Mcneri: blogging

Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Monday, May 12

22 Must have Firefox add-ons for Bloggers (Blogging tip 9 of 22)

Image via Wikipedia
#9:IE Tab (Internet Explorer)add-on for Firefox
This add-on may be self explanatory but I will still lend it some brief explanation. IE Tab for Firefox is an add-on that simulates the Internet Explorer engine within a new tab in Firefox. This enables bloggers to see how browsers using internet explorer (which is very popular though not the best browser) will see their pages.

You may be wondering what for and I will tell you. Internet explorer is a bad browser that finds it really difficult to render webpages adequately as the designers of the page want. Therefore, if the page publisher is able to identify what elements IE will not show its users, then the blog owner can adjust or modify the design to overcome that deficiency.

This add-on is also said to be a more convenient alternative to the add-on called open in IE. That is because you really do not have to leave Firefox to see how the page you have just blogged renders in IE. Serious bloggers have a need for this add-on and you can download it from here.

Monday, May 5

22 must-have Firefox add-ons for bloggers (Blogging tip 8 of 22))

For many bloggers, it becomes a bore to have to type in their name, webpage and email address into every form on other blogs when they make comments. This really gets a lot of bloggers cruising around and not dropping their url all over the place. they even do not place comments because of this. This add-on will make that a past issue.

Signature is a Firefox add-on that allows you to insert custom lines of text called signature. There could be multiple. It opens a cache that lets you store as many signatures as you like. You can also name these signatures whatever you like. When you get to a blog and want to comment, it makes life easy. If the blog does not have an autofill and does not recognize you/your computer through cookies, you just go down to the comments box, right-click on the name box and select the stored name which you want to apply to that comment. This comes in really handy for those that operate multiple blog identities.

In the section for email address, you right-click and select whatever email you want to add to that comment. The third one is url and I think that is the most important. Many bloggers and commenters simply put their homepage url. I was doing that for many of my postings on other blogs. However, it makes more search engine sense to add the url to either your latest post, your best post or the post you have which best relates to the article you are reading. That way, any reader at that blog who finds your comments interesting and clicks on your name/url will be taken directly to the related post on your blog. It also may add some valuable external links to your blog. I however understand that links from comments are of less value, almost no real value than links in body of posts. (That is why my contest gives links in posts, get my RSS now and register).

One of the trusted ways of getting your blog out there is through networking. Having a good and ready access to your signature/url makes dropping comments easy and really gets you one inch or two up the ladder of networking. So get this add-on and blast through the blogosphere. You can get there and you will.

Thursday, May 1

Mcneri's Blog Directory For May 2008

The Blog Competition winners are published above. The image to the left is a list including other contestants. Because of incomplete entries, some entries will only appear in this image. This competition is running on a monthly basis and everyone is free to participate. For the next month, incomplete entries will not be published at all. The published entries will have links from within a post in addition to the top entries being listed as Blog of Focus for that month. Become a winner today. Pat attention to the rules.

May Blog Competition where everyone is a winner

This month our competition continues. The April session went on very well and we have some winners. Our contests here are based on what one does in a competition not "random selection". The rules are clear and everyone can be a winner, but you have to play by the competition rules here.

For the Month of May,link to this post and place one comment below. Below are some of the things you get.
The top entries for the preceding month will get reviewed as featured blog here as Blogs of Focus for the month free!
A directory is published for the month with permanent links through the contestants' keywords of choice submitted in the form below.
The Blogs of Focus box above gets sent out with RSS feeds on every post and we do publish a lot every month.

The winners for May will be in the Directory for June.

As with many lists, we know that the first entries on the list get the most hits, so be wise. All it takes is a link to the post and you are on!

Wednesday, April 30

How to use Entrecard to grow your blog

Unique Blog Contest: Register and win April 2008Entrecard seems to be the new/future of social networking. Keep dropping on me and I will continue to drop on you. I really do not mind bounce rates in a non-self hosted blog yet. Conversions are all important so if you get 100 droppers a day and 5% convert to your blog, at the end of 100 days, theoretically you should have 500 converts! That is the way to look at entrecard. There is a wonderful blog dedicated to entrecard and it has great posts that will help beginners and older users as well.

Many droppers just drop and go, well, you are welcome. I do that too sometimes. However some blogs are welcoming and interesting. They have what I am looking for or what I did not know I needed and that gets me reading and leaving comments. Believe it or not that comment brings me visitors. Dropping brings me visitors. Blogging brings me visitors.

Getting your visitors to come back is all-important. How to do that with entrecard is relatively simple. If you look hard and long enough, you will find blogs/bloggers that interest you. Warm up to them, make useful comments on their blogs, reciprocate their drops, put them in your favorites list. That suddenly becomes social networking. Soon you have a community no matter how small and it will grow into what you dream of some day. Consistency is the word.

Do not lose focus and do not be in a hurry. If you realize that with 5 subscribers to your blog daily in one year you will have up to 1825 regular readers of your blog (from Entrecard alone). then if you use Blogcatalog or Digg or Stumble also, the number further increases. Soon adverts on your blog will be going for double and triple figures.

The good thing about entrecard-grown blogs is that majority of the readers are entrecarders so you will continue to get drops. The hard work is at the begining. I think the first 100 days. If you make 300 per day drops in those early days, certainly you will have loads of converts. However, you must have great fresh and useful content if you want me to be back to your blog. Pro-blog reviews also has a few lovely entrecard and blogging posts.

Drop and go, but please bookmark me, subscribe to my RSS feed and drop a comment. I will reciprocate.

Tuesday, April 29

How do you blog, Blogger?

Unique Blog Contest: Register and win April 2008"How do you blog" would be a good way to greet a blogger visiting another blog. It would be an in-road into the visitor's mind and blogging practices. My guess is that there are as many blogging styles as there are bloggers and that variety is what makes blogging so much fun because humans love variety.

There are several styles of blogging and I will discuss a few today.

1. Blogging on the fly!
This I believe is about the oldest style. It originated from the good old early days when pioneer bloggers simply created web logs of their lives. Most were of their daily activities and programming breakthroughs. The blogger then did not think anyone was indeed really reading the blog. As we expect only us to read our diary, so was the expectation. This has been carried forward and in today's blogosphere, we see rants and raves. This is more common in the personal blogs. A few bloggers from time to time do this also and I have done it in many of my posts. It helps one put a personal touch to the blog, even though it may be a niche that one is blogging in.

2. Blogging as the Press.
As blogging has developed, so has readership widened and many blogs boast of readerships that eclipse my neighborhood newspaper's numbers. Major examples include Google's blogs for its gmail, and google itself and online resources like Lifehacker, Techcrunch (802K RSS subscribers. I hope they have a 401K), The Huffington Post and Mashable. These blogs/websites have editorial teams and the output is really something else. The corporate blogs seem to be a somewhat unofficial source of official information. Press releases serve their role, but also, releasing the information in a sub-formal way via blogs seems to be the way to reach more customers. The challenge faced by the everyday blogger is to measure up to such standards. Well, I wish you luck.

3. Blogging to the top in your niche.
This by far is both the easiest and the most popular. The blogger simply tries to be the best in that little niche that he/she blogs in. Usually the style is a mash-up of the first two styles. Guest bloggers post interesting articles, professionally written and edited a thousand times. Blog owner recruits readers from as many social circles as possible including link exchanges, Digg, Stumbleupon, Blogcatalog and Mcneri's! The Blogger also occasionally produces timeless articles that would measure up to the big fish and have a chance at front page on Digg. It is easy to be in this category because you simply are just trying to get ahead and non-committal to any particular style. You are a Maverick Blogger. Soon you become A-listed and as your readership grows, you have to choose a conventional style, otherwise you will fall back to oblivion where you came from.

I will advice that bloggers keep an eye on thier style and know when to start conforming to a particular style. Know when you need more professional copywriters, when you need to go on that writing course, and when you need to re-define your niche or start another blog.

What is your blogging style, How do you blog?

Friday, April 25

What will you give me when I spread the word about you?

Unique Blog Contest: Register and win April 2008 If you have an answer, state it in the comments box. This blog is giving something really big away, but many readers do not know. If you tell your readers, they will be grateful and thank you. Imagine the opportunity to reach ALL those recieving my RSS feed.

You may be wondering what I am talking about. It is the unique blog contest. I have scoured the internet and I am yet to see anything like it. I will not repeat the contest components in this post, but I will wager any blogger to show me a better contest, or any contest for that matter that offers value better than this. Many blogs host contests that give things away to their associates, selected by unmeasurable parameters: "randomly selected". Such a hoax in the name of competition and greed.

In my definition of competition, there is a clear criteria for winning, nothing random. The winners of this competition will benefit every month with the directory listing them and their keywords and the top contestants will have their links and keyword phrases in this cute box above. On every post. That way, the reader even sees them before they see me.

That brings me back to my question: What will you give me when I spread the word about you? If you have any compelling offer, you tell us, we are listening.

Monday, April 21

Unique blog competition where everyone wins! April

This blog does not believe in sweep-stakes and so-called competitions all over the place where winning is by "random selection". Those are not competitions, but gambling. If you want to compete for a position, then this is the competition for you. A-listed blogs are free to compete, as winning depends on your efforts and not on your luck or previous reputation.

I am compiling a list of Blogs/Websites and their link phrase keywords to be displayed on this site at the beginning of every month. It is important to get links and these links become more useful if they link to you through your link phrase of choice. That way, the search engines see that you are linked to for those words and your journey up begins. In addition to being on the list, the top entries will also get featured as one of our Blogs of Focus for ne full month. In subsequent months, you may submit additional keywords/link phrases which will also be added to the list for that new month and published provided you fulfil all the basic requirements outlined below.

To qualify to be listed, all you have to do is;

Basic Points
1.Comment on two posts on this blog. One of them must be this post.
2.Use the same email address to fill in the form below
3.Subscribe to my RSS feed by confirmed by email
The above gets you 25 points. These you may redeem as Entrecard credits without appearing on the list.

Bonus Points
4. As a bonus, if you mention the competition and link to it in your blog, your trackback link will appear below and you will gain an additional 10 points for every link to it. (SPAM,SPLOGS and obscene or illegal sites are not accepted)
5. If you link to any other post on this blog, you get 10 points apiece.

Goodies
The top entries for the preceding month will get reviewed as featured blog here as Blogs of Focus for the month free!

As with many lists, we know that the first entries on the list get the most hits, so be wise. All it takes is a link to the post and you are on!

Saturday, April 19

Betting on my winning Blogs

Unique Blog Contest: Register and win in April

People often ask me what it takes to know a winning blog. Well, for one you have to be observant. In the last few weeks, I have come across a few blogs that are on the upward trajectory, definitely.

The first one is MattNutts.com. This is an amazingly creative blog by a guy called Matt. he is unassuming, intelligent and goes for the kill. he has created several widgets that make the life of a blogger simple. The icing on the cake is that he is an author. In this book which he has on his blog, he gives you a complete guideline on how to use and help on BlogCatalog, a social networking microblogging platform. That is where I met Matt. I know he will be in the A-list soon enough because he is being of enormous help to bloggers, new and old.

The second blog that has impressed me recently is : Health Nut Wanna Be's Blog. This is a married stay-at-home mum-blogger who has been changing the lives of her readers with wonderful resources for healthy eating and living. She writes engagingly and has intrigued me with her blogs even though she claims no medical knowledge. One visit to her blog will get you addicted. She preaches eating healthy and when you look at her portrait on her profile page, you will understand why. that blog and blogger are definitely blogs of progress. Let us watch that space. See her recent post here.

The third Blog I would want to talk about is milliondollablogs.com. The blog master got my attention....somehow. Visit his two sites, Potpolitics dot com and milliondollarblogs and see how. Anyway he is a great guy living in San Antonio at the moment. I think his style is trendy yet aggressive and he will get through the roof very soon. Watch him and his friends, I for one.

Friday, April 18

Three hard facts that every blogger has to know

Unique Blog Contest: Register and win in April

There are quite a few ways to get your blog up to speed and I decided to share them here today. I will discuss these first ones that easily come to mind. The rest, you will pick up as you read through my posts.

1. Start your blog development by reading other blogs
This is a no-brainer. You simply have to look around the blogosphere for ideas to boost what you have passion to blog about. This will help you develop your ideas into wonderful blog posts. As you visit other blogs, you will come across some "dope-headed" blogs that are almost unconcious, while you will see others that are very vibrant, have a lot to say and are on the go. The artful blogger must clone ideas from the best blogs they visit and add to it to produce new original content for their own blog.

The interesting thing about this aspect of blogging is that some of these blogmaster will be willing to help you with ideas to improve your blog. The blogosphere thrives on goodwill and to get it you have to be humble and pro-active.

2. Not all top-rated Blogs have the originator in-house

Many newcomers to the blogosphere often want to develop their blogs into top-rated blogs and sometimes are lured into copying top blogs erroneously. I am sorry to tell you this, but I have to. Not all top blogs have their originators in-house. Often times the originator of the blog has moved on and sold the blog. The business model may have changed into something that cannot move a new blog up, but can only sustain an old one with status. If you copy such a blog's business model, your blog may never get off the ground.

I want to encourage you and to say that your blog will get to the top if you stay the course and read this blog regularly (RSS is available). There are loads of tips and give-aways that you will get from here to help you grow. Mashable recently highlighted six simple tools to rate your blog's success. Keep your focus on these and with time, success will spill all over you.

3. Traffic exchanges and social sites are part of blogmaster school
Some bloggers do not like traffic exchange for the simple reason that it reduces Google Adsense Pay-per-click and increases bounce rate. Others believe it gives a flse sense of traffic when the traffic is just bouncers. I have to tell you that being part of a traffic exchange is an essential aspect of blog education. You have no choice. If you can afford it, you can advertise on CNN.com or WSJ.com. You could even buy front page on Yahoo. If you can not afford it then go to school organically.

Some traffic exchange programs like LinkReferral (see sidebar) force you to review other sites that you visit in order to gain points and position. Others just put that blog 'in your face'. I belong to Entrecard also and I would encourage newcomers to quickly get registered and start dropping their cards here. My blog and several other blogs even offers a streaming feed of recent card droppers. that way with Entrecard, you get prime position for just dropping your card with me. Many of the blogs in these exchanges are at your level. They are hardly A-listed, though many are on their way there.

The beauty of it is that you are exposed to a wide array of sites, probably more than you would visit in a normal browsing day. You see things you like and things you do not like. You find out those you can associate with and those you want to run from. Traffic exchanges give you an opportunity to see a lot of niches that you would have never dreamed of.

The best aspect of the exchange is this subtle educational opportunity to meet people of like or varrying interests and learn from them. If we do not go to school, we still meet people, probably at church or some cousin or neighbour's place. School does significantly increase socila contact, interaction and bonding. My advice: Go to school, join link exchanges. You can even team up to form advertisement groups and leverage on each other to swing good bargains.

When you outgrow the networks, you will know and you can move on. Come on, you need that traffic. If you have good content, you will convert some and there you go on your way to stardom.

Tuesday, April 15

22 Must have Firefox add-ons for Bloggers (Blogging tip 3 of 22)

#3: Scribefire add-on for Firefox

Scribefire literally fires up a scribe. This nifty blogging tool is another killer tool that makes blogging a breeze. It is an in-built editor that handles text as well as images just like any other WYSIWYG web publishing tool. It has its own cache, so it stores your blog posts on your computer.

When you fire up the add on, it splits the screen into two, thus you can flip from tab to tab in your browser, while the blog piece you are writing still sits in front of you. That comes in handy especially when you need to refine a post, or look for references for your blog post. Some professional bloggers are silent on these wonderful add-ons that we are discussing in the series when they talk about their techniques, but I am sure they use to spin out wonderful posts.

The beauty of Scribefire is that it is adapted to upload your completed blog post to your blog once you input your sign-on details. It also keeps a copy in the tool if you like.It has an FTP transfer tool which comes in handy for pictures and larger files. It also seems to integrate well with Technorati for tags and similar content.

Whizzhack.com recently produced a demo video that further elucidates the uses of this great tool. The authors of Scribefire are not resting and are regularly updating the application. Now the latest version has a button to add videos from Youtube. You can download it here. Be sure to read the notes prior to installation.

Monday, April 14

22 Must have Firefox add-ons for Bloggers (Blogging tip 2 of 22)

Image via Wikipedia
#2 Zemanta add-on for Firefox

This is an awesome Firefox add-on that beats me. I only recently started using it and all I can say is that it is great. According to the Zemanta homepage, the tool lets you

"Have your browser understand what you are blogging about and suggest pictures, links, articles and tags to make your posts more vibrant. We are making blogging fun again."

It is an impressive tool, as it eases off the having to flip between tabs to get content to make your blog relevant in the blogosphere. Zemanta goes and fetches the most relevant content from blogs around the web. More importantly, it fetches content that is recent and from higly ranked pages. That way, when you reference these posts, you are more likely to get references from the trackbacks. That is how to become a powerblogger, becoming more relevant in the blogosphere over time, as your blogging gets more references.

Wordpress 2.5 was recently released and that brought up a challenge for the Zemanta team, however within a few short days, the team came up with a fix. At the moment, the tool is compatible and works with all versions of Wordpress including the recently released 2.5 version. It also works with Blogger and Typepad.

In one of the earlier reviews was from Techcrunch's Mike Butcher entitled 'A content suggestion engine for blogging ?That could work...'. Other earlier reviews include this more extensive one on wordplayblog.com
This suggestion tool that also fetches images is really a blogger's dream. It is still an alpha release and the founders are a start-up, however the tool is likely to get popular real soon. The strongest potential I see is that of being referenced by subsequent blogs on the topic since you would be one of the most recent bloggers about that topic using Zemanta!

If you were to use Zemanta to blog this moment about say.....Zemanta, the tool will fetch relevant keywords, tags, blogs and images for you. Most of the images come from Wikipedia. Below your rich text editor, it keeps suggesting links and keywords which you may decide to take some , all or none. Beside the editor window also, you have the Zemified option of selecting related articles and letting them appear at the bottom of your post. In like manner, other blogs will see you at the side if they are using the add-on.

This tool is new and I do not know how robust its engine is, but there are indications that it is really smart. I will like to hear from you, how useful this one has been and any hiccups you may have experienced using it. It is a must have for bloggers, even though there are some skeptics who are worried about sploggers. What I do not know is when an IE plugin will be available (still beta testing). Or are we all going to FIREFOX?

The video below is from Zemanta. Enjoy!

Sunday, April 6

Part 2: The best kept secrets of blog traffic building

Socialize it
Socializing a blog involves some of the most time-consuming efforts in blog management. You have to first visit the social sites of which there are many. There you have to join groups and form alliances. then you have to visit the blogs of these new-found allies and 'endorse' some of their works. Some, usually less than 30% will reciprocate, as their eyes will be trailing the big fish bloggers, not you rookie.

Is it right to do this? Well, it is all relative, but a little bit of this would not hurt. However, one must not forget the primary business of the day:blogging. Do not lose sight, just continue to blog. New quality content. The internet will find you. You do not need to spend all your time seeking social sites and not have good quality content at home. If you do that, you may get visitors to your blog, but they will leave disappointed and will never come back. Put sticky content that people can not do without on your blog. Even if it has been said before, say it in a different way.

RSS Virus
This virus is more potent than anything I have heard of. You must have an RSS feed....whether you like it or not if you want your blog to survive. In addition to having one, encourage visitors to subscribe to it. Mine is powered by feedburner and I want you to subscribe. It is at the upper left hand corner of my page. If you do, you will always get the latest entries on this blog.

Include an advanced RSS burner or reader that will allow you to sign visitors up by email too. The RSS virus is so viral and we usually can not tell where it will get to in the blogosphere. When a virus carries your information, rest assured it will get to many continents. Blogs fail if they fail to concentrate on stuff like this.

Watch your Stats
If you blog, you want traffic. I am often amused when 'experts say, do not get obsessed by traffic. Apart from content, trafic is the most important aspect of blog development. Traffic validates content. If you remember in the first part of this post, I said that your blog is just numbers, 'one's and 'zero's sitting somewhere. If nobody reads it, it is useless. when you watch your stats, you see how things that you do daily, affect your traffic.

Wordpress has excellent dashboard stats. You can also use google analytics which is free. I have a link to site meter also as backup. Look at it closely, visit those that have sent you traffic, learn from them too. Mahalo actually gives excellent tutorials on the tool. Do those things that drive you traffic more.

Read your blog, read other blogs, get 'hot'content
This must sound crazy, but I am saying it. Read your blog. A must read for others is also a must-read for you. there will be hidden typos, 'nuke' them. read other blogs to get great ideas and blog about them. third is to hunt for hot news. Your blog is not necessarily about news, but being the first, or among the first small sites to blog about some new remotely or closely related news activity or development has a way of getting you ranked really high on searches.

Do not hesitate to blog at 1 am. You may find something from an Australian blog and there you are. Also, a blog like Techcrunch has mid-night bloggers, so be the first to comment/link to one of their articles. They do publish your trackback and that could inch you up the ladder too.

And the beat goes on.....
. There are many other tips and secrets, but I have shared the experiences I have had with blogging in my first 30 days. This post is definitely non-exhaustive, so expect more guidance as we move along. the best is yet to come.I can continue, but I will stop here so that we will have space in the concluding part of the series to discuss where blogging is going. thanks you for stopping by and please link to me. You can visit my first blog here.