Internet Utilities: Guide and Tips For Bloggers

Showing posts with label Guide and Tips For Bloggers. Show all posts

Sep 12, 2009

Gadgets allow you to easily add dynamic content to your Google Sites web pages : Guide and Tips For Bloggers

Jeffrey Harris, Associate Product Manager says in his blog post on March 20, 2009 that Gadgets allow you to easily add dynamic content to your Google Sites web pages, and are available from the “Insert” menu when you are editing a page. Some of the more basic gadgets, like the “Recent posts” or “Recent files” gadgets give you a quick view from a central location of content being updated on other pages.

Gadgets can be tools like a clock or to-do list, informative like recent news headlines or stock quotes, or even fun games or a virtual aquarium. Clicking on the “More…” option in the “Insert” menu brings up a directory of gadgets that you can check out and try on your pages.

If you want to get started building your own gadgets, check out the Gadget Developers Guide.

We have also made some improvements to the way gadgets work for users of the Premier Edition of Google Apps:

* Gadgets can be made to be private to a specific domain.
* Gadgets will match the security and encryption level of the site.
* There is a new start page template that lets each user personalize the gadgets that are display specifically for them.

Source : googlesitesblog.blogspot.com

Jul 29, 2009

Most important tips to increase visitors to your blog

Blogging is becoming more and more popular. Internet users are always looking for information, and often visit blogs as a resource. Why not capitalize on that?

You can certainly have a website that is only a blog and do very well with it. Many bloggers make very good income just through signing up for services such as Google Adsense, or affiliate marketing. If you sell products or services online, a blog will help attract traffic, greatly increasing your chances for more sales. Each blog you post equals another entry in the search engines.

How do you get readers to visit your blog? Here are some strategies you can implement:

Comment on other blogs

Do more than just say "nice post". Give information which will be useful and/or interesting to other readers.

Share your blog on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter

If you post a bulletin on MySpace, come up with a title that grabs people's attention. In the body of your message, briefly describe how your article will help your readers. Follow a similar strategy on Facebook. Use a service such as TinyURL to shorten the length of your URL when you are using Twitter.

Join blog social networks

There are social networks specifically just for bloggers. One of these networks is Blog Catalog. Sign up with them, and actively participate in the discussions. You can learn many useful tips just from reading the forums. Post your own helpful tips, and you will greatly increase visitors to your blog.

Enter a blog carnival

A blog carnival is a collection of many different blogs, usually grouped by category. Having your blog in a blog carnival is an excellent way to increase traffic. Visit Blog Carnival, and check out the various categories available. If you have a good article that's relevant to the topic, submit it to them.

Post quality content

None of the previous strategies will work to your advantage if you don't have excellent material on your website. Pick a topic you are knowledgeable and passionate about. Think of common problems people have and offer solutions. When you write your blog, what information can you offer that no one else can?

Consider posting articles that will be relevant many years from now. Posting evergreen content will ensure that readers will visit your website for a long time to come.

Jul 28, 2009

Promote your blog or website with Facebook

Big companies use fan pages on Facebook, and so should you. If you have a web site you actively promote, it makes sense to set up a fan page on the social network.

The benefit should be fairly clear, but at the simplest level a fan page allows you to “push” your message out to fans whenever you’d like. Think of it as if all of your fans subscribe to your RSS feed and an email newsletter. Whenever you want to promote something new on your site or make an announcement, you just update your fan page as you would your personal Facebook page. All of your fans get a notice in their feed. You can also send direct messages to your fans.

To start getting fans, set up your page and send fan requests to people on your friend list. This will get you started, but it may not be enough to get you to the elusive 100 fan mark, which is required to get a vanity URL for your fan page. To do this, I recommend using Facebook’s built in advertising option to promote your page. It’s like Google Adwords, except you target your ads to certain demographics, locations, and types of people on Facebook and invite them to join your page.

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Jul 13, 2009

Add-Ons & Tools For Your Blog To Improve Visitors Experience

Google Talk Badge - This badge will enable site visitors to get in touch with you quickly. They won’t need a Google account and the badge is enabled only when you are online. Alternative is meebo me.

Web2PDF Online - Love this. People can download your articles as PDF files with a click. The PDFs are free of any advertising and you also get full access to stats so you know what articles downloaded most, etc.

Zoho Creator - If you ever need to create web forms for your blog, use Zoho Creator. It lets you customize the form layouts, there are no data limits and best of all, readers can upload file attachments while submitting the form.

HP Blog Printing - This makes your blog printer friendly. Visitors can pick blog posts that they want to print and only the text + images get printed. Everything else including banners, sidebars, etc. are cut off from the printed version.

Outbrain Ratings - The is the best way to add ratings to your blog posts. Outbrain offers two extra advantages as well - your readers can find more stories related to the one they are currently reading and two, they can rate stories even from feed readers.

ShareThis or AddThis - They help reduce clutter on your blog by neatly arranging icons in a CSS drop-down that appears only on mouse hover. Both are similar though I prefer AddThis as it is loads faster and allows branding.

Google Feed Wizard - This is useful if you have to embed RSS feeds in your blog - you can create blocks in either horizontal or vertical format. If your need options other than AJAX, try these RSS widgets or the static Google Gadgets.

Skribit - This is again a great tool to get feedback and opinions from your site visitors.

For instance, you can put up a question like "What should I write about" or "How Can I improve" in the sidebar and readers can add opinions anonymously. They can even vote on suggestions left by other visitors.

who.amung.us - This helps you and your readers know how many people are currently on the site and what pages are they reading. No sign-up required and amung.us will even tell you the exact location of different visitors on a map.

Eco Safe Badge - This badge allows website visitors to send a full copy of your web page to any email address in HTML or PDF format. Alternatively, they can download a PDF version of the page in a click. The whole idea is to discourage visitors from printing web pages.

Meebo Rooms - This allows visitors on your website to interact with each other inside a chat room. Other options worth exploring include Google Lively but again, Lively requires installation at the client’s end.

Scribd iPaper - If you frequently link to PDF files and Microsoft Office documents like doc or xls, the Scribd iPaper add-on will make sure that your content remains accessible even to readers who don’t have Microsoft Office or Adobe Reader.

You simply copy-and-paste a small block of code into your webpage, and QuickSwitch converts all the documents in your blog into Flash Paper format hosted on Scribd. If you only link to PDF files, try PDFMeNote script.

Yahoo! Media Player - If you have an audio blog or frequently link to MP3 files, integrate the Yahoo! media players in your blog template - this auto-detects any MP3 links and creates an embedded player so you are saved from all the hard work.

Translate Gadget - This lets your non-English speaking visitors translate articles from your website in their native language using Google Translation.

Alternatively, you can create your own translation box with language flags or through a different translation service.

Digg Your Blog - A good Digg widget that doesn’t get much attention.

Unlike the regular "Digg This" buttons, this widget creates a list of posts from your own blog that are currently getting votes on Digg. Put it in your sidebar to highlight "recently popular" content.

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Jul 7, 2009

Adjusting your Blogger privacy settings, Demo Video By Blogger Help Center

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Creating a Blog List with Blogger, Demo Video By Blogger Help Center

Uploading a Video with Blogger, Demo Video By Blogger Help Center

Creating a Podcast with Blogger, Demo Video By Blogger Help Center

Adding a Google Gadget to your blog Video Demo By Google Help Center

Blogger Help Center Video How to Use Google Help Demo

How to post to your blog from your mobile phone Video Demo By Blogger Help

Purchasing and setting up a Custom Domain through Blogger Video Demo By Blogger Help

How to create a blog with Google Blogger Video By Blogger Help

Desperate to make money from your site ? - Read Reality

I have observed that many of the blog and website owners are desperate to make money from their site faster, Here is the fact that there is no such short cut or faster way to earn money from your site.

1. Making money from your site is 80% mental, you got to have positive mental attitude to start with building a site, don't keep unrealistic targets to earn a specific amount per month say 5000$ from the very first month, If you fail to achieve your target you will loose interest and ultimately will be total failure.

2. Don't build your site only for making money, here you should have passion towards your site topic and you should be a good writer writing articles regularly, there is a lot of hard work required to build useful site.

3. Start building a quality site which should be really useful to your visitors (This quality will fetch you lot of money and loyal followers to your site), and then slowly go on increasing your target readers and target money.

4. There is no short cuts in making money from your site, it will take at least 6 months to a year to start earning.

I hope this tips will help you keep patience and start working hard to build a quality site.

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Some Simple Tips for Newbie Blogger - Blogging Tips and Tricks

Are you new to blog and blogging?

Then here’s a guide for you. Blogging means a lot of things and you have to do a lot of work to start your own blog.

Blogger (blogspot)

Blogger is a free and most used platform. You don’t need to buy domain and hosting to start a blog with this platform. It’s an easy choice for beginners.

Some basic questions about blogspot platform
Sign up and get started in blogger
Create your own theme from scratch
Create some unique HTML elements

Wordpress self hosted

Wordpress is a software which can be installed in a web directory. This is the best blogging software and the chice of world class professional bloggers.

Get a good hosting plan -I recommend HostGator
Have the perfect domain for your blog
Install wordpress using Fantastico tool
Install the most essential wordpress plugins

Additional tasks

You’ve started your first blog, now you have to do some additional task to get to the next level.

Write some pillar articles for blog’s foundation
Setup a blog feed with feed burner
Claim your blog on Technorati
Submit your site on search engines
Some basic SEO job for your website

Your own idea

Please do share your own tips about starting the first blog. Are you getting started for your first blog? What tips you’ll share for newbie blogger?

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Importance of Choosing Domain Name, Simple Tips to Remember

Domain/ web address is the most important thing of a website. Choosing the right domain will make you one step ahead of others. You must own your paid domain for your blog. The rankings you’ll achieve will be yours and in the long term, you’ll be allowed to sell it.

Domains are the base of the future business, so you have to be careful about choosing the right one. Once you setup one and started to market it, it’d be harder to change to another one. Here are some domain examples,

Meaningful domains

There could be two types of domains, meaningful and non-meaningful. Meaningful domains are dictionary word domains like business.com, news.com etc. These are highly brandable and most of them are already taken. Non-meaningful domains could be any thing which are not real words but could be made into a brand like, twitter.com, digg.com, sphinn.com etc. Non-meaningful domains are tougher to brand.

Your name as the domain

For an example, ritathakkar.co.in is my name as a domain. It’s my personal asset and it’s valuable for me only. A personal name is harder to brand unless your name becomes something bigger like being a celebrity, business person etc. To start a blog/website, avoid your name as the domain because it’s harder to brand and much harder to sell.

Keyword-rich-domains

These are the new trends of the web. A domain with keywords in it: CheapAutoParts.com, EarnWithForex.net, Build-Your-House.com etc. Keywords separated with hyphens (-) works much for getting SEO benefits. Most of the times a funnel site is being created to capture the top places of the search term and then the lead is being sent to the main site.

Sma.rt domains

It’s the hot trend of today. People are having smart domains to find their favorite words. It all started when Del.icio.us jump into the web. More and more people started to create smart domains such as ma.gnolia, sta.rtup.biz, identi.ca etc. After the twitter trend, it became even shorter like, tr.im, ow.ly, bit.ly, is.gd, cli.gs etc. Getting a smart domain now is easy but you have to spends some money for this because an average smart domain costs around $100-$500/year (till now)

Domain with a commitment :0

Adding a special word in your domain will turn your blog definite. For an example if you put the word, “Daily” such as dailyblogtips.com -then your readers will think that you’re publishing daily articles. But as a blogger, you can’t write daily, so avoid this word. Adding a keyword in your blog such as, “Nokia” will limit your blog into writing about nokia cell phones. Instead of being definite, try indefinite like “Mobile” rather than using “Nokia.” Adding the word “blog” will make it a blog. There’s a word “blog” in the doamin blogexpert.com -meaning that this domain is only brandable for blogs.

So what type of domain is ideal for me?

Meaningful dictionary word domains are better for your blog. When choosing a domain, ignore hyphens (-) and numbers. Try to get a .com domain. Creating a non-meaningful domain will make it sound like a social website and will be harder to market. Avoid smart domains also because it’s harder to remember the combination and it’ll sound like another URL shortening service. If you want to set a target to sell your blog in the future, then avoid your name as a domain.

What you prefer, choosing your domain?

What are the things that you put focus when choosing a domain? How many domains you have now? Do you believe one of your domains will earn you a fortune in the future?

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Writing a Successful Blog - Presentation by Amit Agrawal (Digital Inspiration)

Write A Successful Blog

Most Important Tips to remember while blogging

* Schedule - Don’t disappoint readers

* Thick Skin - Cannot please everyone

* Never Flame / Avoid Personal Attacks

* Avoid Spelling / Typos

* Intelligent Formatting -Most People Will Scan, Not Read

* Think and Write to Avoid Embarrassment Later

* Never Blog When Angry -It Reflects

* Anything Posted Online is UN-deletable

* Wrote a killer post ? Tip fellow blogger but don’t spam

* Offer RSS and Email subscriptions

* Change that About Us Page ‐Self Promotion Not Bad

* Blog Design Matters

* Readers are 100x Smarter Than You - Respect Their Time

* Stop Obsessing about Stats and AdSense Income

* The word “Sorry” can do wonders.

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Tips to Remember Choosing or Deciding Blog Post Title

"Avoid naming similar to other’s popular blog post"

"So your competitor just wrote a blog post that hit the front page of Digg and got blogged seemingly everywhere. And ironically, you have a blog post on the exact same thing… or, more likely, you wrote your own version that you believe is 100x better than your competitors. But the same with duplicating your own blog entry titles, you need to avoid doing the same here.

So name it something completely different to increase its odds of hitting front pages because people will tend to not vote or submit it if it seems to be exactly what they voted for two days ago. Or best yet, keep your killer blog title and entry and wait a couple of months before publishing it, when everyone would have long forgotten your competitor’s version on the same thing."

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Defination of Blog - What is blog? - How to read a Blog

A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

The Famous Blogger Mr Darren Rowse Says

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

Blogs usually have a few features that are useful to know about if you want to get the most out of them as a reader. Lets examine a couple briefly.

Archives You might look at the front page of a blog and think that there is not much to them. A few recent entries, some links to other sites and not much else. However its worth knowing that there is a lot more going on under the surface that might initially meet the eye. For example in addition to the main page of this blog - at the time of writing this post there are over 520 other pages or posts below the surface that I’ve written over the past few months.

When I write a post like this one it goes to the top of the front page. As it gets older and as I add more current posts it begins its journey down the page until it disappears from it. This is not the end of its life however, because it goes into the ‘Archives’ of my blog. It sounds like a dusty dark place but its really just like a filing cabinet that is easily accessible in a couple of ways. You can read my ‘archives’ simply by looking on the ’sidebar’ (over on the left of this blog) at the ‘archives’ or ‘categories’ section. There you will see links to all my old posts which you can access either by category. You’ll see a category for ‘Advertising’ click that link and you’ll see all my old posts on the topic of Advertising with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

Comments Not all blogs use comments but most do. This blog is not a monologue but a conversation. You can give me feedback on almost everything I write simply by clicking the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each one of my posts. This will take you to a little form where you leave your name, email and a link to your own blog if you have one as well as your feedback, comment, critique, question, essay on why you love my blog, promise of money…. etc). Try it now. Scroll to the bottom of this page, click ‘comments’ and fill in the blanks with a little introduction to yourself.

A great way to learn about blogs is to read a few. Leave some comments, ask questions and bookmark your favourites. An even better way to learn about blogs is to start your own. OK you might be laughing at me now you think you are not web savy enough to have your own site? You wouldn’t know where to start? You don’t know how?

Darren Rowse Secret

Let me share a secret with you three years ago I knew nothing about blogs, I had never used the internet for anything more than email, surfing and chatting to friends and I could only barely do any of that! But one day I discovered a blog and after surfing from one to another (blogs tend to link up to other blogs a lot) for a few hours I was hooked and wanted to start my own. I found that there are free blog services that almost anyone could set up in a matter of minutes. Really it is that simple. Literally millions of people blog from around the world. Its not just something for young people, or geeks, or cool folk, or Westerners, or even for people with their own computers instead its something virtually anyone with access to a computer and the internet once or twice a week can start up.

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