Did you know that you can post blog entries by email? If you have a mobile phone that enables you to send email messages to your account, then you can also use it to post your messages on your blog remotely. Even if this is just a standard cellular phone, it will still work, but you will be somehow limited. Whenever you are on holidays and think that there is something that you would like to add to your post or write a new one, you can easily do so. You will be limited on how long your post will be as usually in one SMS you will be able to send maximum 2-3, maybe 4 sentences. You can always send a few messages that will make a longer post as a whole, but you will need to edit them into one larger post.
Another way you can utilize your email is to take advantage out of the very useful option to receive RSS by email. Feedburner allows it, and since most people use emails, it is very convenient because your readers will not need to download any other programs including RSS readers. I also want to give you a hint how to properly count your RSS by email subscriber amount. I am talking about a situation where a person subscribes to your feed, but after some time does not check your messages anymore. The question is how can you estimate how many subscribers are really active and reading your posts. The answer is surprisingly short, as Feedburner has an integrated tracking image in all emails, which means that if the subscriber does not open the email by a set amount of time, the subscriber will be removed from the RSS count. As you see, emails can help you in managing your blog.
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Webmasters know the the appearance of their website is very important. Did you ever wanted to know how search engines view your site? If that is the case, then you might be pleased to hear that there is a tool that might help you with that. Seo-browser.com is a quite innovative browser that offers a lot of information about any website you wish to check. It displays information from a search engine point of view, which means you will be able to see such details as page loading time, number of links, detection of robots.txt, number of cookies, number of frames, IP address, and many more. You can use a lot of this information to make your website more compatible, and you can also check if search engines detect the elements you want them to. Remember to switch analysis mode to advanced if you wish to see all of the details.
These days there are so many browsers that it is important to have a template that is compatible with all major browsers. Otherwise, your website is not going to look professional and because of that your site might be receiving less traffic. After all, there are users out there that use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome among others. It is important to know that your site loads properly no matter what browser is used. I am sure that both computer advanced users and those who just created their first website will appreciate this tool.
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If you are looking for a way to drastically improve your Technorati rank, multiply the amount of RSS readers you have, and expose you to new blogs; I encourage you to participate in link and feed exchange programs. Having higher rankings and more readers will result in being more respected in the blogosphere. This in turn will give you even more traffic. I am going to give an example of how such a program can work.
The idea behind it is simple. It is based on the premise that all bloggers want readers and link backs. So how does it work? You simply copy a list on your blog. This results in link backs for your blogging friends. If a particular program is also a feed exchange, you then click the RSS feed link to subscribe to all of them. Then you add yourself or even a few other bloggers and their feeds to the end of the list. You then publish it on your blog. The reason such programs can be so successful is because the news of such an exchange will spread very fast on the blogosphere. Just imagine if 10 people would do this, and later 10 more after them. That would result in your blog obtaining 100 link backs and 100 feed subscribers.
Participating in such programs have various advantages and it is a great way to get exposure for a blog. Usually even new blogs are allowed to participate so every new blogger should consider participating.
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There are thousands of fonts available, and some of the font creators really earn a lot of money. People like good looking fonts, so no wonder that there is such an abundance of them. It sometimes happens that bloggers edit their style sheet file and change the font to some really pretty font that is very original. If you are reading this post you might think I will explain how to change the font of your blog, but this post has a significantly different purpose. I am actually hoping to convince you to stick to regular fonts, unless you are in some specific niche like a calligraphy website. Most blogs exist to deliver some kind of message to their readers, and this is most easily achieved with easy to read, standard fonts. I think we should make the process of reading as easy as possible, and do not make it harder for your readers. There might be some exceptions for blogs of artists, or for personal blogs; however, most blogs should stick to standard fonts. Most reputable news websites use a very basic font like Times of Roman, because they want it to be easy for readers to read articles.
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An efficient way to analyze many aspects of your blog is to use a stat tracking tool. Such tools measure not only how many visitors come to your website, but also provide a lot of additional information like length of visit, geographical location, keywords used to reach the site, referring websites, and other data. Such information can be used in a multitude of ways, but let me give you an example. Let us say that you are analyzing keywords used by people using search engines to reach your site. Take notes of different terms being used to find your website and you will be often amazed how they reached you. Now that you know what the readers are interested in, you can even try to write posts on some of the topics that are related to the keywords being used, because you know that your readers have interest in it. Furthermore, one of the best aspects of such tracking tools is that most of them are completely free. What you should keep in mind that it may take some time to properly analyze all of the data. It is important not to make any hasty decisions based on your observations, and to take your time while studying the data.
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Very often I see blogs created by people who have the potential of being great bloggers, but somewhere on the way they make a couple of mistakes and unfortunately fail as bloggers. Many of those people quit blogging aster some time, because they realize that they are not that successful. Here are some mistakes that you should avoid making:
-Choosing a topic that you do not like. If you do not like the topic, there is also a big chance that there are other people who are a lot more knowledgeable about the subject. Choose a topic about which you are fascinated about.
-Quitting prematurely. A person should know when to quit, but you should not quit before you put some work into marketing. You should wait at least a few weeks or even months in order to see whether your blog is getting more popular.
-Not making friends. You need other fellow bloggers as friends. You should especially try to have some contact with prominent bloggers in your niche. They can help you and guide you in the right direction.
-Not believing in yourself. Believe in yourself that your blog will be a success. If you do not believe in yourself, others may not believe in you as well.
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In this post I want to discuss practicing writing skills. I am not talking about just any writing techniques, but about the ability to sell your content. Let us imagine that you are listening to an audio advertisement. In this audio advertisement the announcer usually only has a short time to present the message that is supposed to attract customers to the product he is referring to. When it comes to our blogs we do not have any time limit to put our message across, as we can write as much as we want. However, it is generally better to keep our posts concise so that our readers will benefit the most without spending too much time reading a very long message. I suggest practicing writing short posts that are supposed to present some value to the reader. You may later read them yourself in order to examine if the message is really as valuable as you hoped it to be. A successful blogger needs to write in a way that is interesting to his readers, so that is why practice is essential. Another important aspect is the ability to understand your reader base. What are the interests on your visitors? What makes them excited? Those are the questions you should know the answers to.
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Those of us who are really serious bloggers, and wish to provide high quality content to our reader base, know that it is important to be well organized. For example, we do not want to look all evening just for an article idea, while our readers are waiting in anticipation for our next post. The best way to make sure that we really do our work on time is by setting deadlines. For this idea to work you should also tell another person when the deadline is, so that someone else will be able to check on you later. It can be a family member or a friend, however, it is important that it is someone you have contact with on a regular basis. Basically, the way it works is that you decide that you need to write, for example, two unique posts until tomorrow 6PM. You are not going to settle for anything else, and naturally, you will need to have time for choosing a topic, researching it, writing it, and at the end, making any possible changes. You can even implement deadlines for each step, such as looking for a topic to write about, or researching it. In the beginning it might be hard to work with deadlines; however, I ensure you that you will eventually learn to work a lot more efficiently. Do not worry if initially you are going to have some problems sticking to deadlines, because it might take some time to adjust.
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If you are a blogger, you are probably very interested in attracting traffic to your site. One of the most interesting ways to attract visitors is through contests and giveaways. Here are some ideas that others have used in the past:
-Over a period of a week, Darren at ProBlogger organized a giveaway of over $54,000 in cash and prizes. He had fifty thousand in cash and prizes donated by generous sponsors to this event. Every cent of them was given to his readers. Prize values ranged from just a few dollars to thousands of dollars. It was definitely the biggest giveaway I have heard about. One of the rewards included services like new blog installation & customized template package, custom logo design, blog header design, custom WordPress theme, one hour blog consulting, entrepreneurial books, and blog analysis. As you see, there were a lot of interesting rewards given out.
-Garry Conn organized a traffic contest where he offered the winner a unique chance to get advertised on his site for one week. The winning blog received a special banner designed by Garry, and the ads of the winning blog were displayed on each single site of Garry’s blog. Garry asked participants to write a post about this event, and link to his site with specific keywords. There was a random drawing to determine the winner.
If you ever decide to organize a similar contest or giveaway, I hope that the above examples will prove to be useful to you.
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Being a blogger requires many different talents. There has been a lot of talk lately about the fact that bloggers should also be engaged in social activities. If you start a brick and mortar business, then whoever drives by or walks by, will see your store. On the other hand, if you have a blog and do not advertise, then you are not going to be visible at all. One of the best ways to market your website is to get involved in networking. You need to know some influential webmasters that will help you in different ways, including linking to your site. The more people link to you, the higher your pages will appear in the search results. This way you will have more visitors coming to your site as well.
Networking is an important aspect of blogging, and one of the ways to have contact with other blogger is through social networks. One main problem with social networks is that they attract people with different interests. Fortunately, there are more and more social networks being created that cater to particular interest groups. Actually, there is an interesting social network that is targeted at Internet marketers and bloggers, namely socialauthority.ning.com. This is a good opportunity to get involved right now, and who knows who you might meet there. Maybe it will be someone who will share his knowledge with you, or you will get the support of the people who share your passion and will help you with their guidance.
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