HOW TO DEVELOP AND NURTURE YOUR BLOG

Its sometimes a great downer for anyone who writes his post for others and has no one to read and comment on.But all great things start from the scratch and all good blogs were having little to none in followers and readers when they started as we are now.But one's effort never goes in vain and it is just a matter of time before your hard work pays off and you do get readers coming to your blog.

The best thing that any beginner can do is to find out the best blogs which are having similar content or are in the same niche.Try following and commenting on their blog posts to have their attention on your side.This is certainly obtained after you comment on their blogs regularly.Also you need to join some forums where you can find the same kind of people over there and participate actively in the discussion.This does mean that you have be very precise and honest in commenting so that you are adding some value to your blog and not just spamming to get readers commenting on your blog.

To keep readers come back to your blog again and again you have to keep providing them something interesting and fresh almost every time.You find that so many well developed and popular blogs are in the same category but still enjoy fair share of readers.Thus being able to serve something interesting and relatively fresh content regularly is something that helps you to have a long term readership from people that re already following your blog along with the new ones.

It is sometimes interesting to find out that your blog has low readership or it is because of what you post on your blog.People sometimes get confused on what to write on their blog when they initially start.Most of the blogs on which personal views are expressed do not get much appreciation as not everyone has the ability to bind people up with their words,the mesmerising expressions and suitable use of sentences and figure of speech.

We always want to write something that comes naturally from the heart and also that creates a bit of enjoyment for your own self.When things are written for the right reasons and in the good frame of mind, the content is always appreciated by many.If an article or the blog is for sole purpose of money making then people do realise it who visit your blog and you do not get the popularity that you expect yourself to achieve in a certain amount of time.

So try to be full of positive and never say die attitude when you turn to blogging and share goodwill and set up a good example of human nature from your blogging style.This is the best way to develop and nurture your blog as I see it.

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HOW TO ARRANGE BLOG POSTS ON YOUR SITE EFFECTIVELY FOR READERS

Although this post might seem irrelevant to my blog for some time as I am trying out dew things to get the blog in a better shape,If you have the posts arranged categorically correct on your site then you can have a variety of readers reading your particular section though one page only.This requires some initial planning but once you are ready then the blog seems excellent to you itself in the first place.Following are some ideas on how to get the tricks right for your blog.

1.Interlink to the earlier posts

This is an excellent way to help readers reach out to the other posts which you think can supplement readers on the entire topic which they are interested in.In a way this also helps in search engine optimization for your blog (particularly for that post).

2.Rookie area

If you have a particular section for the beginners in the blogging world,then it may add that little x-factor to your blog with targeted visitors approaching your blog.I am looking forward in getting this section of blog archive ready on my blog ready in near future.

3.Posting regularly on blogging basics

It is always important to revert back to basic stuff once in a while to get new readers on your blog plus keep your regular readers also interested.

4.Long term readership

Try having some guest post about basic blogging tips if you think you have had enough of those stuff by yourself.By this way you are developing long term readership as well as loyal friends for your site's future.

5.Advanced section

If you think that there is something special that is required to be conveyed for readers who are in the blogging for some time now then try having a section for advanced steps in blogging for them to make go to that one step ahead.

Ideas mentioned above are possible through constant research about various topics, good amount of content on your blog archive and seriously good writing style.Its also a fact that you cannot keep everyone happy.So do not try and keep everyone happy and interested who comes to your blog because believe me you cannot.Try improving you blog each day with something to add to your blog every once in a while.

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WHAT HAVE I LEARNT FROM GOOD BLOGS- 2010 A YEAR OF REVIEW

It was some one's great inspiration which brought me to blogging.Now reading articles from many blogs on different topics gives me more and more ideas about what the writers are looking to have on their blog and what is extremely popular in a particular niche.Year 2010 was absolutely great showing me great ups and downs and how to fight with circumstances when they are not in your favor and win.This post is basically what I have understood from good bloggers history, how they faced challenges and are now numero uno in their niches respectively.

1.Strive to be Numero Uno

In the early 2000's there was little competition and hence who had considerable posts already enjoyed good amount of success.But it is not the same scenario now.There are many bloggers who started about 2-3 years back and now because of their hard work and smart techniques are successful bloggers in their niche.So this has made me even more tough and prepared for the challenges ahead in 2011.One really has to find how to find the weak link in any niche and attack on that point and get noticed.

2.Patience

One great thing that I noticed is that most of the people who recently came to the blogosphere were having one thing in mind and that is money.Seeing good bloggers earning 6 figure salary through their blogs attracted their attention.But what they are achieving right is a real hard work they put on for 5-6 years and now are reaping benefits.Nobody becomes successful in short time.Perseverance, Hard work and patience is required to survive here.I have seen many bloggers quitting just because they were not successful over a short period of time.

3.The best thing has to be on the home page every time

You should always realize that when people visit your blog you have your best up their every time.They should be able to read just the best stuff and should be able to understand what you wanted to convey through your post easily.

4.Thorough reading, communities and more

The more and more you read and comment on other sites, more you can get in return.Remember that your blog alone cannot be more successful.Having joined many communities and social networking sites makes your blog reach wider audiences and to the next level.

5.Goodwill

A successful bloggers always has the goodwill spread around with his name.You can never read anything negative or uncharacteristic about him.All these are qualities associated with a professional blogger.Hence e should also try and not go off rant in our writing or try and spread wrong information about others.Being able to accept one's shortcomings is what that makes a complete man.

I have already brought these qualities in my everyday life and trying to implement these quality everyday to be more successful.What do you learn after reading from my blog post? Keep your comments flowing in the comments section.

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10 NEW WAYS TO FIND RSS READERS THIS 2011

Its been a long time till I neglected the advantages of having RSS readers on my blog and hence didn't had a badge for RSS subscription also until just previous week.I have gone through many good sites and just found out these 10 good ways to attract new RSS readers to your blog this new year. Of course I am also looking forward to increase my RSS readers and implementation of the methods here imply to me more than anyone else.

1.Commenting is needed

For any blog to survive, comments on his blog post are extremely crucial in elevating the blog to the next level.The comments on others blog and that too legitimate and genuine related to the post is required to enable the author of those respective blogs to come and visit your blog and comment. More comments are always compelling and attract many more readers to subscribe to your blog post.

2.Post everyday

You should always try and post almost everyday so that readers are aware that you are really serious about blogging and hence they always look out for the new post and keep the subscription to your RSS feed running.

3.Put the RSS button on top

Its natural that the things that are on top are going to attract people more and grab their attention.So always try to put it on top of the blog in the sidebar to get more people subscribing your RSS feeds.

4.Allow your readers to subscribe by email

Usage of emails today is enormous and this is another unique way to have more people subscribe to your blog.There is very small amount of people paying attention to the RSS feed on the Internet daily so you have to try and innovate the things to keep your nose ahead.

5.Stay on your niche

Try following your niche regularly because people who follow you expect to get the posts in the category for which they come to your blog regularly or subscribe your feed.

6.Go for full RSS subscription

I get a touch disappointed when I see good bloggers providing partial feeds to the people.Readers want the entire content and not the excerpt.Otherwise they could have read it from other bloggers and not you.

7.Write post to promote RSS subscription

Like I am writing this post many good bloggers should also try and rewrite or mention the importance of RSS subscription.There might be some new bloggers who still do not know the importance and complete information about RSS subscription.

8.Replies

Sometimes some readers do email you after subscription and hence it is important to reply and solve their queries and keep them interested and attached to your blog.

9.Use RSS directories

Submitting your RSS feed to the RSS feed directories can surely help your RSS subscriber count to increase.Feedest.com, blogocular.com and others are a great help to your blog RSS feed exposure.

10.Caution

While the above mentioned ways can help you to attract readers to your blg you can create a sense of discontent and can make your readers to completely abandon your blog.Do not try to force your opinion and methods on others as people generally don't like it.

Over a period of time you will eventually see people subscribing to your blog and commenting on your posts as well.Be patient and let the content flow regularly on your blog.It will do wonders for you believe me.

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A BAD CORPORATE PRESENTATION CAN ALSO TEACH SO MUCH ABOUT BLOGGING

I was attending the corporate presentation for a big IT company having the induction presentation for its employees.Being such a reputed company my expectations were certainly high.But it is indeed interesting to know that our corporate lives also teach us so many good things for other professions and hobbies like blogging.

It was a great pleasure to be a part of the induction ceremony but the real fun started when the man started to give presentation about the company details, history, work culture ethics and other particulars.It was always my dream to be a part of the big organisation with such good ethos about its employees.But I was a bit disappointed after the presentation was over.The details were not clearly visible on the PowerPoint slides,too many unnecessary data present and skipping of slides.The speaker himself was not well prepared as it was evident the way he speaking in front of the large crowd with some nervousness.All in all things could have been much better if they really wanted to create a good impression in the minds of people joining the company on their first day.But this experience has certainly become a lesson as to how one should present himself to any reader or audience through his blog.

1.Good organisation

Even if the matter that you write is high class but you do not have the correct presentation then you might suffer badly even after having an extremely good content.Thus good organization is the first stepping stone to success.In case of my above example, I mentioned the disorganisation of content on the slides just took the interest out of the whole presentation.

2.Do not feed too much of information

Referring to my example, there were lots of data present on the slides that the readers were not able to digest easily.too much of facts and figures for a small topic is not needed really if you ask for my opinion.It just creates a bit of confusion in the readers regarding the inter relations of the facts.

3.Try explaining the background accurately and effectively

Even though you may feel that the same content is present on almost very site present in the same niche but still you should try and present a small descriptive background before you reach to the actual matter of the blog.This creates a good impression on the readers that you have in depth knowledge about what your writing and readers will keep coming to your blog.

4.Conclusion?

We have so many things happening around us that can be taken as a lesson,motivation and encouragement to do things better for yourself and for others.Please do not write indigestible stuffs for the audience or just fill up lines only for the sake of writing content.If your post has what those fast scanning eyes of the readers want then you have a fair share of readers to your blog.It is all these small things that make you a class apart from others.

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COOL WAYS TO ATTRACT READERS THIS NEW YEAR----------- PART 4

This is the final installment in the series on how to attract readers to your blog this new year.You can always refer to Part 1, Part 2 and part3 for more details.

19. Guest Bloggers

Try inviting others to write for your blog and thus improve the content over your blog.As more people come to know that you have other good writers writing for your blog then you can always have more people coming to your blog for quality content.

20. Get Links from Other Blogs

Getting mentioned on other sites and blogs in the same niche, I think, has been the best way to get a readership who keeps returning to a blog. Make contact with other bloggers in yoru niche via comments, email, AIM, skype, homing pigeons – whatever.

21. Newsletters

The Zookoda newsletter provides nice spikes and people tend to forward the newsletter to their friends.

22. Social Networks

Submit your story to Digg and reddit and, regardless of whether it makes the front page or not, you get 50-100 free hits. The easiest way to generate quick exposure. Failing that, comment frequently on blogs that you like. With any luck, the blog author will want to find out more about you, follow the link to your blog, and perhaps write a post referencing one of your posts.

23. Pitch Your Posts

I view other bloggers as a PR pros view journalists working in traditional media. I reach out to bloggers using tactics successfully employed in the world of professional media relations. For instance, I “pitch” specific posts that they might find adds value to topics they are writing about. I also send email introducing them to my blog, but only if there’s a good fit between my blog and theirs. The key is to be very selective in approaching the “media gatekeeper”–just as successful and smart media relations people do.

I hope you would have liked and learned important tricks to attract visitors to your site in 2011.Happy new year and merry Christmas.

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COOL WAYS TO ATTRACT READERS THIS NEW YEAR----------- PART 3

This is the third installment in the series.I hope you would have taken advantage of the ideas expressed in the Part 1 and Part 2 of this series already.

13. Offline Promotion

Talk to friends, family and coworkers about them… you’d be surprised how much the traditional way of “networking” really does work.

14. Search Engine Optimization

Properly optimizing my blog has been a big boost to my readership. Once I figured out how to play around with SEO I started getting a regular 25-35% of my hits from Google.

15. Quality Content

This is already stressed by me many a times and is the word of almost all the bloggers.Posting only quality content.. obviously! Better posts are discussed more, increasing both the number of comments and references in other blogs.

16. Blog Carnivals

submitting posts to Blog Carnivals also generates traffic.Strange Isn't it?

17. Memes

Yeah, a meme. Bloggers want to know about bloggers, not just the business aspect of it but the *person* writing the blog. Reading a quick list of “getting to know me” type tidbits gives me instant inside information on whether or not I will become a regular visitor. Some participants have used it solely to gain business, but frankly I think that turns people away. People are interested in people first, and what they do second. It works.

18. Frequent Posting

I also try to post frequently. I find that the more I post, the more readers I have. The less comments, but the more readers.

I hope you would have got the central idea about what is important to attract readers.In my next post I will rap up the series and give final 5 tips to have readers coming to your blog so wait and enjoy.

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COOL WAYS TO ATTRACT READERS THIS NEW YEAR----------- PART 2

This is the second part in series to attract new readers to your blog.You can refer to the part 1 for more details.

7. Give Away Free Stuff

I’ve had some success with giving away free stuff, like free templates for WordPress. It doesn’t give me lot of new readers, because my blog is written in Norwegian, but the templates give lots and lots of new links to the blog, giving it a much better pagerank in Google, which in turn should mean more readers from search-engines.

8. Be Opinionated

Be opinionated, but encourage opposing viewpoints in the comments. Opinionated makes you interesting – encouraging other perspectives makes you essential.

9. Ask Questions of Other Bloggers

Ask questions of other moderately successful bloggers and try to network. If you shoot too high, you’ll often get blown off because these people have so much stuff to read and deal with.

10.Use Trackbacks

Sending highly creative and penetrating trackbacks about a blogger’s original post.

11.Advertise

Buy advertising space on related websites.

12. Educate Readers about RSS

With the most recent blog I launched I created a page in WordPress called Feeds which not only has the RSS icon on it but a description of what a “feed” is and what are some of the most common ways to subscribe and use feeds, mostly pulled from a CC article.

Refer to the next part so as to find out more new ways to attract new readers this 2011.

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COOL WAYS TO ATTRACT READERS THIS NEW YEAR----------- PART 1

Some good comments on blog posts sometimes helps even the other readers to learn a lot of things to improve themselves.I ran into chain of comments reacting to the topic of how to attract more blog readers.This post certainly describes their point of views in having done everything to keep new readers to come to their blog.

1. Comment on Related Blogs

Commenting on related blogs is probably the most effective strategy early on in the process and responding to comments when people leave them on your blog (this encourages them to keep coming back).I visit other blogs in my niche, add them to my feed and participate in the discussion on their blogs via the comments. Writing interesting comments often gets people to click through to see your site.

2. Join Forums

I’ve found that one very quick way to infuse readers to a new blog is to be active in discussion forums related to your blog topic. Locate posts that ask for help with something you are familiar with and share your experience.

3.Write Effective Post Titles

Simple and to the point. The title should create an instant urge to read the entire post… But of course it should be related to the topic of your blog.

4. Interviews

One example being to interview fellow bloggers who are in the same niche as me. This has gone down well, and has been great for both myself and the interviewee as traffic flows between us.

5. Persist

Persistence is key. After starting up a new blog last month and letting go of another this month, I notice that traffic (quality traffic) doesn't happen over night. On my last site, I think it took 6 months before ASK.com found me.

6.Connect with Local Bloggers

The other thing I have been doing just recently is connecting up with other bloggers in my city and the neighboring towns. We've got something of a link exchange going and a nice side-effect to this is that I/we have discovered that there are quite a few more bloggers and/or website authors in the area than ever expected.

In my nest post I will reveal the other new methods that would be useful in 2011 for you all to attract new readers to your blog.

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BLOGGING BECOMES SUCCESSFUL WITH 4 C'S

A large survey of good sites and reading their content is sometimes so much essential when you do not have much to write for your own.Buzzing through the topics and closely observing key points mentioned in the posts you can derive several ideas which can be converted into a series of posts.The organised fashion of writing and maintaining the blog is what separates the best from the other rookies.

The following four C's are so crucial that if you have all of them then your blogging success is almost certain i n the near future.These 4 C's are:

1.Content

Success always depends on some crucial factors and for any blogger to succeed in the blogosphere, the content is the most important element.You can refer to my post on how to create good content for more details.What people write from their heart is most liked by people all round the world and not scraps being written only for money.Content with good expression and presentation still rules.I was not a good writer right since my school days but slowly over the past 15 months I have improved a lot in my writing skills and grammar but their is still a lot of improvement to be done so that my posts are just great for anyone to read.I guess that a successful writer is always capable of holding people through his way of writing style and use of words.Now you would surely understand how important good content is for any blog.

2.Consistency

By consistency I want to say that you have to consistent in your posting.A good blog blooms better over a period of time only when a writer has put in the hard work to update his blog every day.Its not a compulsion that you have to churn out many posts every day and this will never happen also.You have to decide what re you comfortable with and accordingly pace yourself to be consistent.Remember that Search engines also like to index those blogs which are updated every day.

3.Community

Social networking is the order of the year for 2010 and will be the same for 2011 unless something new appears to be more appealing to the readers and b;loggers.Try raising your voice and your blog through these community sites and I ma sure that even those sites which were not able to generate readers for 10-12 even after having good amount of content on their blog have started generating good traffic through by the use of Technorati, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumble Upon and many other such sites.

Also important thing to consider is that link building should also be performed by bloggers to earn good page rank and Search Engine Optimization for their sites.Many bloggers initially miss the trick by going only for content on their blog and later on suffer for lack of back links to their sites and hence their page rank is lower although they have good enough alexa web rank.

4.Comments

Its always give and then take relationship in blogging.Even if you have to give out more than what you take ,it should not matter for you as long as you enjoy it.I have seen good bloggers always going to the site not known much and still reading their ideas and commenting on their posts to improve their writing style.So it has to be understood that you should once again start commenting on any blog that you like and not just not on the popular ones.I think keeping these strong commenting habits will surely help to give you long term profit.

I guess these were by far the broad factors on which success of any blog depends.There might be more that one would like to say so do not hesitate and try to shell out some precious words of yours.

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EFFECTIVE BUSINESS BLOG DESIGNS --- PART 3

This is the final part in the series effective business blog redesign.You can refer back to part 1 and part2 of the series for more details. Remember this is a republished article originally written by Cameron Chapman.

5. Make Provisions for Other Content

While most business blogs still focus primarily on text it’s important to make provisions for rich multimedia content. You never know when you might want to expand your blog to include podcasts, slide shows or video content. Even something as simple as including images in a post is sometimes overlooked in the initial blog design. Think about the types of content that are commonly incorporated into blog posts and then think about how you can best serve those kinds of content within the design. Even things like making sure your main content column is wide enough to properly display images or video shouldn't be overlooked.

6. Make the blog a Reflection of Your Company’s Values and Personality

The design of your blog should reflect your company values and corporate culture. A company with a traditional take on things should reflect that in their blog design. A company that’s hip and modern should have a hip and modern blog design.

Besides these important points some other key factors to be kept in mind while thinking of blog redesign are:

• Paginate comments if you regularly get more than 10-20 comments on your posts.
• Separate your comments from your trackbacks (incoming links to blog posts from other website).
• Include a gravatar image for your commenters.

Blog designers, however talented, cannot change your corporate DNA. Work with them towards a presentation that is inviting, open and flexible while accurately representing the values and style of your business.

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EFFECTIVE BUSINESS BLOG DESIGNS --- PART 2

This is the second post post in the series "effective blog designs".In the previous post I have discussed the merits of Typography and readability.Here in this post I am going to discuss about nest two important facts:

3. Establish a Hierarchy of Site Elements

There’s a definite hierarchy of design and content elements in any blog design. You just need to make sure that the hierarchy your design establishes is the one you intended. In other words, make sure that the most important parts of your design and content are most prominently displayed.In most business blogs the two most important elements are going to be the main content and the header, which should include branding for the company. Make sure that when you look at the design of you blog that those are the two elements that stand out among all the others. Make sure, too, that hierarchy within elements makes sense. Your blog post titles, for example, should stand out over any subheadings contained within the posts. Elements within your sidebar should be arranged in a manner that makes sense in terms of usability (for example, the navigation of your blog should appear above any blogroll links you choose to incorporate).

4. Don’t Forget Comment Design!

Almost every business blog wants to foster communication and discussion with their visitors. After all, an engaged readership is more likely to come back on a regular basis and more likely to be loyal to your company.The comment form on your blog should be easy to use and make it apparent which fields are required (most often a name, email address, and the comment itself). The comments should be arranged and formatted in a way that clearly separates each comment. Make sure that the typography—the size and contrast in particular—make it easy to read the comments. You’ll also want to decide whether you want your comments to appear in chronological order or in a threaded manner (where replies appear under the comment being replied to). If you want to foster conversation among commenters, then the latter option will almost certainly work better. If you mostly want your commenters to converse with your authors, then the former might work better. Differentiate your author comments, too, to make it easier for readers to see an author’s responses to other commenters. Of course, if your authors rarely or never comment (which isn't a good thing), this becomes irrelevant.

The final part in this series is due next when another two important facts about successful business blog redesign will be discussed.

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EFFECTIVE BUSINESS BLOG DESIGNS---- PART 1

This is a republished post originally written by Cameron Chapman

The design of your business blog has a huge impact on how it is perceived by your visitors. A great design instills trust, makes you more credible and invites your readers to participate. A poor design can make your blog and your company look unprofessional.

Just as with regular website design, there are certain best practices you should keep in mind when working on the design of your blog. The best practices of regular website design still apply, of course, but there are also important blog specific considerations:

1. Don’t Insist on Your Blog Design Matching Your Website Design Perfectly

So many business blogs try to shoehorn a blog into their existing website design. That’s fine if your website has a text-centric design that’s similar to a blog design to begin with. But many great business websites don’t resemble blogs at all. In those cases, it’s important for your blog design to echo your website design, but it doesn't need to match it perfectly. Your blog design should instead repeat elements like the graphics or color scheme, and should incorporate similar typography.

2.Focus on Typography and Readability

Since blogs mostly revolve around text content, it’s important that your design makes that content easily readable. This means using a font that’s suitable for reading onscreen, as well as having proper contrast and a font that’s large enough.As a general rule, dark text on a light background is more readable than light text on a dark background. Just look at white text on a black screen for a few minutes and then look at a light surface. You’ll see black bands super-imposed on your vision for up to a few minutes. The same effect doesn't happen with a light

background and dark text. You also want to limit the number of fonts used on your blog. Ideally, use one or at most two fonts in your design. Instead of using more than two fonts use multiple weights and styles in the fonts you choose to add diversity to your typography.

Next part will reveal the next 2 important details to watch out for a successful blog redesign.

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ADVANTAGES OF REGULARLY UPDATING YOUR WEBSITE

Updating information frequently to a website can have a significant increase in the quantity of visitors it receives. Renowned search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN prefer sites that are habitually added with more content.

The benefits of regularly updating your website are as under:

1.Long tail Search Traffic

When a website has regular content it helps in receiving more precise "long tail" keyword searches from search engines that cannot be attracted through regular SEO.

2. Faster indexing

Most search engines catalog news and blog sites faster than normal websites there fore regular updates on websites will determine more frequent traffic and indexed faster by search engine spiders.

3.Generates discussion

Blogs, articles and news often receive comments from interested customers which in turn often creates discussion and user contribution on the website. Comments also become worthy as free content and are often indexed and ranked by search engines.

4. Solicits enquiries

Informative, articulate articles about business, products or services will promote readers to find out about services. This has been a tried and tested method of sales marketing.

5. Promotes community

Comments, inquires on any website encourages interaction between visitors and is often responsible for communities on websites. Visitors will keep coming back for discussion via the website.

6. Repeat visits

When a website has fresh, regular and remarkable content it encourages users to keep coming back. When a website is left inactive there will be no regular traffic.

7. Subscribers

Informative, appealing content on a website can promote subscription to updates via RSS. This makes sure that any new information will mean that potential people are immediately informed.

8. Internal link strength

Regular content will contain links to specific pages which in turn is beneficial to websites internal link strength.

This was the original post posted by Dinesh LG

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USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO FIND NEW READERS FOR YOUR BLOG - PART 2

This is the part 2 in the series of finding new readers through social media.You can refer back to part 1 for more details.

6. Say thank you for shares

This will encourage your community to share your content more often and also shows the rest of your community that your content is share-worthy. To get the most bang for your buck on Twitter, consider re-tweeting their share with your thank you. That way your followers who missed your original share will have another opportunity to click on your link.

7. Use social sharing sites outside of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Consider building a presence on ‘bookmarking’ specialists Digg, StumbleUpon Delicious or Redditt. The key to any of these sites is that you have to be an active participant in the network to see any real traffic from it. Simply creating a profile will not suffice. You will need to build your community there, connect with people and share content outside of your own, often. Look for vertical specific sites where people in your industry are networking.

8. Come up with creative ways to re-share on Twitter

We all know that different people are on Twitter at any given time of day, so simply sharing your post once probably isn’t the most effective. Find ways to re-share it without just re-posting the same content. Add some sort of “in case you missed it” so that those who didn’t miss it don’t become annoyed. I’d also make sure you tweeted plenty of non-self

serving content in between.

9. Call people out

If your post includes someone in your industry or another brand, let them know. If it is favorable they are likely to share it with their social networks (or through their own blogs). You can add a trackback to their site so that they will get a pingback about your post, but also try the more direct route of just reaching out to them on their networks and sharing your post with them. Many businesses have installed automated social media monitoring services. If you mention a brand or business in your posts there is a better chance that it will show up on their dashboards if you can include their website, Twitter ID or Facebook page. Hopefully they will Tweet a link to the post or create a share to their ‘likes’ on Facebook.

In the end, there is no way to guarantee that each post you write will get a lot of social buzz or a lot of traffic, but you won’t find out if you wait for someone else to get the ball rolling. It is up to the blogger to offer shareable material, reach out to their networks and then encourage the community to share.

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THE DO'S AND DON'TS OF WEBSITE REDESIGN

This is the rewritten article published by Richard James originally.

So it's time for a redesign of your website, and you want to do it in a way that will cause the least disruption of service to your customers and will also maintain your brand identity.

There are a number of different reasons why a business may want to redesign their website. Often a company has grown so much that the original website design no longer serves the needs of their customers.

Or, the original website may have been thrown together hastily just to establish a website presence, like putting up a sign in front of your brick and mortar store. Now, the time has come to re-evaluate your website and see how well it's really serving and informing your customers, and how well it’s advertising your company’s brand.

When you are redesigning your website, don't rush. And don’t skimp.

You don't want to have to go back and keep tweaking things and adding that one element that you forgot, or taking out a bunch of elements that you now realize are distracting and irrelevant.

And you don't want to pay so little for your web design services that you end up with a poorly designed, hard to navigate website.

When you are getting ready to embark on a website redesign, make sure that you communicate your needs to the website designer. You will want to discuss the scope of the project, how many pages you will need, what type of information that you want to convey, what type of audience you will be speaking to - conservative, creative, younger, older, students, race car fans... this will have a huge impact on the look of your site.

You will want to decide if you are going to have a static website or if you are going to update it regularly with industry news or company news, and if so, who is going to do the updating - you or the web designer?

And finally, here are some factors to consider in your redesign, that you will want to discuss with the design company that you hire:

Do you need to completely change the look of your website? You may want to do so if your website is poorly designed and not pleasing to the eye, and if it does not contain any logos or color schemes that are consistent with your company's overall brand. If your company does use a logo and a specific color theme, and those are already in use on your site, at the very least you will want to have your web designer incorporate those into your new design.

How SEO friendly is your website? Many website designers use images where they could be using text. Search engines can not "read" images so important phrases that would help to make your site easier to find on the internet - say, "Colorado cosmetic dentists" - will be unreadable to the search engines. So make sure that you hire a website designer who understands search engine optimization as well as design.

Look over your current website to determine what works, what should be kept, and what needs to go. First, put yourself in the mind of a new potential customer who has never been to your website before and knows little or nothing about your services. Does the top portion of the home page, the first area that a potential customer sees, clearly communicate what your company does? The Jacoby and Myers website, for instance, says "Jacoby & Myers Law Offices" - and underneath that is the tagline, "America’s Most Familiar Law Firm". Potential new clients immediately know what services the company provides and they also know the company’s USP - unique selling proposition.

Now look at the website as if you were a regular customer returning to the site. Is it easy for your customer to find what they need? Is it easy for them to place a new order or contact customer service, or do they need to search for the links that will allow them to do so?

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WHAT TO FOCUS WHILE LOOKING FOR SEO

Here are some important SEO tips for bloggers to follow:

1. Focus on unique content only. Even if you are approached by a PR person with the “ready-made” press release or product review for you to “just copy and paste”, take a few minutes to retell the contents of the release with your own words and express your own opinion. This will make your blog voice stronger in the community, your style more recognizable by readers and your content more valuable for search bots. Remember, Google only values unique content!

2. Link to your previously published posts. Search bots discover and index your posts by following links. Thus, before publishing a post, make sure to drill down to your previously published articles, find relevant ones and link to them from within the new content. This will also encourage readers to browse to your older posts and motivate them to stay on your blog (Take advantage of “Related posts” and interlinking plugins to automated the process but don’t forget to link to your posts manually from within the post content as well).

3. Linking to posts on other blogs is another smart idea. Linking is the foundation of your online connections.Bloggers are always eager to know who links to them. They will most surely discover your track backs, go to your website, browse, comment… and also link back to you! So link generously and get discovered (Wordpress plugins like Zemanta and Arkayne could be a great help here as well).

4. Never link to suspicious sites. While linking in general is highly appreciated, linking to “bad neighborhoods” may get you into trouble. What is a “bad neighborhood”? Just a couple of months spent online will teach you. Those are various health- or gambling-related resources which are likely to send a spam email to your inbox. Be careful who you link to.

5. Make sure that your pages are lightweight. Google has started to incorporate the page load speed into its algorithm but that’s not the only reason to care about your page size. Neither people nor search bots will be able to go through your website in full if each page loads terribly slowly. Besides, taking care of your blog load speed isn’t that hard: choose a good reliable hosting provider, make sure your images and files you upload are less than 100K and install some caching plugin (especially if you have a lot of pages already).

SEO is about making your blog easy to go through, visible and useful enough so that even a search bot can understand your main points and find it usable enough to rank high in search results. At the same time you’ll be producing content that people can value and link to. You don’t need to pretend being good – you can achieve much more by actually being good.

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Blogging with Search Engines in Mind ----- Part 2

This part about discussing the Meta description and the URL structure.

2. Meta Description

Officially, the Meta Description is not taken into account for ranking websites. But it is used to generate the search snippet (a couple of lines you see below the linked part on the search results page). Meta description should thus be attention-grabbing and concise. They are a great opportunity to exert control on the text that searchers will see when your posts come up in queries.

3. URL Structure

Clear, “readable” URL structure will help with both the usability and SEO of your blog:

• URLs containing keywords will appear in search results (with keywords in bold).

• Search engines take keywords in the URL into account to rank web pages in search results.

What bloggers should know:

• Avoid very long URLs: no more than 3-5 words in your URL (for Wordpress bloggers: use “post slug” option to customize your URLs);

• Avoid uppercase in URLS: URL is case sensitive – meaning that if by any reason (your choice or CMS) you stick to a an upper-case version, remember that this can cause a few issues: people are most likely to link to the standard lower case one and you might both lose link juice and suffer from duplicate content issues.Worst case, interested users may get a 404-Page Not Found at the worst possible time.

• Avoid dates in URLs (unless your posts are time sensitive).

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Blogging with Search Engines in Mind ----- Part 1

Search Engine Optimization (commonly referred to as SEO) has its roots in efforts by webmasters to make their websites easy to access and crawl by search engines. The concept has been evolving into something much bigger and broader than simply making websites “crawlable” by the machines. SEO has started to cover usability issues, conversion tactics, backlink acquisition and more. Most SEO experts, including Google engineers, agree that the blog is an area that holds great leverage in all aspects of SEO.

Remember: search bots only “see” text and keywords, they are straightforward and, well, they are machines.Your primary task is to make your blog easy to understand and interpret even for those robots. Three basics:

• Create a clear navigation and naturally link to your old content and posts.

• Create natural keyword prominence: have your important words in the “prominent” places.

• Make your pages lightweight for people and bots to load easily.

SEO Terms that all bloggers should know:

1. Title Tag

The title of each post is of crucial importance. Not only will it grab your readers’ attention and prompt them to read further, the page title is also the most “prominent” place to showcase your important keywords:

• Title tags are displayed in search results (this is the linked part of Google search engine listing)

• Title tags are used by search bots to “understand” the main topic of the page

Make sure to create catchy and attention-grabbing titles AND include some post-specific details in them. Helpful details might include the product you are reviewing, the person you are interviewing, the place you are describing, or the market you are covering. These “details” can help to get your post to appear in relevant searches.

Some best practices and rules:

• All title tags throughout the site should be unique

• Title tags should be preferably no longer than 70 characters (including spaces)

• Page titles should be specific and contain your main keyword(s) – to help Googlebot understand what the page is about.

Part 2 of this series will be about discussing Meta description and URL structure.

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35 DIFFERENT WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BLOG ---PART 4

This the final post in the series.You can refer to Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 for more details.

These are the last five of the 35 successful ways to market your blog:

31. Try a contest.

32. Find relevant forums to add your input (like Google Groups). Add your blog link to your signature line.

33. Have a point of view. If your posts are the same as everyone else's posts, who cares? Be different and get noticed.

34. Define your niche. Focus on an area that you can be the leading expert in. If your topic is too broad, you'll never be able to make a dent.

35. Never ever stop. Your blog is a promise to customers. Keeping that promise going will be a key factor towards your continuing success.

Remember that a good blog supports two way communications. Involve your audience and they will become the most important part of your blog promotion team.

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