Easy Blogger Stuff

How to improve creativity and Lateral thiinking - Infography

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 10:24:00 +0000

Let me state the definition of 'Creativity' in my own language.

"Creativity can be defined as an art of thinking/imagining/writing/acting/doing or even speaking something NEW - that differs from the rest and that is probably :

Unique
Astonishing
Appreciable
Acceptable
Adoptable and in fact
Practical"

Improving creativity is a time taking process and it definitely consumes time. One need to practice a lot to make him/her capable of thinking laterally. I grouped the practices under two separate categories and gave detailed explanations in my other blog (Stuff-You-Look). You may check the following links to go through them

Behavioral practices
Habitual practices

Please go through the below infograph which makes you aware of how to improve your creativity.

Hope you enjoyed reading this. Share your views or ideas on how to improve creativity by leaving comment below. Your views are mostly appreciated.

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Acknowledgement

Finally, I would like to thank a fellow blogger Ms. Shiwangi Shrivastava; writer and owner of Pensitdown blog - for initiating me in writing this article. She suggested me to concentrate on similar articles.

Big thanks to her !

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LinkedIn SMM - A complete guide for everyone

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Sat, 17 May 2014 16:02:00 +0000

The following are some important guide or best practices for getting more professional connection in LinkedIn as well as to develop a stronger network. These tips are helpful for individuals as well as for brands.

1. Complete profile

This is the foremost important part in LinkedIn marketing. A complete profile is like a boon to get more connections in LinkedIn. Remember social networking is mostly about linking connections. The more you connect, the more your business receive traffic - in other words you are marketing very well.

a. About me and skills (keywords)

Make it just like a detailed resume, ensure that you include all of your functional areas or any other services (that you offer) in brief. If you have any personal/official blog, then do include blog links in the about me section. Don't forget to include major keywords wherever necessary. For example; if you are an internet market, then do include some of the keywords like SMM, SEO, strategist, marketer, expert, adviser, consultant etc in between the sentences. That will attract the viewers and help them find your skills easily, thus enabling them to connect with you.

b. Showcase your skills by using Links and media in profile

LinkedIn allows one to add media (pictures, videos or links) in the profile page. Make use of this feature and include four to six screenshots of your professional works (that can be even some of your famous blog links with images) or any of your other works; most importantly relating to your area of expertise .

Below pictures shows - how I included some of the media as reference. As you can see, I have included some of the technical works (screenshot of software usage), my creative works and even image links of my blogs ! You might be knowing that an image is more powerful in communicating anything; at a faster rate than ordinary words. So, choose the most appropriate media to be included and club them in your profile page.

2. Key skills

Having a bunch of skill set in your profile page is equally important. Your professional skills would take you to greater heights. The more you include selected keywords in skill set and the more it gets endorsed by fellow users, the more will be your success in LinkedIn. People usually search for fellow minded professionals (having similar skill set and being active in a desired area) and if found, they try to view their 'about me' and most importantly 'skills list'. If they find some of your skills matching their own, then they will definitely connect with you.

a. Updated skills

One way of getting highlighted is to update your skills frequently. Update in the sense not adding skill tags; that you are not good at !. You really need to grow professionally in this digital world by upgrading your current skills - by catching up with the latest trends, in order to showcase the same to the people. Everyone should develop in one way or another. Seems like those - whom always stay in the same skill level doesn't succeed or get highlighted. If you are say an online marketer, then extend you capabilities to wider platforms like email marketing, mobile marketing etc. This is just an example, and this holds good in almost all scenario.

b. Endorse skills of others

One more important thing is to endorse others skills. Endorsing mean you are accepting the fact that the fellow professional had that skill and so you recommend to others. It's like 'sharing and get shared' funda of twitter or any other social media. But be truthful while endrosing others ! Endorse only when you are confident - that your fellow mate had that particular skill.

In this regard, your 'about me' page and the so called 'media links' (that we discussed above) will be helping others (to a greater extent) to identify your skills easily and so, they will endorse you for sure. Therefore, make use of the 'Media' links !

3. More connections

Connect with as many professionals as possible and importantly keep connecting with new people, regardless of whether you know them or not. Invite those professionals whom deliver more or less the same service like you do, I mean same functional area (niche). In fact you may connect with other niche groups also, only to expose your presence as well as to study/analyze how they are professionally behaving. Connecting with many holds many direct cum indirect advantageous.

VIEW as many profiles as possible - just viewing others profiles (without even inviting them to connect !) helps many to find you -

What you are
What you do
How much useful you are to them
Can you be an asset to their requirements or do you meet their demands etc.

Connect, connect and keep connecting. Always use search option to find as many people as you can.

4. Active in Groups/community

The most important feature of LinkedIn are Groups. Groups are the places where equal minded people gather together to share their knowledge or check others knowledge. It's the fastest approach to find people related to your niche. Make sure that you do the following while in groups -

Active member - Try to post self questions and polls. Raise questions or deliver some news/trends to your fellow mates
Respond to community members for their queries
Sometimes maintaining your own group have added advantage
Don't always post direct links every time. That will look like spam ! Include links only when it's absolutely needed by some fellow group mate.
Use your blog/business links in comments as a guide to their query).

5. Study others profiles

Going through others profiles and doing the following analysis will help you tune/mold your own profile

Keywords in skills
Structure of the profile - arrangement, sentence, wordings, specialties
Kind of media included

These things might help you frame your own profile. Remember; there is no need for us to create everything, all we need to do is to INVENT from the existing ! and in fact the existing things will teach us how to create . This applies well to even content marketing.

6. Allow others to recommend you

Recommendations works like a gem. If you had worked in a team or any projects or if you have some trusted colleagues, then ask them to recommend you. As a two way process, you too recommend your fellow mates.

7. Behave professionally

The most important requirement for a professional person to get success in a professional platform (like LinkedIn) is to behave 'Professionally'. This is not a place to share some funny pictures or something like content sensitive materials (adult or any related media) like most does in Facebook. Remember friends, same funda or attitude won't work in all social networks, we have to act differently in different social networks ! So, be wise/attentive while working in this platform.

Other than the above seven important strategies, the following tips might also do great for your LinkedIn success

Keep active in LinkedIn - Let people know that you appear frequently in LinkedIn. Else, if you appear after some months, then they might ask you - 'who are you ?' instead of 'how are you ?'
Post publicly - share content and suggestions publicly. Let others know your helping nature.
Link back to other profiles. Invite as many people as possible. Get your connections from gmail, outlook etc.
Drag twitter and FB users to LinkedIn - By sending welcome invite through direct messages or tweets !
Watch who is viewing your profile - what kind and area of their activities
LinkedIn social share buttons in your business blog - Including LinkedIn social share buttons will help the visitors easily find your LinkedIn profile and hence they might connect with you.
If possible, obtain membership from LinkedIn - use Analytics tools to monitor your LinkedIn profile behavior.
Use twitter and Facebook to promote your LinkedIn profile - At times post a tweet/update like 'Find us on LinkedIn' to help more followers connect with you.
Thank people if they invite you to connect through direct messages. Acknowledge those who connect with you.
Connect with previous company colleagues or someone like clients whom know more about you so as to allow them endorse you as well as recommend.
Post your companies career opportunities in groups as well as public for more exposure.
Creating customer page. Check who is viewing your customer's page
Update volunteer experience and causes to show your social responsibility

Finally, you may connect with my personal LinkedIn profile here !

Over to you

What do you feel is the best way of getting success in LinkedIn. Do you think that something other than the above mentioned points could be done. If so please share and let the world know about it.

Also see

Interview with Ashley Faulkes - Bloggers success story
SMM mistakes that must be avoided
Best ways of making money through blog

SMM mistakes that startup business must avoid

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 11:40:00 +0000

Before beginning the actual topic; let me discuss a small yet universal. You know that professors of almost all institute's have profound knowledge on a particular subject mostly because of their vast experience. But, in-spite of having experience as well as grip on certain subjects, they too do mistakes sometimes, right ? Same goes with any field, even some of the branded on line social marketing influencers or brands do small to big mistakes.

Think about the situation of a starter brand or business ! knowingly or knowingly they would be doing more. For this reason and in order to make you aware of some of the key areas, I have given some of my views on how to come across this; so as to avoid the so called 'Social media mistakes.

1. Over socializing

Well, socializing is very good but only to a limit. The reason is obvious, if you are totally concentrated on getting socialized then you will forget your main job; your business. You will find less time for your business and consequently your output would be less. If you are a content marketer or a blogger, then being over socialized means you will get less time for writing your own content and so the result would be more followers but with no use to your business !

So, as a starter, your focus should be more on making products or creating content instead of over socializing. Once you develop a good quantity of business products, then you may think of a way to popularize it using social networks.

2. Not socializing, not caring business hours

We now know the side effects of over socializing, the same principle applies to under socializing or not socializing. Once you develop handy number of business products, and if you are not distributing it (especially through social networks; as it is the main source of marketing in current world) then you will be in trouble. Nobody will be noticing your content as there are many competitors out there offering the same service, whom seems active in social networks.

Your work will not get noticed until you yourself spread it. So, you need to make a business plan or what is called a business strategy in order to distribute or popularize yours. The plan that is optimal, deliverable and in fact consistent. Make a schedule and maintain that time table, spare your time and see on which business hours your audience are active, (you may even experiment two or three days to identify the best business hours for posting).

3. Incomplete profile

Your social media profile is the front-line or face of your business. So, having a very good; and importantly complete profile is most important for business development especially for the start-up business owners. Make it attractive with optimum graphics. Maintaining the same profile all across the social networks is also a good practice.

Source : orderwise

4. Promoting self

Well, the theme of social network is to make relationship by

Sharing and letting others share yours
Helping and getting help from others

Social networking is a two way communication process and will be effective only when you are concerned about others too. I can say, boosting about self (all the times) is the worst social media practice. Be truthful and acknowledge others for their works. Appreciate them properly and you will see that they will too recognize you; and in fact support/help you in spreading your business. Even, great influencers and business magnets limits self promotion, because they know the fact. If you are always talking about yourself, then you will be the only person listening to you !

Source : recognize and realize

5. Inadequate content

Well, this point is more or less related to the first point 'Over socializing'. Before having sufficient content; getting socialized will only help you to get good number of connections, but will have less effect on productivity. So, you should exhibit consistency and as a starter focus more on content making rather than just socializing.

6. Not understanding/listening to audience

It's true; your audience are the best judges for your content. It is your audience whom guide you in shaping your content as well as help you in identifying the key areas of focus. So, as a beginner, try to interact with as many people as possible. Understand what they expect from you and get suggestions or comments from them. Most Importantly LISTEN to them, I mean listen to their comments or requirements. Never ignore your audience.

Source : Preschoolar

7. One man army !

If you are representing a business, then taking in hand everything right from the content making to distribution in social media would be a big burden. You may not handle everything, and if your business grows, then you will face the real pressure. So, avoid being an one man army, involve people to work for you and build a team.

Source : latest new pics

8. Patience/consistency

Success in social media marketing is a long process, and you need to be really patient. Social media results are long term and we cannot expect immediate benefits from them. So, be consistent and keep active in social networks.

Source : Santoshrahul

9. Not analysing the competitors

Being un-keen to market is a big mistake. Analyse your competitors by knowing the following details

What are they posting ?
What is their success level ?
How often they share content ?
Are they sharing their own content or others too ?
How are they representing - single or brand ?
Whom they target ?

Analyzing answers for the above questions will help you effectively drive your business growth.

10. Targeting profits right from the start

This is of course one of the biggest mistake that most of the start-up business do, i.e targeting sales/profits right from the beginning of online business process. This supports the point 8 of this post i.e being impatient/inconsistent. I will clear this with an example, it takes at least one month to construct a home right, and even if you spend some extra money, then also you can't build a home within 2 days or so.

Same applies with the success/profits from your online business. So, it's not at all an intelligent act if you focus totally on profits right from the start. It's advisable to concentrate on developing brand awareness among audience, as well as get more visitors or audience initially, your profits shall follow automatically !

11. Being human and social

Being brand mean being robotic, sorry to say this ! While involving in SMM, most of us forget the fact that we are here to socialize and not solely to popularize. Being human in the sense being casual/social, attending some of the problems of others as well as giving your suggestions (that may vary from ordinary to valuable). This will help you to develop long term relationship with many. Also many would be trusting you because of your support.

ALSO SEE :

SMM strategies to build traffic to your business

Social media mistakes that you must avoid

Content making | facts and best practices

SEO | Tools and tutorial for beginners

Bloggers success story | Interview with Ashley Faulkes

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:00:00 +0000

Welcome back friends, today we will be going through the success story of a blogger cum wordpress web designer - 'Ashley Faulkes'. Before looking further, let me ask you a question : "Who doesn't know Ashley ?"; well certainly the answer would be 'No one' ! Yes Ashley is well known social networker and is well connected, not only with top influencers but also with many beginners. I am not much surprised to see his comments as well as truthful conversations in almost all blogs, web pages, social media like LinkedIn, twitter etc. Such is the connectivity of Ashley, and of course everybody knows the same.

Ashley is basically a blogger who blogs about topics ranging from social media to SEO, wordpress etc. He is the owner of the famous wordpress web developing site 'Madlemmings'. In spite of being a developer, he is also a good supporter as well as motivator to many bloggers. His friendly and encouraging nature helped many people achieve success in their blogging career - one among them being 'Lorraine Reguly'. She gave credits to him by awarding 'One Lovely Blog" award.

Ashley believes that making strong and friendly online relations is more important than making money itself. With this motto, he has been working till now and I hope he will be continuing his attitude throughout his blogging career. Within a year he achieved greater heights that any ordinary blogger couldn't achieve !

Below is the status of Ashley Faulkes social media presence

Website - Mad-Lemmings
Twitter followers - 6984
Google+ - 1325
Pinterest - 861
Linkedin - 400

OK, here are my questions and Ashley's response

1. What did you do before your presence in social media (blogging) ?

Ashley's reply :

For the last 13 years I have been working in Web Development, designing and programming web applications for large companies in Switzerland. This is actually not something I studied (I studied Mechanical Engineering in Australia some years ago) but I learnt this on the job here in Switzerland and have since moved into Web Design, Wordpress, Blogging and Social Media.

2. Why did you choose blogging ? Is there any strong reason ? Please state any three reasons.

Ashley's reply :

That is an interesting question with a fun answer. I do a lot of sport here in Switzerland. It is a country where everyone spends a lot of time outdoors. I love to hike, mountain bike and ski. Last year I broke my lower leg into 37 pieces while skiing, and was at home for quite a while recovering. During this time I decided to start a blog.

I had been looking into this for quite a while as a way to move into marketing, mainly because I had developed an online tool for making bookings that I wanted to sell online. So I used this time off work wisely. I started blogging and developed an online presence. Here is my post on why I started blogging.

3. For how long have you been in this field and what is your followers' status after one year of start ?

Ashley's reply :

I have been into blogging for almost one year. My main following is on Twitter, where I have over 6000 followers, Pinterest with nearly 800 and Google+ with 1300. But these numbers do not mean that much. It is really the relationships that you develop while blogging and on social media that are the most important.

4. We know that you are good at mentoring, How did you get the thought of guiding people ?

Ashley's reply :

Thanks for the compliment! I hope I am a good mentor.

I have actually done a lot of teaching and training throughout my career and I find it one of the most fun things that I have done. I love interacting with people, teaching them what I know and watching them grow. It is what drives me to keep working online.

5. What are the products offered through your blog ? What other products you offer offline ?

Ashley's reply :

I started to build some online courses last year, and in January launched two Twitter courses.

Twitter for Beginners - which teaches the basics of Twitter and how it works.
Twitter for Small Business - which teaches the next level of Twitter (optimal tweets, pro tools, improve your profile, find followers in your niche etc)

Recently I also started to offer services on my blog to help keep me going. I now offer the following:

Web Design with Wordpress (from zero, or fixing a site or problems)
Web Site Reviews (helping people understand what to fix on their site)
Blog Coaching (helping people know what to do with their blog to get going faster)
Social Media Coaching (helping people build a strategy with social media)

So if you need any help, feel free to get in touch!

6. How did you manage to drive traffic to your blog in the beginning ?

Ashley's reply :

Starting a blog from zero is tough. If you do not have a social media following or presence online it takes a long time. The best advice I can give anyone is to develop connections and relationships through whatever channels you can. And also, join blogging communities like Triberr and Kingged to help find like-minded people and get your content shared. Building your social media following is also important, but will not have as large an impact as the above, in my opinion.

7. Did you at anytime feel like "Am I doing right ? Is this useful ?" during your blogging career ?

Ashley's reply :

Of course, we all have down moments and times when we feel we are not getting anywhere with blogging. We usually do it alone at home or after work, and do not have any direct help or support. So of course it is tough. But if you have a long-term goal in mind I find that it helps to keep you motivated.

Also, you have to constantly try new things - each month I try something new. New ways to drive traffic, meet new people, new types of posts etc. If you always do the same, both you and your readers will get bored and you will lose motivation.

8. Which blogs inspired you to start your own ?

Ashley's reply :

When I started out I remember blogs like Quick Sprout, Social Mouths, Traffic Generation Cafe and a few other big ones were the ones that I really looked up to. But lately I have moved more towards podcasts, where I find even more useful information that I can listen to while working out or walking. So I use my time more wisely and get great ideas at the same time! I recommend it.

9. Could you list some of your favorite influencers and co-bloggers ?

Ashley's reply :

As I mentioned earlier, Neil Patel is a big influence for me, as he is so creative and brings only great value to his audience. I also admire Pat Flynn for what he has achieved with his blog and podcast and the way that he gives so much to his audience. More recently I have started following James Schramko (a fellow Aussie) from Super Fast Business. He gives away so much business information it is crazy!

10. Whom are your family supporters ?

Ashley's reply :

My biggest support is my partner Ann. She and I both live away from our families in Switzerland so we always need to support each other in what we do.

11. Can you briefly explain some of your achievements as a blogger ? Something that you can't forget !

Ashley's reply :

There are probably a few things that have really amazed me while blogging. One is the ability to get close to influential people online and the other is to help people all around the world.

I have been lucky to have met the owner's of, and been allowed to guest post on high ranking blogs such as

But on the other side I have been able to help some new bloggers get started and solve problems they were having. These people I now consider as close friends. To me these are the kind of achievements that make blogging worthwhile.

12. What tools do you use to manage your social media presence ?

Ashley's reply :

I do not use too many tools online, but the main things I use are Twitter related.
I use:

Buffer to automate my tweets
TweetAdder to increase my Twitter following with targeted people and automate some tweets from RSS
TweetDeck to manage my Twitter account
For the rest I do it manually on Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Facebook.

13. Could you state your major source of income (if any) from your blog ?

Ashley's reply :

Income on a blog is really a lot less than people think. So that is why I started my services. Currently this is still growing, but my Web Design services are my biggest source of income at the moment.

14. Blogging with a social media presence is really a tough job and requires a lot of our time. What else do you do aside from blogging ? How do you keep yourself positive and active ?

Ashley's reply :

As I mentioned in the beginning I do a lot of sport. Especially to help get my leg back to normal. This takes a long time. I also do a little bit of street magic on the side, mostly with friends and family. This is my main hobby outside sport. You can check out my niche blog on magic if you like. I have not posted there for a while, but I do when I get a chance. I have also met some "influencers" in magic. But that is another story!

15. As a blogger, where do you see yourself 5 years from now ? What are your next targets ? Is there any upcoming product that you are working on ?

Ashley's reply :

My current long term goals are to create a business around what I do. This is why I do everything I do at the moment. I love online marketing and want to make a living from it. Ideally I would be helping people develop their online presence every day!

16. What suggestions would you give beginners for their success ? How do you want them to start ?

Ashley's reply :

There is a lot of advice out there on how to start a blog so I won't spend too much time on this question. I will say however, that I believe that you must do the following:

Blog in niche that you really love and try to find a unique way of presenting it or unique area within that niche
Develop relationships with people in your niche before you focus on anything else (write posts of course, but don't waste time on other things)

These two things are the key to starting and growing a great blog.

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That's how our conversation ended. Hope you enjoyed reading this. As you can see from his responses, how many times he mentioned the importance of the keyword 'Relationship'. This is what he strongly recommends and I too believe in that. So, do try to be develop as many online friends as possible firstly, marketing and money making should come after this only. That's why top influencers call him 'The boy'; even though his blog is still younger (just a year old). I thank him for sparing his time to share his feelings with us.

Good luck and thank you Ashley !

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Also SEE

Success story | Interview with 'Ivan Ho' of Blogging business

Success story | Interview with 'Reginald Chan'

Success story | Interview with 'Shiwangi srivastava' of Pensitdown

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Bloggers success story | Interview with Ivan Ho

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 07:13:00 +0000

Welcome back friends, yesterday we had seen 'Reginald Chan success story' and today we will be going through the success story of Ivan Ho, who is the founder of Blogging business tips. Ivan is also the president and CEO of IMV Business Inc, providing online marketing consultancy. Ivan has coached and mentored hundreds of people around the world to making money blogging and other online means.

He is a well known mentor and is famous for his Blueprint works. Till date he has 10 blueprints in hand related to blogging success. Ivan also composed two books; all about blogging. Customers say that Ivan has an exceptional insight in internet marketing. In fact many of his successful customers are still getting advice's from him. That itself shows his mentoring ability. Ivan is well connected with top influencers in the marketing world.

Below is the status of Ivan Ho's social media presence

Website - Blogging business tips
FB personal page - 73644
Twitter followers - 3549
Linkedin - 500+
Google+ - 711

OK, here are my questions and Ivan's response

1. What did you do before your presence in social media (blogging) ?

Ivan's reply :

Before I was blogging and doing Internet marketing I was a marketing consultant for a bottled water company. After about five years in the industry, someone approached me and asked me to help them out with an online marketing campaign. After that, I started to learn more about industry and was very interested in making money and the opportunity of creating an income in such a big market. I was intrigued about the potential of reaching customers around the world and generating a potential income 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

2. How did you get the idea of blogging ? Is there any reason for choosing blogging? Please state any three reasons.

Ivan's reply :

Blogging allows me to get my voice out there on a broader scale and share my information, knowledge and experience of Internet marketing with people.
Blogging platforms such as WordPress are very easy to use and have many features that can integrate with social media to help spread my information.
Blogging is a great source for organic traffic from search engines, you can get a ton of traffic by providing consistent content.

3. For how long have you been in this field and what is your followers' status after one year of start ?

Ivan's reply :

I started about 8 years ago, it was difficult at first as I was quite overwhelmed with so much information. At first I didn't start blogging, I started out with affiliate marketing. I started blogging and created Blogging Business Tips about 4 years ago and right now I have over 100,000 followers.

4. We know that you are good at mentoring, How did you get the thought of guiding people ?

Ivan's reply :

As I started producing content for my blog, I started to get questions from followers to help them out. I started sharing more of my knowledge and information and begin doing personal coaching and consultation. Throughout the past 4 years I've coached over 100 people.

5. What are the products offered through your blog ? What other products you offer offline ?

Ivan's reply :

On my blog I offer a free report called '25 Expert Tips To Blogging Success' and I offer my eBook for sale called 'The Profit Blogging Blueprint' the eBook teaches people how to build a profitable and successful blogging business online the right way. I also offer a one on one coaching program that guides people oh how to make $100 a day blogging.

6. How did you managed to drive traffic to your blog in the beginning ?

Ivan's reply :

At the very beginning I use just produced content and shared that content on my social media platform like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Plus. The key factor that allowed me to build up my traffic was growing my social media platforms and my email list. I worked really hard to grow my social media following. Now the majority of my traffic comes from social media and search engines. If I have something special to promote I will venture into paid ads and solo ads.

7. Could you please tell us about your readers ?

Ivan's reply :

I have readers from all over the world, mostly they are interested in blogging and Internet marketing and how to make money online.

8. How do you manage personal/family life along with blogging and social networking ?

Ivan's reply :

Working online lets me schedule my own hours and devote more time to family. As long as I have my smart phone, laptop and internet, I can work from anywhere. This has been the biggest benefit, the flexibility of being able to create my own schedule.

9. At present, how much visitors (approximately) do you get to your blog ?

Ivan's reply :

On a monthly basis I get approximately 5000 new visitors and 10,000 regular visitors.

10. Did you anytime felt like "Am I doing right ? Is this useful ?" during your blogging career ?

Ivan's reply :

When I started blogging I had a lot of advice from some successful online marketers so I didn't have too many problems. But when I first started out online I was confused because there was so many bad advice and bad programs that says you can succeed and make money really fast. The best advice I can give people is to find a good person to follow and learn from them.

11. Which blogs inspired you to start your own ?

Ivan's reply :

Here are the blog names

12. Is there anyone who inspired you to achieve this success ? Can you list some of your favorite influencers and co-bloggers ?

Ivan's reply :

I would say people like John Chow, James Martell, Jeff Walker and Brendon Buchard. In fact John Chow was one of my mentors and gave me a lot of good advice and really propelled my online venture.

(Ivan with John Chow)

(Ivan with Iman Aghay)

13. Can you briefly explain some of your achievements as a blogger ? Something that you can't forget !

Ivan's reply :

I really enjoyed writing my blueprint and giving people the chance to follow in my footsteps and learn how to build a profitable business online. The blueprint has over 150 pages of information from how to pick a topic, how to set things set up, how to get traffic and how to build your own products and make money.

I have been featured in

The Boston Globe
The Miami Herald
LA Daily News
Washington DC News
The San Francisco Chronicle
Newswatch 50

14. What are the steps that you took to get identified by many ?

Ivan's reply :

Growing my social platforms was a big influence on getting followers. It allowed my content to get read by many and when you have good content to share, people will start following.

15. What tools do you use to manage your social media presence ?

Ivan's reply :

I use WordPress as my blogging platform and I’ve installed plugins such as Only Wire and Jet Pack to help me distribute my content once it is published.

16. Could you state your major source of income (if any) from your blog ?

Ivan's reply :

My major source of income is my eBook “The Profit Blogging Blueprint” and my coaching program. I also have many good affiliate programs that I support which helps people out and provides me an income like “The School of Internet Marketing” and “MOBE Top Tier Program”.

17. As a blogger, where do you see yourself 5 years from now ? What are your next targets ? Is there any upcoming product that you are working on ?

Ivan's reply :

In the next 5 years I want to continue on growing my audience and help more people succeed online. A new project that I am working on is video tutorial program that people can watch and follow my advice on how to profit online. Hopefully that program will be out DEC 2014.

18. What suggestions would you give beginners for their success ? How do you want them to start ?

Ivan's reply :

Have patience and learn from someone that has success and willing to teach. Do things the right way and grow your audience through social media and email. Always provide good, valuable content for people to read or watch.

If you would like a free video tutorial on how to get started you can watch it here

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That's how our conversation ended. Hope you enjoyed reading this. Apart from online relationship, Ivan Ho is also a good friend to me and has been supporting me in almost all social networks. I am glad that Ivan accepted my interview invitation and spared his valuable time to share his thoughts with us. We wish him to reach further heights in his career.

Good luck and thank you Ivan !

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Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Bloggers success story | Interview with Reginald Chan

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 07:40:00 +0000

Welcome back friends, This article is all about the success story of an entrepreneur and also a CEO named 'Reginald Chan' from Malaysia. He has been considered as one of the best consultant for SEO, blogging tips, social media marketing, wordpress projects along with monetization and internet marketing works. Providing value driven services to his customers (through his blog Reginald chan) and making them fully satisfied is his main motto.

Apart from his regular blogging and consultancy activities, Reginald also happened to be a well connected social networker aiming to make good relationship; by making friends rather than customers ! If you wanna check this, do connect with him.

Below is the status of Reginald Chan's social media presence

Website - Reginald Chan - blogging tips
Twitter followers - 3393
FB personal page - 1311
Linkedin - 500+
Google+ - 5188

OK, here is how I posed questions and how he responded to that

1. What did you do before your presence in social media (blogging) ?

Reginald reply :

Thanks for the kind opportunity. Before going into blogging back in 2005, I was a ghostwriter for several years. After doing ghost writing, I decided that it is time to build my own brand (starting a blog) in 2005 and only a year years later, I started serious blogging.

2. How did you get the idea of blogging ? Is there any reason for choosing blogging? Please state any three reasons.

Reginald reply :

I started blogging out of hobby. My first blog was on Blogspot and I was blogging on general things; life, love and technology. It was purely fun and only as hobby. Back then, I did nothing on SEO, social media etc. I got the 'light bulb' only after getting my first $0.50 from Adsense three months laters. Haha!

Why blogging?

State my opinion
Sharing tutorials and guides
Providing information on things I know; SEO, social media and blogging as I see so many blogs providing the wrong information

3. For how long have you been in this field and what is your followers' status after one year of start ?

Reginald reply :

Started blogging in 2005 and gotten serious around 2009. Back then, I didn't have any followers and to be honest, I didn't believe the importance of followers until 2012. Now, I have roughly a thousand followers on my blog. On social media, I have around 8,000 - 10,000 followers.

4. We know that you are good at mentoring, How did you get the thought of guiding people ?

Reginald reply :

Well, I would blame it on my background. I love teaching others and my expertise are on Operations, Sales and Marketing. Until date, I have worked with over 5 International companies under 8 years and now, I finally settled down as a head of department in an International company.

As you can see above, I founded my 'indirect' talent and coaching and decided that helping out others is extremely fun!

5. What are the products offered through your blog ? What other products you offer offline ?

Reginald reply :

Generally, I offer free blogging advises; content marketing, Internet Marketing, SEO and WordPress. Whatever I know are there and is for anyone to read. Besides that, I do run my own consultancy agency but I don't promote it much (for obvious reasons). I promote my blog more than my agency. Haha!

Bet this doesn't answer your question right? :)

6. How did you managed to drive traffic to your blog in the beginning ?

Reginald reply :

When I started my self-named blog, I gotten a huge number of traffic under 60 days. Being in blogging industry long enough, I know there are huge demand of untold stories. For example, I am often sharing weird ideas on SEO and even WordPress.

This build my reputation as an unique blog and overtime, creating more readership.

What I do mostly are:

Sharing stats
Doing case studies
Determine how to outsmart Google (when I am extremely boring!)

7. Could you please tell us about your readers ?

Reginald reply :

My readers prefer more SEO and marketing tips compared to any other. So, whenever I blog, I try to incorporate this thinking into it. Oh yes, majority of my readers think that my blogs are too long; over 1,200 words per article on average.

8. How do you manage personal/family life along with blogging and social networking ?

Reginald reply :

I blog during my free time. Family and my consultancy comes first. Therefore, I try to blog at least once a week (focus at least 2 articles per month). On social media, I use automation such as Buffer. Afterall, we are all living in the 21st century and thus, time to make use of technology right?

9. At present, how much visitors (approximately) do you get to your blog ?

Reginald reply :

Relatively low. At an average around 300 per day. I blame this to my extreme writing. People tend to love tips and tricks than business blogging. My blogging methods are more towards educational which makes it pretty length and boring!

But, one clear advantage of this is that I get very good followers back in return.

10. Did you anytime felt like "Am I doing right ? Is this useful ?" during your blogging career ?

Reginald reply :

Honestly speaking, no. When I blog, I blog what I think is correct and yes, tons of negative reviews as well but it is good. More words of mouth means free advertisements. My main goal is to ensure that the information I shared are self tested (i test everyone of them) and I believe that stats speak for themselves.

But of course, I hope that all my articles are extremely useful for all.

11. Which blogs inspired you to start your own ?

Reginald reply :

This is a tough one. I read a lot (over 10 blogs a day) but here's a recap:

Content writing - CopyBlogger
Analytics - KISSmetrics
Marketing - John Chow

12. Is there anyone who inspired you to achieve this success ? Can you list some of your favorite influencers and co-bloggers ?

Reginald reply :

When it comes to influencers, there are many. A few would be like Neil Patel and Brian Clark. They are pretty much top notch in marketing. I don't have co-bloggers but I do have just one guest bloggers until date (okay call me choosy and picky)!

13. Can you briefly explain some of your achievements as a blogger ? Something that you can't forget !

Reginald reply :

Hmm, I would say the various mentions from other blogs or bloggers. Three of my achievements I really love are:

Top 100 bloggers in Triberr
Featured on Harvard University Blog
Featured on Yahoo Small Business News

14. What are the steps that you took to get identified by many ?

Reginald reply :

Be different, thinking out of the box and be bold.

For example, if everyone is finding 'tips to make money online', why don't blog a post about '50 ways to make your first $100 under 14 days'. Make sense to you?

15. What tools do you use to manage your social media presence ?

Reginald reply :

My current go-to tool is Buffer. However, HootSuite and Socialoomph are my previous tools. Basically, just use one paid services and you would be just fine. Moreover $10 or $20 per month is a pretty good deal since 90% are on automation. And yes, balance between automation and manual is the best way to go around.

16. Could you state your major source of income (if any) from your blog ?

Reginald reply :

On average, I make around $500 per month from my main blog. Affiliate earnings takes around 90% of my income while 10% from banners.

17. Blogging and social media presence is really a tough job and requires much of our time. What else do you do aside from blogging ? How do you keep yourself positive and active ?

Reginald reply :

I am a born motivator and I always see things on the positive side. My day job requires me to solve problems and issues (yup 8 hours of negativity). So, staying positive is a must. Do this when you wake up daily. Ask yourself in the mirror if you want the day to be good. If you want it to be good, start looking at the bright side of life.

Why should you take things too seriously?

18. As a blogger, where do you see yourself 5 years from now ? What are your next targets ? Is there any upcoming product that you are working on ?

Reginald reply :

I see to build my own membership site (it has been my goal since 2013 until now). Let's see when I will launch it thanks to my limited time. Also, I tend to ditch my day job and focus completely on consultation down the road. I love to help businesses grow!

19. What suggestions would you give beginners for their success ? How do you want them to start ?

Reginald reply :

The first is mentality. If you want to start blogging because of money, you are wrong. You could make money fast but not enough to last. The ultimate goal is to have every lasting money.

Therefore, have these plans in mind:

What do you want to target? (niche blogging, general writing etc)
Who will be reading your blog?
How do you generate more readership for the blog?
How to monetize from your visitors?
How to sustain and grow your blog?
Who are your competitors?

Now, answer these 6 questions and try to explain each in detail. If you are able to describe each of the above questions in detail, you are probably good to go. If not, you need to do more planning.

The biggest mistake I hear from blogging is that they want to make money blogging or they want to build a site on blogging tips. They don't consider factors like how to stand out from the rest.

Remember that there are over 60 million blogs out there that are competing with you.

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That's how our conversation ended. Hope you enjoyed reading this. As you can note from his replies, how friendly he communicates things that too brilliantly. That itself shows his art and that's the reason why he is considered as one of the best consultant. I am glad that Reginald accepted my interview invitation and spared his valuable time to share his thoughts with us. We wish him to reach further heights in his career.

Good luck and thank you Reginald Chan !

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Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

Sharing is caring. Like us in social networks to get updated with latest posts. Subscribe to our free mail service in RSS feeder.

How to create a Blog | course - 6 | blog Design template-2

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:38:00 +0000

We had covered five courses on 'how to create a blogger blog' in the previous posts and this course is a continuation of the four. The five courses being :

Course - 1 | Create a first blog

Course - 2 | Blogger terms explained

Course - 3 | Blogger basic settings

Course - 4 | How to create a post

Course - 5 | blog Design template-1

We will further learn some more template design settings in this session. As usual we will see the proceedings in step-by-step process.

Step - 1

Log in to your blogger account and go-to blog > Template and click the 'Customize' button as shown in the below picture.

Step - 2

Now click 'Advanced' button in the settings pane provided at the top left corner of the template page as shown in the picture. Then check 'Page Text'. Page Text is nothing but the settings of text that appear in the actual article.

As shown in the picture, we are allowed to select the font style, pixel as well as text color. The selection of the font color depends on your blogs background colors, whereas the font pixel selection is based on font style chosen. Do make an experiment by varying the style, pixel and color and select those that are mostly pleasing to you.

Step - 3

The Backgrounds setting allows you to choose appropriate color for outer as well as footer of your blog. The settings were shown below.

Step - 4

The 'Links' setting only changes the colors of the html links that too in the side bar (left or right). You can see this blogs links in blue color in the right gadgets bar.

Visited color indicates the color that appears when a visitor clicks that link. Enabling visited color helps the visitor in identifying the links that are yet to click.

Hover color is the color that appears when a mouse is placed on the link. The settings are shown below.

Step - 5

Now, click over 'Blog Title'. This is the title that appears in the top of your blog, just like that shown for this blog 'Easy Blogger Stuff'.

This setting allows you to change the font style, size and color of the Title with the options of bold and italic.

Step - 6

The next setting 'Blog Description' is the text that appears just below the blog title (if you have included that).

Step - 7

'Tabs' are the blog categories, also called as 'Pages' that cam be included in every blog for the purpose of easy navigation. We had already learned about Pages in our previous course. Now, the 'Tabs Text' allows you to change the text style, color and size of the tab.

Like you can for this blog (at the top of the page), the tabs are HOME, SEO, SMM, Make money etc. like shown below.

Step - 8

To change the background settings of the above tabs, you need to click 'Tabs Background' as shown below. Choose the separator color.

Step - 9

'Date Header' can be seen just above the post title (or below the blog title). The next setting 'Post' is the important concern for blog design. The 'Title font' is the font style and size settings for the post title that appear above each post.

'Background color' and 'Border color' are not for the title but for the total blog post. As shown in the example, a light brown post background is selected on brown background. This applies from top to bottom of the blog. You may even select the border for better visibility.

Step - 10

'Gadgets' are the widgets that appear either in right, left, top or bottom of the blog post.

This settings are meant to choose the color, size and font of your blog, an example of gadgets shown below (from this blog).

Step - 11

The remaining settings like 'Footer', 'Footer Links' are for the bottom most appearance of the blog and by default, they can be left as it is. The 'Add CSS' helps you to edit template code and is usually done by advanced bloggers who know much about coding. As of now, the basic settings are enough to deal with to customize our blogs.

How to create a Blog | course - 5 | blog Design template-1

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:27:00 +0000

We had covered four courses on 'how to create a blogger blog' in the previous posts and this course is a continuation of the four. The four courses being :

Course - 1 | Create a first blog

Course - 2 | Blogger terms explained

Course - 3 | Blogger basic settings

Course - 4 | How to create a post

Now, as discussed in the fourth course, designing a template is important and comes next to third course. But since, in order to have a complete look on how your blog (as well as post) looks, I suggest you to create at least a sample post before working on designing/customizing a blog. In this session, we will go through the first part of customizing a blog design. As usual we will see the proceedings in step-by-step process.

Step - 1

Sign in to your blogger account and go-to blog > Template as shown in the below picture. Now, click the Customise button as indicated by the number 2 in the picture.

Step - 2

Clicking 'Customise' will display a preview page with some settings on the top pane as shown in the screen shot. The first option is 'Templates', which will allow you to change the theme of your blog. As discussed there are 34 default theme sets, and you can choose any one among them. Just click on your desired theme and you will see the changes in the preview of the blog (provided on the same page below the template settings pane).

Step - 3

The next setting is 'Background' as shown in the below picture. This setting allows you to choose the background color as well as backdrop image and alignment settings. If you wish to incorporate a backdrop image (image behind your blog post pane), then click on 'Background image'.

Clicking this will display a popup window as shown below. As you can see; there are many predefined images by default, you may choose any one of them, otherwise you may upload your own image from your desktop by clicking the 'Upload image' link provided at the top as shown below. Most bloggers don't prefer to include background image; even I too don't prefer. Blog design should preferably be simple, plain and in fact visually pleasing.

Anyway if you want to select one, do that and click 'Done', else click 'Cancel'. Whenever you are making any settings or customization, don't forget to preview the changes in the same settings page. Verify whether the selected changes suits your design or not.

Step - 4

Under 'Background' setting, you should also see 'Alignment' drop-down menu allowing you to choose six kinds of alignment options as shown below. This allows you to align the background image (if any) as per the selection. Do make a experiment by choosing all the six alignment types, and select the one which pleases you. As the name suggests; the 'Tile' option provided below 'Alignment', tiles the image if click it.

You may select a predefined color from the available options (if you don't like the default color of the theme) or you may choose a custom color by clicking on 'Main color theme' as shown below. This color setting affects only the color of the background or theme and not the color of page tabs, links, text colors, page title and any other color. That will be done in 'Advanced'' option.

Step - 5

OK, once you are done with the first two settings and before going through 'Adjust widths', we will understand about 'Layout'. Click on the fourth option 'Layout' as shown below.

Clicking Layout will display a set of layout options both for body as well as footer as shown below. You can select one option among the eight different layouts available. Like for example, for this blog, I selected the second layout option, that's why my blog gadgets as well as ads moved to right (other than the tab page or top ad, that we can change).

Anyway we can even change the order of gadgets also; that we will learn in the coming posts. Next select the type of footer as shown above.

Step - 6

Now we will move to 'Adjust widths' (third setting) as shown below.

This settings allows you to change or customize the width of overall blog and width of the post. The below picture shows the two settings. By dragging the tab or by altering the value in the pixel box (px), widths change accordingly. Remember whatever changes you make, will appear in the preview pane below this settings menu. So, it's always a good practice to go through the preview, whenever you make any template settings.

I chose only right sidebar and so only right sidebar setting is being displayed in the option, but if your design has both right and left sidebar, then both will appear in the section. Whenever you want to revert back to the default settings, you can always do that by clicking the 'Reset widths to template default' link available at the bottom as shown in the picture.

Step - 7

The next major setting 'Advanced' will be taken care in the coming post. For now save your design. To do this, navigate to the top right corner of he page and click 'Apply to Blog' button as shown in the below picture.

You can also preview your blog page by clicking 'View Blog' link. To return back to blogger dashboard, you need to click 'Back to Blogger' as shown in the above picture.

How to create a Blog | course - 4 | create a blog post

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 15:16:00 +0000

We had covered three courses on 'how to create a blogger blog' in the previous posts and this course is an extension of the three. The three courses being :

Course - 1 | Create a first blog

Course - 2 | Blogger terms explained

Course - 3 | Blogger basic settings

Before learning 'how to customize the design and template' of your blog, it's always better to create a post (be it is a sample post) so that by looking at the article (post) you may come to know the best way of re-organizing gadgets as well as design your blog. So in this session we will learn to 'create blog posts', that is helpful to publish articles in blogger. As usual we will see the proceedings in step-by-step process.

Step - 1

Step - 2

Now, as shown in the above picture, click that pencil icon (numbered 2), clicking this link will display the following screen. This is how the window looks for writing posts.

Step - 3

Now, before you start writing your article in the space, the best thing to do is to set some initial settings that is a part of SEO process. The first concern is the Post Title, as you can see in the below picture, you have to give a good title in the space provided.
Learn the best page Title practices for better SEO here

Step - 4

OK, since you are seeing this window for the first time, please do some quick research about the editable options that are provided for editing content in this window.

The functionality of options (from left to right) have been explained below

Font - allows you to customize the font of whatever you write in the space. You are also allowed to use multiple font across your writings. Remember you can only edit the font off those letters only inside the article (called text body), you cannot change the font of letters that appear on the side bar, tabs and blog Title's here. Of course you may do that in the template section (we will learn about that in the next session).
Text - Allows you to change the size of the text - small, large etc.
Heading - allows you to select the nature of line - normal, sub heading, heading etc
B - Bold - Bold en a letter
I -Italic)
U - underline
~~ABC~~ - strike a line
A - Color of the letters or words
brush icon - color of the background of letter
Link - Hyperlink - link to n external URL
The remaining icons are explained in the following order (left to right) - add image, video, page break, align text, numbering, bullets, include quote, remove formatting, check spelling, language change, alignment - left to right, right to left

Step - 5

After understanding the basic options for editing your text in the content pace, now look over the next SEO steps. (SEO here reefers to Search Engine optimization is the technique of optimizing your content so that your content will get noted in available in search engines.
Learn more about Search engine optimization here

Notice the right options bar named 'Post settings' as shown in the below picture. Click over 'Labels', which will display a space for entering the labels. Labels helps the search engines as well as users to identify the keywords in your content (article). So, it's always better to give as many number of major keywords. Say for this post, I can include some labels as shown in the picture. Those labels are more or less related to my post content. They can also be termed as keywords. Using any of these words, users search in the search engines (SE) and SE robots will identify your post easily if your posts have optimal number of these words.

So, do enter some major keywords in the space and click 'Done'

Step - 6

The next option 'Schedule' allows you to publish post in time bound, like you can create and set the time to post so that blogger will automatically publish the article as per the set time. Setting 'Automatic' will have your own control on publishing, i.e unless you won't publish, the post remains as draft.

The third option is 'Permalink'. This allows you to change the default URL of individual post as per your requirement, thus enabling you to have full control on how it appears, what keywords it include etc.

Learn more about How to change the default URL of each blog posts.

As the name suggest, Location option allows one to include the location of posting, this is of no use. The next important setting is 'Search description'. This is one important tool in SEO process and I covered more about this in one of my post 'Best Search description practices and how to add this'.

The final setting is 'Options' which is set by default. Anyway just click that and ensure that under 'Reader Comments', the 'Allow' option is checked. By allowing the comments; blogger allows the visitors to comment on that particular post. In other words, you can also control the exclusion of comments (if you don't wish to listen further comments) in any specific post.

Step - 7

OK, The blank space that you see (as shown in the below picture) is where you need to paste your article. And, yes instead of creating your article here, use notepad or even MS word to write your article. Once you are done with writing as well as grammar/spelling corrections, copy them and paste in this space. After pasting, just use the above 'editable options' to align it or organize it. Remember even if you include headings in word, the same when copied in this space will appear as plain text. So, organize the content (by giving colors, headings, alignment etc) only when you copy in this content space. I always prefer Notepad instead of MS word.

Step - 8

(additional information)

You can always save your work and use the same after a while. Just ensure that you click 'Save' setting (provided at the top right corner of the blogger account) as shown in the picture numbered one. The preview setting allows you to visualize and see how your post appears in the blog. Just click 'Preview' button (numbered 2 in the below picture) and you will see your blog. It's always advisable to preview multiple number of times to identify any correction like alignment, picture size, text appearance etc before publishing any content.

Whenever you feel like going back to your blogger dashboard or settings page, just click over your blog name provided at the top left corner. For example; for our Test EBS blog, I have to click like shown below.

Step - 9

OK, Now you understood all the settings features while creating a post along with the SEO settings, if your content is ready and you are satisfied with the preview appearance, finally click 'Publish' orange button to deliver your content to the world (example shown below). That's it. The same steps apply for all of your blog posts.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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How to create a Blog | course - 3 | Basic settings

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:51:00 +0000

We had covered two courses on 'how to create a blogger blog' in the previous posts and this course is a sequel of the two. The two course being :

Course - 1 | Create a first blog

Course - 2 | Blogger terms explained

Now, in this session we will learn to incorporate some basic settings that is required as a preliminary step to start a blog. As usual we will see the proceedings in step-by-step process.

Step - 1

Log in to your blogger account and go to your blogger dashboard. By default you will see the page containing a list of your blogs as shown in the below picture. Click your blog name (in my case it's Test-EBS).

Step - 2

Clicking this, you will navigate to the overview page as shown in the below picture. While we will not be dealing with the first nine functions at this time. We will now go through the tenth function, settings. So, click the 'Settings' link. Then click the sub-category 'Basic' as shown in the below picture.

Step - 3

Now under the basic settings, you will see firstly 'Title'. 'Title' here in the sense the name of your blog. The name by which people recognize your blog in search results. This is the title that you gave in the beginning (As we saw in course - 1). If you want to change it or add, you can do so (anytime) by clicking 'Edit' button next to the Title and then typing your desired Title.

This differ from post title's in that blog title holds wholly for the blog while post titles (also referred to as 'Headings') are meant for that particular post, in other words each post will have unique title's. For now just work on blog title and later we will learn how to select individual post title's.

Step - 4

Secondly, click on the 'Edit' link next to the description. Clicking this will display a space for entering something about your blogs description as shown in the above picture. The description you write here will also appears under blog's title as shown for this Test-EBS sample below. So, do enter a short and brief (in 500 characters) description detailing completely about your blog. Include some major keywords in that like for my blog case I could include something like

"A blog about blogging, SEO, SMM and other techniques with tips to help you drive traffic as well as monetize your blog"

Something like this should work. So, decide the major functional areas of your blog and include them in a very good sentence form in this description space.

Step - 5

Once you make your description, click 'Save changes'. Thereafter, scroll down a little to see 'Blog address' that you gave in the beginning like the one shown below.

If you wish to change this, you can do so by clicking the link 'Edit' and making the necessary changes or if you are satisfied with the existing address, just leave it as it is.

Step - 6

Now navigate to the left menu and click 'Posts and comments' as shown in the below picture. Once you click this, you will see 'Show at most' option under posts, right ? by default blogger will show 7 posts on the main page. Now, you need to change this figure to 1 (one). By changing this to one will enable the blogspot to display only the most recent post of your blog, else you will be seeing seven recent posts in the same page, that looks awkward.

Step - 7

Now, scroll down a little and look at the section 'Comment Location'. Make sure that it is set to 'Embedded'. Embedded comments give aesthetic look to your blog and is maximum preferred by bloggers, be it be word press blogs.

Now see the next function 'Who can comment' and click any of the desired option. Clicking (checking) 'Anyone' will enable comments from Google registered users as well as from anonymous.

'Registered User' is an external commenting platform from 'OpenID' which requires all users to sign up for their account and comment. Clicking 'User with Google Accounts' allows only Google account holders to comment. This needs a log in whenever a user tries to comment on your blog. 'Only members of this blog' are users who registered and followed your blog through Google account.

My analysis goes like this : when you are new, prefer 'Anyone' and when you slowly start gaining audience, then jump to 'User with Google Accounts' or even 'Registered user'. I don't prefer 'only members of this blog'.

Step - 8

OK, then come to the next option 'Comment Moderation'. It's always preferable to moderate all comments from your end and so check/click 'Always'. This will protect you from spamming comments. You will have the total control. Then enter your email address in the space 'Email moderation requests to', doing this will let all the comments flow into your inbox for moderation before it gets published. Also set 'Show word verification' to 'Yes' and 'Show Backlinks' to 'Hide' for more security.

If you want to learn more about these options, just place your mouse on the question mark next to the options as shown in the picture. It will guide you then. After you are done with comment settings click 'Save settings' provided at the top right corner of the page as shown in the below picture.

The remaining two options under settings named 'Mobile and email' as well as 'Language and formatting' are all set default and there is no necessity for making any changes to them.

Step - 9

Now comes the next option 'Search preferences', As soon as you click this, you will see a page just like the one shown below. Under 'Meta tags' click 'Edit' next to Description which will ask you whether to 'Enable search description' or not. By default it was set to No. But you MUST set that to 'Yes' without which your customized description won't appear in search results.

So, check the 'Yes' button and enter a detailed description about blog. For the 'Test-EBS' example I gave the following description

"This blog is all about educating the newbies on how to do blogging with some tricks and tips as well as something about SEO, SMM and more"

This is what visitors read about your blog in brief and this will help them to reach your blog. The description here is wholly for the blog, just like description for your homepage. OK, now look at the below sample on how search descriptions appear in search results. Now, I hope you understood the importance of giving good search description.

Step - 10

Click 'Save changes' after entering the description. The remaining options like errors and redirection, crawlers etc have nothing to do for now. Leave that as it is. Same goes with 'Other' option. They are by default set as per your requirement and so no need to make any changes for now.

Bloggers success story | Interview with Shiwangi Srivastava

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 09:50:00 +0000

Welcome back friends. This article is all about my interview with a co-blogger named 'Shiwangi Srivastava' from India; whom started blogging very recently (six months back). She has been a good supporter to my blog and also helped me in writing some posts in this blog. In spite of facing hectic family schedules, she manages to write for her own blog (named Pensitdown), help others as well as do some freelancing jobs out of passion and interest.

(Shiwangi Srivastava - Blogger, writer, freelancer)

Her blog Pensitdown is all about topics related to Blogging, writing, money making, social media, technology, personal, family suggestions and more. Of course her blog is still on the process of development. Her motive is to write more to achieve further success and help co-bloggers by sharing their content. She believes in the fact 'Sharing is caring'.

Below is the status of Shiwangi Srivastava's social media presence

Website - Pen-sit-down
Twitter followers - 228
Pinterest followers - 515
Pensitdown FB followers - 153
Google+ - 133
FB personal page - 192

Before I interviewed her, she put the following question to me:

"Hi Bhanu, Thanks for providing me an opportunity to share my views with the readers. Before you initiate the conversation with me I want to put a question to you first of all. What made you think of conducting my interview, who is still learning and yet in the road to the city of knowledge as a blogger."

That's really a good question. My answer to this is :

"Well sis, The main idea of bringing this concept 'Interview with bloggers' is to serve the beginners or even intermediates, so that they might go through the response and understand how co-bloggers are performing and managing activities. If I start my first interview with say an influencer, then of course my readers will enjoy that, they will come to know about the struggle the influencer took in developing their own brand and also go through their achievements.

But the fact is I got worried whether that could assume any negative effects ! As you know almost all influencers have tremendous number of followers, page views and fans. And if the beginners see such huge figures, they may get feared thinking that 'achieving this much might not be possible'. They might feel that they are nowhere in this blogger world. This is what I feared. So, I made my mind to start interviewing the one whom is an intermediate blogger, but well connected with many influencers and also maintaining a good professional network. Your social status (figures as above) might lighten them and give them confidence to continue their work without leaving in the middle. Although in the coming interviews, I would target influencers.

Hope that justifies"

OK, here is how I posed questions and how she responded to that

1. What did you do before your presence in social media (blogging) ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Before blogging, my dreams were monotonous and limited. I was happy working with 'Muthoot Group', but after that I left the job because I wanted my baby boy to undergo all considerable steps of parental care. Indeed I was happily occupied with my cute boy.

2. Why did you choose blogging ? Is there any strong reason ? Please state any three reasons.

Shiwangi's reply :

(Aha my favorite quest) When it comes to choose blogging it’s quite straightforward answer which I am going to share in three powerful reasons:

Firstly, I was little disheartened to relinquish my stable career and you know baby concern always win over shaping a career for a mother. Therefore I always look for the option to work from home as a writer. After some research in Google I went to know the www.skillpages.com and few more sites for making career as a writer. Even I got one offer for content writer but did not get certain edge from it. I am passionate about writing and playing with collection of words and giving it some bizarre twist and turns is always my first love.
Secondly, show me one woman who does not want to be superwomen may be there are many. But I always wanted to give wings to my desire. I know the path of my dream career may be fraught with extra challenges and setbacks because I wanted to taste the flavor of parenting and professionalism being at home. It is like holding both distant ends.
Thirdly, I wanted to be self-dependent. Regardless of the fact that I am not head and shoulder or bread winner of my family. As my husband is doing it perfectly. Even I instill penchant to make my own penny to enhance my self-respect and to identify my potential.

All three mantra made me indulge into the blog zone.

3. How did you managed to drive traffic to your blog in the beginning ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Apart from a support of my cousin brother Atish Ranjan (who is experienced and helped me in driving good traffic; CEO of - Techtricksworld) I was generally showing my social presence in different networking sites like Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others. I also used to comment maximum on other fellow bloggers so that my blog will get acknowledgement and visible to maximum people.

Atish one introduction for my blog was sufficient to beckon many bloggers to switch to me. And I establish relationship with my fellow bloggers or friends that is USP of driving traffic in initial time.

4. Could you please tell us about your readers ?

Shiwangi's reply :

My readers are my God. Without them I am like fish out of water. If my blog is picking certain height this is all because of my readers. They can make and they can spoil. I always try to find the midst way out to keep the bonding alive between me and my readers. It is not only my duty to acknowledge my readers choice but also I love to do according to my readers.

5. How do you manage personal/family life along with blogging and social networking ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Literally, it is very frazzled and tough to handle four section altogether in 24 hours.

Looking after Family
Write for Blog
Establish presence in social networking sites
Freelance Writing

When I do work officially I do not want the involvement of personal life for distraction and vice-versa. Many times I find myself torn between the witching hours when my work and family want my full attention altogether. Trust me this is a big irksome. After suffering few days I made strategy to balance both online and offline work. Sometimes I still trapped and end up suffering everything. But I cannot escape from any four of the responsibility as they all are my favorite too. Still happy that I am in the company of most liked stuff i.e. blogging.

6. At present, how much visitors (approximately) do you get to your blog ?

Shiwangi's reply :

As I started my blog six months ago. Earlier I was non-seriously handling it. Atish used to warn me by saying you are taking blogging for granted. His blah blah suggestion boosted me and gave me energy to perform well. I did work sincerely over my blog 3 months only. Frankly I do not have much knowledge of optimizing the posts but still I managed to get more than 250 unique visits on daily basis.

7. Did you anytime felt like "Am I doing right ? Is this useful ?" during your blogging career ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Never felt, even an iota. Though I encounter few and rare disagreement but blogging has got certain ingredients to motivate you. Whenever you feel low any of the layers of blogging world would come and lift you up for sure.

8. Which blogs inspired you to start your own ?

Shiwangi's reply :

I was unaware of any of the Blog I read today. I read my cousin's few of the post. His blog can be excellent example for anyone who indeed wants to be in this world.

9. Is there anyone who inspired you to achieve this success ?

Shiwangi's reply :

First of all I did not achieve success yet, lot of things is yet in pipeline. I remember I called Atish bro and said I want to write for your blog. He asserted me by saying 'why do you think small Di? Don’t you want to be famous and in limelight'. I said who else do not want to squeeze all those stuff. He created blog for me and despite of his hectic schedule made me learnt lot.

I would like to say thanks Atish through this medium which I never said for his unwavering favor and countless simultaneous support and of course he has answered my non-stop and silly questions often.

10. Can you list some of your favorite influencers and co-bloggers ?

Shiwangi's reply :

None other than Atish and Nirmala (Owner of - My-magic-fundas). They are my favorite; both of them are very hard working and value the time. They inspired me not only in professional level but also in personal front. They two always come to me and encourage me to ask for their favor. They are the one I can knock their door anytime.

In fact, I believe even newbie blogger can inspire you. Everybody has their own individuality and even points of them which set everyone apart from others.

11. Whom are your family supporters ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Family is always a harbor whenever you meet any sort of moment. Since beginning my real elder brother kept plotted me for giving priority to reading and writing. I instilled it on my mind and now the time has come I can write on any issues. My family feels proud to see me in that stage of life and always encourage me to do better. My siblings are the pillar of my condition in which I am now. My all family members have been such blessings to me in my initial time and even now.

12. Can you briefly explain some of your achievements as a blogger ? Something that you can't forget !

Shiwangi's reply :

Yep, my blog Pensitdown within 6 months has got Alexa Rank down approx 1,52,000. One of my posts List of 9 Microblogging sites ranked on first page with keyword “Microblogging sites list”. My blog has got increasing number of readership. But I have a long way to go. I need to get my Alexa atleast 20k then I will consider that I have achieved something. And of course due to my blog I got number of offers for content writing. Besides that I feel happiness is big asset for anyone and blogging is way to my bliss. It has given me enormous reason to stay happy and calm. Truly biggest achievement.

13. What are the steps that you took to get identified by many ?

Shiwangi's reply :

See as I said earlier, being a Atish sister is always advantage for me. His reputation in blogosphere helped me immense. The number of his fan following, admirer and most decent guy ever is all obvious reason to get lot of exposure from many. Apart from this I involved myself in social shares and likes. Also gave lot of priorities to comments to get maximum acknowledgement. Boosting social presence is a key ingredient to get identified.

14. What tools do you use to manage your social media presence ?

Shiwangi's reply :

I don’t need to use any tools like ManageWP, Glyder or any to sustain my social media presence. I only stick to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Just re-tweet, Buffer and so on. But I am erratic in most of the sites.

15. Could you state your major source of income (if any) from your blog ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Freelance Writing gives me sufficient income as of now. There is so much potential of making money yet to be tapped in the form of monetization ideology like Affiliate Marketing, Paid post and from Banner Ads and so on.

16. Blogging and social media presence is really a tough job and requires much of our time. What else do you do aside from blogging ? How do you keep yourself positive and active ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Blogging itself is highly time consuming job with tremendous challenges. I am not that much productive that I can step in other business apart from content writing and blogging.

When it comes to positivity I believe that nothing is more positive and reasonable profession than blogging. When you work in Corporate you undergo huge pressure without any appreciation whereas in blog zone there are in most of your step you face appreciation. Blogging work culture ensures very well to pamper their employee.

17. What suggestions would you give beginners for their success ? How do you want them to start ?

Shiwangi's reply :

I am also beginner and learner. From my experience up-to now I would like to suggest them that they must have Mentor. Without mentor they can find themselves in missteps which can overshadow everything.

There are three stages of knowledge – Listening, Contemplation and Practice. Act upon it.
Try to expand your Network and build your rappot with co- bloggers.
Trust your instinct.
Be eveready to help as per your knowledge. It does not mean if you don’t know even you are misguiding newbie to show your presence. There is no way to coy if you don’t have knowledge even if you hold good position.
Success should never go to your head. Always try to be favourite more than successful.

18. As a blogger, where do you see yourself 5 years from now ?

Shiwangi's reply :

Let me triggered sharp reaction Lol. In today’s world, blogging take numerous twist and turns and the future is murky too. Five years is very obscure to predict. Even though I see myself full time pro blogger with at least one award in hand. Is this cocky and arrogant( haha). It’s my pipe dream.

Pleasure to be connected.

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That's how our conversation ended. Hope you enjoyed reading this. I'm glad that Shiwangi ma'am accepted my request and took the pain of writing and suggesting this much. I was actually surprised to see detailed answers from her because usually people give short responses to save their time. I appreciate her again for sparing her valuable time by putting her hectic schedules aside in order to contribute to this blog.

Thank you ma'am !

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Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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How to create a Blog | course - 2 | Blog terms explained

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:44:00 +0000

We had seen the basic procedure for creating a blogger account and also learnt how to select the best 'blog Title' as well as 'domain address' in the previous post Course - 1 | create a blog. Before going through initial basic settings that is needed to start a blog, we will understand some blog terms.

Log in to your blogger account and you will be landing by default to the below shown page. As you can see the blog name 'Test EBS' that I created in my previous section. Now click your blog name (in my case 'Test EBS').

If I have say three blogs then all that blog names should appear hear, like the one shown below.

Ok, clicking your blog name his will take you to the 'Overview' section of your blog. As you can see in the below picture, there are 10 functional parameters, some of which will be useful all through your blogging works. Since, they are useful during blogging, we will understand something about them as follows

Overview

Like the name indicates, it gives an overall status of your blogs traffic. You will get a quick status of page views, comments etc. The below snapshot shows how the overview looks. Note the terms and functions.

Posts

This will display a collection of posts that you created (published as well as draft) along with page view status. This is where you create new posts as well as edit already published articles.

The below picture illustrates how Post section looks. As you can see there is a list of posts with labels and page views.

Pages

Pages differ from post. Pages are more or less like the tabs and is the place dedicated to include categories (links). Pages can be considered as 'Static' as they remain visible to the visitors. Posts are the place where articles are written and shared to the world. A page can hold group of similar posts, but a post is meant for specific article. Pages are not updated in RSS feeder and is meant mostly for the use of some kind of static articles like 'About me'. Bloggers allow you to create only 20 pages while it allows you to create unlimited number of posts.

Just keep the following thumb rule while choosing between a page and a post

For writing articles that is share-able in social media, use posts
For including list of similar posts as a directory (category) or to just write a static page like 'About Me'; that is not shear-able, go for pages

To make you more clear; the page that you are reading now in this blog is a 'Post' and the page that will be seen by clicking any of the above tabs (placed at the top of this post - HOME, SEO, SMM, Create Blog etc) is termed as 'Page'. Just go through them and understand how I categorized post links.

The below picture shows a snapshot of 'Pages' section of this blog. Just refer this for quick understanding.

Comments

This is a section where your posts comments (published as well as waiting for modification) would be displayed. Remember the comments has been published can be deleted anytime later. The picture shows the same. You can note the tabs 'Remove content', 'Delete' and 'Spam'.

Google+

Google+ link allows you to change settings to link your blogger account with Google+ account so that whenever you publish a post, then it may or may not get shared automatically based on your settings. By default, your blog will be linked, that will be fine.

Stats

Stats is the juncture where you will be spending more time in blogger. This page will give you details similar to analytics like page views, post-wise traffic, sources of traffic (URL's and referring sites) and audience (location of view, browsers). Stats will be more useful to track your blogs status once you start blogging. Check my blog stats and note what are all shown in that page.

Earnings tab

This will not be useful for now. It will be useful only when you start monetizing your blog. For now take it lightly.

Layout

OK, here is the useful section. Layout is all about your blogs inner arrangement. Layout will allow you to

Add new gadgets like pages (tabs), ads, social sharing buttons, subscribing links etc.
Delete some unwanted gadgets
Customize or reorder the location and placement of gadgets

Below picture shows this blogs layout. Compare the shown layout with this blog and you can easily understand about layout. note that we can re-arrange them by dragging and placing anywhere (except some gadgets; that we will learn soon).

Template

Template helps you to edit HTML as well as customize the design of your blog. It will help you to

Choose new designs
Change the existing design like background, text, colors, blog widths and everything needed to make the blog customized.

Settings

As the name indicates, settings allows you to change/update your preferences. This is where some of the 'search engine optimization' techniques were employed. We will learn about that in-detail in the next section. For now just go through the below picture and see the various sub-headings under settings. The sub-groups being

Basic - settings for Blog Title, Meta description, blog address
Posts and comments - settings to include or exclude word verification, member sign in for comments etc
Mobile and email - settings to mail posts after publishing
Language and formatting - Translation, time and date settings
Search preferences - settings for meta tags, re-directions, crawling and indexing etc
Other - Blog feed, footer and analytics settings

You may check the next part - Course - 3 | Basic Blogger settings required before publishing a post in my next course.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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How to create a free blogger blog | course - 1

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 11:13:00 +0000

So, you made your mind to start writing articles using blogger blog. That's really good. Creating blogs with blogspot is really easy and free too ! But free blogger blogs usually have the domain .blogspot; for example if you create a blog named abc, then it's domain will be something like abc.blogspot.com

You may upgrade to more custom domains (like .com, .in, .net, .org) anytime in the future, preferably after getting good blogging experience. This post named "Create first blog" is the first course of the series "How to create my blogger blog".

Let us look at the step-by-step procedure of creating a blog with the help of pictures.

Step - 1

Sign in to blogger account using your Google account details. If you don't have an account, create one by filling all the required details. Once you log in, you will be landing to a page as shown below.

OK, since you are new to the blogger, you won't be seeing any blogs. To create a blog navigate to the left side of the page to see the button 'New Blog' as shown below. Click that tab.

Step -2

Clicking 'New Blog' displays a pop up window as shown below. Enter the title of your blog in the space given. Be careful while selecting the title. Your blogs Title represents the name of your brand and therefore it should preferably carry the following characteristics :

Keep it short and simple
Use a keyword
Preferably use letters, don't use commas and other special characters
You may use your own name

keywords are some specific, major words that appear repeatedly in your blogs content. They are also the words usually searched by users in search engines. Say, if you want to search about "how to start a blog", then you would type that in the search bar right, now look for the most targeted words in the line, in this case it's 'blog' or 'start blog'; so consider them as keywords. My blog is mostly about blogging tips, that's why I chose "Easy Blogger Stuff". But however be careful with your selection !

Forecast the future and make an initial guess of the topics that you might be covering. Let me tell you the mistake that I did while choosing title for my blog. I actually thought that I would be covering only about blogging techniques, but as you can see I also discussed about SEO, social media strategies and marketing techniques. Actually these articles were written in flow, and I did the mistake of not forecasting the areas of my post. So couldn't add keywords like SEO, SMM etc in the title. Please take this as a lesson and do forecast the possible areas of your blog. Choose the most suited keyword in order to include them in the Title.

Using your own name is also allowed, but that will be less effective compared to the above. Bloggers use their names to see them as top influencers in the near future. And if you turn up as a notable person; then having your own name in domain will be an advantage. Users might find you with your name.

Step - 3

OK, now you understood how to select the most suitable Title to your blog, the next thing to do is to choose an address as shown in the above picture. The address is more or less your title and will reflects your brands image. Using title in address is customary and is preferred by almost all the bloggers. So, use the words (keywords or name) that you used in framing the title.

For example I choose the title 'Easy Blogger Stuff' to this blog and so my address should be something like

easybloggerstuff.blogspot.com
easy-blogger-stuff.blogspot.com
bloggerstuffmadeeasy.blogspot.com

Now we will analyze the above four samples for possibilities; starting from the third one

The address 'bloggerstuffmadeeasy' is looking good since it carries the keywords blog, blogger, made easy, blog made easy etc. Infact it is readable and is also assuming a good meaning too. Visitors can easily interpret the content of the blog. But the thing is it's very lengthy. While lengthy address are accepted, it's not preferred most of the times. So, let's look for other options.

The address 'easy-blogger-stuff' is quite readable. But the fact is usage of hyphen is not recommended. Remember; the new users who visits your site once or twice might be willing to return back by searching your blog in the web and if you use hyphen or any other special character, they will not be able to find you easily. So, it's always better to use plain wordings.

The address 'easybloggerstuff' is comparatively short and also doesn't have any hyphens or underscores. Also 'easyblogging' works fine but I want to add 'stuff' to all my blogs as I started my first blog named 'Stuffyoulook'.

You can see that I used 'Easy Blogger Stuff' as blog's title but selected 'test-ebs' as the address, that doesn't sound usual right ? Anyway I changed the title as 'test-ebs' by going through the settings (that you will learn from my next post). You may change the title and even blog's address (domain or URL) anytime later, but please be sure that whatever changes you make should be before publishing your blog. Once you publish your blog and some visitors start finding you, then changing either Title or domain won't be useful and so not advisable.

Step - 4

I hope you understood some rules for selecting a good address, right ? Now choose your selection and enter the same in the space provided and Google will tell you automatically whether that address is available or not. If not jumble the words and try till you find something appropriate. After jumbling, re-arrange the title accordingly.

Step - 5

OK, finally you need to select a design (template) for your new blog. There are 34 default templates available in blogger. However there are no restrictions and you are allowed to customize your own design. You are free to choose and style as per your requirements. For now select anyone of the available default template and click 'Create Blog'. Remember; design process is continuous and you may not design at once. You may be required to change the layout and arrangements as time goes. We will learn that soon.

Step - 6

OK, now you should be seeing your blogs name displayed in the window as shown below.

Also check the tab 'View Blog' next to your blog name. click that. This is how your blog looks. I chose watermark template and since there is no single post yet, that's why the blog is looking empty. The 'About Me' page appears by default. However we may re-arrange it like we wished.

You may check the next part here - Course 2 : Blogger settings and terms explained

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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SMM strategies - to boost your business traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 17:49:00 +0000

Why social media presence is required for small business ?

Unlike B2B and B2C companies, small business may not be able to spend considerable amount of money on advertisements. Even some B2B companies are facing difficulty in making huge investments on ads; and so they are stepping back. Some of them even stopped relying totally on advertisements.

But, thanks to social media. These tools are helping business/brand to do marketing without much expenses, and interestingly they are turning as a weapon for brands growth. Every brand should therefore target for SMM strategies by utilizing them effectively without overlooking their importance. Here are some important tips for you to realize and implement.

1. Increase online presence

We all know some facts about McDonald and Pepsi, they are well known business players all over the world, right ?. But in spite of having their vast presence, they are still engaged in spreading their brand through online as well as advertisement. That itself proves the power of social presence. We need to constantly pinch people saying that "We are still active". Without getting noted by people, your brand won't get attention from audience and so it's important that you increase your brands online presence. You have to tell the world that there is a brand and that can offer some desired benefits to the interested. If you don't do this, then your brand might get hidden somewhere and it's only you (and some your friends) who visit your brand !

2. Selected and targeted media

There are more than hundreds of social media websites till date. Not all social media networks suits your business, in fact it's very difficult to maintain a constant and active participation in all networks. So, it's always advisable to select most suited/appropriate networks that drive more audience to your business. Choosing three to four social media platforms showed good results.

3. Best social media to share content

OK, we have just learnt - how selective participation in social media pays good results to our business. Now the question is "which social media is best to my business ?, where I need to be active to drive traffic to my business ?" Of course this is a big challenge to all business. Some brands usually end up involving with false social media that doesn't help the business grow.

Research the market, research your competitors

To decide 'The best social media' that suits your brand, you need to understand the behavior of market ongoing practices. Explore and understand where your competitors are playing. Compare the behavior of many competitors and then you will automatically understand where to keep your brand active. For example say, competitor A is active in Twitter and has got 20K followers and competitor B is active in Pinterest but has only 3K followers, then it does mean that for that niche, targeting twitter should be better. However it also depends on other factors like

Frequency of sharing
Quality of content
Variety of content
Time from which they are active in market
Marketing STRATEGIES they employed
Promotions and giveaway techniques

Do analyze the above factors; by considering at least three to four competitors and then you will come to know the best place for sharing your content.

4. Serve even one !

If say you got only one follower in your social network., then also don't under-estimate or neglect that single gentlemen, just keep on sharing your works as usual. You might have seen many great influencers having quite a good number of followers (starting from thousands to millions) but you might also have noticed that they aren't sharing things frequently/regularly. I even noticed that some of them are active only once or twice in a week.

But can you imagine how much strain they took to grow that huge network ? They too started from the scratch with a single follower and because of their initial active participation and care for the followers, they achieved this much. So, as a beginner you need to be really patient and optimistic. Single follower is just an example for comparison. Neglecting even a single follower is a big loss. Care should be given each and every individual as far as possible.

5. Search for new followers, connect with influencers

Keep searching for new audience; whom are interested in your content. Instead of waiting for their follow, you yourself approach and follow them. Soon, they will follow you back. Connect with as many influencers as possible and analyze

how they are behaving
how they are responding
what kind of posts they are sharing and
how often they are sharing

Regularly visit the profiles of influencers (as many as possible) and search for the people who are following these influencers. Follow these new people in order to attract them and follow you back. This is a very good way of socializing and driving new audience to your brand.

6. Leave comments in influencer pages and get recommended

If you are running a website or online blog, then trust me leaving comments in influencers page works like a gem. As you know, some thousands visit influencers page (website/blog) everyday. So, if they find you in the comment section, then they will definitely visit yours too ! But you need to be sincere in writing comments and not comment just for backlinks. You may also request some of the influencers to visit your page and leave their suggestions/recommendations in the comments, so that who ever visits your page and go through the comments will understand the importance of your site.

Learn more about Backlinks | comments best practices

7. Same content in all networks ?

Like we discussed, not all social media suits your total business. And it's usual to have multiple content area, like say if you run a blog, then you may be discussing about online marketing, technology and more. In such case, the best thing to do is to post relevant content in the network that has active audience for that particular niche. Say; you may select Pinterest for sharing technology related content and you may use Facebook and twitter for online marketing related content. But not like sharing all content in all media. That doesn't sound impressive.

However, you first need to understand the behavior of audience in all social networks. Understand what type of information audience prefer and share in each social media websites. Do act accordingly for better results.

8. Targeted approach - (Objectives and goals)

Of course I should have discussed this in the beginning. Before you start marketing with social media, set your objectives and goals. Target for that and act accordingly. Your objective may be any of these :

Brand awareness and exposure
Build audience or traffic
Promotions
Sales parameters (ROI)
Products and Services

Your objective may be just to make people aware of your brand, or you may wish to sell something, you want to attract customers by freebies and giveaways like coupons etc. Decide your goal and approach your audience accordingly.

9. Active member in groups

Well, most people join groups and forums to get their doubts clarified or likely to explore some new developments in a particular niche. If they find someone being active and responsive to their queries, then they would love such people for sure and would recommend them to their community (friends and other group members). Therefore, sparing some time to solve others problems would indirectly save your own time for finding new and regular customers.

Responding to users queries might showcase your talent/ grip in that subject and in this process more people will come to know about your potency. So act wisely and be an active group participant. Give away your suggestions. This world is always filled with good and bad, some people may not agree with your opinion, but don't worry just give your intellectual views. You will then see the miracle !

10. Creative Content

Whatever techniques you employ and whatever freebies you giveaway won't turn successful if your business is poor at quality, I mean content. Quality rules the entire world and it is this quality that makes your content a big hit/success. Keep it user accessible, target for delivering qualitative content rather than aiming for ways of driving audience. A qualitative content will drive you enough traffic even without the need of any free giveaways ! It's like the saying 'Success follows hard-work'.

Learn here - Facts about content | Best practices for beginners

11. Brand Vs human

Act like a human, even though you represent a brand. Suggest, comment and share like a friend. There's a lot of difference between a brand and a friend. Branding is like 'targeting only business - caring for ROI' (Return on Investment); but being friendly reminds the saying 'sharing is caring, we care for you'. Working with this attitude helps you grow your business at a rapid phase.

12. Appreciate others

Everybody loves to get appreciated. Acknowledge others for their works and contributions. Even, appreciate the followers who pose questions or answer others queries. This will help you build a strong community relationship and will last for a longer period. Remember socializing is all about building relationship and not about 'only sales'.

13. Infographics, Images and videos

I have been discussing about multimedia in almost all of my posts, such is it's importance. In fact infographics are performing well these days. Images and infographs attract more people and drives huge traffic to your brand. So, make a strategy of utilizing these resources. You may use these free online tools to make inforgraphs.

Canva

infogr'am

Piktochart

Visual'ly

easel'ly

However making a infograph is time taking process and sometimes it consumes more time than writing an article. So, If you have capacity, spare a little amount to hire a good designer, who work on infographics. That will save your own time, so that you could better concentrate more on content !

14. Using same profile in all social media pages

It's essential to maintain a brand image in the chosen networks by creating a good profile. It's even important to maintain same profile in all social media websites so that audience could find them and easily connect with the brand. If possible get your profile images as well as backdrops designed from a designer.

15. Consistency and Dedication

Well, gaining reputation and prominence is a time taking process and requires a lot of dedication. Like I said earlier, one should be patient and consistent. There are a lot of competitors striving to highlight themselves and if you don't show consistency or dedication, then you will be at loss. Be patient and keep moving.

16. Free giveaway

Freebies are the coolest way of growing network. It's a strategy that most top companies follows; like giving some coupons, eBooks, free tips, courses and more.

Finally I would like to summarize our learning as follows for better SMM

Increase online presence
Select limited but best social media networks
Research the market, reasearch your competitors
Understand your Audience
Targeted approach - set objectives and goals
Use multimedia - infographs and images
Be an active group member
Be friendly and human, not a brand
Search for new followers and connect with them
Connect with influencers
Comment on influencers page
Get recommended by influencers
Aim for delivering quality content
Raise thought provoking questions in forums
Serve all
Free giveaways - tokens, coupons, discounts, eBooks etc.
Maintain consistency and dedication

Now learn about - Mistakes you might be doing in Social Media marketing

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Triberr basics | How to create an account and link blog posts

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:59:00 +0000

Well, we had seen the benefits of joining Triberr and how it helps boost traffic as well as followers. We know see how to create an account as well as link our blog RSS with Triberr to enable others share our content. Follow the step-by-step procedure.

Step - 1

Signup to Triberr by giving your name, mail ID and your website URL. As soon as you get into, Triberr will ask you to integrate either of the three accounts viz. Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Select your desired media (prefer Twitter). Once you are done linking your social media account. You will see a page with details as shown below.

Enter the preferred keywords relevant to your website or blog niche, in the 'Get Started' option as shown below.

If you are a social media marketer, enter something like SEO, SMM, marketing, business, entrepreneur, content making, curating etc. Then click search, you will then be shown a page with some active posts like the picture shown below.

Step - 2

Look for the tab 'Tribes' provided at the top center of the page and click it. Then you will be shown an overview of your tribes. Since you are new, you will only see 'New Tribe' bar at the top. If you scroll a little down, you will see some available tribes most suited to your preferred search area. Of course you can click them and join as a follower or member. However we will learn here to see how to create our own tribe. Click the 'New Tribe' option.

Step - 3

Clicking this will display a pop-up display where you need to give a name to your tribe as well as select the 'category' as shown below. Click 'save' after your selection.

Step - 4

Now, your new tribe is ready, but we need to do some more settings in order to make it more useful. Click the 'Account' drop down menu and click 'Settings' as shown in the below picture.

Step - 5

You will now see the settings page 'Manage your profile'. Enter the required details, don't forget to give a unique username as well as bio.

Step - 6

Now, click the tab 'My Social Networks' and you should see the following page. As you can see the twitter profile is already updated because I used initially twitter to integrate my account.

You may even add your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles here. OK, Now click 'Assign Tribes' to see a popup window with the list of tribes (as shown below), that you either created or joined. In the picture; the tribe 'Social media blogging' is what I created and 'Bloggers zone' is what I joined before creating my own. If you had joined multiple Tribes, then you should be seeing all that tribe list here. Ensure that your twitter or any other social media profile is linked with that. The blue tab indicated that the profiles were assigned to the respective tribes. If you don't see blue tabs, just click on the plain profiles.

Remember you can assign only a single blog to a tribe and adding multiple blogs to the same tribe is not allowed. But your blog can be used in any number of tribes.

Step - 7

OK, once you have ensured that tabs are appearing, click 'Save'. Now, the next thing to do is to link your blogs feed URL to the tribe. Linking blog feed URL, allows the Triberr to automatically fetch your new posts to your account. It then display the posts to the bloggers as well as tribe members. So, linking your feed is an important task to be done before getting active in Triberr. For this, click 'My Blogs' tab provided in the same page and click 'Edit' button as shown in the picture.

Step -8

You will now see a pop-up window. Give some name to your website, paste your homepage URL as well as RSS Feed URL. (I hope you already have feed burner account and a valid feed URL for your blog. If you don't have one, please do Google it and join feed burner to get a feed URL). Now click 'Save'.

Step - 9

After saving and returning to the same page, click 'Check Feed' link as shown below, which will now fetch your recent posts (Whenever you publish a new post, do check this as an extra precaution). After fetching your posts, click 'Assign Tribes', again you will see a pop-up window.

You will now see the list of tribes (your own tribe and the one you joined), Be careful to select the best tribe because every Tribe can only have a single blog (for 30 days), so choose the correct tribe that you wish to include, preferably select your own tribe to be assigned, or if you don't have a tribe then choose the tribe having more reach, members and where members frequently update their posts.

Click the drop down menu and select the blog URL. (If you had added two blogs then you may add a blog to one tribe and the other blog to some other tribe). Keep the rest unassigned as shown.

You are done with linking your blog to your tribe. Now, the left job is to search for relevant bloggers or influencers and invite them to your blog. You may also update a status under 'Bonfires' stating that you are new, created a tribe and wish to add more members to your tribe. Now, to receive more followers and get noted by influencers just start sharing others posts by placing your cursor on the green 'share' button. That's it.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Triberr Benefits | How it drives traffic and followers

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 14:44:00 +0000

What is a Triberr ?

Well, I can say Triberr is neither a micro blogging site nor a social media network something like Facebook or Pinterest. It is called Blog Amplification Platform, a network solely dedicated to the bloggers to group similar minded bloggers and share others blog posts or works. Trust me Triberr will increase your Twitter followers from 100 to 1000 (at least). Yes it's true, all you need to do is share others posts in Triberr.

Who use Triberr ?

Well, bloggers join groups or communities that are more or less related to their niche. These groups are named as 'Tribe'. Of course, Triberr is not meant for the audience (whom get benefited from the blog posts), but it is basically meant for the bloggers to help fellow bloggers in order to receive help to their own blog, just like trading. The interesting thing in Triberr is that there is no need to post your new blog posts manually. Once you update your blog settings (initially), then Triberr automatically receives your newly updated post links (along with description and a picture) through feeds.

Photo attributes : Kashflow blog

As soon as you publish a post, Triberr immediately grabs that as well as share the same in your social media account (Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn) from your side. In other words you don't need to take the pain of writing all the descriptions, copying URL, giving tags, loading pictures, like we do in other social media platforms like Tumblr, Stumble Upon etc.

Reach 200K ?

By joining two tribes that too in just four days, I achieved nearly 200K reach, it means my post will be visible to these 200K people ! The thing we need to do is search for relevant tribes that seems active; and join them by sending a membership request to the owner of the tribe (usually referred to as chief). You can even create your own groups (Tribe) and invite co-bloggers to join yours. Alternatively, other bloggers may find your tribe in search results (or so called 'bonfires' that is available in Triberr to let new tribers post something about themselves or invite people to join their own tribe) and possibly they might approach your tribe to get a membership. In this way, your blog network grows and soon there will be many people sharing your content as well as recommend you to their own people. Of course you too do the same.

My content shared by un-known ?

The biggest benefit of being a member of Triberr is that your content will get shared by many unknown co-bloggers, those whom are unknown to you or even they doesn't know ! Such is the power of this platform. Audience (end-users) are in no way related in triberr. Also, Triberr was designed with very lovely user-interface where it doesn't take even 5 seconds to share a content. All you need to do is just place your cursor over a button and you are done ! No need to paste URL, no need of writing descriptions, nothing. Everything is done automatically.

Image source : Jeffbullas website

How multiple sharing helps ?

The other important thing to note is whenever you share multiple posts (say 10 posts) of others in Triberr, the posts won't be appearing immediately in your social media timeline (like twitter, if you preferred), the posts will be shared with some time gap (say from 5 to 20 minutes) thus maintaining a naturality. It means what you share within 10 minutes will be updated one-by-one in your social media timeline with good time gap (say upto 2 hours), thus allowing you to look over your own work or blog without minding social presence. I started doing this : share multiple posts at a time, then work on my own blog (or even take a short nap !) and after returning from my work, I see my timeline still getting updated with shares.

Where my shares are updated ?

Triberr allows one to connect with three major social media networks viz Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. You can integrate your accounts with Triberr so that whenever you share someones (or your own) posts, then that will go automatically to your preferred social media account. I preferred to integrate only Twitter account because Twitter is the place from where my blog has been receiving good number of followers as well as traffic to my posts. Of course Facebook and LinkedIn are handful but the fact is sharing others content, doesn't help me grow much traffic in such social media. I prefer to manually update in such platforms.

Benefit of sharing others blog

When you share a post of a co-blogger (he may be new to you) in say twitter, then that update will appear followed by @username, username here is the twitter name of the co-blogger. So, he will get to now that you shared his content and hence he may do the following actions

Re-tweet your shared content
Share your content like you shared his
Add you back to his circle
Appreciate you with your name in it

1. Re-tweet your shared content

Now, let us analyze some facts about this, when the co-blogger re-tweets your share, then almost all the followers of him would come to know the link along with your twitter name. It's like he/she is recommending you to his/her followers. In this process there's a grater chance of getting noted by new people and hence they might follow you too.

Image source : Open2source

2. Co-blogger shares your content

Out of courtesy, he too starts sharing your content from Triberr, just to show his thanks to you, because you shared his. So, in other words your involvement to find new people have drastically reduced and your co-blogger is helping you find new followers as well as blog readers. Some one is promoting you, Awesome isn't it ?

Even I observed that many influencers are supporting me. After joining Triberr, I started sharing content of bloggers who seemed famous, I mean influencers. Surprisingly, they acknowledged me and they too started sharing my content. You know what it mean, my profile will be visible to not less than 5K new people, since every influencer has got good number of followers !

3. Co-blogger adds you back

Well, after he follows you and you follows him back, the next thing he does is find you in Triberr through the tribes and may add you to their own tribe as a member. When you are added as a member by some one in a tribe, then it's like he is recommending you. I mean you have been given credit as a valuable blogger and the credit has been brought to the notice of fellow tribe-mates. And whenever your post gets updated, then the co-blogger as well as other tribe-mates will definitely

share your content (at least to 60%). You know what it mean; your content will be shown to millions !

4. Co-blogger appreciates you

When you share his content, he will be give a reply something like 'Thanks for sharing' or 'Thanks for RT', which again will be visible to his followers. Hence it's like appreciating you in front of many people. Again there is a greater chance getting more followers.

Image source : Kindredgifts blog

These are the points that I noted with my experience with Triberr, thought like sharing with you so that you could also find good number of followers as well as traffic to your blog. Anyway, helping a fellow blogger is always awesome and would be delightful too ! isn't it ?

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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How to add pages and customize page menu tabs in blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 09:39:00 +0000

Having page menu/tabs in a blog; either at the top or at the side of the page helps the audience easily navigate/browse through the blog. It's similar to 'categories' in web directories where different content are grouped under separate headings (like education, business, lifestyle, home etc) so as to act like a catalog. Even Google recommends the use of user/HTML sitemap in every blog so that audience could easily browse through and find their desired content.

Learn more about advantages of user sitemap to SEO

Now, having pages with relevant post links are indirectly a way of site-mapping your blog; since you will be placing all your blog links somewhere or other. Note that having drop down menu style of tabs is another way of doing this. But as you can see, many blogs has got not less than 50 posts and it will be quite uneasy for the users to check them in the drop down list. So, it seems better to use a page for every category and include links relevant to that tab category. By employing pages you can include as many links as you can. Note that you can even give sub-categories for a given category. For example, If the category is say education, then you may include sub categories like school, entrance exams, Engineering, medical etc. This will look more readable to the user.

Remember; a normal user spend at the most 1 to 3 minutes in your site and he will try to check as many topics as he can (if found !). So, if the blog is designed to allow easy navigation, then the user might find related posts quickly and hence there's a greater possibility of viewing multiple posts !

Learn here how to add page tabs at the top or side bar in blogger using the following steps. I also gave some additional tips related to this subject at the end of this page to help you customize your blog for better design and look.

Step - 1

Log in to your blogger account and go-to blog > Layout and click 'Add a Gadget' button (anywhere in your blogs layout) as shown below.

Step - 2

Clicking 'Add a gadget' will display a window with a list of available gadgets, scroll down a little to see 'Pages'. Click that. Clicking this will display a pop up window, something like shown below. The menu shows a list of available pages in your blog.

Step - 3

Note that; only those pages which are checked will be displayed. If you want to hide a specific page from displaying, just un-check that option. For example I unchecked 'SEO' page in the below picture and as you can see in the 'Page order' list (see below picture) the tab 'SEO' disappeared.

You may even re-arrange the order of the page tabs by just dragging the pages to the desired position with the use of a mouse. The arrangement in the below picture will display tabs in the order

HOME > Blod Design > Make Money > Social Media

Step - 4

After you make your selection, click 'Save'. Now go-to the design of your blog (Layout) and drag the Page gadget to the top of the Layout (but below header gadget) as shown below, only if you wish to display the pages at the top of the blog like I did for this blog.

If you wish to display the tabs in some other location (say side bar) then drag the Page gadget to that location.

Step - 5 (Add a Page)

OK, Now you know how to create tabs as well as re arrange them, we further see on how to add more pages. For doing this go-to blog > Pages as shown below. Click 'New Page'

Step - 6

Clicking 'New Page' will display a page similar to what we see while writing a new post; just like the one shown below. Do give a title in the space provided (numbered 1 in the picture). This title name will appear as a Page in the tab list. Don't forget to write search description for your new page (numbered 2 in the picture). Giving a brief and attractive description (with keywords) will help the search engines index your page and hence show them in search results.

Learn more about search description importance and how to add separate search descriptions to individual posts

Once you made your page click Publish and you are done. If you want to re arrange the order of this page in tabs just follow step 3

Step - 7 (Additional help)

OK, let me give you some more useful tips regarding this topic. Now we will see how to customize tab buttons - color of the tab, size, borders and more.

To do this go-to Template > Customize as shown in the picture. Now you should be seeing the design of your page.

Notice some options at the top left of the page and click 'Advanced' as shown below. Now all you need to do is customize Font, values, colors and more under the two sub categories 'Tabs Text' and 'Tabs background' based on your blog design and color style. It's your own turn to choose the styles that match your blog. Make the selection and inspect how it looks by viewing your blog. Once you are satisfied with your customization click 'Apply to Blog' button provided at the top right corner and you are done !

OK, sometimes bloggers wish to put external post links in place of a page tab just for giving additional information. The link may be related to the same blog or related to some other website. Clicking such tabs will direct the visitor to the link post.

To do this go-to blog > Layout > Pages (the page gadget that you created), click Edit to see the popup window similar to that shown in the second picture of this post. Click the link '+Add link page', which displays the following window. Give a desired title, that you want to show and paste the URL of the link. Save the changes and you are done.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Black Hat SEO | worst SEO practices to be avoided

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 13:06:00 +0000

Well, when you are tasting sweet, you should also know the taste of hot. We had already discussed 12 tips and good practices for SEO, let's see the practices which is considered as offending during SEO process. Google considers the practice of tricking the search engines to get indexed (those websites having little or no useful content) as 'Search engine spam' also called as 'Spamdexing' or 'Balck-Hat SEO'.

While the practice of attaining SEO through recommended and regular practice is considered as 'White-Hat SEO'. Let's look at the practices that lead to Black-Hat SEO. Knowing this is like a precaution step to avoid such practices, which will otherwise make Google to ban your site by either dropping your PageRank or by completely deleting your webpage details in their database.

1. Page title and URL differing from the post content

Usually this is referred to as "Cloaking". Some bloggers do the trick of including the most searched keywords in title or URL of pages that has completely different content. I mean the content and titles are totally unrelated. This is to make the robots index the page and show the same in top search results so as to get more page clicks. This posts won't be useful to the users as they can't find their required information, thus leaving a bad impression on search engines.

Ultimately, audience will lose the trust on search engines. This will affect greatly in the long run. Therefore, search engines are very keen in identifying such sites and eliminating them from their list by dropping their PageRanks or completely deleting the pages from their database.

2. False Redirects and popups

It's the process of including links with different keywords, clicking which will take one to some other (not-related) page. Some bloggers do the trick of clubbing ad links to a link so that whenever users try to click that, some unwanted ads popup. This kind of practices is to be avoided. Say if the link reads 'Justin bieber latest release songs', but clinking this will take to a page something like 'Buy one get one free in our showroom', such practices is odd and is considered as black-hat behavior.

3. Hidden cookies, Invisible links & text

The practice of stuffing content as well as links with cookies and hidden links, in order to get clicked from visitors (without their knowledge to earn money !) is also considered as black-hat. There are some sites where even by clicking on page tabs, pictures or even text will direct one to some ads. Avoid doing such nonsense things in your blog.

4. Multiple usage of not related words, phrases

This is concerned with the content. Flooding the article with words (or any other phrase) just intended to make it look longer or to highlight some major keywords by aimlessly repeating the same words N number of times is a waste and of course a worst practice. Your content lose readability and your audience will face poor experience with your content. This will not only reduce your sites traffic in the long run, but also drop PageRank.

5. Keyword stuffing in Titles' and meta tags

Using only keywords in titles, headings and meta tags is a great way of getting indexed quickly and also a great way of getting drained in web world. A title should have optimal keyword must be a heading type, I mean it must read some meaning without just a plain line or wordings.

6. Link farms or trading

Link trading is the trick of mutually linking between sites just for getting ranks. Two or more bloggers come to an understanding, they will dedicate their pages just to put links (backlinks) of the other bloggers. The other blogger will also do the same thing by including the links of the first blogger, thinking to boost their PageRanks. Well, it's the opposite that actually happens.

Google is not a fool to get tricked easily. Google uses spammer technology to identify such sites and punish them. So avoid trading links with anyone, just blog casually. Use links from external source only when you feel the necessity for them, that too when they offer additional information to the readers.

7. Duplicating content

Content that was stolen (copied) from top blogging sites (already published content) and using them in other sites are considered as 'duplicating content'.

Google released two updates Panda (in 2011) and Penguin (in 2012) to drop the PageRanks of those sites having duplicate content. This is in response to the findings that some websites started sharing content of each other, just to get good PageRanks.

Apart from the above discussion, below is a quick list of things that has to be avoided to protect your website from getting banned

Mirror web-siting - Avoid maintaining similar websites with same content but with different names or URL's.
URL direction - directing users to another page without their knowledge and necessity
Broken links - broken link is an indication of site poor health. If more broken links are found, then that site will get punished
Avoid including links from spam web pages
Avoid over-linking in order to build backlinks
Avoid going for paid links
Avoid doing other black-hat SEO tricks
Avoid buying or selling links - instead focus on content
Avoid having multiple homes in your blog
Avoid keyword dilution in title and URL
Don't include only images with no written content

Finally, here are some supportive images to explain the phenomena of punishing websites

1. Banning of major brands by ChrisDavies -

2. Another video about SEO by Marco silva

Here is how German BMW got banned from Google for spamming from Blogoscoped

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Add floating social media buttons using ADD THIS tool

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:52:00 +0000

Social media marketing is the best way of promoting your business, and it applies well to any niche be it be a blog, website, sales, promotions, education, finance, lifestyle, politics, travel and lot more to mention (actually it applies to all fields). So, it's important to ensure that our business is well connected with preferred social networks. By including social media buttons especially the floating type will allow a user to quickly share the content. Readers won't be reading the entire article most of the, yes it's true.

Only those who actually want's to learn will go through but the remaining people (like say influencers, reviewers and friends) will just make an overview of your post and there is a little chance getting to the end of your page. So, having floating type buttons are advantageous in all respects. It URGES /reminds the users to share the page.

But it's worth noting that, not all social network sites suits all business. For example if your blog is about local education, then you may go for Facebook, Google plus, LinkedIn. The remaining social networks like Twitter, Pinterest, Stumble upon etc won't be much beneficial. Like this for almost every category, only some social networks fits best for popularizing as well as marketing.

In this article we will learn how to put floating social media buttons using addthis tool. The buttons will appear as shown below in your blog. You may also follow the same procedure to use this in your website.

Step - 1

Sign up or Log in to Addthis account giving little details to it. Once you sign into the account you will see a page with some tabs on top right corner. Click the settings button (shown as human icon).

Step - 2

You will then be redirected to a page. Click the 'Profile' link available at the left side of the page as shown below.

Scroll down a little to see 'Add a profile' link. Click the link and give a name to the profile say your own name. Then click 'Add'.

Step - 3

After you complete the above step, move to the top of the page and click 'Get the code' drop down button available at the right corner as shown below. Click 'Smart Layers'.

Step - 4

Scroll down a little to see some options in the left side. If you select 'blogger' in 'Platform', then you will get a widget that will be installed automatically without the need of copying any code. But the problem is this widgets are not working properly in blogs having dynamic themes.

So, instead of selecting blogger, choose 'A website' in the drop down list of 'Platform'.

Step - 5

The follow buttons are the one that appear in top right corner of the web page as can be seen in this blog. It basically allows users to connect with your blog or yourself (as you wish). So, check the follow button to 'ON' to see some common buttons with spaces for URL's as shown below. Copy and paste your respective social network URL extensions in the space provided.

You can select the desired buttons to show on the top. Say if you don't want to display LinkedIn button, then un-check that button as shown above. You can even choose other social networks by clicking 'Show More' link as shown above. Remember whatever changes you do, will appear in the preview pane of the same page.

Step - 6

Now scroll to the 'Share' option and select your choice : number of buttons. positioning of vertical buttons, either left or right. Also check 'What's Next' and 'Recommended content' to ON, they are very great and useful tools. Now click the drop down button 'More options' and select the profile to 'your profile' as shown in the below picture. Check whether you are satisfied with the selection or not by reviewing the Preview pane . Finally click 'Generate code' and copy the displayed code.

Step - 7

Now log in to your blogger account and go-to blog > Layout and click 'Add a gadget' as shown below.

Step - 8

A menu with a list of available gadgets will appear, scroll to find 'html/JavaScript', click that and paste your copied code in the space available, then click 'save'. After doing this click 'Save arrangement' in your blogger dashboard and view your blog only to see the social buttons appear.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Search Engine optimization | 12 SEO techniques

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 17:41:00 +0000

SEO ?

Famously called as "Search Engine Optimization" is the technique or process of enabling your website or blog in top search results of search engines. Now, to understand why we have to care for SEO, let me tell you that according to Google statics, those websites that appear in the first three results of search engines enjoy 90-95% of clicks and page visits. So, it's important that we make our websites visible at least in the first two pages of search results. Also, PageRanks matter in search results. Those websites which enjoy higher page ranks are said to be "healthy sites", in other words 'sites with good SEO'.

1. Easy navigation and user/html sitemap

The common mistake that most of us do is not having proper navigation system in our web page. Navigation in the sense, ease of access of posts or links. Having a very good sitemap (HTML) in our website usually referred to as user sitemap is a proper way of channelizing links/posts. New users tend to overview your blog by going through all of the headings of posts, and if they face difficulty in identifying you posts, then you are at a lose !

So, do include a directory in your blog that will categorize posts under separate headings for easy finding and navigation. Remember XML sitemaps are only for search engine bots while HTML sitemaps are for both bots and users.

2. Inter Linking

It's a very good practice to include some of your previous posts links within your new post (inside your article). I mean inter-linking. Remember links in footer and even side bars, have less preference (by search engines) than links within the content. So, try inter-linking your webpages like I did in this post. Links from other related webpages are also advantageous but better avoid inducing links of unrelated webpages (webpages of different niche).

Well everything has a limit, for example as a human we have to eat food but it doesn't mean we have to take breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time. Same goes with linking, Inter linking of course is a great practice but over-linking is a waste practice. Include links only at necessary locations that too when required.

3. Domain

My blog is having .blogspot domain (low domain) and is only three weeks old, but my post links are already appearing in Google and Bing search results ! I did no do trading or nothing. I have other blog Stuff about CEED Exam which is 7 months old, but my posts are appearing in the first place of search results related to the keywords. The thing is I don't believe in domains. Some people say that .com, .net etc domains have higher preference.

They might be correct but if you have blog that has unique content (content/niche that is not easily available in the web world) then domain has nothing to do with PageRanks ! But having some (or at least one) major keyword(s) in the URL or domain name is a big advantage and has upper hand in search results.

4. Content

Content happened to be the most important concern for Google as well as users. This giant web world is just meant to deliver content and we all chose blogging to write something, something that is useful or helpful to the remaining people. So, the main theme of blogging is content only, aim for making a good cum useful content and mind less for your sales or benefits initially.

Once you create a great blog with quite a good number of posts, then you may aim for ways of making money. In this context, don't make the mistake of duplicating a content. Duplicating in the sense copying the content from others or posting the same content multiple number of times in your own blog. Google considers these practices as Black-hat SEO and therefore ban your website or reduce your PageRanks so as to hide your page completely from the web world.

Google released two updates Panda (in 2011) and Penguin (in 2012) to drop the PageRanks of those sites having duplicate content. This has been taken to action after noting that some websites started sharing content of each other, just to get good PageRanks.

Learn here Content making facts | best practices for beginners

5. keywords

Having sufficient and related keywords in your post/content is one required factor for SEO. Whenever users type a search query in search bars, crawlers will search for the related search query and index the page that have optimal keyword density in the page's content, URL as well as title. So, having suitable keywords is an added advantage. But never flood your posts with repetitive keywords, just for the sake of indexing and PageRanks. Search engines can easily find that and therefore avoids such pages from indexing.

Use most searched keywords like "how to ..." and "my". Matt Cutt revealed that having such keywords in page title's, search descriptions and URL's contribute a lot for indexing a page. That's because these are the keywords mostly neglected by the blog owners ! and most of the users search with these type of words like :

"how to get my blog indexed"

"how to boost my blog's traffic"

6. URL Structure

Keep your URL descriptive and preferably avoid useless extensions; something like

http://abc.com/seo-techniques9578455/

Crawlers will get confused and so there's a little chance of your page appearing in top search results. Include some major keywords but don't stuff them. URL should be readable and also of sentence type.

example of stuffing - http://abc.com/seo-indexing-optimization-pageranks/

Good practice - http://abc.com/15-tricks-to-optimize-my-blog-for-SEO/

Even though the above URL holds less keywords, it looks quite natural and readable. I had already discussed at length about URL selection.
Learn how to customize default blog post URL in blogger

7. Analytics and webmaster

Well, using Analytics and webmaster free tools are a great way of understanding your audience behavior as well as SEO tactics. The more you understand your blog's stats, the more likely you will adjust your blog to the requirements and hence SEO. Once you became a regular user of analytics or webmaster tools, You will understand that you are automatically doing some SEO techniques without the need of any external SEO resources. That's the power of self analysis !
Learn here - Benefits of upgrading to Universal Analytics

8. No broken links

Broken links are an indication of site's illness. Inspect each and every page of your blog for any such links and if found, correct it. Broken links annoy users and search engine bots. A blog having many broken links will not get crawled properly leading to low PageRanks. So, do scan your content regularly.

9. Title, headings & search descriptions

Title act as the first impression for your page and impresses both the users as well as crawlers. A title should be related to that page's content; preferably with keywords in it. Search description meta tags are the short summary of your page, they are usually referred as 'snippets' and will appear in search results. So, it's your turn to frame a good but brief description about your page, that might probably attracts the visitors once they read it.

A very good title and search description are enough to let users click your page's link, and possibly there is 80% chance of getting clicked provided the page appears in top search results.
Learn here - Best Title making practices for SEO

10. Submitting URL's to - search engines, directories, book marking sites

Your site should be visible firstly to search engines, then only to users. Yes, search engines should get to know about your site's presence in order to display them. Therefore we need to ensure that our blog posts are properly submitted and indexed. While major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing takes your pages automatically (after submission of sitemap to their webmasters), submission to directories requires manual effort, I mean you need to personally submit them to get them reviewed by editors.

Learn here where to submit blog for indexing

11. Social media

Social media and directories not only drives traffic to your site, but also helps people identify your pages and so they may use your links in their own sites. In other words your blog is getting more backlinks and hence PageRanks.

Learn more about mistakes that must be avoided in SMM

12. Optimize your website/blog caring for

XML sitemaps, Labels/tags, meta tags & robots.txt files
Design - Blog layout with minimum graphics and mobile compatibility
Redirects and errors - care for any previous redirects or posts that has been deleted but the links of which are still left in your website.
Images & videos - Optimized use of images is preferred, pictures appear in Image search results and can have greater visibility
Boost organic traffic - Learn how to drive traffic to your blog
Backlinks & Page Ranks & Inbound links - Learn more about Back linking techniques
Group discussions, Comments (anchor texts) and forums - Learn more about comments best practices

These are the points that I wished to share with you.

Hope this helps.
Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

Sharing is caring. Like us in social networks to get updated with latest posts. Subscribe to our free mail service in RSS feeder.

ALSO SEE

Facts about Content making | Best practices

Social media marketing | Twitter best practices

Social media marketing | Facebook best practices

16 mistakes that you might be doing | Social media marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 14:58:00 +0000

Because of the importance and immeasurable value that social networks offers us, we often keep moving with our usual style of socializing. But in this process; there may be chances of forgetting some common fundamentals most essential to keep us socialized with our friends, followers or social mates. It's very important that you avoid such simple yet powerful mistakes, otherwise your reputation might get down and within less time you will be seeing someone else occupying your position. These 16 points were learned by observing many influencer's and gurus on how they are attracting many followers and how they are getting socialized. However, I also observed that many such people are also doing some of the below mistakes !
This is an extension to the topic - Social Media strategies to build traffic to your business

1. Not caring beginners ?

You know, most of us have been socializing not for getting more followers (something like to become a celebrity) but to popularize and market our brand, business, website or even a blog. So, we are actually intended to offer service to the interested audience, right ? But I see many influencer's neglecting beginners. They approached you to get socialized in order to get benefited from you; or you find him related to your business; then when you hesitate to add him to your list ?

I even also saw many people not replying to appreciations from beginners like "Sir, I saw your blog, feeling useful, thanks for sharing", if someone mentions you in this way, then do reply him at least with a simple "Thanks", that will ease him and keep him connected with you, otherwise he will think that you are egoistic and so neglects you. Remember only by the support of these kind of followers, we get popular.

2. Having non related visitors ?

If someone out of your niche found you and asked you to connect, then why hesitate ? do join them. You are socializing right. Don't feel like 'joining these people are not useful'. Who knows, he might have liked your style of socializing, way of writing or any other thing. If only he trades with you, then avoid such gentlemen as discussed below.

3. Link Trading - Liking not related blogs

OK, some marketers are very clever, they try to get just 'LIKES' from any kind of people, without caring whether their brand are useful to the people or not. Let me clear you this with my own example. As you can see this blog is all new. Slowly because of my exposure to LinkedIn groups many people came to know about me - about my work and some enjoyed reading my posts (they are still enjoying); thanks to the readers.

But the matter; is some came to my blog's Facebook page, liked the page and dropped a message saying 'Hi, I just liked your blog, do come and like my FB page by clicking this link'. Then, I said to myself 'Fine, why not, it will be my pleasure' and when I checked the link I was surprised, I saw that their page was something like fashion, furniture, dating and more. I was laughing and was thinking

'what's the use of liking this way?
neither this page is useful to me nor i'm gonna order furniture's from America staying in India, then what's their purpose ? how they benefit from my like ?.

Funny you know, just to get number of likes, trading 'likes' is a very bad thing. It will be of 0% use. Even if say I liked the page, I'm sure i'm not gonna visit that page again ! These kind of trading looks unnatural and one will get the feel that they are just acting in-human and are like 'barter system' - I give something and you give something. No use. Please avoid doing these kind of tradings. It doesn't show your status and people will under look you if you act similarly. Let it be business, but lets show some sincerity in that.

Picture source - Urban tips

4. Pumping same topic

Re sharing is a great way of exposing your content to many. It's a fact that not all people will be available at the same time. Depending on their geographic location and their profession, they will engage at different times. So, re-sharing your content helps you attain greater reach. But, hold down be careful, you might be over pumping your links !, yes ensure that you are not repeatedly showing the same links to the followers.

Posting the same topic say twice or thrice the same day will do OK, but not as much as 30. I saw some people posting the same link for every minute or in two minutes. I was surprised and I even got bad impression on them. Yes, you may also get the same thought and feel like 'hey, what's wrong with this guy ? why don't he keep quite for a while ?' like this the followers might be thinking about you when you pump topics aimlessly.

People will get bored. It's like eating same food of same taste thrice the same day or like say watching the same movie continuously for hours. In this process, if you are sharing a valuable information, then people might be neglecting it thinking that the share was just as usual. So, better maintain a gap between re-shares, if you don't find your content to be shared, then try posting similar interesting topics from others (by say re tweeting) or just spare your time to appreciate others work. This way will be far better and will help you grow network. However you may re-share the same topic say daily or once in a week, something like that built at different timings !

Picture source - Paragonist blog

5. Repeating same content ?

Many bloggers often does the mistake of discussing the same topic repeatedly, I mean making multiple posts about the same topic. For example, topics like

10 best SEO strategies
SEO best practices
SEO for beginners

OK, cool may be this topics are meant for different users, but the funniest thing is; I noted same headings and even same sentence repeated in all the posts ! I even saw many famous websites doing this. It might be just to write something and maintain their 'timings between posts'. Friends, delivering a quality content after a long time is far better than repeating the same kind of topic, it's like I discussed in my post - Content | Best practices for beginners having a single gold coin is worth than having 100 copper coins, right ?. Keep a practice of writing different topics.

6. Having incomplete profile

Well, you got a brand or your personal page. Then what ? the question is 'is that professional ?'. Not having a very good profile with no proper keywords are of little use. Visitors will firstly be checking your profile, after that only they see your posts, links and so on. It's like your profile is a first impression. So, please do spare time to complete your profile, ensure that you put some keywords and your major area of service and fill your web links where ever possible. Also interconnecting social networks like including your FB and G+ profile links in twitter will also help you to grow huge followers. Care for profile pictures and back drop.

7. Acting unnatural - being inhuman

OK, like I discussed some marketers assume unnatural behavior. They behave like robots and they are just pumping their own work with no relation with their followers, not even sharing others work. This type of behavior will soon hide you behind the screens and you will not be available to the followers.

Picture source - adoptingjames

8. Not responding to comments. re shares and favorites

Not responding to the queries of the followers is a bad remark, this applies even within your blog. Do favor them by giving them your valuable suggestions. Even if someone asked some other, involve in that discussion and show your honesty as a 'good socializer'. Trust me, this will boost your respect as well as followers. I have been talking more about getting more friends and followers, right ? no offense that's because when you have more connections and when you are a respected individual (be it be brand) you will do better marketing automatically ! Respond even to negative comments - followers will be watching how you gonna handle them with tactics.

9. Not appreciating others, no participation

People love feedbacks. They like their names highlited. Even if we share a simple "Good morning" in Facebook, we will check

how many likes I got,
how many comments I recieved
And most importantly who commented

So, giving proper credits and appreciation to others work is a way of mutual linking. It also applies to twitter retweets. If somebody retweets your work, then do appreciate them at least with simple thanks. That will work great.

10. It's not all about you !

The main meaning of socializing is "to get connected" and not to "get highlighted", socializing means making good relation with people, be it be long term. If you are boosting about yourself then you will remain as a 'comedy piece' It should not be all about you, not always. You are one among the ocean and you are the not only person topping. Treat others equally important and give value to them, their posts and their comments.

Do introduce some newbies to the already existing community and do write about others in their own blog (may be by commenting). This is a great way of showing your professional style and in this process you will see many people getting in touch with you, even from others blog !

11. Language and tone

Be friendly, Of course you are a senior and you have vast knowledge about something say social media, it doesn't mean everybody listens to you in the sense they won't appreciate rude way of writing and commenting. Using some proper appreciable words states your tone of friendliness.

12. Not knowing which social network to use and when

This is a major drawback and most new bloggers are getting confused in this regard. I see some bloggers aimlessly posting in a social media that is not good for that niche ! Yes not all social network suits all category of marketing or blogging. For an example if your blog's niche is about a local education, then Pinterest won't be helpful at all. It's up-to us to decide which platform to select by researching the networks quite a time. I will discuss this topic in-detail in my upcoming posts. For now let us assume that we should identify best networks that is good for our niche and keep engaged with that only.

13. Having accounts in ALL social networks

It's great to connect in all networks but it won't be easy to manage them and in fact not advantageous too. May be in the beginning you will seem active but slowly you will understand how difficult it is to manage all social media. If you are so interested then better engage an employee specifically to manage social media.

14. Setting a brand but not handling it regularly or even forgetting it

Well, your brand is set and you also successfully made wonderful and outstanding profiles in the key social networks. That's great, but ensure that you remain active in that networks by posting regularly. Just having a account doesn't mean your job is done. Social networks are not like search engines. Search engines will display your works (website and blogs) in search results once you set some SEO techniques, I mean it will continue to appear. But being active in social media mean posting continuously. It's a continuous work and need more patience as well as consistency. Your post once shared will get hid somewhere very quickly and if you don't continue sowing your face in the networks, then the followers might most probably forget you.

15. Being In-consistent

Building a good network consumes time as well as energy. So you should be really patient and continue getting more socialized.

16. Don't target for sales, target for socializing

Only targeting for sales in social networks is the worst thing that I know. If you target for getting socialized, then automatically your sales follows you.

Some tips that will help you socialize without your much presence

Use blogging platforms like Triberr - Triberr is a great place, where your work gets noted to thousands (and even millions) without much of your need. Having an account and sharing the available links is a great way of getting more new followers and friends. Trust me it works like gem. It happened with me too ! - Learn How Triberr helps you build 1K followers and traffic to your blog
Try giving some guest postings - Guest posting is a way of showcasing your skills to other bloggers and their audience.
Utilize friends and family to promote.
Include Images for better share-ability

These are the points that I wished to share with you.

Hope this helps.
Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

Sharing is caring. Like us in social networks to get updated with latest posts. Subscribe to our free mail service in RSS feeder.

ALSO SEE

Social Media strategies to build traffic to your business

Facts about Content making | Best practices

Social media marketing | Twitter best practices

Social media marketing | Facebook best practices

How to add Flipkart affiliate ads to your Blog | Indian bloggers

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 08:45:00 +0000

We had seen the differences between AdSense and affiliate programs (check the ways of making money and the difference between AdSense and affiliate programs). Like I said, AdSense won't be helping you immediately after setting your blog, but affiliate programs does. They will encourage you to continue your writing and you will not get disappointed like most do. The thing is most of the bloggers expect to earn immediately after starting their blog, and unfortunately you can't expect AdSense to help you in this regard. Building traffic and getting some money from AdSense is a time taking process and you need to be really patient and consistent.

During this process many people get frustrated and therefore stops blogging. So, I therefore suggest you to start with some affiliates. Flipkart is wide-spreading in India. It's one of the largest online product selling website. According to Alexa Rank, Flipkart is one of the top 10 most searched online websites in India. Earlier, I never used to buy anything online, but now I have been ordering many books and gadgets from Flipkart, such is their service.

So, If we include their ads, then most likely we may earn some money at least in the beginning. They will pay you from 8% to 15% of the actual product cost. I had already discussed similar article about - How to add Amazon affiliate ads to a blog. Here we will see how to add Flipkart affiliate ads in a blog.

Step - 1

Sign up to Flipkart Associate account. If you already have one, then sign in to your account. And enter the following information :

personal details
Contact number
Website/blog information
Your Bank account details

Step - 2

After doing the formalities, you will be landing in a page as shown below. Scroll down to see Affiliate tools section in left bar as shown below.

OK, here are some suggestions on selecting a widget for your blog Flipkart offers zone - These are banner types which show only texts like "Exciting offers like clothing ....." They don't show any specific product.
Bestseller widgets - These are rectangular or square ad boxes which show a specific product, especially a gadget with some offers, these do great in blogs. But only few (minimum four) product offers are allowed.
Featured Deals widgets - These are more or less similar to bestseller widgets.
Product links and banners - allows to browse for a specific product and put that as ad in your blog. But these are very small badges and are of least useful. Google recommends banners of sizes 250 X 250, 300 X 250, 728 X 90 leader boards or 160 X 600 vertical banners because they do performed well.
Static banners - As the name says they are static with a general information like 'offers', 'fresh deals' etc
Search bar are just a bar that can be placed in your blog so that users can search for a product in that bar. I hope, this have little or no use.
Multi Product Banners - I likes this kind off banners mostly, They are simple and allows us to select a specific product to display the same in our blog.

Step - 3

Lets assume that you wish to put 'Multi Product Banners' in your blog. Click the link 'Multi Product Banners' as shown in the above picture.

Then you will see the below display. Select your choice. Say you want to put a vertical banner, then check Vertical and then select the number to products to show; either three, two or one (I will consider three here), then click Continue.

Step - 4

Clicking this will display 'Search Products to display' as shown below. Type a product that you want to show, say Ipad mini and then select the category 'Mobiles' in the drop down menu next to the search bar as shown. Click Search.

Doing this will display a list of available products with the name 'Ipad mini, Now choose a product that is more attractive, mostly bought by users and with low cost (offer price) and click 'Add Product'

Step - 5

Your selection will appear below the search tab as shown below. Like this select at the most three products. You may select different categories too. For instance, I took a tab, a book and ladies wear as shown.

Women products like clothing, shoes, beauty, health and some products like electronic gadgets are the one mostly preferred in online purchases. Research found that percentage of online purchases by women are more compared to men's purchase. So, do target including ads for women. But this may not work always, it depends on your blog's content and niche. If your blog is say about an exam or education, then prefer to include books that is more related to your topic.

Step - 6

Ok, once you select your desired products, scroll to the bottom of the page to find 'Continue' button. Click that.

Step - 7

After you click the continue button, you will see three formats of header 'Flipkart', select any one color. Then click 'Review Banner'. Sometimes by clicking this, you may get a horizontal banner, If so close the banner and scroll to the top of the page and then check 'Vertical' link again, then scroll down and click 'Review banner'. You should now be seeing the below shown display.

Step - 8

If you are satisfied, close that and click 'Get Code'. A pop up display will appear with the code, copy that.

Step - 9

Step - 10

By clicking Add a Gadget will display a list of available gadgets, scroll to see 'HTML/JavaScript', click that. Then you will see a pop up window with a space for content. Paste your code there and click save changes. There is no need to give title to that ad. Click 'Save'

If you wish to re-locate the ad, drag it to the desired location and then click 'Save changes' in the blogger layout. Now view your blog only to see the ads displayed in the side bar ! That's it you are done.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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15 effective ways of driving traffic to your blog | website

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:48:00 +0000

1. YouTube videos

These days; people are clinging more to video tutorials than plain articles, because a video communicates 60% more easily than that discussed in written form. Audience are therefore browsing for more helpful videos and webinars. So, in order to drive new audience and traffic to your blog, post some videos in you tube and don't forget to put your website or blog's link at the end of the video discussion.

Free giveaways in the form of videos, eBooks, PDF's are essential and I can say an important tool especially for the beginners to expand their presence in the web market. Just convert your blog posts in video formats and ensure it's simplicity in terms of easy explanations and understand-ability.

2. Guest blogging

Guest blogging is one of the important concern for SEO during late 2010's but slowly it lost it's importance in the recent years. Google webmaster guru 'Matt Cutt' said that Google no longer considers guest blogging as an essential tool for PageRanks and SEO, due to the growth of spammers. But to be precise, it does help you build traffic to your blog ! Even though we can't expect much back links or SEO, the reason why we should still care for guest blogging is that we get an all new audience from others website or blog.

If you give very good explanations with appreciable facts about some topics in others blog as a guest (topic that is related to your blog's content), then readers of that blog comes to know about your expertise in that topic and so they will look for your similar posts. In this way you can attract them. While guest posting, ask the blog owners to include attributes to you and also preferably with a link to your blog. Also post only in those blogs, the content of which are more or less related to your's.

3. Social media exploring

a. Importance

I have been discussing about social networks in almost all my posts (similar topics), what to do ? such is the importance of socializing and so I can't neglect it telling you repeatedly. Social media is like a protective armor to all web marketers and promoters. It works like a gem and helps in every aspects to build, grow and boost your business. Without proper social media exposure/presence, you are not gonna make reputation as a writer or an entrepreneur.

Social media platforms like Twitter, Google+. Facebook, Pinterest etc are the key targeted zones to share your content and these are also the places where millions spend hours daily looking for new topics and trends.

Do you think - a simple submission to search engines will help you grow traffic immediately ? Even if your blog gets indexed, it takes hell lot of time to get into the top pages of the search engines. People may not be finding your blog easily and so you will be left with frustration.

b. Use Google+

Google plus is an emerging network and are gaining importance these days for driving traffic to blogs. Share you content in Google plus. You may post same articles many times but with some gap.

C. Use LinkedIn & Triberr

LinkedIn is the best professional platform to connect with similar minded professionals. Trust me by joining LinkedIn groups and being an active member you can drive huge number traffic to your blog or website. You will see new and professionals leaving comment in your blog. I really enjoyed being in LinkedIn and in just two days I received many new connections as well as blog readers. Be sure to join LinkedIn and keep active in all the discussions. Identify similar minded people and connect with them.

Triberr is the rocking blogging network that I found yesterday. It's soley dedicated to bloggers and we are allowed to connect with awesome bloggers out there. With the help of triberr, I received 30 followers in just an over night ! Trust me being a member of triberr is a huge benefit to drive traffic as well as get good number of followers, you will see that your blog links will be shared by many people, the people whom you never come across and don't know even their names !

c. Link back to your blog in all social media

Be an active member of some top social networks. Follow as many bloggers/influencer's as possible and get yourself introduced to people. They will recommend you for sure. Find people who are searching for your topics, drag them to your social networks and keep them engaged. Maintain a superb profile in all your networks and don't forget to leave your website/blog links in your profile "about me" page. For best results, include a link, the topic of which is most popular in your blog (instead of giving your blog's homepage address)

d. Groups, forums, discussion and chat rooms

Twitter and Facebook groups are great platforms to get introduced to new audience; whom are particularly interested in a specific topic. You can see and connect with like minded people. Explore for such groups and join them. Be an active participant in almost all discussions. Give your detailed views and suggestions to them for their queries. If you are a business and you don't find time, employ some one say your employee to specifically deal with social networks.

Don't be simply like "check me...", "check my blog......", I mean just throwing your posts on their faces, machines does that not humans! you are required to get involved personally. The best attraction being raising questions or solving their questions. There are some interesting chat rooms in twitter, post your links to that; members will easily find you and your content. Some examples are #blogchatter #blogger #blogging. Also give a try to LinkedIn groups, they are doing well and are gaining prominence these days, because of being a professional network.

e. Email subscription, feeds, email signatures

Email subscription and feeds are the best way of spreading your latest release to the followers without your need. Include for sure; feed and email subscription links in your blog or website. Analysis says that 95% of the new visitor won't come back to see your articles. So, by enabling email subscriptions, you are sending your articles to the subscribers directly, and so there is no need for them to search for your blog again.

Utilize some space in your blog to put email subscription links. Put your blog link as a signature along with your name, whenever you communicate through mails.

4. SEO strategies

Ok, just now we saw how social networks boost blog traffic. But remember; social sharing is a temporary process (most of the times), your data will be lost soon and so you need to update it regularly to keep in track. Now we look towards search engines, they are the source where we get noted even with time ! So, it's really important to care for them as they are long term helpers unlike social networks. In order to get good results and get in top search pages, you must apply Search engine optimization tactics, the main concern being about 'Content'. Care for the following to get indexed and get more traffic

Titles - a brief, descriptive (with keyword) titles - Learn here more about titles
Search description - short summary about your blog post to help visitors and robots understand your content - Learn here how to include search descriptions
Meta tags and 'alt' tags

5. Use Backlinks, comment practices and link trade

Backlinks are masters for optimizing your site for search engines and also to get good PageRanks. Having numerous inbound links are an indication of your blog or website popularity as well as importance in the web world and so Google gives higher importance to such sites. Incorporate good practice of leaving backlinks. The best way being by leaving comments in others blog or trading for links. (Learn more about backlinks and good comment practice here)

6. Use Analytics and other stat tools

It's very important to understand the behavior of your audience. Analyzing and understanding your audience helps to decide the following

what to write or post
when to post
where to post
Whom are the target audience (demographics)
Whether to elaborate any specific topics
Which topic is getting popular
Whats the audience needs

Delivering the needs of audience might help you grow your network. Audience loves to get their requirements fulfilled, and if you understand their's, then it's very easy to build traffic. Use Google Analytics tool to analyze their behavior. Also post only when your audience are active and not when you find time ! Remember we are writing for audience only and not for robots or self.

(check benefits of upgrading to Universal Analytics here)

7. Re share your old content with people

Like I said above, you may re-share your content with some social networks like twitter, pinterest and even G+. Everyday some hundreds will be joining and so when you give the same topic, the newbies may find it useful, thus leading to greater exposure. So, it's no harm in re-sharing a content, but better maintain reasonable gap.

8. Use friends to promote

This is also a best way of getting traffic. Ask your friends and family members to share your content with their friends and known people. People give more value to content that has been shared by their friends than a content shared by someone unknown.

9. Submit blogs to search engines, pinglers and directories

Directories are great places for categorizing blogs under different headings. They might help in directing traffic to your blog (through backlinks) and hence got more credibility. Also submit your site or blog to free services like Google webmaster, Yahoo, Bing, MSN and other search engines as well as to pinglers.

(Learn here where to submit your blog to drive traffic)

10. Social book marking sites

Use social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Delicious, Stumbleupon and more to share your content as well as get good traffic.

11. Include visual media (image and videos)

Well, here comes today's trend - visual media through images or info graphics. Visual media content is productive and attracts audience well (like videos). Images can communicate content in an interesting, easy and yet in entertaining manner. Remember, images will also appear in image search results and therefore you will get visitors this way too.

12. Keep posting frequently

Audience will only remember you, when you are active and post content frequently. Set a specific time frame say daily, once in two days and in worst case once in a week. This is to ensure that you are active. Audience will be waiting to see your articles !

13. Maintain a great blog layout, easily accessible

A very good and visual appealing blog layout attracts the visitors as well as search engines. Preferably don't include pop up ads, that will annoy users. Include HTML/user sitemap to give your audience an easy and good navigation experience.

(Lean how importance is HTML sitemap to SEO)

14. Content

a. Offer original content

Content that is very rare to find in internet (not always possible) or at least; content that stands out of the crowd from others (regarding the same topic) are mostly loved by people. Show your passion and expertise in your content. I had also given a very detailed guide about Content marketing, you may check that for better understanding.

b. Do keyword research before posting

For better search results, select page titles and include most searched keywords in page titles, URL as well as in search description. (Learn how here)

c. Organize your content

Include appropriate page breaks, phrases or paragraphs. Write in a friendly tone and give facts. Don't stuff keywords or unnecessary words in your articles to make it lengthy. Be natural in writing, let the article be short.

Learn more about Facts about Content | Best content writing practices

15. Don't give up - be consistent

Finally, driving traffic is a long process and there's nothing like 'shortcuts', you need to do a lot of research in the selected niche and keep writing/posting even if you don't enjoy much traffic in the beginning. It's a slow process but steadily your site receives good traffic as well as trust in people. This is a web world and there are thousands competing with you about the same topic and it's really hard to get noted soon. Be patient and maintain consistency. This way you grow soon and enjoy.

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Facts about content writing | guide for begineers

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:14:00 +0000

This article is focused on explaining facts about 'writing based content' like articles, blog posts or even books.

Unique content ?

Almost all social media and marketing websites refer 'Unique content', I wonder is this correct always ? As per me, we cannot always create a unique content. It all depends on your views about an already existing topic. If you are writing about say Abraham Lincoln, do you frame a new story about him ? No right, you have to refer other works in order to make the same story interesting.

(Picture source : Kidspot)

1. Go through multiple articles

Everybody learns from others. It is based on experience and exposure to similar topics. The more we come across similar topics from different tones, the more likely we frame new ideas. So, by going through many such articles, we can juice it up to make a 'creative content' by adding our own sugar/flavor to it. We usually eat pizzas and sandwiches right, some people prefer dominos, some prefer McDonald and so on. 70 - 80% of the recipe is same; then what's the difference, why some like dominos and others like McDonald; why can't everyone like a single brand ? The reason is simple, it depends on the taste and not all people likes same taste ! Same goes with content making.

"The way you add pepper to your content determines it's taste"

Use Wikipedia to the full extent. Wikipedia is a great knowledge base and I can say is the best guide to get knowledge on anything. I depend more on wiki than any other page or website because the information what they give are factful and of course ACTUAL. If possible, try donating them, as they are non-profit organization.

So, those who are beginners/starters; don't get afraid of the word 'Unique content' and don't feel that you have to create a all new topic right from the scratch. You have freedom, this is your website/blog and you are free to express your own views about anything, provided you add your own pepper (masala) to give good taste to your content like discussed above.

2. When to expect Unique content ?

Of course, we can expect unique content in some areas like electronics, gadgets, reviews, lifestyle, home etc. For almost other operating areas, we need to refer some previously discussed topic. Say if you are teaching mathematics, you are not creating formulae but you are teaching that in a simple, understandable with some shortcuts. Lets look into your case, the thing is what you communicate is more important and how you express them (for better user understanding and experience) is even more important.

But yes, you need not want to copy same things (wordings, sentence or others shortcut/creative idea) from others, except some definitions and pictures. If you do so, give appropriate tributes to them by including their link; something like "sourced from .....", "taken from ........" like I did for pictures in this blog.

3. Speak with your own tone

The best part is to deliver the topic in your own style, with your own voice. Readers always search for topics which are easy and approachable (I mean understandable). So try to give a content that probably give crystal clear idea about that topic. Content is to be designed keeping in mind a lay person, Better don't consider your readers as experts in that field (even though they are !). Thinking this way will help you write articles with superb explanations.

(Source : venusbuzz)

4. Stretch articles unnecessarly ?

Put your full efforts to explain things in-detail, don't worry if your article is getting larger, let it be; but deliver every important point. And if your article is short, then don't stuff it with unnecessary lines so as to stretch it. This is of no use and I can say this is a waste !

(source : kylewilson)

If you stretch your topic than what required then users may get bored, they might feel that your content is unnatural; just written for some exposure or business. So visitors give less importance there after. If you write 50 superb posts, then it takes say a year to get noted by people, but if you write a single fault post, then likely you will loose many trusted visitors within no time ! true, it happens.

5. Write/post often ?

If you're not running a big brand and if you don't have many contributors for your website, then It's not mandatory to write everyday. Of course writing new posts regularly will keep your visitors active and engaged. But just to keep them engaged, don't post articles un-selectively. Some bloggers usually do the mistake of posting uninteresting or repetitive articles just to maintain the regularity. In such situations you might lose your reputation, building which took hell lot of time !

Write, only when you feel the necessity or when you receive requirements from the followers as well as only when you got a killer content idea. Let it be often writings, not a worry.

"A single gold coin is worth more than 100 copper coins !"

6. Don't be like a family member, be like a guest

Say, if one of your family member or a friend or a guest turned up after a year, then the value and respect you give him/her will be immeasurable (even if he is your enemy !). If say the same person has been with you continuously for three to four months, then you will automatically feel that he is less important and so give lesser value than you did at the beginning. Right ? it's a fact and you might have experienced the same kind in your life.

(source : writeandgetpaid)

Be like a guest and not like a regularly looked family member, guest have more value than family members ! Apply the same logic in your blogging activities. But don't give a long gap (like you met your family member after a year); they will forget you and so you will be forced to start from the scratch. Post regularly at least one article in two-three days or in the worst case a week. maintain the same track and meanwhile if you have ideas, then there's no harm in posting everyday also.

7. Apply your pepper thoughts

Be truthful in what you write and what you review. Don't copy totally from others, put your own thoughts, let it be a mistake at first instance. But don't repeat again. For this, you need to interact constantly with your visitors as well as influencers or so called gurus to get their feedback about your content. Ask your readers; how they feel about your topic, whether your topic is acceptable by them or not and whether it meets their requirement or not ? These feedbacks help you tune your content to proofread any mistakes in your topic. This will also act as a good exercise and learning for you.

(Source : work)

Visitors are not blind and even though they visit your page to learn about a topic, it doesn't mean that they can't find the mistakes, they are the best judges to decide whether the provided information is correct or not. So, make it a good habit of chit-chatting with your visitors. Ask some experts (whom can be found in social networks like twitter) to check your content and guide you. But you inturn review their suggestions and decide whether what they said fits your niche or not. Take full power in your hands.

8. Jump to topics ?

Don't jump to random topics. Say you are blogging about gadgets and after sometime if you switch to say mathematics, then it look ridiculous. You may concentrate on multiple topics but they must be closely related like technology and gadgets, exams and mathematics, like this.

(Source : Techli)

10. Write with passion

Passion and interest is all required to create a wonderful content. Of course you should have expertise in that field without which won't work even if you got passion. Tune your content slowly to the requirements of the audience. Understand how visitors are acting and what actually they look for. Incorporate your ideas to make articles attractive to them, but make sure that you write them with your own interest and not forcibly . If you have less knowledge either study and write or better skip that topic.

(Source : conciousflex)

Hope this helps.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

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Facebook marketing | Best practices for brands

noreply@blogger.com (Bhanu Chander V) — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 10:47:00 +0000

How Facebook works

Facebook is the largest social network that is still in use by millions around the globe. It's like a viral platform where the shared content gets spreaded like anything, just like a chain network. If one of your follower like or share your content, then his friends will get to know that; and if any of them are interested, they will also share or like. In this manner your content will get spreaded to already engaged as well as new users.

Facebook is best for following categories : Education, career, crafts, fashion, politics, entertainment, humor, Technology, Engineering, health, lifestyle, Internet, marketing etc. I believe finance has less presence in FB compared to the remaining areas. Here we will go through 15 best practices that might help you build good traffic to your website, brand or even a blog.

Best Practices

1. Create a Group in Facebook

The best practice is to create your own group or join groups related to your brand's field of expertise, in order to participate in the on-going discussions. This seems more beneficial for categories like education, career, exams, society and groups like designers, art, freelancers, products, sales etc. It's a kind of direct interaction with the people who came to resolve an issue.

Being engaged with them by responding to their queries, staying in contact, sharing your content are all possible ways of building traffic. For whatever query they raise, give a broad and detailed explanation for that, let it be lengthy. By doing so, members will get to know about your expertise in that field. So, without a doubt they will start following you or your brand and therefore they may check your updates regularly.

Don't do the mistake of being in-active after attaining more followers, people usually do this. After feeling that they have good number, they give less response to the queries. This will lead to a break of trust among the new members as well as existing members. Remember, they love your updates and will be happy to see your posts or response regularly, that's why they liked you !

2. Maintain a brand page

Having a Facebook page is like showing your brand's royal status thus making other competitors feel that you are not lesser to them. Your page helps the followers, keep in track of your latest release. Timely manage your page by posting your new posts to the timeline as soon as you publish it.

3. Frequency of posting

Frequent posting is needed to keep engaged and also to maintain a track with the followers. It's not mandatory to always post your blog/business related topics. The marketers should also concern on encouraging their followers by posting quite often some interesting and enjoyable things. Post relevant topics from all over the web. Include some entertainment, funny images or videos, inspiring quotes, awesome travel shots and some well wishes like "A very happy morning to you all", these are all some best ways of your brand promotion and engagement. Update regularly about the latest trend related to your area of concern.

Frequency of posting depends on your topic and audience. Facebook recommends posting a minimum of one post per day. However it depends on the niche as well as audience engagement timings. For this, FB Insight tool helps you analyze the situation and lets you understand how much to post, what kind of posts (article type, text, picture etc) are to be updated and when.

Facebook mentioned that "If you notice that engagement with your page has decreased, try varying your posts and post frequency. Emulate posts that have been successful in the past and experiment with new types of posts". Below is shown how Facebook Insight page looks. Note that insights will provide you with details about Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts, People.

4. Post repeatedly ?

Unlike twitter, posting same topics repeatedly in Facebook won't be much helpful and also not advisable too. Twitter is a place where people check current tweet updates in their own timeline and mostly won't be checking your brand's timeline every time. Also followers will be engaging at different time based on their geographical location. So, retweeting helps to promote your post to as many as possible. Whereas in Facebook, whenever you update a new post, the same will go to the followers timeline and so there is no need to re-post the topic. So, better don't repost frequently.

5. Post more visual media (Images)

Regularly check FB page insights, this will help you understand how your followers are acting. It will also give you an idea of what type of shares (like photos, links, videos or simple texts) are actually getting more reach. Analysis revealed that followers checked more images than video, text or links. Images are performing well in Facebook.

These days, social marketers are concerning more on employing visual appeal (just like infographics) to boost social presence in networks like Facebook, pinterest and more; that's because images enjoyed more likes, shares and even comments. It works like a gem. Try to post any of your update with an attracting image or infographic. This will attract the users and therefore will achieve greater reach. Also images with questioning features are most viewed.

6. Ask questions

Ask some questions at times, to keep your followers active as well as interactive. Posts that are of the type "Fill in the blanks" receive more response from the followers. Give some special discounts and offers to your followers. Also, tweet the FB links for discounts and offers to expose more.

7. Friends recommend you

Ask your friends and family to promote your page to their friends. It will be more effective if someone suggests your page to others rather than you yourself striving to get highlighted, the later part is difficult and also not effective. Analysis shows that 90% of users trust recommendations from friends and family.

8. Engage female promoters

It's a marketing technique that i'm frankly disclosing here. If say a gentleman posts a topic, then he will receive at the most 10-50 likes only and the same topic if posted by a women will receive 100 likes (just a figure). This is the fact, this actually happens in marketing world. That's the reason why you see more women being engaged in advertisements; even for not-required areas like automobiles !

If you are having some female friends or if your business have female workers, make them involve in social marketing. Instead of you directly getting involved, ask them to recommend and post for you in forums, groups etc. This seems odd to you, but what to do ? this happened to be one of the best way of driving traffic !

9. Be friendly, You are not a machine !

Even though you represent a brand, behave like a human and be friendly with people. Reply to the comments in a friendly manner and keep replying to all the comments; be it be a critic about your post. This world is not always filled with all good people or all bad people. When you are

improving, there will always be someone who tries to pull you down. However, it depends on your tactics on how to handle such situations decently.

10. Best timings to post

The Best timing to post your content depends on the targeted people demographics and geographics (location). I hope it's not correct to say something like 2pm to 5pm is best or 10pm to 9 am is worst. Something like this won't actually perform well for all categories. Say, if your targeted people are students, then you should be posting during off-college hours like during nights (students usually browse late in the nights !). What I mean is it depends on the kind of people whom actually use our content. Better understand their activities by going through Facebook Insight tool as discussed above. Also don't post during business or work hours. People won't be engaged in FB during such times.

11. Design your profile

Like we discussed in twitter best practices, having a visually appealing profile picture as well as backdrop is best for attracting new people. Your profile picture represents indirectly your face and the saying 'first impression is the best impression' still holds good for every activity. Give a brief but detailed description about your brand in 'About me'.

Here is an example of a famous entrepreneur - Kim Garst profile for your reference.

12. Facebook Ads

Whether your brand is small or big, including your brands ad in Facebook is an added advantage for greater exposure to the world. To be precise, big business brands might already have greater exposure, but smaller brands (that still need to grow in terms of traffic) have to be brought to public notice, and this can be effectively done by advertisement.

Facebook is such a place where some million people spends hours every day. So, promoting your brand in FB is a good decision. Facebook ads allows promotion of your brand to the targeted audience. So, it's no offense in spending some little amount for ads (if you are capable !).

13. Post compatibility

Also, updates that have more lines or very less lines (characters) were mostly liked by the followers. Know the best timing to post an update. Post timings depends on users and the geography. I mean location of targeted audience. Statistics revealed that Facebook has been used by more mobile users than desktop or tablet users. So, design your website/business page to be compatible with mobiles as well as accessible at ease.

14. Include Facebook social buttons in your website/blog

If you are running a niche blog or a business promoting sales and services through web site, then include Facebook like and share buttons so as to let users know your presence in social media.

When someone connects with you say in twitter, then leave them a direct message gently asking them to get connected in Facebook also. You may also include your Facebook links in social network profiles like G+, twitter and Pinterest.

15. Guest posting

Invite guest posting from influencers and ask them to share their views about your brand. Pin such important topics always on the top of the page, so that visitors will go through the most important views about your brand/business. Also guest post on others pages, forums or group giving valuable information regarding that topic. Put your full knowledge to give a very valued and most appreciated post. That will help the followers of the other pages know your capability and hence more chances of getting huge traffic.

Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions by posting a comment below.

Sharing is caring. Like us in social networks to get updated with latest posts. Subscribe to our free mail service in RSS feeder.

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