Bloggingtricks

Research is boring. Researchers don't get much glory. Research can be expensive. But for bloggers, research is important. And there is plenty of free research available for bloggers if you know where to look.

And the first place I look when I want to research blog trends, topics, posts and keywords is Nielsen's Blogpulse.

This place is a gold mine for new bloggers. If you want to find out what topics, keywords and blogs are hot, look no further.

Here's an example of how I use Blogpulse. I am interested in buying some keyword - based ads in an attempt to drive traffic to one of my other blogs called PodcastingTricks.com.

So I checked to see how three different keywords showed up in various blog posts over the last six months. I checked "podcast," "podcaster" and "podcasting."

Nearly two percent of all blog posts mention "podcast" but less than one half of one percent mention "podcasting."

The lesson? If I want to buy the most popular keyword, "podcast" is four-to-one more popular than "podcasting."

I can use Blogpulse just to watch general interests. For instance, I noted that six of the top ten most popular blogs are political in nature and the rest are technology or consumer oriented. If I am looking for a subject that gets lots of traction to blog about, I might consider these trends.

I can also search for key phrases. Today, "superman returns" is very popular due to the release of the latest Superman movie. I might decide to write about a Superman podcast over at PodcastingTricks.com if I want to take advantage of the high interest level in Superman, right now.

As you explore Blogpulse, you'll no doubt see many uses for its content. Explore, enjoy and utilize this great free resource and let me know if it helps you figure anything out.

This post is part of my series on promoting your blog and increasing your blog traffic. Read Part 1 and Part 2 first, then follow-up with this post.

Every Thursday I offer a blog promo tip. Today's is a pretty straight forward subject. Submitting your blog to blog search engines.

Of course you should submit your blog's URL to regular search engines, but there are special blog directories and search engines that you will also want to be listed in.

Here are some of the major blog-only search engines.

*Blogwise
*Blogdigger
*Blog Catalog
*Bloggernity
*Globe of Blogs
*BlogARama
*IceRocket

You should also make sure that you list your blog's RSS feed with Yahoo RSS Media Search.

Listing your blog in these and other specialized search engines will drive up your traffic and your audience.

Scott Bourne-Media Consultant 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 01665529

I am offering a new consulting service. If you or your company needs help setting up, designing, operating or maintaining your blog, give me a call. My telephone consulting rate is only $100 per hour. That's half what I charge for in-person consulting. Let me know if I can help.

There is a cool social media and networking site called Squidoo. I am a fan of marketing guru Seth Godin and he introduced me to the concept of a "lens." Visit my BloggingTricks.com Squidoo Lens to find out more.

I've received some email from readers asking me why I suggest Blogger over WordPress. To be accurate, I advise that NEW bloggers start with Blogger.com because it's simply easier to use in my opinion. That said, I like, use, promote and support both platforms. Each has its pros and cons.

Blogger allows you to host your blog on a remote server so you can use your own web domain. WordPress doesn't allow that function unless you install special software on your server.

Blogger allows scripting language. This means you can run lots of add-in pieces of software like Google's Adsense (that makes you money) and polls. WordPress doesn't allow scripts so you can't run anything but plain old HTML. This is somewhat limiting and really reduces the chance for monitizing your blog.

WordPress supports both categories and pages. This allows you to better organize your blog and makes it easier for readers to find archived posts. It also allows your blog to have better navigation making it a bit cleaner. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't support categories or pages unless you do some very fancy programming and even then, it's a workaround, not a feature.

Blogger allows you to edit your own template. WordPress does not allow code-level access to the blog template. This is either a pro or a con, depending on your point of view. WordPress is actually somewhat easier to customize with drag and drop programming but Blogger allows more flexibility if you are familiar with CSS or HTML.

Both services offer a wide variety of templates, are free of charge and work pretty well.

I run this blog on the Blogger platform. I run my PodcastingTricks.com blog on the WordPress platform. Depending on my needs, I may circle back and forth between the two.

My best advice is to set up a free test blog on each system, play with it and then make your decision. The good news is that both platforms offer lots of cool features for new bloggers.

If you are new to blogging and want to learn how to get the most out of the Blogger platform, there's an incredible resource available to you at lynda.com. It's an online training title called Learning Blogger with Molly E. Holzschlag. It's part of a broader training library that you can access for only $25 per month or you can just buy the CD from lynda.com for $49.95.

You'll quickly get into setting up your weblog, adding specialty features such as comment systems and news-feeds, working with and customizing templates, and even creating team blogs and audio blogs.

Here's a quick checklist to get you started on the road to successful blogging. Add to it, expand it and tailor it for your particular situation.

1) Goals - what do you want to accomplish with your blog? Who needs it? What good will it do? What purpose will it serve?
2) Audience - who is the audience? Describe them. Paint a picture of them in your mind and write each post as if they were sitting in the room with you.
3) Content - How does the content support the goal? Is the content readable, interesting, accurate, entertaining, and targeted at your audience?
4) Design - What colors should you use? How many columns? Is the blog navigation easy and intuitive? Do the designchoices support the content or call attention away from it?
5) Frequency - Decide on a publishing schedule. Post regularly and decide what resources you can legitimately set aside for the blog to make sure you keep your schedule.
6) Community - Decide on whether or not you want comments or other feedback and then decide on what vehicles you will use to engage in and respond to any conversation that starts as a result of your blog.
7) Writing style - Decide on a style and stick to it. Will you use AP Style? How about the Chicago Manual of Style? Pick one and live with it. Make sure your writing is clear. Establish a voice that lets readers know who you really are. Check for good grammar, spelling and punctuation.
8) Organize - Use categories (if your blogging platform supports them) to help readers find older topics. Decide on easy, one-word titles for your categories.
9) Promotion - Build a marketing plan. Tell the world about your blog. List it with search engines and on blog directories, comment on other blogs, etc.

Podcasting and blogging are very closely connected. In fact, almost everyone who podcasts, uses a blog for things like show notes and as a landing zone for their show. Interested in learning how to podcast? If you're lucky enough to own a Mac, read on.

GarageBand 3, the ingenious Apple software most noted for its music-making capabilities is also great for podcasting. In Podcasting with GarageBand 3, I take you step by step through optimizing GarageBand 3 for podcasting, working with track settings for professional-sounding audio, and choosing the best hardware for recording music or vocals. He also covers techniques for recording voice versus music, how to add background loops to the recording's timeline, the best ways to publish your podcast, and more. Exercise files accompany the training videos, allowing you to follow along and learn at your own pace.

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SKU: 02504
Duration: 4.75 hours
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Be sure to include your name and mailing address with your payment. This offer is void after July 2, 2006 or whenever the CDs sell out, whichever comes first.

If you have cancer, would you rather receive medical advice from a general practitioner or an oncologist?

Blogs work better when they have a very narrow focus. Some beginning bloggers try to write about anything and everything in hopes of attracting a larger audience. It doesn't work. People are looking for specific information and they don't want to sift through a bunch of random data to get it.

This blog is aimed at helping bloggers. I don't also cover sports, cars and lawncare here - just blogging. In fact, I have an even narrower focus - I just write for beginning bloggers. And while I may not have the world's largest audience, the audience I have is extremely targeted. And that's a high-value audience.

If you happen to be an expert at more than one thing, write more than one blog. Keeping your blog focused like a laser beam will make it easier for search engines to point relevant traffic your way, it will make it easier for advertisers to reach the right audience and it will make it easier for your readers to get the information they seek.

The more focused your content, the more focused your readers.

This post is part of my series on promoting your blog. Read Part 1 and then follow-up with this post.

Every Thursday I offer a blog promo tip. Today's tip is designed for those of you who took my advice and built your blog with Blogger.

Blogger has a cool feature called the Navbar. When you build your Blogger Blog, you have the ability to turn this bar on or off. I turned mine on and it has led to more traffic. Why? Read on.

One of the features on the Navbar is a button called NextBlog. If you click it, you will visit the next Navbar-enabled blog. It seems to be a very popular way of flipping through blogs - sort of like channel surfing. Accordingly, the next blog button gets a lot of attention and is something you should take advantage of.

Not only does this bring you random traffic, the Navbar includes a Search box that lets your readers search your blog for key topics. This important usability feature will help build loyalty and thus traffic.

If you're a professional writer or communicator, this trick won't come as a surprise to you. If you want to be a better blogger, start reading other blogs. Read as many blogs as you can. Subscribe to them. Check their feeds regularly. See how others are doing it.

Start by reading blogs in your own field of interest. Read your competitor's blog. Then branch out. Just start reading blogs that offer posts on subjects you find interesting. Then start reading random blogs. Hitting the "Next Blog" button on the Blogger Dashboard is a great way to find random blogs to read.

Once you've read several blogs, you'll have a better idea of what you like and don't like and what people will reasonably expect from you.

It sounds simple and it is. Yet many new bloggers skip this step at their peril. Before you start serious blogging, start serious reading and you'll save yourself some time and heartache.

There are lots of ways to monitize your blog. One way is to add a shopping cart so that you can create an online store. Whether its gas caps or cheese you want to sell, there's probably an online market for it.

But building an e-commerce solution can be a daunting task. It requires programming skills that can humble even the geekiest among us. That's where Shopify comes in.

I just signed up for an account with Shopify and it was about as easy as it could be. I can now add a simple e-commerce solution to any blog and I don't have to resory to something like an Ebay store.

The hosted solution lets you customize the look of your store. Shopify also provides RSS-enabled order tracking, allows PayPal and credit card transactions, allows product grouping, tagging and a host of other features that will make it a joy for most people to build an online store. Shopify takes 3% for this service and that seems more than fair to me.

What's the catch? None so far that I can see. With any new service you have to be careful. I probably wouldn't use them for large transactions given the fact that they still have to prove themselves financially stable enough to weather the storm of competition that will no doubt come their way. But for simple web-based transactions, they offer the most attractive solution I have seen to date.

Respect other people's copyright. Just because you see a photo or an article online, doesn't mean you can copy it and paste it into your blog. The words and images in your blog should be your own or you should have a license to use the work. A license is just a legal agreement that outlines what you can use, who owns it, where and how many times you can use it and how much it costs to use it.

If you don't have a license to use images or words from a third party, you may be guilty of Copyright infringement. This is where you do an act in relation to a copyright work, that the copyright owner has the exclusive right to do, without any permission. This may be a criminal and/or civil violation that costs you money.

So keep it simple. If you see an image on the web that you want to use, ask the owner for permission. If they are unwilling to grant it, find another. There are lots of stock photo agencies that will affordably license an image for web use.

If you see text that you find interesting, quote a line or two. That's considered fair use. But don't copy the entire article. Instead, just reference it with a link.

That way you will respect the other person's copyright and still give your readers the information they want.

There are lots of reasons to include hyperlinks in your blog posts. They improve readability, comprehension and search engine placement. But it's not enough to just use links, you need to use descriptive links.


Consider this sentence.

To learn more about computers, go here.

Now here's the same wording with a descriptive link.

To learn more about computers, go the Apple web site.

Here's another example.

If you had a post with a list of library resources you could describe the link as "Resources" or you could say "Search Our Collections: databases you can search for books, journals, e-journals."

The more descriptive link is easier to understand and as a side benefit will provide much better search engine response. Life is too short to click on an unknown. Tell people where they're going and what they'll find when they click.

In a future post, I'll give you a slightly more advanced trick that makes your descriptive links even more powerful.

One thing new bloggers need to understand is the concept of reader expectations. Your blog readers will come to expect something of you. They expect you to blog regularly. Notice I didn't say frequently. In the early days of blogging there was a great deal of pressure for people to post several times a day. But that led to blog bloat - a form of information pollution.

While frequency helps attract an audience, consistency and regularity will hold the audience. Decide how often you want to blog, establish a rhythm and stick to it.

I try to post something everyday to all of my blogs. To cover myself, I promise at least six days a week. Engadget, a popular technology blog, features dozens of posts each day. Some successful blogs like PhotoAttorney.com publish only once per week. Wherever you fall on that time line, let your readers know when updates will occur and stick to your published schedule. What would happen if your daily newspaper just started skipping a day or two?

Whatever you do, don't post when you have nothing valuable to say. Polluting cyberspace with excess information won't help you hold an audience. To ensure regular publishing, hold back some ideas and post them when you hit a dry spell.

When it comes to blog design, there are good designs and bad designs. But what makes a good design? Here are some starter tips. This is a theme I will revisit often because it is important and also an evolving area in the Blogosphere.


1) Don't use black or dark backgrounds with light text for your main post area. It's just too hard to read. And while we're at it, avoid all caps. Not only do most Web users consider it rude, it's hard to read.

2) Keep graphics small but do use them to break up text. They draw the eye so place them in strategic locations. I like to use graphics at the top of every post because they help readers understand where the next post starts.

3) Don't forget to include an author photo. Having the author's photo on the site helps to connect the audience to the writer.

4) Navigation should be simple and consistent. Avoid flashing buttons or highly-stylized images. Look at lots of blogs to see how others handle navigation and you'll soon realize that there are some standards that people seem to gravitate to.

5) Keep it clean. Think less equals more. Allow some white space and make sure you don't have pictures running across borders, ugly colors or text that's so small nobody can read it without a microscope.

6) Make links to your RSS feed prominent. If they can't find you, they can't read you.

Every blogger wants more traffic. And we're all constantly looking for ways to build new traffic. Here's one that I use. In fact, I am using it now.

It's called writing a series.

On every Thursday, my blog posts will be dedicated to increasing traffic. Don't worry, the rest of the week we'll cover more basic nuts and bolts stuff like how to ad pictures and work with trackbacks.

But traffic is important. You're only having a conversation if someone's listening to you talk. Otherwise you're not having a conversation, you're talking to yourself.

Back to my traffic building series...

I suggest that you start (and keep up with) a series. It can be daily, weekly or monthly. It can be about any topic that's relevant for your blog. If you're an insurance salesman, you might spend one day a month explaining trusts. If you're a doctor, you might spend a week just blogging about cancer. You get the idea.

Now here's the kicker. Make sure the series is interlinked. In other words, link each part of the series to the other. If you hook your audience, they'll visit all the pages in the series, driving up your page views (that's traffic) and getting the audience to read something IN ADDITION TO the front page.

If you're new to blogging, you may want to understand what some of the basic terms surrounding blogs, bloggers and blogging are all about. So this brief primer will get you started.

Archive - A collection of all your posts on one page. Can be categorized by month etc.

Blogosphere - This is the online community of people who blog and their writings.

Dashboard - When you login to your blogging account, it is the first screen with all controls, tools and functions.

Permalink - A permanent identifier to a specific weblog post. Permalinks can be used to point to a blog post that someone wants to archive or access later. Since blogs change frequently, not all posts stay on the front page. The permalink helps readers keep track of their favorite posts for posterity.

Ping - This is short for Packet Internet Grouper. Pings notify other blog tracking tools for updates, changes and trackbacks. It's a way of saying - "Hey - I am here."

Tags - Labelling / attaching keywords to collect similar posts.

Trackback - When one blogger references another blogger's post in a blog, the second blogger usually sends a trackback. A system by which a ping is sent by a blogger to another blogger of a mention.

Weblogs - Weblogs or blogs are similar to websites but they are usually diary-style journals that are updated regularly and read via syndication.

If you do any research about blogging, you'll no doubt hear about community. Community has to do with building a relationship with your audience. When blogs were first launched, this usually came in the form of comments. People would read what you wrote and then comment on your post. This brought the audience back for more because they liked to see their name in lights. There are other ways to establish community. Polls, trackbacks, pingbacks, contests, e-mail feedback, toll-free numbers to name a few. But comments are top-of-mind when it comes to blogging so many bloggers use them.

But there is a downside to allowing comments on your blog. And taking a page from marketing guru Seth Godin, I have decided not to allow comments on my blog posts. Like Seth, if I allow comments, I feel compelled to clarify or to answer every objection or to point out every flaw in reasoning. Second, it's time consuming and takes away from the time I have to research and write new posts. Third, I hate fighting comment spam, and finally, and most important for my audience, comments change the way I write. Instead of writing for everyone, I find myself writing in anticipation of the commenters, carefully choosing each phrase knowing someone will parse every word to infinity. That robs me of my voice and it robs my audience of my true opinions and feelings so I have decided to eliminate the problem.

This is a deep subject and I will continue to post about it regularly. If you're blog needs comments don't hesitate to enable them. But do keep in mind this post so you can best decide how to deal with the issues that comments always seem to create.

If you want lots of traffic on your blog, pay attention to the words you use. They matter. Content matters. Information matters. In fact, the more valuable content your blog offers, the more readers you will attract. No amount of search engine or RSS trickery will replace good writing.

Most professional communicators will tell you everything starts with the audience. So be sure you know who your writing for. Serve their interests, not your interests.

Give generously of yourself. Don't hold back. Gurus who don't share are not loved. Be human and humane. Identify with the individual who reads your words, not the masses.

Ask yourself if the information you provide while blogging is deep enough, insightful enough, valuable enough.

Write tight sentences. Use proper grammar. Pick a style and stick with it.

If you offer new, insightful, pithy, valuable information on your blog, your readers will love you and promote you and help you gain success.

Wikipedia says:

RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is used by (among other things) news websites, weblogs and podcasting. The abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards:

*Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
*Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
*RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)

Web feeds provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other metadata. RSS, in particular, delivers this information as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, web feeds allow a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.

Why is this a big deal? And why should you care? RSS is the reason blogs have become so popular. Without RSS, blogs would be just another set of web pages competing with millions of other web pages for attention. But RSS is a way of making sure that you and your readers stay connected with very little effort in between.

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows readers to easily stay informed by retrieving summaries of the latest content from the sites they like. Readers save time by not needing to visit each site individually. RSS also helps ensure reader privacy. Since the reader doesn't have to join via email there's no way to identify any individual.

RSS also solves the problem of bounced email. Even when people subscribe to web-based newsletters and emails, SPAM filters often get in the way of information delivery. RSS eliminates that problem since the only thing seen and requested is the raw data feed coming from the site.

RSS readers (or aggregators) make it easy for readers to follow their favorite web content. This is why the chicklets on the right sidebar of my blog are so important. Using these aggregators, readers can easily connect to my content automatically without remembering to visit on a regular basis.

If you've never tried RSS or an aggregator, now is the perfect time. I use Bloglines.

If you want people to find your new blog, there are some things you can do from the start that will increase your chances of getting noticed.

1) Write with keywords in mind. Digital Point has a free keyword suggestion tool that can help you with this process.

2) Use the name of your blog in your own posts and post titles. Notice that "BloggingTricks" is included in every one of my post titles?

3) Make it easy for your blog readers to subscribe and include RSS feed subscription buttons or “chicklets” in your side bar.

4) Submit your blog to RSS and Blog directories. Also submit the blog to regular directories such as MSN Business Central, that have categories for blogs.

5) Ping the major RSS feed and Blog search engines each time you post. This can be configured with blog software or if you’re using Blogger.com, then you can do this manually with Pingomatic or Pingoat. USE ONLY ONE PING SERVICE! Otherwise you could get blacklisted.

6) Trackbacks - Be sure your blog software is configured to send a trackback ping to blogs that you cite within your posts. Pay attention to press releases distributed by PRWeb. If you cite a release, and ping the trackback link, the press release will in turn link to your blog. This is better for driving traffic than for link popularity. I'll cover Trackbacks and Pingbacks in more detail later.

7) Comment on other blogs. Your name will be linked to the blog url that you enter. Do NOT make off-topic comments and DON'T use keywords in the field for your name, use your name or blog name.

If you're looking for a free, fast, easy way to make your own blog, Blogger is a great place to start, especially if you're new to blogging.

Using blogger you can pick your blog name, select a predesigned template, write text, (you can use a WYSIWYG or HTML editor. Another great advantage for beginners) add photos, moderate comments, enable trackbacks, offer RSS feeds and provide links to other sites. You can also easily add some Google AdSense links which can make you money if you get lots of traffic.

There are a few negatives: The service occasionally has reliability problems since its servers are constantly busy. It's not a big deal and is nothing to be concerned about unless 24/7 perfect uptime stats are important to you. You also need to be very skilled at HTML, CSS and other technologies if you want to heavily modify the Blogger templates. And you can't add categories - this is one thing that sours advanced bloggers. Otherwise, it should suit your needs unless you want a highly-customizable and configurable blogging platform and in that case, you'll need to spend some money and look elsewhere.

I use Blogger because it's easy and can be used either on a free hosted server provided by Google (who owns Blogger) or on a private server. Since I have my own server, I prefer this route. I don't have to worry about down time since my server is well maintained. I also like Blogger because it doesn't just re-route my URL - it maps to it, meaning I will get better search results. More about URLs and DNS routing in another post.

I do want to mention that I also use another more advanced service called Word Press which you may also want to investigate.

Good luck and let me know when you write your first post!

According to Wikipedia:

A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a website usually consisting of articles, though they can focus on photographs, videos or audio, in a reverse chronological order. Like other media, blogs often focus on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; however, some function as online diaries instead. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.

The first blogs were known as "online diaries", and started in 1994. The term "weblog" itself was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.

You made it. You're about to embark on a trip to the blogosphere. But what is a blog and how do you make one? What sort of technology is required and how do you know what to blog about? Is there a way to make money at this or impact social policy? Can my company use this to sell products or educate our prospects?

I'll answer all these questions and more here at Bloggingtricks.com. And I promise to always respect the new user. This won't be the place for advanced tricks and tips. That will come later. Here, I'll get you started with the basics.

So welcome and jump right in. Let's get started blogging!