – you merely have to find it. With the recent increase in popularity of blogging these days, the use of RSS is once again being expanded. Now your friend can have you subscribe to his blog and receive instant updates on what is happening there. The supply of subjects for which there are RSS feeds is virtually endless. From Politics, jokes and inspirational quotes to currency exchange rates, they are all available.

Okay you say, now in a nutshell how does it work? RSS headlines are nothing more then simple text files that the sending website submits to a special RSS feed Server. This server in return sends the related text files to the subscribers’ computer as fast as it receives them. This means the reader is always kept up to date on his selected events. The time involved here is usually anywhere from 30 seconds to as much as 30 minutes.

Now you say that you are sold on it but you do not know how to set it up nor do you want to spend money for the software needed. This also is not a problem.

Getting started with your own…

To get started with your own RSS feed reader, you first find a reader that you want to use. Most readers are free and easy to both install and use. Some of the more popular ones that people are using:

-Feedburner

-Google Reader

-Bloglines

-Technorati

-Delicious

You can view a few more at the bottom of this post. All the little icons are under the heading “Bookmark/Search this post with”.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Next, you will need to setup your screen. This can be accomplished in several ways. If you visit a website that has a feed that you desire to subscribe to you will notice a special code or orage RSS icon on the site for the feed. All you need to do is copy and paste the code into your reader or just simply click on the “RSS” feed icon.

It is that simple. You merely need to log into your RSS page now and start your reader. The software will scan all your selected websites automatically. If you so desire you can arrange the various feeds into individual folders simpler to how you arrange and organize files on your computer.

To subscribe you will need to not only install the reader but also sign up for the feed. Now you are ready to not only save time and save effort but also too quickly and easily get the latest information you are seeking.

Mark Joyner Gives Away Free Blogging Course

Blogging Tips December 24th, 2007 Say Something (0)

Just doing my part ok, 

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.