Adding Social Bookmarks to your Blogger site
3:42 AM Posted by Slamy
All bloggers struggle with one important question, How to drive traffic to our blog ?
We need to have quality content and backlinks to drive traffic to our blog and occupy first place on google search engines and create goodwill.
The most important factor is the quality of post (The Material). Secondly, you need to put the main keywords/Tags for the article in the post for easy search (Tags).
One of the very effective ways is to have bookmarks in various social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Furl etc. But the author just can’t just submit each and every post to bookmarking sites as its very time consuming.
The below post will guide you through the step by step to add these links to your blogger site so that the visitors/readers can submit our article to bookmarking sites
This Social bookmarking widget contains Post Link submission to major bookmarking sites like Digg , technorati , Blinklist , Del.icio.us , Furl , Stumble Upon , Reddit & Yahoo.
Just Follow these simple steps to add social bookmarking sites widget to blogger:
Step 1 :
Log in to your Blogger Account and navigate to Layout Section. Then go to Edit HTML Page and check the Expand Widgets box.
Step 2:
Now search this code : <p><data:post.body/></p>
Step 3:
Copy and paste the below code immediately below <p><data:post.body/></p>.
Note: If this code has worked out for you- please digg, reddit, stumble, Mixx this post and leave a comment as well.
THE CODE:
| <span class='post-author' style='font-size: 95%;'><br/> Add Post To: | <a expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Digg' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/digg.png'/></a>| <a expr:href='"http://technorati.com/faves?add=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Technorati' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/technorati.png'/></a>| <a expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Delicious' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/delicious.png'/></a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='StumbleUpon' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/stumbleupon.png'/></a>| <a expr:href='"http://reddit.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Reddit' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/reddit.png'/></a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Url=" + data:post.url + "&Title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Blink' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/blinklist-16x16.png'/></a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=" + data:post.title + "&u=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Blink' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/furl-16x16.png'/></a>| <a expr:href='"http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?t=" + data:post.title + "&u=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Yahoo' src='http://shaisoku.software.googlepages.com/yahoo.png'/></a>| <br/></span> |
Mistake Most Blogs Do
6:33 AM Posted by Slamy
labels RSS,BLOGGING
As much as this might surprise most bloggers, the #1 mistake most blogs are doing is not publishing their content via e-mail, as a supplement to their RSS feeds.
Just think about it: while RSS is growing strong, it still only penetrates about 5-6% of the American online population. Furthermore, according to a recent BlogAds survey, "only 12 percent of the blog reading audience said it used RSS always or often".
If you're delivering your blog content only via RSS, you're missing out on about 80% or more of potential regular readership/followship.
THE KEY BLOG PROBLEM
There are millions of blogs already, but really few people have the time to watch more than a few daily. But if they come back just once a week, they can be quickly overwhelmed with the amount of new content.
That's why it's crucial to provide a "best of", a helping hand to guide your readers to the "must-read" content you publish … and delivering this content either as a standalone “blog-zine” or as part of your regular e-mail newsletter.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
Deliver your blog posts as they are written via RSS, but then also publish a regular (weekly or monthly) e-mail e-zine with your "top blog posts" for those that are still not in to RSS.
Don't do just one channel, do both.
E-mail is still the #1 end-user content delivery channel ... whether we like it or not. Using e-mail (as a supplement to RSS) to deliver our content is just good business practice, at least for now.
THE CHRIS PIRILLO EXAMPLE
Chris Pirillo is the publisher of one of the most popular sites on the net, Lockergnome.com. He was actually the first to proclaim e-mail as being dead.
But still, while he preferrs for his subscribers to use RSS instead of e-mail, that isn’t stopping him from using or promoting either RSS or e-mail.
COMPARING BLOGS, E-ZINES, E-MAIL AND RSS
If you’re reading this article and thinking that blogs are actually “beyond e-mail”, just consider the following reality.
RSS and e-mail are content delivery channels; the tools that enable us to deliver our content to end-users. Blogs and e-zines on the other hand are two different internet media content formats, differing in how/what content is provided and presented through them.
RSS/e-mail and blogs/e-zines cannot be directly compared. Blog content and e-zine content can both be delivered via RSS and e-mail, and there is no direct business/logical relation between, for example, blogs and RSS.
Blogs are "personal" conversations, opinions and news, delivered in a linear structure, usually written in a more personal style, and confined to a limited number of content types.
E-zines on the other hand are more similar to magazines or newspapers, carrying content presented in a complex non-linear content structure, and having the ability to carry many different content types that do not mix well together if provided through a linear content structure.
A typical e-zine might include:
- an editorial;
- a leading article, representing the prevailing topic of a specific e-zine issue;
- supporting articles, clearly structured to show they are secondary to the leading article;
- links to "best of" blog posts in the given timeframe;
- links to the most relevant forum topics and posts;
- a news section;
- a featured client case study;
- different advertisements (banner ads, textual ads, advertorials etc.);
- a featured consultant;
- a Q&A section;
- a featured whitepaper;
- etc.
Providing all of this content demands a complex content structure and a strong and experienced editor. The blog format simply does not provide the level of structure needed to effectively present such a complex content mix.
But that's not to say that blogs are in any way inferior to e-zines, they're just different. And businesses need both, and they need to deliver both via RSS and e-mail.
Personal preferences towards content delivery channels and internet content media formats have no place in business. What matters is what our audiences want and how they want it.
How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog
6:06 AM Posted by Slamy
Building niche sites is all the rage these days.
The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.
For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.
At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.
Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.
First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.
To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.
Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.
Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.
Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.
When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.
Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!
During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.
Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!
Free Blogging
6:05 AM Posted by Slamy
Labels RSS,Blogging
It's nice to see that RSS has entered the lime light, and that everyone is getting into blogging. As you know, the Trii-Zine Ezine has been solely distributed using RSS for the last 2 years. As you know too, the Trii-Zine is powered by the Rolls Royce of the RSS industry, as is AdsOnQ. But what you may not know is why I choose to spend money to drive this Rolls, when everyone else is clamoring to free blogging systems, (what I refer to as the VWs of the industry) like Blogspot, Blogharbor, etc..
The reason is.... YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR! It's that simple.
Free blog systems offer very little in the way of control. You have set templates to work with (boring ones at that). Not all blogging systems are true RSS feeds, and they do not provide a complete communications system to their users. (They cannot provide private communications systems to their users, because they don't know how.) Systems that are not true RSS feeds cannot be syndicated either, which is one of the major benefits of using a blog.
Another benefit to driving the Rolls is privatization. The VWs don't allow you to lock the doors. That is to say, that you cannot password protect your free blogs.
Because I have the ability to password protect any RSS channel I create, I have been able to utilize RSS for communicating with the Affiliates of AdsOnQ, and to develop a membership channel for my Melaleuca partners. This allows me to communication with both groups of people without having to send them email, at the same time, affording them [members] a direct line of communication with me, and with each other.
The VWs are missing their gauges too. Currently VW drivers are unable to track their stats. It's like speeding down the highway not knowing how fast you're going, or how far you've gone. Stats are vital! You gotta have 'em!
I can tell you how many subscribers I have, when they subscribed, the link they came in on...
Then there is syndication... Syndication is what makes RSS viral. Syndication is what allows a channel publisher the ability to insert their content into other peoples' web pages (with permission of course). When you have the ability to syndicate, you can offer other webmasters your content for their customers, benefiting both. (The Trii-Zine and AdsOnQ are syndicated on 100's of other web pages on the net.) You can't do that with free systems.
How can free blogging systems operate, without charging for service? Again, the answer is simple... Since they provide users with a sub domain name, they receive the hits and rankings for your blog. So the harder you promote your blog, the higher in rankings the provider goes. They make their money by charging for upgraded services, once you're on the free hook. The thing of it is, if you're serious about using RSS for business purposes, you need to be able to do all of the things in those upgrade packages. Not only that, but you'll need some of the RSS services they cannot provide: privatization, private communication, brandable pages, stats tracking, etc...
So there you have it. I drive the Rolls Royce because it provides my business with all of its needs and gives my subscribers every comfort. Which looks more professional... arriving to your business meeting in a Rolls, or a VW?
Keywords: free blogging, blogging systems, rss feeds, rss, syndication
