Finding news things for your blog can sometimes be difficult I know there are days when I sit here and go completely blank with what to talk about. To find out what to talk about often needs feedback and comments from your visitors. It can be like a host talk on a radio where you get no one talking back to you. I really have huge respect for the ways, those guys can find something to talk about out of thin air. It seems to me a remarkable gift.

I was looking for something to tell you that would be useful as tips for bloggers.

One thing you really need to do, is make sure if you have had made previous comments on the subject, make sure you tag those comments and back link to them. These both help the visitors and the search engine spiders. Make sure you allow comments as this keeps the conversations going and extends the subject for you to be able to reply to it as well.

There are several places that you can submit your articles besides putting them on your blog.  One of these is Blog Carnival. Here you can submit your article and with luck you might even get it on the feature list. Although you might not get a lot of traffic from it, you are getting your name out on the web and linking back to your website.

There is a bloggers directory that you can join as well. This won’t give you much traffic, unless you manage to get into their blogs of the week listing, but at least you are on their list of sites.

Remember all these sites have to be enabled. It’s not just a case of joining them and expecting them to list you. Go back in once you have joined and make sure you enable your website on their listings.

The main place you will find good traffic will be Twitter and Facebook. And this is done by finding blogs that have similar interests to yours and following them on Twitter. Make sure you visit their sites and post comments that are both helpful and in response to an article or two that has been posted. Intelligent and helpful blogs will soon get you followed back to your own blog. This also means that you will be found by the search engines. Ensure that your posts are well tagged, and that you leave your info like your email and your web address when you do your comments. Technorati looks for tags. In fact, that is how they pick up posts. If the website is on a blog that is WordPress then make sure you have the Technorati enabled so that WordPress automatically pings your new blog.

It’s a good idea to also connect to Google Friend Connect.  It’s Google’s answer to Facebook, and as it is Google it will be well searched for info for any links. Just as YouTube is used by Google so you can use Google Maps and place your name on there with your website as a place to find you.

When you are a blogger you are there for one of two reasons. One is to express your opinion. The other is to make money. When you are there to make money one of your main objects is to get a large following and to be well thought of both by your followers and by the search engines.  That sounds a little on the hard side to do but, in actual fact it’s not as hard as it sounds, if you follow the “keep straight” simple rules.

Always give value. Be honest and up front and grow your reputation.
When you are blogging don’t tell someone that something is good just to make a commission. In fact if you aren’t happy about using something yourself you shouldn’t be trying to sell it.

Keep your site up to date and simple to navigate.

One of your best tools here is WordPress. It’s simple to use and has an enormous resource of free tools for you to plug-in or use as widgets.

Decide what you are going to be selling and choose an appropriate name for your domain name and then register it with Hostgator or 1and 1. Now create your account with wordpress.org. You do this by filling in your name and address as well as your email.  Write up a small description to tell them what you are going to be blogging about.  You will need to choose a nickname to use to log into your account as well as a password.

Now you can set up your site using you theme and whatever else you have decided upon and start organizing your self to start blogging. When you first start it’s a good idea to keep to a schedule and blog at least three or four times a week or more if you can so your stray visitors will see something fresh regularly.

Search through the rest of the blogs and find one that has similar interests to you. Log in and join them and when you have something constructive to say make a post. Not an inane post like “I like what you say” but actually add to the post. This way you will build up a reputation for being a real person with a positive contribution to the area.

Your first post on your own blog can be down by clicking on your link in the dashboard that says new post. Once you have written up your post make sure you save it or it will be lost and you will have to start again. Make sure you set the site up with a thought out theme. There are plenty of free ones available on WordPress.  Put up your site name and your logo if you have one. Do put up an about page on one of the static pages. People always read those as they are interested in what you are about as a person. Add a bit of the personal here as well like a photo or two. Write up something to make people connect to you.  Be sure always to check both your spelling and your grammar.  It is also a good idea to get an account at copyscape.com and check your post isn’t duplicating someone else’s prose on the net. Never copy someone else’s work and post it to the net. Once you get into the swing of things and start having regular visitors you will find you have people responding with comments of their own which will make the blog pick up momentum and make it more interesting for all of you. If you have a cell phone that will work interactively be sure to set it up so you have pages that work on the cellphone and you can update from there.
Include your twitter and facebook links so that you are interlinked and this will also increase your visits.

Time for blogging, let’s get to it folks. Blogging is what you do nowadays, weird isn’t it? A few years back no one had even heard the word. Where did it come from anyways? Anyone knows? Random thoughts like these cross my mind and set me thinking especially when I should be doing something else.

Ah you see I got distracted and had to find out.  Thanks to your dictionary.com I now know. It came from a guy called Jorn Barger, who made up the word Weblog which got shortened to blog. We live and learn Oh and it all started on December 17 in the year 1997.
What do we need for a blog?  We need to write that’s number one. We need to be vocal with our words. To be interesting or people will just click away. And we need to design out blog page to be navigable and interest with all the easy features of navigation.

Brand with Favicon

However, first and foremost I need to make myself stick in your mind, so I am going to Brand myself. For this I am going to go to a website called Favicon.com and grab a shortcut icon. That’s going to be the signal to the world, I am me. You can use anything even a picture of your favorite cat. However, it’s going to be something people will see and instantly recognize you from. It’s like a Logo but not a logo. Well in a way it is a logo. What Favicon does is make those little signs you see next to people URL’s. I am sure you have seen them. The Yahoo Y and the Facebook F. you know the kind of thing in the address bar. The small 16 pixel or 32 pixels square is produced free by this site by using their online editor. It ends up as your brand on the URL toolbar linked to your website or blog on the internet. If you don’t want to make your own they do have a paid service that will create one for you. When you have made your favicon you need to save it in the favicon format which is a file name ending in .ico. That’s important as it won’t work with any other file name.

Add your Favicon to your webpage

 
This is fairly straight forward as what you do, is upload the file to your root directory and then add code to you webpage among the header tags. Your code will read like this.
<link rel=”shortcut icon” 
href=”http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico“> 

Use of gradients on your page:

By using gradients you will show you are taking more care and although people might not know what you have done to create that look it will make a better impression. This can be done both in Photoshop and in Corel photo Paint. Use your color picker to find your base color. Make a 2nd layer with a different name and then place it above the first. For this layer, you pick the same color but in a lighter shade.  Now using the Gradient tool which is in the Fill tools use the mode for Foreground and transparent. Try it a few times its fairly simple.

Text distortion

Fix any text distortion by using the Anti-Aliasing Tool. Play with the settings till you are satisfied. You can have a variety of different settings from Crisp to None. Each provides its own view of the Text. Sharp is usually the best choice.

There is nothing more frustrating than going to a website or blog and having to hunt to find your way around it. Tell it straight to the person visiting. This is what I am about. If you want to find this, it’s here and so forth. I sat clicking on a page for a good 10 minutes today trying to find more that the first picture. I followed the writing and clicked. Nothing happened. I was just about to click out unsatisfied when.. Admittedly, I was half asleep.. I saw the cross scroll bar was long. Eureka I had found the next photo.

All these are the things; you should take into account when designing your blog page.

Blogging is the name of the game folks. You can’t be private any longer. You have to tell the world what you are doing and what you are thinking. Share and share and share again.

Your Weblog or Blog is the IN thing. It’s been around longer than you think 13 years, in fact. However, in the last three, thanks to WordPress, it has become a household institution.
Now if you are thinking of setting up a blog, there are certain key elements you do need to apply if your page is going to turn out correctly and become successful.

Let’s take a look that those.

Be unique

You need to stand out in the crowd. People need to want to come back to you for your original thoughts. If you are just saying the same thing in different words that the public has read on 100 various websites, they won’t stick around, and they won’t come back. You need to be distinctive and have original thoughts. Amazing as it is, they come to learn, and, unless you produce the goods you are just another also ran.

Get noticed

Boring I know but in this day and age Facebook and Twitter are necessary to get noticed. However, you also need look at posting on other blogs with a link back to your blog. If the blog has an area where you can comment, use it. Search on line for places with blogs relevant to the subject matter you intend concentrating on and make relevant and interesting comments on the bloggers’ post. Use this to also gain back links. Yes folks, SEO although it seems silly, is appropriate and back links is a good way to go. The higher the website or blog is in the rankings the better a one way back link will be for you. If you don’t want to be known that it is you, and you live at such and such, then create a non de plume from the start. It’s actually a good idea as the internet stalking can be very real and can be dangerous. If you are going to have a non de plume, make the same one for all the websites. Keep consistent.

Hashtags

Hashtags are part of the Twitter community and the # symbol in front of the means being part of a “grouping”. It’s a tracking device on Twitter, which follows keywords for following a particular subject. It can be a useful tool once you have established an identity and subject on this social media site.

Facebook

Create a specialized page on a particular subject matter and get fans. Companies and celebrities are creating more and more of these Pages to tell the world what they are doing. Something must be right about it. It surely keeps someone or two in writing jobs if nothing else. Remember though it can be a huge amount of work, but it’s a good way of interacting with people and getting their constant feedback. People are curious about people. Its one of the reasons celebrities are mobbed and made into super stars. It’s almost like a feeding frenzy. So be prepared.

In web design, most people agree that content is king, and that this is by far the most primary aspect of any web design, taking precedence over custom graphics, or any other feature. This is also true when it comes to blogging, but with a few subtle differences that work in both the background and the foreground.

The role of WordPress and your blog, is more than just a tool to support it. It is also a holistic representation combined of what you say in your blog, and the theme you choose to support what you say. The theme and the blog combined, serve to make a holistic approach to the reader.

In its own way, WordPress has taken the concepts of web 2.0, and pushed it that little bit further, by extending the features of communication, expression, interaction, and opinions, and giving them a stronger platform, so that more and more people have a voice.

In no small way, is WordPress, together with social networking, is the largest contributor to web 2.0. This is quite an achievement for a blogging platform.

There can be no doubts that the theme is an extremely important aspect of your blog, as it serves several functions in one. It makes your blog more readable, provides easier navigation between articles and out going links, and can in its own right, draw attention from readers.

This last aspect of WordPress, is the difference between WordPress and standard web design. Though websites win awards for their navigation and appearance, it is hard to remember any that stand out. Due to the ease of creation, distribution, and customization, WordPress themes stand out and draw comments from readers for their appearance alone.

It has become a necessary and important aspect of blogging, to choose the right theme to support it.

Of course, ultimately, the blog is the most important element to draw and retain readers. The content is still King in the blogging world too, and by creating interesting, topical, humorous, informative and opinionated blogs, will gain you notoriety and success at blogging.

Behind the scenes of your blog, WordPress also helps in other ways too. It databases all articles, and groups them by category. This happens automatically so finding a blog, or pointing the way to one, is fairly straight forward.

It also helps comments to be regulated, so that you do not get pointless, random, or annoying posts cluttering up your blog. These are well known for driving readers away.

The role of WordPress and your blog is an issue that can be debated over and over again. The customization properties of WordPress, does ensure that if you do not get the right feel first time round, a trial and error approach will help you in getting it just right.

It is arguable that WordPress has taken blogging in a new direction with the ability to monetize from the blog. Google has added much weight to this with the introduction of Adsense, and many bloggers now use this.

The blog and WordPress seem to by synonymous, especially as WordPress is so easy to use. If you have something to say, you have a perfect platform, and as WordPress is being updated constantly, the options to change, expand, and add to, in support of your blog, currently appear to be endless.

The role of WordPress and your blog, continue to grow and change day by day. Though what you say is still the most important aspect of your blog, it is thanks to WordPress, with all its amazing functions, such as themes, plug-ins and ease of use, that your blog, like millions of others, finds a voice.

In our last article, we showed you 11 blogging mistakes to avoid. Sadly, there are 10 more blogging mistakes to avoid, if you want your blog to be successful. By following these, and the previous 11, or more accurately, by not following these and the previous 11, you should have a good guide on what not to do.

Don’t avoid mixing with other bloggers on the web. As there are millions of blogs out there to choose from, then the chances of the readers flocking to you is slim. By posting on other blogs and forums, you are spreading the word about yourself. This is a great way to market yourself and your blog.

Don’t blog about making money with a blog until you have. Many bloggers will write about how to make money with their blog, as it is a commonly searched for subject on the web, even if they have no experience in doing so. This does show in the blog, and if your blog comes across as unconfident, ill informed, or worse still, wrong, then your readership will dwindle.

Don’t blog about things which are not useful. Sounds a bit of a mouthful, but blogs that solve problems, or give good advice are always of use, and will keep people coming back for more. They will also spread the word about your brilliant blog.

Don’t put search engines above your readers. As you have probably guessed, this is another article on keeping things reader-focused. It is good to optimise your blog, and use SEO techniques to bring people in, but if you start jamming in keywords without any thought to how they are going to affect the article as a whole, you end up with rubbish. Guess what your readers think of rubbish.

Don’t be a stat-man. Stats can lead to a rocky road of depression and disaffection with your blog. It is alluring to see who is reading the blog, and comparing various demographics for fun, but this once in a while flirt with the stats, can soon become something you do every hour, looking for spikes and dips. Unhealthy, very unhealthy, eat some fruit instead.

Don’t attack other blogs, just to draw traffic to your site. Blogs and bloggers work largely on reputation, and you do not want to be saddled with a reputation you cannot run away from. So consider what you are doing before you go on an offensive.

Don’t dither about too much. Sounds a bit belligerent I know, but if you can avoid dithering, and work out the focus of your blog, the better the direction it will take.

Don’t lose the opportunity to sell yourself. Selling yourself on your blog is not like selling yourself for medical science, it is in the blogging world, an important aspect of your blog. Use your blog as a way of establishing yourself as a quality, knowledgeable writer, with something useful to say.

Don’t shut-out your readership. The best blogs encourage and inspire debate, so make sure you leave room for it on your blog. So keep your posts open-ended, and not closed. This way it will encourage your readership to leave comments, and keep the blog alive.

Don’t just repeat what everyone is saying. Try and make your blog as unique as possible, this will create interest and bring people to your blog.

This “10 more blogging mistakes to avoid”, article, combined with its predecessor, will hopefully bring you blogging success, and all the trimmings that go with it.

There are other mistakes to avoid, but hopefully these will give you a helping hand whether you are a new, or seasoned blogger.

The teaser is a great tool to utilize while creating blog postings.

What does it do?

The most common teasers are in newspapers. Only a partial amount of the story is shown on the front page, while the rest is in the body of the publication. This gives the reader a chance to flip through the entire publication, searching for the rest of the story they were drawn in by a good teaser and headline. This gives an increased chance of a reader looking at ads. Read the full story