Blog Your Voice

Feel the difference: Recap

2011-11-24T15:57:00-08:00

'Feel the difference' was introduced as a segment that shows the readers the elements or features that i found interesting while reading other blogs. I would like to recap some of them.

Sort by Feature - In 'Physorg' one can sort the posts based on the date of posting, popularity, etc.

Reading Time - In 'Software Critics' you can select the length of the article depending of the amount of time you have.

Turn off advertise - 'DailyKos' allows you to turn off the advertisements for a small amount of fees.

Randomise Button - This button in 'Buzzfeed' randomises the selection of posts.

Felt the difference??

Poor man’s blog titles and SEO

2011-03-08T08:05:00-08:00

In the earlier article I talked about how to make Search engine friendly Blog Titles. I explained how blog names should be selected, how keywords should be integrated in your Title Meta tag and even put down an ideal length for your blog title. All these techniques will help you to optimise your blog title for the search. Another tricky way of optimisation is by making Poor man’s blog Titles.

I am sorry. Poor man’s blog titles do not mean that the blogger is poor. I’ll. I love the actor Benicio Del Toro for his performance in many films. He is an Oscar winning actor from Puerto Rica. But, when you look at the picture you’ll find that he reminds us of Brad Pitt. For that reason he is called the poor man’s Brad Pitt.

Benicio Del Toro might not be getting his resemblances to Brad Pitt purposefully but there are many blog that have adopted names and appearances that are similar to that of a popular blogs and websites. Problogger and FreeProblogger is a fine example. When anyone searches for Problogger the latter will show up in the list of first 10 results for sure. You would have understood why I called this poor man’s blog titles. Though this is a technique, i don't think it can be called as a gentleman's technique.

Have you ever come across such blogs whose name resembles to that of a popular blog?

How to make Search Engine friendly Blog titles

2011-03-04T12:28:00-08:00

The present form of blogs was evolved from daily diaries. It started to take shape when ‘Open Diaries’ an online diary platform added the option of commenting into it and started to make it participatory. You can read more about this in the History of Blogging. Anyways my topic is not this. As far as you are not intending to keep your blog to its crude form of a diary but want people to see it, then you really want to optimise your blog for the search.

First step for SEO

The first step for SEO would be to make your blog title search engine friendly. It would be great if you get it right from the very first stage. I think if you are about to start a blog and you are looking for a name, then you select names that itself become a keyword.

For example, Tips for new bloggers, Digital Photography School. These titles themselves serve the purpose of a keyword.

Keyword in title

If you are keen to have a creative name or if you have already started a blog, try to get a related keyword or two into your title Meta tag.

Format:

Blog Title - Prime Keyword

It is what you write in the title Meta tag that will be shown in the search results. For example: Check out Blog Your Voice in the Search Result. The name would look like this in the title bar.

But be aware of the length of the title.

Ideal length of a title Meta tag

The ideal length of a blog (website) title is 80 characters. This is because most search engines would only read the first 70 characters of the title. The portion after that would be truncated. So add your keywords in the title Meta tag, but look out for the length as well.

Another way of optimising the title- that is not advised- is to have Poor man’s blog titles. Read more about Poor man’s Blog Titles in my next article.

Feel the Difference | March 2011

2011-03-04T07:33:00-08:00

Feel the difference was a fresh segment introduced in ‘Blog Your Voice’ last month. As I had explained before, ‘Feel the Difference’ presents before you, 4 different elements or features that I observed in other Blogs during the previous month. It is not meant for us to flick those ideas that we see around the web, instead I appreciate their creativity and present it before you.

If you had missed out this segment last month do check out:

Feel the Difference | February 2011

The 4 elements or features in which I felt a difference this month are:

1. Reading Time

Life is really fast and busy nowadays. The first things that any visitor who visits your blog checks are whether the article has something interesting in for him and then how much time he would have to spend for reading the whole post. ‘Software Critics’ a blog that writes software reviews has this element right at the top of every post. It tells you the approximate time that you could take to read the whole article. If the reader is been told the particular article takes a lot of time, he is also advised to bookmark it if he has no time to read it then and there. This is a way to show care and loyalty to your visitors.

2. On/Off Tynt Paste Feature

Before I explain the feature I should explain what tynt is. Tynt is a publisher tool that creates backlinks when someone copies text from your blog and pastes it somewhere else. Try copying something from my Blog and Paste in the notepad in your computer, you’ll find that a link will follow the text pasted.

This option is enabled in many blogs but ‘Electronista’ offers you to turn on and off this feature. ‘Electronista’ is a wonderfully designed blog that talks about the latest news on all gadgets. This means that if you turn it off you can freely copy content from the site. This feature again shows the respect for visitors.

3. ‘Sort by’ Feature

The ‘Sort By’ Feature in Physorg allows you to sort the posts by date rank and popularity allowing the selection easier for the visitor. Again it shows care for the visitor.

4. 100 Latest updates

Blog herald offers a list of their hundred latest updates. They say:

“Hard to keep up with the updates? Then the list below, consisting of no more and no less than the 100 latest updates on The Blog Herald, might be a good place to start.”

I think this helps if your homepage is designed unlike a syndication feed. In such a situation such a link on your menu would help your visitors to follow the latest updates of your blog. The interesting thing that I found in this feature is that it creates 100 straight forward internal links. J

So Which is the feature that you loved the most?

Greet your visitor based on the referrer site

2011-03-03T03:01:00-08:00

It is very important in business to greet your customers well and serve them like kings. It starts right from the receptionist in the office. Such greetings often silently show off your professionalism. This professionalism should to be shown while blogging as well. One way is to greet your visitor by the time of the day. Whereas another method is to greet the visitor based on the site that he is coming from.

When a visitor lands on your blog post from a google search wouldn’t it be nice if he is greeted calling a Googler( As shown in the above picture). I am sure that this way of greeting would make every visitor happy. DEMO >> Click here to make a sample search. Select the 1^st result from the google query. You will land on an article from Touch|Your|Sound. The page will greet you by calling you a googler.

Now, how to greet blog visitors based on the site they come from.

In Wordpress:

As I have said always one of the advantages of Wordpress over Blogger are its use of plugins. It makes work all the more easy for us. Isn’t it? Like the Apple’s saying, ‘For everything even Wordpress has a plugin’. GreetBox and Referrer Detector are two excellent plugins for this purpose.

Download the plugins from the given links and then install it in your blog and finally activate it. In my personal opinion I prefer the GreetBox plugin because it has more advanced features to switch on and off the javascript and so on.

In Blogger

The same can be added in a blogger blog as well. DEMO >> Techbhroom.blogspot.com is an example for that. Select the 1^st result from the query and you’ll find that you are addressed a Googler. Classic tutorial has developed a code for this. Copy the code and paste it an HTML/JavaScript gadget in your Blogger blog.

Now you can start greeting your visitors by their referrer and show that you care for them. Always show that if you want to widen your visitor network. Happy blogging!

How to greet blog visitors based on time

2011-03-02T05:35:00-08:00

Did you notice on the top of the posts? I welcomed you and greeted you as per the time of the day. Have you ever wondered how to greet your visitor according the time of the day? Like, Good morning when he turns up in the morning and Good afternoon if it is at noon.

Codefuture has created a form as shown below in which you need to fill and generates the code for you.

Steps on how to greet blog visitors based on time of the day

1. Specify how you are going to greet your visitors at the specified times.

2. After writing all the greeting notes, Click on ‘Make code’ to generate the code.

3. Copy the generated code

4. Blogger users have to add a Html/Javascript widget and the paste the code.

Wordpress users likewise, add a text widget and paste the code

You would want to greet your visitors as soon as they reach your blog. So I would advise you to paste the code on the top of your blog. Show that you care for your visitors and make them happy.

10 Featured Post Sliders for Blogger Blogs

2011-02-27T07:14:00-08:00

This is another post amongst the set of posts about featured posts. I hope you have already read the earlier posts about the effects of a featured posts widget and the list of wordpress plugins for featured posts. This is a list of 10 featured posts sliders that can be used in your Blogger blogs. A demo and the code and instruction for the creating the widget are provided with each option.

Nivo Slider

GREAT LOOK
RANDOM ANIMATION
TEXT OVERLY
AUTO/MANUAL NAVIGATION

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Mootools Slider

GREAT LLOK
TEXT OVERLY
SMOOTH ANIMATION
AUTOMATIC NAVIGATION

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Stylish Jquery Featured Post widget

FEATURED POSTS LIST
TEXT OVERLY
COMPACT WIDGET

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Easy Slider 1.7

BASIC SLIDER
TWO TYPES OF NAVIGATION
SMOOTH ANIMATION

DEMO NUMERIC | DEMO CONTINOUS |

CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS:

DreamCSS Jquery Slider

GREAT LOOK
NUMBERED NAVIGATION
TEXT OVERLY ANIMATES

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Smooth Jquery Featured

SMOOTH ANIMATION
NEAT LOOK
HEADING OVERLY

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Awesome featured Post slider

GREAT ANIMATION
TEXT OVERLY
GOOD LOOKS

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Easiest Jquery

GREAT NAVIGATION
GOOD LOOKS
TEXT EXCERPT

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Simple Jquery Content Slider

BASIC SLIDER
NEAT LOOKS
NUMBERED NAVIGATION

DEMO | CODE AND INSTRUCTIONS

Do add in your suggestions as well.

Benefits of an 'Upcoming posts' widget in blogs

2011-02-22T07:24:00-08:00

Before I start to write anything, I would like you to close your eyes and hear the audio track below.

This is usually the way how an episode of a television serial ends. They would raise the suspense level to the maximum and then stop it there. A marketing technique used to maintain the level of viewership. If the serial is broadcasted on the weekdays it is natural that there would be a good amount of viewers on Monday carried forward from the previous week. The episodes on Monday and Tuesdays would have normal endings, whereas, the Wednesday’s episode would end with a slight note of suspense. Thursdays, again it would end on a normal note but finally on Fridays, the suspense level of serial climbs to the peak. This is a trick used all over the globe to maintain the viewership levels across the weekend.

The same trick can be used while blogging as well. Whenever you seem to feel that you are not able to maintain the level of visitors, an ‘upcoming posts’ widget would really help you. John and Fernandez in the audio track are just fictional characters that I created to convey the theme.

Benefits

1. Returning Visitors: An Upcoming posts widget enables you to inform the visitors that you are prepared for those posts mentioned in there. It is recommended that you use an ‘Upcoming posts’ widget while you have a dip in the amount of returning visitors.

2. Increased subscription: Mentioning your upcoming posts will help you increase the number of your feed subscription. The curiosity reflected in the minds of the readers is reflected in the form of numbers; feed subscriptions.

3. Google: The heading of your upcoming posts would be in the Google’s list way before you publish it. This increases the chance of exposure as well. I usually keep a featured upcoming post in queue at least until three other posts are published and are indexed by the Google. So that the heading of the upcoming post will be cached each time those three posts are crawled.

Upcoming Post Widgets for Blogger Blogs

I use a very simple and a basic widget and I add the upcoming posts manually. The code that I use is.

< ul style= " text-align: left; margin-left:10px; " >

< li > < img src=" IMAGE SOURCE " height= " 40px " style= " float:left; border: 1px solid #cccccc; padding:1px; margin-right: 3px;text-size: 17px; " / > HEADING < /li >

< hr/ >

< /ul >

I would replace the IMAGE SOURCE and the HEADING each time, that’s it.

Upcoming Post Widgets for Wordpress blogs

For Wordpress users, there is a plugin developed by MrLive. This plugin displays that post headers along with an excerpt for the post which you have scheduled to publish and which are in the drafts folder. Download the plugin here

I am extremely happy with the results that an ‘Upcoming posts’ widget has given me. It will definitely show results if the suspense factor is used in right fashion at the right time.

10 Wordpress 'Featured Posts' Plugins- (List 1)

2011-02-20T05:46:00-08:00

Portraying your featured blog posts becomes an easy process when you use a plugin for that. Here I have mentioned a list of Wordpress plugins which can be used to show the featured post in your self-hosted Wordpress blog.

To use these plugins, firstly download the 'featured posts' which you prefer. Then go to your Wordpress dashboard > Plugin > Add new > Upload the downloaded plugin.

1. Featured Content Gallery

TEXT OVERLAY
GOOD ANIMATION
MANUAL NAVIGATION &
AUTOMATIC NAVIGATION

Demo | Download

2. Smooth Slider

ICON INDICATING FEATURED
NUMBERED NAVIGATION &
MANUAL NAVIGATION

Demo | Download

3. Featured Content Slider

NEAT ARRANGEMENT
EASY INSTALLATION
AUTOMATIC NAVIGATION
FAST ANIMATION

Demo | Download

4. Nivo Slider

GREAT LOOK
RANDOM ANIMATION
TEXT OVERLAY
AUTO & MANUAL NAVIGATION

Demo | Download | Installation Video

5. WP Slide Show Gallery

LARGE IMAGE
THUMBNAILS BELOW
TEXT OVERLAY
FAST ANIMATION
AUTO & MAUAL NAVIGATION

Demo | Download | Installation

6. Nextgen Slideshow

GREAT LOOK
GOOD FOR MAGAZINE STYLE THEMES
TEXT OVERLAY
CAN INCLUDE HEADER
INSTALLATION IS DIFFICULT

Demo | Download and Installation

7. Impnerd Featured Post

NEAT ARRANGEMENT
STATIC

Installation | Download

8. Simpleviewer

GALLERY VIEW
GOOD FOR PHOTO BLOGS
DESCRIPTION ON LEFT

Demo | Download | Installation

9. Featurific

TEXT OVERLAY FROM TOP
GOOD ANIMATION
NUMBERED NAVIGATION

Demo | Download | Installation

10. Featured article plugin

GOOD DESIGN
NICE NAVIGATION & ANIMATION

Demo | Download

Do add in your suggestions as well.

How to make Featured Posts widget in Wordpress Blog

2011-02-20T03:20:00-08:00

Blackberry

I had written in an earlier post about the effects of having a 'featured posts' widget, where I had mentioned that it would be an iPhone or a Blackberry which you would be able to find in the front plinth when you get into a phone store. This is a marketing technique that is followed in all markets where a product is marketed.

Likewise you would want to display your featured posts in the most attractive manner. Rite? Today I would discuss how such beautiful featured post widgets can be installed in your WordPress blog.

Featured Posts in Wordpress.com

Hosted Wordpress blogs (Wordpress.com) do not allow you to add java script into your page. The easiest way to display your featured posts is by using the sticky posts feature. A sticky post always stays at the top in the list of posts in your homepage. You might be now thinking on how to make a sticky post in Wordpress? It is very simple to make a post sticky. Heather has explained this in the official Wordpress blog.

But there is a problem, not all wordpress.com themes support sticky posts. Now how do you make it sticky? Simple, kiddy! yet tricky. I'll tell you. Publish your post once and republish it with a date that is way ahead in future like 23 February 2050 or so.

Featured posts in Wordpress. Org

In your self-hosted blog run on the Wordpress platform, a jquery or a simply a plugin can be used to display your featured posts. Plugins- the most advantages feature which makes blogging easy. One of the main reasons why I love Wordpress is that. Check out: Wordpress 'Featured posts' Plugins- List 1.

London Blog Club - Meetup

2011-02-19T08:26:00-08:00

It was a very splendid evening, the day before yesterday for us the members of the London Blog Club. London Blog Club is a club for the bloggers in London led by Murray Newlands. Various bloggers blogging about various topics from all around London meet up to share ideas and blog to the next level. (Are you in London? Join us?)

It was James G. Evans, from the Advanced SEO Training who had talked day before. It was about various on-page and off-page SEO techniques. This is a video of James' talk.

Visit Advanced SEO training to view the 15 SEO blogging tips by James.

I believe that being a member of such a club would enable you to meet up with many bloggers and share many ideas and thoughts. An offline social network might not bring you a lot of clicks but it can really help you to increase the quality in which you are blogging.

How to select fonts and its attributes

2011-02-14T16:14:00-08:00

As I explained in the previous post, I think that font selection is important for a blog for two reasons; communication and bounce rate. According to study done by the Princeton University and many web analysts there are some fonts that they have suggested which are suitable for a web article. My University had given me certain guidelines on how to format a paper for submission. Taking points from both, I would like to cast my opinion on how to select fonts and its attributes for a blog.

Font selection:
though it mainly depends on the type of content you have, I prefer to use fonts that easily readable. I love the font Garamond. But I had my own reasons why not to use that as I climbed my steps in blogging. My lecturers in the college had advised me to use Helvetica neue or Arial while preparing an assignment draft. Those fonts were easily readable. Verdana and Georgia, which were created mainly for web-use, can as well be given a try.

Capitalisation:
The right kind of capitalisation is very important while writing your content and mainly while writing the heading for it. It is very basic that you need to start a sentence or a proper noun with a capital letter; many people do look into it as well. But what many try to do is capitalise the whole heading. Do you have the habit of doing so? I don’t think it is worth. A fully capitalised word might stand out in a sentence but definitely not a fully capitalised heading. It is mainly because headings are higher in size and an extra capitalisation of words makes it more difficult to read. Just like

How to select fonts and its attributes

HOW TO SELECT FONTS AND ITS ATTRIBUTES

Text Size:
Selecting the font size correctly is equally important setting your blog page. Size of the font plays a major role in portraying the importance of each and every text. You would definitely not want to have the size of the font to be bigger for a sidebar text, rite? It not only takes away the importance of the main content, it breaks the balance of the page.

Letter spacing and Line Height:
While optimising our blog pages we tend to increase the gap between the letters and lines to make it easier for the reader to read. Though it is on depended on the font which you are using, most of the times it is preferred to have the letters closer with a line height of 115%-130%.

These are some of the main points that I consider to be checked setting your page or hitting the publish button. I would love to hear your opinions as comments.

Importance of Font selection

2011-02-10T17:18:00-08:00

I had said that readers love blogs like how girls love gentlemen. They love you for the content (personality), but it is the appearance that calls them to have a try. (The good girls might disagree) In that sense, onto the second step, like how your body language enables the girl to read you well, a good font would help the readers read your blog post well. Why is font selection so important for a blog?

Communication

This is the main headline on all News syndications right now. How would it be if it’s written like this?

It does not seem like a serious headline, right? The selection of font while designing your blog is a very important factor. It is the primary communication on what the content is like. Princeton University had done a study on font selection.

click on image to enlarge

As seen above, an excerpt was written in two fonts and many people were made to read. Participants who read the italicised non- fluent one rated the author less intelligent than those who read the normal one. So, why give a chance by setting fonts that look really odd.

Bounce Rate

This is another important aspect which is affect by the selection of font for blogs. According the above said research, the participant also took more time to read the non-fluent excerpt. We bloggers are very much aware that no reader would stay back in here for more than 20 seconds if the content is difficult to read. This makes the visitor leave and naturally increases the bounce rate. I know you don’t want. So how do you avoid that?

Next post: How to select fonts and its attributes for your blog

5 main SEO tips for 'Blogger' blogs

2011-02-08T05:58:00-08:00

‘Blogger’ the blogging service hosted by Google as we all know is a wonderful platform for blogging. One of the main advantages of Blogger is that it is a free service but it has some disadvantages as well. You might already know that, optimising your blogger blog for the search is quite a difficult process when compared to a Wordpress blog. Here are 5 main SEO tips that are to be remembered while optimising your Blogger Blog. I have also given the solutions for them as well.

Avoid Duplicate Meta Tag Description

Meta tag description is what tells the search engine what your blog is all about. You might have written one when you started the blog or changed a template. In most cases, most of the bloggers, as I did would forget to write this description for each and every post. So what happens is that the same Meta tag description is used for each and every post. Google considers this as duplicated content. This is a factor which could take you down in your rankings.

How to avoid this? Blogger Stop has explained the solution to this. Check out.

Title Tags

Search engine optimisation experts suggest that, having the blog title along with the post title can help to improve rankings of the page in search directories. The default Blogger title tag is

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

Find that in your template and replace it with

< b:if cond= ' data:blog.pageType == & quot;index" ' >

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

< b:else/ >

< title > < data:blog.title/ > | < data:blog.pageName/ > < /title >

< /b:if >

This means that each time a search engine crawls your blog posts, it fetches the page title and blog title together. This does well in page ranking.

Robots browse all contents

Robots at times disallow the search engines to crawl certain pages in your blogger blog. This can happen due to several reasons. A small code into meta section will direct the robots to crawl all the content. That is:

< meta content= ' ALL ' name= ' ROBOTS ' / >

Permalink

Permalink is a big factor in search engine optimisation. ‘Blogger’ permits only up to 40 characters in the permalink of a Blogger post. If your title is more than that then permalink gets truncated from the word when it reached 40 characters.

For Example:

“The story behind why there are 50 stars in the American flag” But after you publish the post using Blogger the permalink would be shortened to “the-story-behind-why-there-are-50-stars“. That looks meaning less to the search engines.

The solution to this is to publish it with a meaningful title once and re-publish with the title you actually want. Publish something like “The story of 50 stars in American flag” first and then republish it.

Sitemap

The default sitemap that blogger uses in its atom feed. But there is a small problem with such a submission. It indexes only a maximum of 26 posts at a time. An average blogger will definitely go past that stage in a matter of 2 months’ time. So, how do you submit all your post? Use the small code in here:

/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=50000

This feed is able to submit up to 50000 posts. It is very rare that you get to cross such a limit.

These are some of the main points to remember while optimising your Blogger blog for the search. What do you think?

Feel the Difference | February 2011

2011-02-07T08:56:00-08:00

These are the four 'Feel the Difference' elements of February.

1. Quick read

I had started to follow the Huffington Post feed from the last year. It was recently that I visited the site on web. I just loved a feature I found in there. The ‘Quick Read’ function. It is a big relief to see the sidebar full of pictures in such a website full News in text. As you hover the mouse over a picture it shows the quick read option on it; click on it to read the summary of the News. It saves space.

2. Content Thieves

As I said earlier there are a lot of people who copy content from other blogs/websites. Blogger Stop has a segment which shows a list of blogs that have stolen content. He requests not to visit those blogs. I appreciate the idea of the author because bloggers who have stolen content once who have seen such a segment would hesitate to do so the next time.

3. Randomise button

This is an interesting feature that I found in ‘Buzzfeed’. Press the Red button on the top right it selects a random post for you to read.

4. Turn off advertise

Most readers get irritated when they see advertisements amidst the content in a blog or feed. The ‘DailyKos’ takes off the advertisements for you if you subscribe to them paying $4 a month.

So which is the feature that you loved the most this month?

Feel The Difference

2011-02-06T13:55:00-08:00

Feel the freshness and difference

A fresh segment is being introduced. This segment would contain Elements or Features that I found while reading other blogs and that are not seen widely in the blogosphere. There are a lot of interesting things on the web; especially there would be a lot in your niche. It is not good for a Gentleman to just flick it from there and paste in here. Anyone can do it. Instead appreciate the creativity.

This segment presents before you each month four Elements or features that have a difference. Those elements would have been introduced long back in that blog. But I happened to find them the month before. Readers who follow my feed, please note the archive of 'Feel the difference' will be available on

Feel the Difference | February 2011

Feel the Difference | March 2011

‘Blog Talk Radio’ as a blogging tool

2011-02-05T08:35:00-08:00

As I mentioned in the first article ‘Blog Talk Radio and Blogging’, ‘Blog Talk Radio’ can be used to share your passion, expertise, cause or even publicise your business brand. The point that should interest the bloggers is that the site allows you to share these podcasts across various social networks and blogs and websites.

As a Blogging Tool

Yesterday you might have created a pie chart in your economics blog to show the difference in the number of investment bankers in U.S.A. Today you’d have used a map overlay report to demonstrate the usage of oil across the world in your political blog. Tomorrow you create a radio show in BlogTalkRadio as a reference tool.

The site has a wide variety of podcasts in various topics like Politics, Spiritual, Technology, Sports, Film, etc. A blogger may use a third party podcast which interests him on a gentleman’s deal and that too for personal use alone. Most of the bloggers who commercialise their blogs these days are advised not to do so. It is extremely easy to create a show in Blog Talk Radio own your own. This podcast can be used in website as well.

Advantages

1. A radio show brings more authority into your written content.

2. The podcast can be used as referencing element like graph or chart.

3. Blog talk radio can be used for marketing your written blog. Some of the methods in which it can be done are:

Hosting a radio show and inviting guests to participate in the discussion. You would get to say your blog’s name at least 4 times. This can be used as a brand building tool.
Volunteer to become guests in other blogger shows.
Create a featured show by creating it 48 hours in advance and increase the chance to hit the front page of the site. If your show is on the front page the chances are naturally more that more people listen to it.

So start to use this and get the benefits for that. Check out and get back with your opinions.

Zoom images using Fancy Zoom in Blogger

2011-02-01T04:17:00-08:00

The easiest method is by using installing a javascript by ‘fancy zoom’ in your head tags. The steps to create a feature that allows your visitors to zoom images using fancy zoom are:

1) Firstly download the ‘Fancy Zoom’ Script. (click on the link to download)

2) Upload both the javascripts to any script hosting service. Refer: where to upload the javascript?

3) Call the javascripts from your blog. I’ll explain. Go to > Design > Edit HTML.

4) For safety reasons download the full template on to your local drive.

5) Now find < /head > from the editor.

6) Now select copy and paste the code given below just above the < /head > tag.

< script src='FANCYZOOM HTML URL' type='text/javascript' > </script >

< script src='FANCYZOOM URL' type='text/javascript' > < /script >

7) Replace the FANCYZOOM HTML URL with the url where you have uploaded the FancyZoomHtml.js file and the FANCYZOOM URL with FancyZoom.js File.

8) Now add this to your < body > tag.

onload='setupZoom();'

9) As far as you have no other attributes in your body tag your body tag will look like:

< body onload='setupZoom();' >

10) Now save your template.

Now check whether the images in your blog are being zoomed on a single mouse click. If it is working perfectly then it means that we have completed the process successfully. Enhance the appearance of your blog and enjoy blogging.

'Blog Talk Radio ' and blogging

2011-01-31T13:37:00-08:00

With my 2 years of experience in Radio Production, I can tell you that there is a big similarity in the likes of both Radio and Blog audiences. Both of them prefer news in an opinionated form as content. The blog author and the radio jockey establish the same vibe with their audiences in the niche. Blog Talk Radio is a combination of both.

Blog Talk Radio is a platform where any person/blogger can host their individual shows which will be aired live on the radio, where the listeners can call in and even text-comment to the host. As ‘Blog Talk Radio’ states, it allows you share your passion, expertise, cause or even publicise your business brand. This was actually an idea which I had in mind a few years back, but it was then when I saw this site one day in 2006. I know that happens to most of, we think of an idea and we later get to know that it was already implemented. J.

You just require a phone to make your own broadcast. The user calls in a particular number and is given the control to select callers using their software. And the audience select their shows and hear them live on air. If you were not able to hear the show live on air, you can here its podcast later. It has a vast collection of podcasts across various subjects like business, technology, politics, film, sports, etc.

Blog Talk Radio can be used by the main stream blogger in many ways. It works as another blogging tool. Check out the next article:

‘BLOG TALK RADIO’ AS A BLOGGING TOOL(with video)

Royalty free photographs useful for bloggers

2011-01-30T09:37:00-08:00

Images are the windows to your blog posts. It is an image that attracts a visitor to the snippet of an article. Having good looking images in your blog posts will definitely enhance the appearance of your blog as well. Where do you get such usable images from?

A general search would fetch you a lot of images but all of them need not be usable. Here, I have a listed a few sources that offer usable photos. These are just royalty free sources. This just means that you need not pay the artist or the website, but some of them demand you to give due credit to the artists individually when and where you use an image.

15 sources that offer usable images are:

1. Free Digital Photos

‘Free digital photos’ is a nice place select and use images for personal, educational and even commercial purposes free of cost. Unless you purchase the image, the website demands you to credit the artist and the website. Crediting the artist includes adding a text link to the artist’s profile as well.

2. Free Pixels

Photos from ‘Free pixels’ can be used for any purpose. Bloggers who use these images can crop off the ‘freepixels.com’ from the image but a instead the website should be credited in text near the image.

3. Public Domain Pictures

All photos can be used for any purpose. All they ask you is to give a link back to the website. Do get permission from the copyright holder when you use photos of products or brands or models.

4. Stock Vault

Stock Vault has a wonderful collection of images, but they cannot be used for commercial purposes. Can be used for personal, educational or any sort of non-commercial purposes.

5. SXC

Not all SXC images can be used for all purposes. Check out the restriction level. If the image has standard restrictions then you can use the image by crediting the artist the artist alone.

6. Free Range Stock

These images can be used for any purposes. All they ask you is not to redistribute them.

Credit: Robert Nilson (Free digital Photos)

Rest of the Sources are:

7. A digital dreamer

8. All our Stock

9. Photovaco

10. 123RF

11. Getty Images

12. Jupiter Images

13. Dreams Time

14. PhotoGen

15. Free Photos Bank

The reason why I did not mention Flickr is that, it might serve you with photos according to needs, but all the rights most of the photos hosted there are reserved.

Hope that this list would help you. Has it? So enjoy using the wonderful photos from all these sites.
Photo Credit 1: Louisa Stokes (Free Digital Photos)

How typing speed increases productivity

2011-01-27T13:03:00-08:00

As I had told before, my dad was a full time sports-journalist and he was one amongst the early bloggers. The generation in which he started his career, as we all know never used computers to write articles. So he found it extremely frustrated when he was not able to publish his ideas online as they came. Most of you would have gone through this situation at some point of time. The flow of letters from the keyboard leads way to the flow of ideas from your mind.

What is touch typing?

A thorough practice of touch typing enables you to type without looking onto the keys. This method, which was invented by a court stenographer named Mcgurrin is the most famous method and really helps to increase the speed and accuracy of typing. Typing speed will definitely increase the productivity of a blogger. So start your lessons today.

How to start?

1. The first lesson for touch typing is to understand your keyboard.

2. A, S, D, F and J, K, L, ; are the base keys. Keep your fingers on the base keys and checkout which fingers are used for each key from the picture above. The bumps on the letters ‘F’ and ‘J’ makes it easier to place your fingers without looking onto the keyboard.

3. After you have understood the keyboard layout and the fingering for it, now it is time for some practice. Sense-Lang offers 17 lessons for practicing the fingering (One of the best that I have found online).

4. Practice each lesson at least twice. Practice more as you go higher in the levels. Keep a watch on the speed in which you are typing shown in WPM, ie. The words per minutes.

5. When you reach around 35 WPM, you have reached the level to write constructed sentence. Now, start practicing with your own sentences.

6. You might get bored at some point of time, but never give up. There are interesting typing games available online. Check out some at Type-racer and Sense-lang itself.

At one stage you will definitely start to feel that, “hmm, am typing at a good pace.” I can tell you from my experience that you will be able to write one full page in 4 minutes time. So start blogging at a faster pace.

Photo credit 1:Brownstock Inc. / Alamy/Alamy

Blogging to the next level

2011-01-25T07:13:00-08:00

Darren Rowse the Problogger had written 3 years before that blogging about the blogging space has become extremely cluttered. As he mentioned, it is a fact most new bloggers blogging about blogging last only six months to year. Even understanding that history of those bloggers, why do new bloggers who want to make money online follow that same old path?

A few years back, one of my friends decided to start a Medical Store in his native place. A beautiful town that’s green foliage would really make you dazzled. When I asked him as to where he was planning to start the store he said that it was in a retail park in town centre. I was confused as to why he should start another one where there are already three medical stores. I asked him to clarify my doubt. His answer was that a consumer would definitely prefer a place where everything would be available at one stop. This expands the size of the pond from which the water is drawn. So having a store next to the competitors takes away their advantage of having a better location. Now he needs to care about only for the prices, products and strategies.

Same is what happens with new bloggers. They try to get into a market which has already drawn water and believe that it would fetch them as well. Some take their water some do not. But the amount of people who want water has decreased across a few years. The interest among the teens to read blogs has gone down on a good amount. Various things like social networks, advanced gamings, reality shows would have been factors for that. I know many people who sit in front of Facebook all throughout the day.

Blogging started to become popular from the late 1990’s. The main reason for its popularity is its participatory nature. People could shout their views and opinions loud. People could criticise their political setup, their favourite actor, their favourite football club and even their boss. There are no restrictions in the subjects in which you can make a blog post. (Although there was a blog taken out from the blogger which wrote about Obama) Basically the subjects that people write about in their personal blog are about their hometown, childhood memories, etc. People used start blogging with a passion for that. But now, blogging has to take off to the next level.

Most of the blogging tutorials, as do mine, would mention that the blogs should be easily scannable. Yes it should be and to get blogging to the next level there should be things in it that increases the reading happiness as well; things that reduce the load off the reader. Only such things will be able to increase readership from now on. I shall try to incorporate such elements in my blog as well.

6 tools to create graphs for your business blog

2011-01-24T04:37:00-08:00

Most of the business organisations now maintain a business blog for several reasons. First of all it has turned up to be a great tool to communicate with their customers and employees. Blackberry and Google update their stuff daily with their figures and graphs and videos. Such posts with graphs will explain things like the financial figures well and the reader will get to understand the gist of it better and quicker.

Given below is a collection of 6 tools to create graphs for your blog online. All of these tools are very simple that a downloadable image graph is prepared readymade when the required values are entered into it.

1) Chart go

Chartgo is a tool that creates various graphs like a bar chart, pie chart, line chart and an area chart. Enter the values required like the width, height, color, etc to create beautiful graphs. Requires no Registration.

2) Chart tool

Chart tools offersto create 10 variety of graphs which are Bar,line, area, pie, X-Y, Radar, Scatter, Bubble, Meter, Line+Bar. It has almost everything in it to make a science blogger happy. Requires Registration.

3) Gliffy

Gliffy is quite a different tool. It creates flow charts, venn diagrams, floor plans, etc. This is an advanced tool which would really enhance the representation of business figures. Requires Registration and not free, but has a 30 days trial.

4) Chart gizmo

This is another wonderful tool to create beautiful bar, line and pie charts. This would good for financial representations. Requires Registration

5) Piecolor

This tool creates wonderful pie charts both looking 2 and 3 dimensional. The image can either be downloaded or can be directly embedded on to your website. Requires no registration.

6) Chart Generator

This tool creates good Bar, line and pie charts. It can be saved as a png image. Requires no registration

4 useful CSS generators for bloggers

2011-01-23T13:58:00-08:00

Bloggers would generally at some point of time require some sort of a CSS or another to stylise their blog template. I definitely had big difficulty in the beginning when I landed on this CSS world. But later I understood that it is a brave new world.

Here is a list of the 4 main CSS generators that would be useful for bloggers.

CSS background gradient generators:

How to add gradient background which does not break after half of the page? This generator by gradient glrsad would be really useful for creating gradient background images. A detailed description is mentioned in Add a gradient background to your blog post.

Border Radius Generators

Have you ever thought how to curve the edges of borders of your images? This generator creates curved borders according to radius you wish. This generator creates a cross-browser compatible code.

CSS Menu Generator

This plugin is for those who have crappy menu in your wonderful template and for those who want to add a good looking extra menu. You have to write all the values and the names of the menus, it generates the CSS and HTML source code for that. The CSS source code is to be placed in the style sheet whereas the HTML inside the body.

CSS Table generator

There are many bloggers who find difficulty in creating tables. Just like all generators above, it creates the tables according to the values you give like the thickness of the border, its colour, Length, and on and on.

Google Adsense in a single blog post- Blogger

2011-01-21T08:20:00-08:00

While monetising your blog, all experts would recommend to get your ads close and resembling to your content. It is a proven fact that such a practice of bringing the ads closer to the content increases the click rate of your adsense.

Unfortunately Blogger does not have such a slot by default, close enough to the post content where ads can be placed in. Blogger has an option to between every post, but in that case as well, the ads are only shown after the comments

‘Tips for new Bloggers’ has explained how to add ads in a single blog post in a very detailed manner. Following all the instruction correctly will enable you to add ads inside your posts.

Avoid ads from Home page.

Your homepage will also look really shabby when you have a block of ads in it. There are two methods for that.

So, let look at how to avoid ads from homepage? You just need to add a small script.

I assume that you have added your parsed adsense code into template.

Method 1.

Before your parsed adsense code paste:

< b:if cond= ' data:blog.pageType == & quot;item" ' >

After your parsed adsense code paste:

< /b:if >

Your code will look like:

< b:if cond= ' data:blog.url != data:blog.homepageUrl ' >
<script type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>
< /b:if >

It is very simple logic. The code tells the compiler to display the ad when the url is not equal ( !=) to the home url of your blog.

This method is only useful only if you are display one google adsense block and want to avoid ads from the homepage alone. You would be having a small problem if you have ad columns in your sidebar. Google Adsense allows displaying only 3 ad blocks in your blog at a time. In that situation if your blog happens to display more than 3 posts at a time (which is normal in every blog) then the ad block placed in your sidebar would go vacant. This problem occurs mainly because most templates render (reads) the sidebar last. To avoid that follow the second method.

Method 2

Before your parsed adsense code paste

< b:if cond= ' data:blog.pageType == & quot;item" ' >

After your parsed adsense code paste

< /b:if >

Your code will look like:

< b:if cond= ' data:blog.url == & quot;item & quot;' >

google_ad_client = "pub-***************";

google_ad_host = "pub-****************";

/* 336x280, created 1/2/11 */

google_ad_slot = "**********";

google_ad_width = 336;

google_ad_height = 280;

//-->

</script>

src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&
quot;>

</script>

< /b:if >

It is just a small difference. If you want to avoid ads from homepage alone, then follow method 1. If you want ads to be shown only in post then go for method 2. So create an ad block in your blog post and increase the chance of getting more clicks. Happy blogging.

Blog Your Voice

Feel the difference: Recap

Poor man’s blog titles and SEO

How to make Search Engine friendly Blog titles

First step for SEO

Keyword in title

Ideal length of a title Meta tag

Feel the Difference | March 2011

Feel the Difference | February 2011

Greet your visitor based on the referrer site

How to greet blog visitors based on time

10 Featured Post Sliders for Blogger Blogs

Nivo Slider

Mootools Slider

Stylish Jquery Featured Post widget

Easy Slider 1.7

DreamCSS Jquery Slider

Featured Post Content slider

Smooth Jquery Featured

Awesome featured Post slider

Easiest Jquery

Simple Jquery Content Slider

Benefits of an 'Upcoming posts' widget in blogs

Benefits

Upcoming Post Widgets for Blogger Blogs

Upcoming Post Widgets for Wordpress blogs

10 Wordpress 'Featured Posts' Plugins- (List 1)

1. Featured Content Gallery

2. Smooth Slider

3. Featured Content Slider

4. Nivo Slider

5. WP Slide Show Gallery

6. Nextgen Slideshow

7. Impnerd Featured Post

8. Simpleviewer

9. Featurific

10. Featured article plugin

How to make Featured Posts widget in Wordpress Blog

Featured Posts in Wordpress.com

Featured posts in Wordpress. Org

London Blog Club - Meetup

How to select fonts and its attributes

How to select fonts and its attributes

HOW TO SELECT FONTS AND ITS ATTRIBUTES

Importance of Font selection

Communication

Bounce Rate

5 main SEO tips for 'Blogger' blogs

Avoid Duplicate Meta Tag Description

Title Tags

Robots browse all contents

Permalink

Sitemap

Feel the Difference | February 2011

Feel The Difference

Feel the Difference | February 2011

Feel the Difference | March 2011

‘Blog Talk Radio’ as a blogging tool

Zoom images using Fancy Zoom in Blogger

'Blog Talk Radio ' and blogging

Royalty free photographs useful for bloggers

How typing speed increases productivity

Blogging to the next level

6 tools to create graphs for your business blog

4 useful CSS generators for bloggers

CSS background gradient generators:

Border Radius Generators

CSS Menu Generator

CSS Table generator

Google Adsense in a single blog post- Blogger