Showing posts with label blogging tricks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging tricks. Show all posts

Thursday 8 August 2013

Blogger Tricks: 7 Tips to design professional blog layout using Blogger

// siddhu vydyabhushana // 5 comments
Blogger it's a very powerful platform to publish your blog. It's free and with some features which you can customize how you prefer, without limits.

In this post I want to illustrate some tips which can help you to improve your Blogger template to design a professional layout for your blog.


1. Start creating a custom template
A nice template is important for the success of your blog in terms of visits and return of money using AdSense. Before to start your custom template, writing code from zero, I suggest you to download a simple basic Blogger template, for example "Minima": so, copy and past on your preferred HTML editor HTML source (remeber to check "expand widget models" option) and remove everything is contained within b:skin tag. This is the only code which have to remain:

<b:skin> /*</b:skin>

...and, below the previous line, add this code into the <head> tag to create your custom CSS style. I suggest you to use the following CSS structure:

<style type="text/css">
/* -- 1. Standard HTML elements reset --*/
/* -- 2. Custom Page Elements --*/
/* -- 3. Redefine blogger standard elements --*/
/* -- 4. Other custom classes --*/
</style>


In this way CSS code will be simpler to manage and update. This is a screenshot of a part of CSS code I used to design my blog:


At this point you can start writing HTML code, adding layer, sections and other elements to your template. When your template is ready, copy the code and paste it on Blogger Layout editor and save it. If you need more info about Blogger customization, I suggest you to take a look at BloggerBuster a "Blogger-dedicated" site mantained for my friend Amanda which provides useful templates, tips and tricks for Blogger users.


2. Create single custom pages on Blogger
Using Blogger you can create single custom pages like on WordPress. How do you do it? Simply creating a post which you will use like a web page for example adding links or in general contents organized for category. On my blog I created some pages (Tutorials, Showcases, Freebies) and, for each page, I added a link on navigation bar:


...and each page contains links organized for topic (take a look at the page Tutorials). When you have to modify the content of the pages you have simply modify the related post directly from Blogger Post editor.


3. Display some HTML elements only on home page
Sometimes it's usefult to display some page elements only on home page and not on each single post. To do it, you have to use Blogger <b:if> statement, adding the following code on your Blogger template:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<!-- ... HTML code if you want to display only on home page here... -->
</b:if&gt

In this way, if the current page isn't an "item" page (but for example it's your home page) , will be displayed all code within <b:if> tag.


5. Page title and meta tag description
For a better indexing of your blog on Google I suggest you to make these simple changes on your template. Change this line (blog title):

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

...with the following code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<title>My site | This is a short description</title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>


...and add Meta tag description below the previous <b:if> statement.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<meta name="Description" content="Add here a short description of your site" />
</b:if>

For example on my template I added: "Woork is a popular tech blog mantained by from Antonio Lupetti. Topics focus on web design, tutorials, resources and inspiration", so when someone looking for my blog on Google, search results display the following description:




4. Design custom categories section
By default, categories on Blogger are displayed on one column. If you want to modify the default layout showing labels on two columns instead one column, you have manage manually your labels using this simple trick: adding on your template, for each labels, a link like this:

<a href="http://yoursite.blogspot.com/search/label/Category Name?max-results=max numbers of posts to display">Category Name</a>

For example, to design my categories section I used this code:

<a href="http://woork.blogspot.com/search/label/ajax?max-results=2">Ajax</a>
<a href="http://woork.blogspot.com/search/label/blogger?max-results=2">Blogger</a><a href="http://woork.blogspot.com/search/label/coldfusion?max-results=2">Coldfusion</a>
...

...and how you can see on my sidebar the result is:


I know, the process is not automatic and each time you add new categories, you have to udate your template manually... but this solutions renders more flexible template design.


5. Republish Feed RSS to manage recent entries and comments
Personally I don't like Blogger default archive widget. So, on my template I used FeedBurner BuzzBoost service to add a section with recent entries and recent comments. If you have a FeedBurner account login, clik on "Publicize" tab and select "BuzzBoost" service:



Follow instructions on the page and copy and paste BuzzBoost code on your Blogger template, within a new layer with class property = "recentPost" (you can insert this layer, for example, within sidebar):

<div class="recentPost">
/* FeedBurner BuzzBoost Code*/
<script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/your feed here?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Woork"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript>
</div>

To customize recent entries section add a CSS class (recentPost) using, for example, the following code:

.recentPost li{background:url(arrow image URL) no-repeat left top;
padding-left:14px;}

Final result is something like this:


You can repeat the same process to add a new section which contains links to recent comments, simply changing the feed URL.


6. Add custom subtitle to your posts
If you want to add a subtitle to your Blogger post you can use a simple "trick" using CSS. On your Blogger template, create a custom class ".subtitle" (for example, I used this code for Woork's subtitles style):

.subtitle{
font-family:Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-size:20px;
color:#555555;
line-height:28px;
}

Now, when you add a new post, to add a subtitle, add a div layer with class property = "subtitle" before the post content:

<div class="subtitle">This is a subtitle</div>

This is a screenshot of Blogger Post Editor:



So, add the rest of your post below the div layer and the result is:



7. Add social web buttons
Social web buttons are a extraordinary solution to share and make popular content you write on your blog. Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg are my preferred social network which drive on my site a lot of traffic but also Mixx, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz!, DZone can help you to increase your visitors. For more info about how to add social buttons on your site take a look at this post for the full list.
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Some Blogger Tips you probably don't know

// siddhu vydyabhushana // 1 comment
Blogger or WordPress? Blogspot.com subdomain or custom .com domain? These are some recurrent questions which people do when they want to start a "professional" blog.

My personal opinion is: Blogger is the best choice to publish your web site for free and I want to dedicate this post to illustrate the real power of this platform to create professional and succesful web sites, taking advantage of all free Google services like Picasa Web Album and Google Pages.

How organize images on your Blogger site
I read in several articles about Blogger you can't manage images you load on your posts. This is not true! When you load an image from the Blogger Post Editor it is saved on your Google Picasa Web Album account. To have a full control on all graphic element you load on your site you have simply to access to Picasa Web Album. You can do it directly from Google Home Page selecting Photos from the menu:


All images of your Blog are saved in an Album and you can organize them how you prefer in a very simple way:


Use Picasa Web Album to mantain original image quality

When you load a picture directly from the Blogger Post Editor, you will notice the quality of image you loaded is worse then original picture. I think Blogger uses (correctly) an image "compressor" to avoid people load enormous size pictures which would render too much weighed the page loading. But how can you do if you want to reserve the original quality for your picture (for example because you need the better quality for your layout elements)? I found this problem when I uploaded the background image on my site header directly from the Blogger Post Editor. The result was very bad. So I tryied to load the image directly from my Picasa account and voilà! Perfect quality.

Favicon Tips
I found several post about this topic very helpful but not completely exact. In fact all these articles suggest to upload your favicon with .ico extension on Google Page Creator. But if you use .ico extension for your file, fivicon will not be displayed correctly and it will sobstituded with GooglePages default icon. So, I suggest to use a .gif file instead of .ico. Anyway using a .gif file you can always upload your favicon directly on Google Picasa Web Album.

To display your favicon on web browser address bar you have to add this code into the <head> tag of your template:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://yoursite.googlepages.com/favicon.gif"/>

Professional layout on Blogger

I also read some opinions about the difficulty to design a "professional" layout on Blogger compared to Wordpress. It's completely false. There are not any different. You have to modify lines of code on Wordpress like on Blogger. The only limit you have is your creativity.

I hope this post can help you to consider the real power of Blogger also creating complex and "professional" web site layout for your free, money-maker, succesful blog.
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Blogger Tricks: add social buttons to increase your traffic

// siddhu vydyabhushana // Leave a Comment
If you have a blog, the most simple way to increase your traffic is using Social Networks.

Every time you add a new post on your blog, I suggest you to take some minuts to promote it on sites like Digg, Technorati, Reddit, StumbleUpon ad delicious to increase quickly your traffic.



Take a look at the following list of links to add your preferred buttons on your Blogger template:

Add Digg vote button on Blogger Template (update)
Add Yahoo! Buzz button on Blogger Template
Add Technorati blog reaction on your Blogger Template
Add Reddit button with counter in your Blogger Template
Add StumbleUpon button in your Blogger posts
Add delicious button with counter in your blogger posts
Add Mixx button on Blogger template
Add DZone button on Blogger template
Add Design Float button on Blogger template

They can help you to attract new readers and increase popularity of your blog.
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Saturday 3 August 2013

The Mistakes Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging

// siddhu vydyabhushana // 1 comment
We are human, so mistakes are inevitable. We will have experience after we had mistake. And the things we could do better compared than animals are we will avoid in order not to repeat such mistakes.

A newbie blogger will have a lot of mistakes in blogging and I’m sure that they don’t want to have them. They want to be a professional and successful blogger, and that is why we created this blog, to help them do what they want easier.

If you are a newbie blogger and want to be a successful blogger, the easy way I think you should do to get this results is do the same things that the successful blogger did. One of them is avoid the mistakes that they had in blogging. So, what is it?

1. Choose Wrong Topic

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging

There are many things you can write about. You can write about what you love or what you have knowledge. You can write about love, technology, journalism, science, etc. So, to choose a topic which you will write about is most important.

Many of newbie bloggers chose wrong topic when they started their blogs. They chose the topics which they think it could help them make money. But they were wrong. All of the reasons is they couldn’t make the readers to be trust about what they said. And they were failure.

Personally, I recommend you should only choose the topics that you really have interest and knowledge. That’s all.

2. No Plan

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging

No plan will be making everything messing up, and of course, you’d be hard to carry out your goals.

I know you have many things to do. So, you can pass something if you don’t have a plan. If you missed something, which means you missed some chance. That why you need have a plan when you start a blog.

Having a plan will make your job progress smoothly and your success will come more easily.

3. Choose Wrong Blog Platform

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging

There are many blog platforms you can use to build a professional blog, and your job is to choose a blog platform that best suits your abilities and your needs.

If blog platforms can’t give the function that you need, you can not do anything.

Even so, the selection of a blog has too many features or surpasses the ability of your control is also not reasonable. If you plan on choosing a blog platform has many features that you are not sure or can not manage the blog, you should not select it.

4. Copy Content

Copy other people’s posts to your blog that is mean nothing is yours. You are just a shadow of others. Surely, readers would not appreciate such bloggers. Furthermore, when the search engines change their algorithms, your blog will receive a “punishment” if you copy the post of another blog. That is why many successful bloggers advice to the newbie bloggers should create the unique content for their blog to get success. You should too.

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
You should try to avoid to copy other bloggers content because it is the best way to build a brand for your blogs.

5. Use Free Domain and Free Hosting.

A free domain will not give readers the trust and professionalism to the site used it. This is certain. Try checking with a small question. You would buy the produce of which the vendor of the two following addresses: BestBuy.com and BestBuy.tk?

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
Free Hosting to often make your page load time more slowly. And Did you have enough patience to wait for a site load too long? I believe no. You will leave this site. Using Premium Hosting will guarantee work for your blog load faster and stable. That’s why I do not recommend using free hosting.

6. Use Free Themes.

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
In fact, there are many free templates for you choose to use for your blog. I’m also sure that many of newbie bloggers will use free themes for their blog. I did that and of course, after a while I realized that this is a mistake. You will be hard to impress and create individual images for the reader to use a Free Themes because so many people have used it. Think carefully before you decide to use Free Themes for your blog.

7. Don’t Update Regularly

This is the mistake which many bloggers have in blogging. There are many reasons why they could not update their blogs regularly. They had no time, they had some important things to do … and so they could not take the care for their blog. But this also is the reason that the traffic to their blog is downing.
The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
Readers want new information. There are thousands of blogs existed will be happy to cater to them. If you couldn’t bring it to them, they will leave you. That’s why you should make your blog refresh as much as possible to get more visitors.

8. Don’t Learn About SEO

There are many blogs having good content but it still not have good traffic. Why? I think because of they don’t know how to drive traffic to their blogs. They just wrote and hoped readers will come. But it not happened. They really needed to do more.

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
There are many ways to get traffic to your blogs, but, from personally, I thought SEO is the best ways to do that. Because of most of us always used the search engine to look for something. And if your blog has high ranking in search results, you will have more chance to getting more visitors. So that’s why you should learn about SEO.

9. No Backup
The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging

Many of my friends forgot to back up their blog data and unfortunately when their hosting provider had the problem. Their blogs will die for some time and it seems like their efforts have gone. That’s terrible, right? So, make sure that you are regular backup your blog to protect yourselves.

10. Don’t Use Favicon and Gravatar.

The picture makes you prone to irritability rather than words. And you should know that the images may also represent a brand. That’s why you see the apple icon, you’ll think about Apple Inc, or fire fox you will think of the Firefox browser. Favicon for the blog and use Gravatars will be the best way for people to recognize you among hundreds of thousands of other blogs. This is also a way for others to know about your brand.

11. Do Not Reply to Comment

I saw many successful bloggers always reply to every comment they had in their blog. They also recommended too. Why?

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
Not answer a reader’s comment on the blog is a mistake that you should not have. Because of this was the best way to mount you with your readers, increasing the reader’s trust in you. If possible, please reply to all comments on your blog.

12. Become a Spammer.

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
Comment on other blogs is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your blog. Many people took advantage of it and become a spammer. If you are going to be a spammer, I recommend you remove this idea just because it is not welcomed by everyone, sometimes counterproductive.

13. Choose Wrong Methods to Make Money

There are many ways to make money from your blog, but not all of them are right for their blog. Some niche blog only be suitable for one or two methods.

The Mistakes  Bloggers Should Advoid on Blogging
For example, when I asked my friend, “ Can I make big money online from my blog with Google Adsense?”, he answered is NO, with my blog niche (my blog niche is blogging), I can make just some cent from GA. That’s truth. I put some GA ads but it don’t work. But when I put it into my other blog niche, I got the result that makes me a big surprise.

So, I think choosing the right ways to make money from your blog is so important.

14. Placing Too Many Ads

I tried putting a lot of ads on my blog this past week and there’s one thing I noticed is the amount of visitors to blog less, the percentage of customers leaving the blog has increased. The reason according to my understanding that the ad images made readers uncomfortable, and difficult to focus on blog content. Moreover, too many pictures and java script as well as blog load slower and of course, the reader will not have enough patience and leave your blog.
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Saturday 20 July 2013

Blogger Templates: free responsive blogger templates

// siddhu vydyabhushana // 1 comment

Copyblogger

copyblogger

Sensational

sensotional

Elice

elice

Minimum

minumum-theme

Personal (Not responsive but unique)

This template design and development from Web Design Tunes. This is not responsive but I think you like our first Blogger template. Enjoy :)
personal

ExtraNews

extranews-blogger-template

DailyPost

daily-post

Main Photo

mainphoto

Balance

balance-blogger-template

Elite Minima

elite-minima

Chronicl

chronicl

Main Photo

main-photo-version-1

Incipient Template

incipient

Adsosive

adosive

Portfolio

portfolio-blogger-template

Excelencia

Excelencia

Pinfinity

Pinfinity

Bresponsive

Bresponsive

Max Mag

max-mag
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Thursday 4 April 2013

Guest Blogging: how to do guest blogging correctly

// siddhu vydyabhushana // Leave a Comment

How to Do Guest Blogging Correctly
You don’t need to create a number of blogs just to promote your site. You can do so with multiple channels. Aside from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and so on, you can use guest posting as a link building technique to harness your SEO strategy. By guest blogging, traffic will be increased and your interaction with a bigger circle will be expanded. In this article, we will learn how to do guest blogging the right way.

But, Before going to read this article you've to know 

what is guest blogging? and what are It's benefits?

To know the answer for the above question, Read this article Things You Need To Know About Guest Blogging 

After reading this article, Now you have a cleared your mind that what exactly guest blogging is and it's benefits. 

OK, Now let's see how to Do this Guest Blogging correctly.

How To Do Guest Blogging Correctly

1. Connect To Other Bloggers

Before you can even submit a post to publish, you should have created good relationships with other bloggers. Take note that these bloggers you wish you write a guest post for should have related niches as yours. 

Niches are valuable for consideration as your goal here is to increase awareness of your brand and cater to a related target market. 

Guest blogging is not just about getting more click-through to your website but it’s more than that. It is about getting sales conversion and building a far greater circle of people who are most interested to your products and services. In order to capture this market, you should be able to post your work in sites that offer similar causes and information. 

Avoid those sites with no social media presence and has developed only a small number of followers.

2. Use The Right Keywords

Users are in need of answers to their problems online so you better provide them relevant and noteworthy articles. 

One of the first steps in making them feel that they are reading a related material to their concern is by scanning through the article. If they do not find the words or statements they are looking for, they might not spend the rest of their time through the entire post. 

Hence, it would be very beneficial for you to use the right keywords as well for the search engines. 

When they crawl to your post, they get the title, headings, description and the keywords that are repeated or highlighted in the article. So to add value, setting the font face of your keywords to bold and bigger font sizes might actually help them as well.

Research for keywords and take time and effort to gather as specific keywords as possible to attract reader’s eye.

3. Write Unique Articles

The world is a giant treasure trove of information, and there are many articles that are written thousands of times before explicating the same meaning. So to differ, you have to write in your own personal style

Make the article unique by injecting your own thoughts and testimonies. You can even add in your photos and embed videos to stimulate visual understanding. Content should be hot and evergreen, so that people would always look for the same answers even if a decade has passed. 

Writing good guest posts also requires well-researched materials. Points are added to your profile when you can provide statistics and figures behind facts and claims. 

Remember that competition is fierce out there, and readers would only get your bait when you present them with exceptional posts and ideas. 

The key is to write with the blog's audience in mind.

4. Optimize Backlinks Wisely

Usually, webmasters allow up to two backlinks or affiliate links you can use in your guest post. So make the most out of this opportunity to promote your own blog. Just be careful of where you put the links and how you optimize those links. 

Google is now policing web articles as this giant search engine sees PageRank sculpting as a rather “bad” practice of link building through guest blogging. 

Essentially, you can put backlinks in your “Bio” portion when you introduce about your site briefly. Also, if you are to use other links aside from your landing page or home page, you have to keep those links related to the content and niche of the host site. 

Optimize the link creation by entering a relevant anchor name. Don’t forget to consider including the link to your Google+ profile for Authorship.

Conclusion

Guest blogging is now becoming more popular and a lot of bloggers are into this, knowing that this would be helpful in getting more visitors to their sites. However, if you don’t sweat correctly, you will only be wasting your time for nothing. 

There’s no shortcut to being successful in guest blogging and you will realize that building relationships and outreaching to other bloggers while creating high-quality content is not too easy after all. But they will be worth it.
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Blogger Traffic:Top 20 tips to write a great blog post

// siddhu vydyabhushana // Leave a Comment

#1: Anatomically Correct

A blog post contains several areas that require our attention and care. Pamela Seiple refers to six parts of the anatomy of a lead-generating blog post:
  • Eye-catching title
  • In-text links to landing pages
  • Sidebar/banner calls to action
  • Social sharing buttons
  • Call to action at the bottom
  • Relevancy—making sure the post is relevant from top to bottom
blog anatomy
Parts of the blog anatomy.
more anatomical parts to include in your blog posts
Example of more anatomical parts to include in your blog posts.

#2: Blogging Platform

By knowing the ins and outs of your blogging platform, you’ll ensure that your posts look as good as they can. Take the time to master the visual editor (or raw HTML, if you prefer) so that you know how to format a post, insert an image and embed a video or podcast.
Whether you’re working in platforms such as WordPressTumblr or Posterous, it’s good to stay up to date on the features and new versions.
If you’re not comfortable with the more technical aspects of blogging, try to find someone who can be a resource for you to answer questions as they arise.
WordPress' editor
WordPress' editor where you can toggle between visual and HTML editing functions.

#3: Categories

Whether your new blog post is a stand-alone article or part of a series you’re writing, it should fit into your blog categories as well as your overall corporate content strategy. Meaning that you want to stay on topic and have your posts fit into the categories you’ve established.
For example, HubSpot has nine categories on their blog. Posts are written to fit in with each of these categories. Writing about category topics such as analytics, blogging, email marketing, HubSpot TV, etc., allows both readers and writers to stay focusedon what they can expect to see on HubSpot’s blog.
When you choose your categories, ask yourself, do they make sense, and do they fit into the objectives of my business? Having clearly defined blog categories will help youcontinue generating meaningful content and topics for your blog.
blog categories
Write posts that fit into your categories.

#4: Description

Most search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description on their results pages. If you don’t create a meta-description (defined as a “…concise summary of your page’s content”), a search engine will often take the first 160 characters it finds on your page instead.
Note too, that when you create a meta-description that is fewer than 160 characters, you’ll see the full description in the search engine. Otherwise it will be cut off.
example of a meta-description
An example of a meta-description created within the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin in WordPress.
example of how a post's description appears in Google search results
An example of how a post's description appears in Google search results with and without the meta-description.

#5: Editorial Calendar

Bloggers find editorial calendars helpful for scheduling and organizing topics for posts. Some people use their calendars to track more elaborate details.
Michele Linn suggests using specific tabs in a spreadsheet to track info for each post such as: post date, author, tentative title, keywords, categories, tags, call to action and status. She says “By tracking more than topic and date it will help to make sure the key elements you need for SEO, digital optimization and conversion are accounted for.”
Download a sample editorial calendar worksheet.
example of a template for a master editorial calendar
An example of a template for a master editorial calendar as shown by Michele Linn.

#6: Fine-Tune and Revise

Like other forms of writing, a blog post is rarely completed in one draft. Many writers find it helpful to take a post through several revisions and fine-tune the post as you go along. Check grammar, spelling and punctuation, and make certain that all of your links are working.

#7: Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

By following a few tips and best practices, you can increase the chance that your blog post will be found by search engines—by Google in particular.
The State University of New York at Plattsburgh offers these helpful writing tips:
  • Google likes text
  • Google likes formatting
  • Google likes freshness
  • Google likes accessibility
  • Google likes outbound hyperlinks
  • Googlebot isn’t psychic, so remember to link your pages
  • Google likes you to tell it where you are
  • Google likes experts

#8: Headings

Joost de Valk offers some good suggestions regarding blog headings. He writes, “The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they’re interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog’s homepage or your category archives.”
He offers five basic principles about heading structure:
  • The most important heading on the page should be the H1
  • There is usually only one H1 on any page
  • Subheadings should be H2s, sub-subheadings should be H3s, etc.
  • Each heading should contain valuable keywords; if not, it’s a wasted heading
  • For longer pieces of content, a heading is what helps a reader skip to the parts that he/she finds interesting
headings
Headings should contain valuable keywords.

#9: Images

Blog posts are made up of more than words and headings.
Judy Dunn recommends five ways the right photo can increase readership and blog views:
  • Convey the overall feeling or emotion of your post
  • Illustrate a metaphor or analogy that is part of your main idea
  • Evoke surprise or curiosity
  • Complement your headline
  • Make your reader smile
Judy points out too that readers are visual learners and images can help people take in and retain information better.

#10: Journalistic Approach

Bloggers can learn a lot from traditional journalists and the ways that they approach their news stories.
Mickie Kennedy offers five things that bloggers can learn from journalists:
  • Get your facts straight
  • Trust has to be earned
  • Give credit to your sources
  • The inverted pyramid works (basic overview in first paragraph and then delve into more details in subsequent paragraphs)
  • Editing and proofreading are essential
inverted pyramid
As shown on Wikipedia.org

#11: Killer SEO and Blog Design

Cyrus Shepard makes an important case for having a beautiful blog. He says, “…the overall design of your site is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, page views and conversions.”
Cyrus suggests that certain elements on the page will add to a blog’s success:
  • Search box
  • RSS feed
  • Breadcrumbs (helping users navigate),
  • Flat site architecture by minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your content
  • Images
  • Keep your best content above the fold
  • Link to your best content
  • Don’t overdo links
  • Watch ad space
  • Encourage comments
  • Add sharing buttons
  • Test the blog for speed
  • Check your blog in different browsers
  • Pick a powerhouse blogging platform (e.g., WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr)
For a resource that will help remind you of these killer SEO suggestions, check out Cyrus’ infographic, Blog Design for Killer Search Engine Optimization.

#12: Lists

Lists have become a very popular type of blog post.
Nate Riggs offers three types for bloggers to consider: brief, detailed and hybrid lists.
The brief list has little description but can entice readers to bookmark the post to use the list as a resource down the road or to share it across their own networks.
In a detailed list, each bullet is a complete thought and serves as a good way to communicate complex information.
The hybrid list combines the elements of short and detailed lists, often with descriptive narratives or explanations in paragraphs between the actual lists.
Nate’s post has a lot of useful information about lists as a powerful content marketing tactic and is a good example of a hybrid list.

#13: Metrics for Blogging

Magdalena Georgieva identifies five metrics to keep an eye on to know how your blogging is going: visitors, leads, subscribers, inbound links and social media shares.
As Magdalena says, “Measure the performance of your business blog regularly toidentify weaknesses in the content you’re producing, what topics your audience truly cares about, and what blogging tactics work for you.”
When you find topics and approaches that work particularly well, try to replicate those efforts and be willing to let go of features that aren’t performing well. Magdalena recommends looking at your five most successful blog posts and asking, “What do they have in common?”

#14: Names, Titles and Bio

Not only are readers interested in the content in your blog post, they also want to know who wrote the post and their role at your organization.
Sometimes you’ll come across a thoroughly researched and well-written post only to find an attribution of “admin.” Even if the blog is only written by you and you’re the administrator of the blog, be sure to include your name, title and a way for readers to contact you.

#15: Original vs. Curated Content

The type of post you write can contain completely original content or can consist of content that you’ve curated.
Pamela Seiple addresses the issue of curated content and makes an important point when she says, “There’s a misconception among marketers that curated content is lazy and unoriginal, but we think it’s the complete opposite. It takes time and careful evaluation to create quality curated content and the result is oftentimes a very valuable piece of content that helps people seeking information on a given topic to cut through the clutter on the web and save time.”
The 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is an example of curated posts, pulling in the expertise of others who have written on the topic. As a curator of this kind of post, I love the journey of the research and find it especially rewarding to see the content pulled together in a way that hadn’t been previously available. Curated posts can be incredibly gratifying!

#16: Publish and Promote

Kristi Hines speaks about the publishing and promoting stages of creating a successful blog post. Kristi says that one thing you want to do during the publishing stage is to ensure that your post has some kind of call to action. “Think about what you want people to do once they’ve read the post….”
Promoting a blog post can involve a fair amount of thought and strategy, as you’ll see from Kristi’s approach. She has a different plan in place for “averagely awesome posts, awesome posts and killer awesome posts.”
What differs for the three types of posts is how many social networks she shares the posts with, whether she includes the post in her writing portfolio and whether it’s included in her custom RSS feed or utilizes blog commenting promotion and direct messaging partners in social media to see if they’ll help spread the word.
Kristi describes promotion as taking from a few minutes to a few hours, and recommends taking the time to build a good foundation before you expect to execute a successful blog promotion.

#17: Questions

What are you going to write about post after post, week after week, year after year? Sometimes thinking about content for your blog can seem daunting.
Lee Odden offers a great piece of advice: “One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type into search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors.”
In one example, Lee said that he noticed that numerous visitors each month were typing in the question “What does a community manger do?” and search engines were sending them to one of his posts about that topic. He used it as an opportunity toexplore other related questions about social community managers and providing content in the form of answers.
What questions are your web visitors asking before they arrive on your pages? How can you maximize your content to answer readers’ questions?

#18: Research

Well-researched blog posts can differentiate your content from your competitors’. Being known as a go-to source in your industry will help make your blog stand out. Where do you go to research posts?
I find that utilizing a variety of sources helps me gather the information I’m seeking.
For example, while I can often find a lot of useful content via web-based searches, sometimes there’s nothing like a visit to the library or a bookstore where I often will discover a helpful book on the shelf that I wouldn’t have known existed if I hadn’t been standing there physically eyeballing them.
Oli Gardner makes a good case for using social media research for your blog posts. He suggests ten social media research strategies:

#19: Stand Out

When you’ve been blogging in a competitive marketplace for a while, chances are good that you’ll see other bloggers writing on topics similar to yours. It doesn’t mean that you have to stay away from the topic completely; rather you can use it as an opportunity to see what worked and didn’t work in their post and write yours in a way that will help you to stand out in the topic area.
By reading the comments on similar blog posts, you will get a great view of what questions and thoughts people had after reading the post and you can take a slightly different angle by making sure you cover those areas in your article.

#20: Title

How important is the title of your blog post? Simply put, very important!
Brian Clark writes that the title is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader.
He says, “Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.
But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can alsocommunicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text.”
example of an eye-catching title
An example of an eye-catching title from copyblogger.com.


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