blogging – Etiole

Blogging for Dummies – 5 Tips to remember

Monik — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:22:25 +0000

Blogging is a very entertain able business, but only if you have knowledge in your field. In keyword research phase, every one picks only those keywords that interest them or attract them in other words. Thus starting a blog on those keywords means that you can write on your targeted keywords. However as a professional blogger you must keep the following tips in mind. 1. Don’t Panic Establishing a business need some time, efforts and struggle. Don’t panic and never expect big things in short time. If you are thinking strategically and want to build a long term business, then you must handle every situation. 2. Search, Search and Search World is full of great information about every field. If you want to popularize your business then you must search the whole web and find informative information about your field. This will make your expert in your field and people will start following you. 3. Stand out of Crowd If you are serious about your blog and want to build a better blog and a strong blog then you must show the world that you are the only one who can provide great information. The 2^nd tip will make your stand out of the reset blogs, as you would provide value to your readers. 4. Learn, listen and Share As I mention in 2^nd tip that you must learn about your field, similarly you must also share your expertise with your readers. Blogging is all about sharing and if you will not share, no one is going to recognize you. So share as much as you can!! 5. Build Network I personally recommend you to build a powerful and strong network and interact with co bloggers. It really helps in promotion, so keep in touch with co bloggers and your readers. By strong blogs I mean stable traffic and income, thus this will help you in building a strong blog. Starting a blog is very easy, but starting a better blog needs really great efforts. Follow the above 5 tips and you will see the result in a few months. Once again don’t expect things in short period, because businesses need long term planning. Think strategically and work hard to make your blog better. This was a guest post by Saksham who is working for Go-gulf.com, a Dubai based web design company that provides web design solution in Kuwait, Bahrain, Sharjah and Middle East.

Why most bloggers fail and why thats good for you

Monik — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:16:40 +0000

Last time i went to a social meetup. When i asked people i met, what they did about 80% of said that they were bloggers. Now i next time i meet anyone i would clear it up, please don't give me shit that your a blogger. Today, from Top Ceo's to 9 Year old kids, all are bloggers. These days a lot of guys come online thinking that by starting a blog they will be able to generate as much money that would help them to live the rest of their life without working anywhere else. What a Big #fail idea. I had local newspapers who guaranteed authors to earn three digit US Dollar online working only 2 hours a day. When i tried to contact one of these guys to find out what it was, they said they would set up a wordpress blog for me and set up adsense account. Then they would fill it up with some shitty starting content and i would have to keep on adding to it and then finally if someday it would ever start making money, they would take 50% of the profit share. Seriously man, what is this? Blogspot revolution again gave this another boost, and since anyone here can make a blog for free and get a adsense, adbrite or widgetbucks ad for free there they go. Millions of blogs are present today. If i was to talk about the 20:80 rule, it applies here. 20% of the blogs rule serve 80% of the blog readers. I found something very funny about the current state of Blogosphere. I found so many blogs who treated blogs as posts. 1 post per blog. For every new post they created new blogs! Now I know why so many blogs exist. The fact is that if you don't get serious about posting content, your blog won't reach heights. Another thing that i have noticed is that most bloggers aren't focused on topics. One day you post about Obama and next day about hacking into a WiFi network, who is going to read your blog? The best thing you get out from all the failures is that you get patterns of failure. As it is said, When Edision failed 999 times, he had 999 new ways how not to succeed which helped him get that final one attempt which got him the light bulb. So bloggers pull up your socks for 2010 and get ready for a energy packed year ahead :D

Breaking : Google Pagerank update is in Progress! Good or Bad for webmasters?

Monik — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:42:54 +0000

Seems like Googles Pagerank update is in progress (Thanks Binoy who pinged me on Gtalk with this news, showing that his blog showed a change in Google Pagerank!). Google updates it's pagerank quite often, but according Google's Marissa Mayer google has 2 Pageranks. First one is Internal which updates on Daily Basis while the second is External, the one you see on Toolbars and pagerank checkers. But, as few sources claim mostly Internal pagerank is taken into consideration for various purposes. Frankly Speaking, i have had experiences when websites with pagerank 0 have got onto the first page for top ranking keywords, which prove the myth of more pagerank=more vists wrong. [caption id="attachment_2698" align="aligncenter" width="484" caption="Dont Blame me for using Bing's Twitter Search"][/caption]

Super 8 reasons why People Start blogging and Posting Content Online

Monik — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:11:13 +0000

Not wasting time on other stuff and getting back to the point. As the title suggests here are 10 reasons as to why people get onto internet and start a blog. There you go!

They have a big fight with their School/College/Office Colleagues and the decide to take on a mission, to completely shatter, insult and kick off other persons identity (One Reason why i started blogging was to take revenge with one of my class mates. Since he had lots of hair on his body, i named my first post as "Hairy Potter" with his pictures.)
They just broke up with their GirlFriend/BoyFriend and now, they think their next girlfriend could be their blog. Sounds, Weird but people do attempt such things. If you want to spot such blogs out, then you can surely make out this when the blogger is blogging about his ex's and giving love advices for you, to now break i.e becoming the next love guru.
They Think blog as a matrimonial service and try to find the "Eligible Partner" and often hide their identities under names like the "Eligible Bachelor". Seems Weird? Check out this blog which actually does this.
They bought a new product, maybe a car, gadget or anything. They bang the customer service desk but no response. Now the only method left is to hurl abuses at the company via your blog and make them understand the damn situation. (Wait, i did this sometime back too)
Some People think Blogging is the shortest route to become rich online. This is lame, but i can find you 100,000's of blogs where they just have 10 posts, or perhaps they do post frequently but by visiting their blog posts, you find more ad slots compared to actual content. Well, some people do make money online after hard work like Sensonize.com while others don't give a damn about the content they post!
Blogging, is the fastest way to catch attention of people, and it's greatest advantage is that its free. You pick up a noble cause and support it. Here's a Example of this Act - FundACause.
Apart from Money People do it because they think, blogging will get them Fame, name in newspaper headlines, Tv Channels :=) Well, that does happen [True in My Case :P] but only to people who are dedicated. Hoping that you add content for a month, and have super high expectations is crap, unless your a celeb, or some high dignitary (Obvious).
40% people blog for fun. Correct, and thats 40% blogs on the web are more interesting than others :) Its not about just posting content, but posting things which you are interested in, your opinion, views and things which you think can make a difference.

Dont Underestimate the power of blogging : Blogging the pro style

Monik — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:47:52 +0000

This is a Guest Post by Sylwia Presley , ethicist and business developer at work, social media strategist for non-profits outside of work; social media enthusiast and blogger who still believes in the power of written word ;) Catch her on Twitter and Facebook. I was asked to post about blogging. Blogging is a big topic, and it's hard to compile all its aspects in a post (which should not be too long;)), so I will send you away to my very new, crispy fresh 'how to blog' blog and here talk about why I think blogging still is powerful. Mainly because it is an interactive tool, which allows us to reach global audience. Thus its content is exposed to constant criticism - before you post anything on you blog you need to consider every possible consequence of what you put up there and still be prepared to cope with the unexpected reactions. It does require a certain type of predictability, but also transparency and openness for critique. I personally really like the self-regulatory power of bloggosphere, because it encourages building strong voice and very powerful relationships. I would advise to think twice before you post something and if you do, have your goals in mind. Take my recent post on love for instance, designed to send a message to everyone who knows me to update them on where I am in my life, to my past, present and future partners to understand me better, but also to question few old truths and hopefully kick off discussion. Now, the discussion kicked off by content of your blog might not happen in comments section. I think social media is rich in tools and by now I see conversations moving to various platforms. I very often converse on Twitter, but I also talk on Flickr, LinkedIn and Facebook. I go and talk about my main blog's content via e-mails, and quite often I have in my inbox posts from my friends referring to recent blog posts - simply because they are used to this way of 'conversing' with me. At the beginning, in 2004 I was very happy that I can put all my toughs on a topic in a rather structured but still personal way in one place on-line and let my friends read it whenever they want to or have time to do so. And they really picked it up and consider my blog as a journal - written just as much for myself, as for them! I also bring discussions from other platforms to my blog and talk about recent Oxford Flickr group exhibition, YouTube video, Mashable discussion or testing of Google Wave. My blog is the central hub for who I am for public. In my case I am quite open, as blogging changed my life drastically many times and I think honesty on-line is a huge investment. However I think it is up to each of us how much we give away here. I do keep vast amount of my life offline and I want it to stay this way. I have my own balance between what I do say and what I keep for myself, but I strive to present my on-line voice as close to the natural one as possible. You have to decide, what you want to present, what tools you want to use and what effect you want to have on people. Blogging gives you a unique opportunity to voice your opinions, present yourself the way you want to, and meeet similiar people. You can do it from your pc, mobile or anywhere with wifi;) You can do it few times a day, you can post once in a while. It is entirely up to you how you do it, but remember - the 'how' in this case stand for 'who you are' so you might want to decide upon your own blogging tactics. I suggest starting with this brilliant free guide to blogging and simply trying blogging out. As you start discovering your own voice and the beauty of on-line interaction and variety of responses, you will get the feel of what blogging is about. Just make sure you have a good reason to do so;) Fake blogging can be easily spotted, and we bloggers are like wolves - we respect our own kind, we are very open to new ideas, but we tend to turn away from meaningless conversations! Listen to others, read their content and contribute to the discussion on-line. Manage discussions on your sites and be aware of what is happening around. And if you are funny, think about the fact that you can make someone's day! It's a nice thought as it is:) Good luck! So stop reading, go on, set it up and start typing! And if you need support, catch me on Twitter as @presleysylwia ;)

How to Write Great Blog Posts to increase readers and subscribers

Monik — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:20:39 +0000

I don't want to give this post a starting like any other post. Maybe Thats why i did type this out. Anyways, getting back to Writing Awesome Blog Posts. For that You need to first understand what goes in Making of a Killer Blog Post.

What Makes a Killer Blog Post?

Killer Headline
Super Targeted Content
Uniqueness and freshness of the content
Your Style Of writing (Don't worry, everyone has his own)
Finally how you promote (It's not a big task, if you've got content, u'll get this task right for sure)

What I have Noticed.

Some People Just blog for money
People think that Blogging would make them look cool or perhaps just to show off Geekiness
Just to write shit and gain attention
To get Famous
And rest, i don't think i need to give examples. I know a couple of them too.

Nah, The good things too.

No Ads, Nothing. No hurry for revenue.
Very Less Readers but still posting content regularly.
Urge to share knowledge with others
Share Experience to help others passing by the same way someday

I had read a poem in my school text, where the poet once came to a place where the Path Forked into two and he was not sure of which to take as his path. One taken by most while other, which needed wear and was quite lonely. He took the other one and then end of it, he tells that his decision of taking the second path made all the difference. Success or Failure he did not mention. Well, what we need to know here is that success or failure hardly matters. All matter is carving out our own unique path and hope someday, someone would take us a reference to taking the path rather than we taking someone other as reference. What has this got to do with blogging, ha? It has, more than what a chicken has got to do with it's egg. When you start your blog, and come to your posting page you too are left with two ways. One which the rest 100 Million blogs are doing, posting stuff which is rotation around the web or the second, to try out something new, a post perhaps you won't be able to find all over those Millions of Blogs floating around. Getting to next point. You are writing because you like, aren't you? Ask this question to yourself 100 Times before writing a blog post. If the answer is yes, then only proceed. If now, then do i need to say anything? When i asked someone, he said

I write things that i think my readers will like

Do you think it's Right? I don't think so. I thought blog was for Writing what You like and not for someone else to like. Here's some interesting incident with one of my friend who is a blogger too, and he might be reading this somewhere :)

When someone asked me which are the top 3 blogs i read? I said Techcrunch, Mashable and Digital Inspiration. Later i realized, that why didn't i mention my own blogs name?

Perhaps, that answers so many things. When You yourself are not a reader of your own blog, how do you expect it from others? I don't think you have any right to do so. First, have confidence in what you write and write it such that you start loving it. Unless you do it, you won't ever be able to make your blog a hit. I can guarantee it. Well, Getting back to reality. After you know what to write 70% of the task is done. Remaining is 30% which includes all your marketing. If you have faith on your writings this gets simplified, believe me, a lot. Marketing Via Twitter, Digg, StumblUpon, Reddit, etc. is alright but all that is surely short term. According to surveys it was found most of these visitors where just like those Hit and Go people. "I came, I saw. I went." If you are looking for real, organic traffic search engines are the way to go. Concentrating on Search Engines would help you a lot. Then, once if you got search engine traffic, then i can assure you your subscribers will grow at an amazing rate. Imagine me a user who has dropped on to your site while searching for some content. Here's a summary of what i do.

I read the article. Find it interesting. I check out some related posts. Ah, there i see a subscribe button, and i feel that this blog has posts which interests me, and it would be great to stay updated with stuff like this! So i'll subscribe this blog!

Now you might ask me, if this was so simple why aren't there so many successful bloggers out there? Perhaps, there are. All those who write content from heart are successful because number of readers don't actually decide the quality of content. Well, all this is called Hacking a Readers heart <3.

Set up Twitter account for your blog : Auto Update Twitter account with latest posts

bastab — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:19:43 +0000

An avid Twitter user and also an active blogger myself, I used to update about my new blogposts to my many followers on Twitter by posting the link of the posts to my timeline occasionally. Now it can be a really tiring job (if you happen to update your blog on a regular basis) to post the links everytime you do another blogpost. So,that day this thought flashed to my mind, that why not I create a Twitter account for my blog also. The basic concept behind this being whenever I update any new blogpost, the account will automatically extract the RSS feeds from the blog and hence post the same in the timeline of the account, so that the other tweeps following can go through them. Thus it will be helpful to none other than me, otherwise which I would have needed to toil the same over and over again. The next step was to execute this thought to reality, which is obviously the tougher part among the two. So, I set myself some priorities to do so:

First, I have to get myself acquainted with the concept of RSS feeds to the extent that if any problem arises in the middle I wouldnot have to ask for help to anyone. Not that I didn’t know anything about RSS feeds from before. But this determination payed me off later,while working on it.

I read about RSS feeds extensively here: http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html 2.The next priority was to find a good enough and deterministic way to embed the RSS feeds of my blogposts into the twitter account extensively. Initially I thought this would be a tough one to do, but turned out it’s the easiest part. More of it coming later. Now priorities being set, plans being done, it’s time to execute. Finding a definite way to embed the RSS feeds to the twitter account, rather choosing it was a tough call, since there are a few ways to do so. Though a coder myself, am still not that acquainted enough with the process of editing the API of the twitter account to get the RSS feeds embedded. So, I had to do something which will help me to aboid these intricacies. A friend helped this time- none other than @monikkinom. He gave me the link to this website: twitterfeed.com And that did the rest of the work for me. What I did was to sit back and enjoy, though I had to get the Twitter account of my blog(@_M_A_D) created by this time and extract out the RSS feeds link from my blog through the Google feedburner I happen to use. [caption id="attachment_2271" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="There's my blog's Twitter account churning the feeds!"][/caption] And thus, I was done. Apart from that, if you've got a Self Hosted Wordpress, then you can download the plugin developed by @monikkinom, which does the work of posting latest posts to your twitter account simple by just installing the plugin and setting up your Twitter Account. The Plugin is available here.

5 Best Desktop Blogging Clients for Mac : Finding Windows Live Writer for Mac!

Monik — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:02:26 +0000

There are a lot of bloggers around who are always looking for a Windows Live Writer for Mac. Unfortunately thats not available for mac or Microsofts never going to do it, or else windows sale will get a hit. So here's a list of some of the blogging clients i found which might be able to replace Windows Live Writer 1.) Blogo - If you were looking for a Windows Live Writer for Mac, here it is. Perfect Desktop Blogging client for Probloggers, nearly has all the features which WIndows Live Writer has and the User Interface is way better than Live Writer. You can check it out here and download the free trial version here. [caption id="attachment_1964" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Blogo - the advance blog editor"][/caption] 2.) MyBlogEdit - Another Cool Desktop Blogging Client. Best part of it is that it allows you to import posts from HTML and TEXT files and many other supported types. It has got a Comfortable user interface which allows you to use most of your wordpress blog functionalities. 3.) Ecto - Another Desktop Blogging Client which supports a wide range of platforms including Drupal, Typepad, nucleus, blogger, wordpress and so on. Although the Software may be a bit complex but when it comes to features, nothing can beat it! 4.) MacJournal - Simple and clean desktop blogging client which supports a handful of blogging clients like blogger,wordpress and amazingly, .mac too! Best Feature - Makes adding videos, pdf's and other content very easy to the blog post, so if you do post such content on regular basis, this one's for you! [caption id="attachment_1963" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Mac Journal"][/caption] 5.) Flock - Free to use browser which many might have used on Windows, and this is also known as the Social Browser. It also supports blog posting and editing so if your planning to go with flock, then you surely don't need a Separate browser or blogging client because both come bundled up saving space and making it easy to post!

Protect your WordPress Blog from Hackers and Stay Safe!

Monik — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:02:50 +0000

Wordpress is the most used Blogging platform on the web. It's Latest Wordpress Version has been downloaded over 6,115,128 times. Being the most popular one Hackers eye wordpress the most since many top blogs use Wordpress as their Blogging Platform. Well And good. But if you get your blog hacked what could be the consequences?

All Your Content would be stolen, by the Hacker.
Images, other files could be deleted.
Adding Malicious code to your blog
Posting on to your blog stuff which you would not like to appear
Or Maybe even worse, just get your blog wiped off.

I think theses are enough to reason you as to why you need to concentrate not only on securing your Email Ids but also your blog. I'll tell you some very simple and quick hacks to prevent your blog from being hacked.

Wordpress, like any other Open Source has got Bugs. Mentioning your Wordpress Version would not be a good idea if you there's some bug out through which your Blog can fall into Trouble. So Try not to mention what Wordpress Version you are using as this may become a soft target for hackers. Just Remove the String of Which wordpress version you are using by editing the header.php of your file -bloginfo(’version’)
After that is done another simple trick is to upload a empty, index.html file to your plugins folder to prevent hackers from getting to know your plugins as this could also ease out their task of getting into your blog by simply finding the loophole in the plugins.
Sometimes Hackers use Various Techniques to hack your blog like password guessing or perhaps something more advanced and that is Brutre Force. Various login Attempts with different passwords till the actual password is found. In order to solve that problem, get the Plugin Login LockDown (Download it here). It Bans Ip's after certain number of Failed Login Attempts.
A awesome plugin i came across is WP Security Scan which provides best security features. It's Very easy to use it. After Installing check out the scan and if any vulnerabilities are found then along with them, a way to correct them is also shown.
Checking File Permissions is most necessary. If you have got it wrong then chances of your blog getting hacked are very high. Here is how they shall be.
Bonus Tip : Have you not heard of this? All posts come with some bonus! - Using Robots.txt, if Search engines start indexing your login pages, your plugin directories and so on.. It will turn out quite dangerous for you. So just edit your robots.txt file and "Disallow" all these directories and so your important directories are blocked off from search results.

WTH? 145,000,000 Bloggers don’t have time to change their blog title!

Monik — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:44:17 +0000

It's Very Funny to find that People keep on posting like 4-10 posts per day on their blog and actually don't change their Blog title! Just Google the Query : "Just another wordpress weblog" What do you see? 145,000,000 results being showed. Most of these are out there because their Blog Sub-Title hasn't been changed to some other suitable thing. Common, you can't be more lazy than that, or perhaps the Blogger is too busy posting content.