Most of the open source blogging platforms out there are going to come with at least a few different basic blogging designs. Some platforms call them themes, others call them templates, and others still have completely unique names for them. Most of these basic themes or templates have nothing inherently wrong with them, but customization is somewhat necessary otherwise everyone would have a blog that looked exactly the same as every other blog. Most blogging templates are really basic, and adding your own flair to them is easy. Still, many people get the whole customization thing wrong, and need to be steered in the right direction. There are some basic mistakes to how people go about customizing their blogs, and hopefully we can dispel some of them in this series on principles for good blog design.

1 – Whether you really want to or not, it is vital that you have some information about *you* in the blog. Either create an about me page, or have some information about yourself displayed in the sidebar of your blog. This should be a prominently placed section so it can be easily found, and it should be truly about who you are, rather than read like a resume.

2 – Make sure that your personal contact information is readily available, and even more importantly, easily visible. You need to at least have an e-mail address visible, and a phone number would be even better. If you want to prevent spammers from harvesting your e-mail address, use an image to display it rather than text. You can always use a free web based e-mail address such as a yahoo, gmail or hotmail address to keep from having your true personal address displayed, if you like. By posting real contact information, you are going to make yourself appear much more real. Although people may not really find reasons to contact you, you’re still indicating to your readers that you are available, which is a good thing.

3 – You should absolutely include a picture of yourself in your blog. All blogs, even business blogs, are personal, and the people who visit yours are going to want to know who you are and what you look like so that they can get to know you, and can benefit from the personal nature of your blog. It is much easier to build trust between yourself and your readers if your picture is visible and your readers feel like they know you. You do not absolutely need a picture, but it is still strongly recommended that you do have one in order to get the most out of your blog.

4 – Some of your blog posts are going to be more popular than others. Once you recognize which blog posts these are, keep them from being buried by finding a way to highlight them.

Continued in part 2 of this series.

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Originally posted 2009-02-06 08:15:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Blogging has become a truly popular form of media for the sharing of ideas, the facilitation of communication and other methods of collaboration on the internet, and as a result it has generated a great amount of interest and buzz traffic to all kinds of different website. When it comes to creating and maintaining a blog from an internet marketing perspective, things like blog search engine optimization become vital because they pave the way to attracting new people to our web pages.

By building a blog and providing readers with informative and useful content, you can gain your own personal following of readers that subscribe to what you write and return time and time again to see what you have to offer. From this readership base you will be able to create all kinds of additional buzz by providing links to websites, services and products and anything else that you wish. However, even if your blog is one of the best in the world, if nobody is capable of finding your blog then you are only going to be writing for yourself because nobody is ever going to see anything that you have to say. So what you have to do in addition to simply writing your blog is that you have to have a strong and sturdy blog search engine optimization plan in place as well.

The goal of a blog search engine optimization plan is to make your blog as findable as it possibly can be. Here are some ideas for how you can make this happen:

1 – Your blog articles need to be search engine optimized as part of your blog search engine optimization campaign. This means you should be using the right keywords without overusing your keywords, and you need to properly utilize HTML links in the resources section of each of your articles as well.

2 – You need to submit your blog articles to other websites as part of your blog search engine optimization campaign. You should join websites like Go Articles and EzineArticles and submit content to these websites for syndication so that you can create additional valuable links to your website while building authority on the web.

3 – Third, you need to make sure that your blog is being indexed as part of your blog search engine optimization campaign. This means that your blog should be pinged as well as crawled by websites that are designed to index blogs. Some examples of these sites are Zimbio, Ping o’ Matic, Ping my Blog and Blog Digger, but there are many others out there. The more you find and ping, the better the results will be.

4 – Finally, as part of your blog search engine optimization campaign you should be registering with blog search engines, checking your rating to see how you compare. This will give you a foundation for improving your blog.

Photo Credits: jose u

Originally posted 2009-10-05 03:15:19. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

If you want to monetize your blog, you have to ask yourself a series of questions, starting with what kind of blog is it, and do you have any readers? If you’re not getting readers at your blog, you might as well put all your money-making plans on hold. Even if you got the greatest pay-per-click program in existence with the highest rates (which won’t happen if you don’t have readers) you can’t make money because there’s no one there to click the ads. Generate traffic first, and then worry about monetizing your blog.

If you have a steady stream of traffic, then the best ways to make money from your blog depend on the type of blog you have. If your blog is a general interest blog, it’s probably harder to make money from that than a specialized niche blog. Of course, if you have thousands and thousands of readers, you can run general advertising for things people typically need like credit cards, mortgages, insurance and very general basic things.

If your blog is general interest, though, no one is coming to your blog searching for cheap insurance, the best way to refinance a mortgage, or a better rate on a credit card. They’re coming to read how you burned the cookies, your thoughts on today’s politics, and the latest celebrity gossip, or whatever you’re blogging about.

But if you pull in thousands of unique visitors over a month, you could still make some money from these kinds of advertisers because a certain percentage of them will click the ads, and a certain small percentage of them might buy. This is a hard way to monetize that requires thousands and thousands of readers.

If your blog is smaller and more of a niche blog, you have many more options. Lots of people use Café Press or other sites that will print custom t-shirts, mugs and items for you. You could have some principle of your blog, your logo, or some great concepts you created printed on these items and link to them from your blog.

You can use the mother of blog money-makers, pay-per-click ads like those through Google and Yahoo. Don’t just sign up and assume it’s all automated, though. You have to watch the ads that show up, the click-through rates, and your pricing. If the ads that are showing up aren’t targeted closely enough and aren’t getting good click-through rates, you’ll get less per click than otherwise .So watch your statistics and make adjustments as needed. These pull off your keywords, so be keyword focused when you write posts.

Affiliate marketing is a top way to monetize a blog, too. If your blog is about how to lose weight, for instance, you can promote a weight loss product or information that has an affiliate program. When people follow your link to that product and buy it, you get a commission. The more narrow your niche, the easier it is to monetize your blog because the people coming there are looking for specific information and products.

Photo Credits: borman818

Originally posted 2009-06-10 05:06:18. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Whether your blog is about general interest topics like how you washed a crayon in your son’s pocket and there’s a new bank going up in town, or you have a niche blog designed to make money, the same basic blogging strategies apply if you want to be a top blogger.

Post Regularly: You don’t have to post every day. But if you can, do it. Post every other day or 3 or 4 times a week. The more regularly you post (especially if you have good SEO optimized titles) the better your blog will look to the search engines.

Post In-Depth: If you post every day and you’re not fond of writing, this might be difficult. But maybe you can do it twice a week, or even once, and have shorter posts the rest of the time. If your post is long and full of information that almost always makes it better than a short post. First, it’ll contain more keywords and probably help your search engine listings. Second, it’ll contain more information that might lead others to different parts of your blog if you’re linking correctly. And finally, a long post just gives you more space in which to connect with your reader.

Post for the Readers: Search engine optimization is important if you want people to be able to find you through search engines. But if your blog post reads like it was written for a keyword-searching bot, the reader will know it. Make sure you write for those real people who will be reading the post, not just for the search engine spiders.

Connect with your Readers: While it’s important to write for them by including actual content and not just sentence after sentence stuffed with keywords, you still have to engage them. If the contest interesting but written in a wholly uninteresting way, readers aren’t going to be that thrilled. If you’re worked up about the idea of writing, just decide to write like you speak. This isn’t a legal document or a literary publication submission. If your language is pompous sounding, you’ll put people off. Just write in a manner like you speak, and leave the formal language to lawyers and people from the 18^th century.

Rein in Your Sales Message: If you’re using a blog to sell something, it’s okay to sell it. You can point it out to people, talk about it, hype it up a little. But you can’t do that all the time. If every post is touting the benefits of your new product, then there’s not much point in people coming back unless they’re already interesting in your product. People interested in your general subject will go elsewhere.

Don’t fill your posts with fluff and then try to sell to people on your blog. If you’re selling an e-book about 100 rainmaking techniques, offer up 3 in a blog post and then lead them to your ebook.

Keeping the readers and their needs in your mind is the key in all the best and most successful blogging strategies.

Photo Credits: Waponi

Originally posted 2009-05-27 05:22:53. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Most businesses today recognize the power of blogging and are using it to their advantage. Everyone from the bigger companies to much smaller businesses are taking advantage of the free advertising and wonderful increase to website traffic that can be gained from successful blogging. There are some mistakes that you should avoid if you are blogging for your business. Unfortunately, these mistakes have been learned the hard way, but you can learn to avoid these mistakes before they happen to you.

The most common mistake that people who are Internet marketing make is only blogging when there is available time. Anyone who is working in Internet marketing knows that there is no extra time and blogging must be scheduled. If you want your blogging efforts to be successful, you must blog with consistency. The readers of your blog will soon become tired of waiting for the next time you have available time to update your blog and move on. This is lost traffic for you that may never return again.

Poorly written content on your blog makes you sound unprofessional. A blog is intended to establish you as an expert. How much of an expert can you be if the content of your blog is full of grammar and spelling mistakes? Take a little time to go over the content before you post it to make sure that the typos are all corrected and everything is grammatically correct. This will protect your image as an expert in your field.

Allow your blog readers to comment on your content. Many people are so afraid of negative comments that they simply don’t allow them at all. Blog readers love to have the ability to voice their own opinion on the content on your blog. If they find that they can’t comment, they will simply move on from your blog to one that allows them to make comments. You can always filter the comments and approve the ones that you want. At least your readers will have the option.

Your blog must link to your website or products that you are selling online. Why do you have a blog? Chances are it is to sell your product and increase the traffic to your website. However, if you don’t link to your website and finish the job, you are just wasting your time and effort.

Do not stuff your blog with keywords. They must flow through the content naturally or people will see the blog as nothing more than a piece of marketing material. Quality marketing does not appear to be marketing and a sales pitch should never sound like a sales pitch. The readers of your blog should be interested in the content and never feel as though they are being marketed to or you will lose them.

If you learn these mistakes and avoid them like the plague, you will increase the traffic to your website and gain the business that you want and need. It is very competitive online and avoiding these mistakes will avoid some very costly mistakes.

Photo Credits: SuziJane

Originally posted 2009-06-17 05:23:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

In the 1990′s people started to set up websites know as web logs, a term which has been colloquially evolved into the term blog. A blog is a internet website where users post regular article, providing commentary, information, news, and various other forms of posts. Why do individuals start blogging? Below are listed a small sampling of the reasons that people get into blogging.

For your Business –

After the wave of the blogs started to hit the internet, corporations and other companies saw the potential to be closer to their customers. As a result, companies started to form blogs which would provide news about what is going on in the company and products that are soon to be released. Comments on the blog allow a dialog to form between the consumer and company, giving real time feedback to a company regarding its products and giving the consumer a feeling of being close to the company.

For your Career -

Many blogger start their blog with the intent of making money off of it. The primary vehicle for this monetary gain is advertising revenue. When a blog is doing well, advertisements on the site will give the site owner money for every click on the ad. Even if the blog owner will only have one in a thousand visitors click on an ad, given that some blogs experience millions of hits a day. This can add up really quickly, especially if the blog owner is maintaining multiple blogs.

As a Hobby -

A lot of blog owners are not in it to make money or promote their company. Some are in it because they have a hobby and would like to share their experiences. Model builders, athletes, board game enthusiasts, these individuals can share their hobbies, informing others while learning from visitors to the site. Site owners can show off their talents, which can lead to job opportunities for the blog owner in their field.

To spread Information -

Some blog owners are in it to inform their readers, by collecting information from many other sites. These sites will collect information from a number of web sources all related to a common theme. This allows other users a central hub within which to obtain information from many different sources, tailored to a central theme or field of interest. These bloggers may hold other reasons as well, but their passion with respect to their chosen field.

For Personal Reasons -

Another good reason to blog is for personal reasons. There are a number of blogging platforms that are ideal for personal blogging, like LiveJournal for example. Personal blogging is blogging about your daily life, relationships, dreams, beliefs, worries and other subjects relating to your existence. Personal blogging doesn’t involve selling products or pushing brands, but rather is just about sharing yourself with your readers.

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Originally posted 2009-02-03 07:45:03. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

When you are working to find your blog’s niche, it would be a bad idea to choose one that you think is profitable. That would be the wrong choice to make. Instead, you should consider a few questions in determining your niche. The first is important: Is it something that you are interested in? You will be tasked with generating lots of content, with frequent posting. This will cost you time in terms of research, writing, brainstorming, etc. Without interest in your genre, you won’t last. Motivation will dwindle and the blog will be short lived. Plus, if the blog talks about what you are interested in, you will have a lot of knowledge to start with.

You should also ask if your niche is too specific or general. To specific, and you may find yourself capping off with five readers. Too general, and you will be competing with blogs that are already well established. Try to achieve a balance so that the competition will not be as high, and that you will attract a good number of readers. As an example, instead of a baseball blog, choose a specific team, or state or stadium. Related to this, ask who your audience is. A blog that is targeting senior citizens may not do so well right now, because those individuals may not spend time online. A generation from now, that may not be true. Targeting a specific region, do they have internet?

Now ask yourself, will you be able to easily advertise? This is important if your goal is to generate traffic for revenue. Your blog should be able to reach high in the rankings, advertising should be able to added to the blog without much distraction, and that there are other similar blogs which you could potentially exchange links with. Your searching should also answer another question, who are your competitors? Finding out who these people are will allow you to generate content that is different so that you do can draw readers to your site.

If you are seeking profit, will your niche be profitable? This will not apply to all blogs, as some people are out there to inform, not necessarily make money. This also should not be the only concern with a blog. If in considering the first question, you find a few topics which you have interest in, you can try and pick from the list the one is most profitable. Topics for which you are most passionate should have preference as they will be the easiest to generate content for.

Finding a niche is a process that requires much thought and inner reflection. You should not pick a niche for the profit alone. What is most important is that you choose a genre that you have passion for. Not only will your blog do much better in terms of quality and quantity, but you will not lose interest and find yourself disliking your blog. Make sure that you know the answers to the above questions before settling on a niche.

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Originally posted 2009-02-06 09:15:09. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Adding music capabilities to your blog, your myspace, or your livejournal can be a really excellent way for you to add atmosphere to the pages, further personalizing them for those who visit. When it is done right, adding music to your blog is something that can make it unique and enjoyable without necessarily putting off any of your visitors. It used to be that adding music to your website meant embedding a single sound file onto your page, focusing your readers and visitors alike to sit and listen without any capability for stopping the sound short of turning their speakers down. Thankfully there have been great strides in music technologies and website technologies that have surpassed this point by far, allowing you to take advantage of a wide variety of different musical options for adding music to your blog website to spice it up a bit.

For starters, there are music players that are intended for being embedded into blogs. These blog music players allow your readers to select from a diverse group of different songs, choosing to pause them at play them at their own will rather than based on the will of the underlying HTML code. This is not only an excellent opportunity to provide your readers with variety, but it is also absolutely necessary so that your reader can make the most important decision: Music or no music? As much as you enjoy your music, there is no telling what your reader wants to hear. Better safe than sorry is an excellent adage for such a situation. Forcing your readers to listen to your music may actually turn them away from your site because it can be irritating to them and can discourage them from staying on the site for very long at all.

In this realm of thinking, there are a number of different options for you to choose from. One such example is Easy Listener web music player, allowing you to put together your own unique playlist. This program is not hard at all for you to set up, and it will allow you to play music from the web using mp3 links. You may also like to try out the number of different radio player widgets that are available on the internet, many of which are designed specifically to integrate fully with your blog platform. Last.fm has a very popular, thriving music community, for example. Other options that are available to you include Finetune, Sonific, RGB and MOG. All of these widgets make it possible for you to add a music player to your website or blog, meaning that your readers can play music while browsing your blog if they choose to.

One of the best music widgets on the web today is Muzicons, which is a relatively new widget with a lot of functionality and potential. It is one of the easiest to use and set up, and only requires that you upload mp3s and choose settings like the color of the player so that you can personalize it.

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Originally posted 2009-02-05 06:45:59. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The word “blog” is one of the most popular words on the internet today. This buzz word is one of the most popularly searched terms on the net because increasing numbers of people are trying to figure out what blogging is all about. A blog is a web log, or an online public diary or journal that is written for others to read. You can create blogs for personal reasons, educational and informational reasons, business and corporate reasons or a multitude of other uses and purposes depending on what suits your fancy.

As a marketing tool, blogs are full of all kinds of potential. Blogs have some truly unique characteristics as a marketing tool. First of all, they are much easier than newsletters when it comes to getting your idea across. They can be added to, and they can be updated at any time and from virtually anywhere. Blogs also have long lasting shelf lives, as they exist on the internet until you decide to remove them. This contrasts well to newsletters which have extremely short shelf lives, because once you send it out, it’s sent, then trashed, and gone. Unless you are just posting marketing materials that are deglossed, most blogs offer a large amount of credibility. Whether your blog is a personal blog or a business blog, viewers come to blogs expecting to find frank and personal perspectives on a topic that you are passionate about.

If you maintain your viewers and you respect the idea that you should be passionate about the content of your blog, then your credibility will go up, and this is what blogging is truly all about. Blogs are easy to syndicate, meaning that you can get your information and opinions out there, and can allow them to spread like wildfire. If you have an opinion to share, a product to sell, a brand to market or something else to say on the internet, and you think that people are going to want to read what it is that you have to say, then blogging is an excellent option for you to consider.

If you do not already have a blog that is associated with your business or your website, then now may very well be an excellent time for you to start blogging. You should not think that blogging is unnecessary simply because you are employing other strategies for marketing or communicating online. There are completely different dynamics when it comes to e-mail communication and blogging. Nothing facilitates conversation, communication and community the way that blogging does. There is no confusion about blogging being spam the way e-mails can be looked at as spam. Blogs have a long shelf life, meaning they last longer than e-mail correspondence and blogs work very well in conjunction with other forms of communication and methods of marketing as well.

So the answer to “Why Blog?” is “Why Not?”

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Originally posted 2009-02-04 15:10:56. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

There are a variety of reasons for why WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms on the internet. Many people try different blogging platforms, but they end up coming back to WordPress because it offers so much greater functionality. Here are five of the greatest reasons for why WordPress is the best blogging platform to use regardless of whether you are brand new to blogging or have been blogging for years.

1 – The Plugin Functionality –

WordPress has a seemingly endless supply of plugins that can be downloaded, installed and utilized for absolutely free. The installation of these plugins is easy, and involves uploading the plugin to your blog space and simply activating it through the admin section in your WordPress site. Whatever you end up needing in terms of functionality, there is more than likely a number of plugins that can be downloaded and installed to improve the capability of your blog.

2 – The Theme Functionality –

Most people are going to be interested in customizing their blogs. There are literally thousands of completely unique themes out there, offering one column, two columns or three columns, graphics, color combinations and a variety of other details which allow for complete customization of your blog to suit your needs, the theme of your blog and the needs of your readers.

3 – Auto Ping Functionality –

Many scripts may offer this particular possibility, but many free blog hosts do not offer auto ping, meaning that you are going to need to ping yourself after every single post that you make. On the other hand, WordPress can do the pinging for you, which makes your life significantly easier and saves you a lot of time in the process.

4 – The Trackback –

The trackback feature is an important one if you want to know who is reading and responding to your blog, and if you want to be open about who you are reading and talking about in your blog. If you link to a post in another blog using WordPress, WordPress will automatically make a comment in the post that was linked to in order to facilitate communication between the two different blogs.

5 – The Overall Feeling of Simplicity –

WordPress is an extremely user friendly blogging platform. By using cpanel, you can install WordPress in a single click in most circumstances. After the WordPress blog is installed, you are pretty much ready to get going, provided that you do not want to do any tinkering beforehand with stats, themes and other details. You do not have to know anything at all about computers in order to set up a WordPress blog. When it is installed and ready to go, you simply have to log in to your WordPress panel, which is also extremely easy for you to use in most circumstances.

Ready to start using WordPress? I have tried lots of hosting providers and one is without a doubt the best in my mind. Host Gator. Use the coupon code BlogTrafficExchange to receive $9.94 on the package price.

Originally posted 2009-02-06 05:25:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter