If you are a lazy blogger, or simply don’t have time each day to write a full post, this handy little tip may help to at least keep your blog looking fresh with new content every day.
You need a del.icio.us account first. Once you have your account, as you visit other blogs bookmark their posts that you find interesting each day. Once you have set up your auto post below, del.icio.us will create a post on blog from each days saved bookmarks.
These instructions are from theory.isthereason - he has a full post on other options on his blog:
- Sign up or Login to your del.icio.us account
- Start bookmarking and tagging favorite web pages.
- In del.icio.us, click Settings and look under Blogging, then click on the link that says “daily blog posting”
- Click “add a new thingy” and some obscure form appears
- Enter the following into the form, and enter your relevant details in the [boxes]
job_name : WordPress Daily Post (or any title you want)
out_name : [Your WordPress Username]
out_pass : [Your WordPress Password]
out_url : http://[Your Blog URL]/xmlrpc.php
out_time : 4 (the GMT that you want the post to happen. 0 = 8pm EST)
out_blog_id : 1 (might not matter to WordPress)
out_cat_id : 1 (Regardless, it’ll probably post to the default WordPress category)
- Hit “Submit Query” and you’re done!
- Simply wait for the magical moment when you links magically appear on your blog!
All very simple and straight forward. Now if you find you are running out time to write a post, visit a few of your favorites and add their post to del.icio.us and you will have created a new post.
I don’t recommend you do it every day, however it could make a nice weekend roundup of what you have been reading and found interesting and would like to pass on to your readers. Make sure it provides some value to them and they will be appreciative.
You will notice that all the top bloggers - or ‘A’ listers - use a weekly - and sometimes daily - roundup of their favorite pages - you can too now.
With the speed of the internet came blogs and we all know that it is important to have a blog for your company but it is also as important to have good design on your blog. New blogs are springing up every day and the competition is only getting tougher to get noticed and stand out.
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In the blogging world there are millions of bloggers, yet the majority of them never bother to stop and leave a comment on any of the blogs they visit. If most bloggers new the true power of comments I am sure they would leave more.
There is a real art to leaving to comments which, when mastered, provide readers with an insight to your views and your writing style. The best approach is to treat your comments like mini posts. Follow the same ‘rules’ for writing a post. A start, a conclusion with of course the body in the middle. Short easy to eat paragraphs that add to the conversation surrounding the initiating post.
Leaving comments such as “I agree” do nothing to ‘add’ to the conversation and certainly do nothing to add to your reputation. Write meaningful mini posts as comments and other visitors are more likely to follow your link back to your blog to see what else you have written.
As you gain a reputation for writing meaningful comments, bloggers will not only welcome your visit, they are more likely to visit your blog to leave comments as a way to encourage you back. The reason, posts that contain valuable comments are almost as good at generating traffic as the post itself.
Comments are a powerful tool in the right hands, learn to use them effectively and learn to take as pride in the comment left as you do in your own posts and you will soon see your position within the blogging community rise.
This will lead to increased inbound links and with it increased rankings. This becomes a snowball effect, increases in rankings lead to more search traffic and of course, more links and more traffic. Total win for you the blogger, simply because you took the time to craft your comments.
Blog marketing starts right from day one when you decide on your blogs name. There are many blogs that have a ‘name’ that is different to their domain name. It is an interesting concept, but one that can lead to many problems.
If your blogs domain name is xyz.com and you name your blog ABC, there is the danger that first, someone will come along and register ABC or a derivation, or that ABC is already taken and you are blogging under someone else’s domain name. The other problem is that of confusion with your readers. If they remember you as ABC, they may forget your URL and never return. These issues are counter productive when it comes blog marketing.
Of more importance, is how you select your domain name. Most of the good dot com names are gone. You may find some variations still available, however many bloggers are now deciding on either long domain names, or using variations with hyphens. For example, rather than just xyz.com, they may try x-yz.com or x-y-z.com. A good or clever domain name can be a blog marketing blessing as the name itself becomes a marketing tool.
In selecting a name for your blog, you need to find a name that serves three purposes. The first is relevance to the content. The name of your blog needs to one that can, over time, be easily associated with the niche that you intend to operate in.
The second area to look at when selecting a blog name is the ease of use. Having a blog name that is a mile long with umpteen hyphens makes the URL difficult to remember, is even harder to type, and is a blog marketing nightmare. It can be more prone to typing errors as well.
The third aspect in a domain name is whether or not it can be used as a keyword. A long hyphenated domain name can be difficult to optimize in itself. You need to rely heavily on associated keywords instead of the domain name.
Blog marketing can be a difficult task. Add a poorly thought through blog name and the task becomes impossible.
Launching a blog these days goes hand in hand with an ecommerce strategy. A blog is a very effective choice when adding new content to your growing site. If you are planning to monetize your blog by selling some of your products than it is very important to have a consistent credit card processing system in place for both your website and your blog.
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Blog content has several issues that need looking at over time. The first is the problem of duplicate content and the second is the issue of new content.
Blogs are popping up everywhere and one of the common practices is to subscribe to RSS feeds and then just reprint any articles of interest from them as their blog content. They are even getting smart now and only taking the first paragraph and using the read more to link back to the source.
This can result in websites with duplicate blog content - in some cases 100% copies. Google now claims to be able to locate the original content and drop any spammed copied from their indexes. You can never be sure.
The second issue of fresh blog content is a little different. Fresh content normally means publishing something new on a regular basis, preferably daily. Sometimes this is just not possible. There are options available can be of help.
Have you ever seen those “Quote of the Day” widgets on blogs? They adds a random quote of the day to each page that the widget appear on. Some work on a time basis, updating every set time period; others update for each visitor that arrives on that page effectively changing the blog content for each visit.
The effect is that every time you arrive on that page, the page will be a little different. The search engine spiders see the same thing. Every time they come to read your pages, the blog content has been changed.
If you can incorporate several different widgets on a page, you can make significant changes to the page which will result in frequent visits from the spiders and frequent reidexing of your pages. This is a great counter to the lack of fresh content on your pages.
It also makes your pages look different to the scrapped pages on another site. If you have incorporated any links back to site in that content (which you can do quite easily within the RSS feed) then Google and the other search engines will see your site as being the original publisher of the content.
Images can often make a difference to a blogs overall look and certainly add reader value to an individual post - if that is the image is suitable to the content and the image itself optimized. These blogging tips are directed more towards the look of a post than to any SEO affects.
Many bloggers fail to look at the most basic blogging tips when it comes to images. I often come across pages where an image has been placed and the effect actually destroys the flow of post itself. It can be very disconcerting to a reader to the point that the post’s message is lost.
Simple blogging tips like left or right aligning the image with text wrap. Placing white space around the image for clarity - there are so many blogs where the text is hard up against the image. Borders can be a useful affect as well if you know how to use them. Blogging Tips has an excellent post on How To Add Borders and is well worth a read.
Apart from borders, you can very quickly and easily add white space and change the alignment of your images with a couple of short commands.
White Space:
To add white space around an image - add the following command inside the <img src=”???? hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″> line in your html editor. The number 5 represent the number of white space pixels.
Image Alignment:
Add the following command <img src=”???” align=”left> - you can use ‘left’ ‘right’ or ‘center’ in the command line. The left and right options also allow the text to wrap around the image.
These are very simple blogging tips, however the overall affect to your post can be quite startling.
For some bloggers, getting traffic can be difficult particulalry when they first start up. For some, blog networks offer a flow of traffic that helps to kick-start their blogging life.
Blog networks have several advantages and disadvantages. The main idea of a blog network is that, once you sign up, for every blog you visit you will receive credits which are used to bring visitors to you. The general pattern is one return visitor for every two blogs that you visit. Visit 50 blogs and receive 25 visitors to your blog.
That can be time consuming. Visiting 50 blogs takes quite a while. Some blog networks have paid options where your visiting ratio become 1-1. You may even be able to buy credits so you don’t have to visit other blogs at all.
One of the benefits to new bloggers is visiting other blogs. You get a feel for blogging and what is involved, how other bloggers set up and perhaps monetize their sites. This can be a quick learning experience for the new blogger.
Most experienced bloggers find it hard to justify the time and cost of joining a blog network. However, for new bloggers, it pay provide a steady stream of traffic and help to introduce them to a great many blogs they would otherwise not have seen.
Most blogs include an RSS feed for their readers, however there is more to your RSS than relaying your latest post. Your RSS feed or email has some valuable blank real estate around your posts that could be put to work to enhance your blog.
Blogging Income: With prime real estate going to waste it makes sense to increase your blogging income where ever possible. You can either sell advertising space or sign up for Feedburner’s Adsense ads. The good thing about Adsense is the targeting of ads to your content.
Link Building: You can incorporate links to related content on your site. For WordPress users there are several plugins that can help with this process. Placing internal links also adds a little value if your posts are scrapped onto a spam site.
Promotion: You can use the space to promote yourself, your blog or another blog or web site that you control. You can also use the space to promote and funnel readers to dedicated landing pages.
Copyright: The footer of your RSS feed is the perfect place to include copyright information. You can include other statements such as disclaimers in this areas as well.
Special Offers: You can reward your readers by placing special offers into your feeds footer. Everyone appreciates special offers, particularly if they are free.
With these suggestions there is no reason your RSS feeds should be limited to just a relay of your latests posts. Use the space wisely and your readers will appreciate it and you will benefit from it.
One of the problems that some blogs face, particularly if they are popular or in a very competitive niche, is that of security. This blogging tip looks at what you can do to tighten up your security.
Most security issues revolve around two areas. The first is the software itself, for most bloggers that is WordPress. Over the years WordPress has had numerous security issues which have resulted in regular updates to the software.
The second area of concern is at the server level and these blogging tips will address several of those. I know from experience that one of the regular areas to be attacked is are your data files.
Hacker’s exploit your database as the WordPress default table prefix is wp_ .You can change this to a more secure prefix in a number of ways. The most secure is probably by doing it manually. This is time consuming, but then losing your database is probaby more time consuming.
There is very good six step guide to changing your table prefix at t-dot blog - simply follow the instructions carefully and you will safeguard your database tables. There is also a plugin available, however from what I can tell, it seems to have issues for some users.
The WordPress plugin site has a plugin that may be worth looking at. It provides a broader range of security issues including removal of version numbers and file permissions. WP Security Scan does a good job of securing your blog, however, I cannot stress enough the need to read the instructions carefully before installing and using.
Blog security is a big issue and needs careful actions. The last thing you need is to compromise your blog while trying to protect it. However, if you don’t put in place some security issues, the loss of your blog’s data can cause even bigger headaches. My biggest tip: backup regularly - daily if possible. If your security is compromised, you can at least restore from your back up.
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