On Blogging and Social Media

The Anatomy of a Tweet

2011-02-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

I don’t think anyone can question that Twitter has become an Internet phenomenon. With an estimated 500 Millions active users each month. What remains at question is how effective is it as a tool both for sharing and retrieving information?To get the best out of Twitter you really need to understand the anatomy of a Tweet.Here’s a simple Tweet:RT@zzTechstuff: RT @NikPeachey: another fabulous

How to create a social network profile page

2011-01-20T01:20:00.001-08:00

Most of us who have blogs these days also participate in a range of other social networks and use a range of social networking tools. Tying these together can help you to promote all the things you do, build your profile and make visitors to one service aware of other services you provide and so help you to develop your network. I've been looking for a long time for a good tool for this job and

Knowledge sharing with Slinkset widgets

2010-06-04T01:37:00.000-07:00

A few months back I wrote an article about creating your broadcast network to feed information to your PLN. In the article I included a section on a tool called Slinkset which I used to create my Technogogy news portal, which I use to share information and links to informative articles about education, technology and ELT.Recently, I have discovered a new feature of Slinkset that automatically

An introduction to Stumble Upon

2010-05-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

Stumble Upon has been for some time one of my long term favorite browser plug in tools. It’s one of the best sources of interesting and sometimes offbeat new websites and can also be a great way to point people towards your own blog or website.Just download the plug in to your browser tool bar, register for free and the discovering can begin.So what’s so great about Stumble Upon?Stumble Upon

Give your sites a quick ping

2010-05-25T01:15:00.000-07:00

With the number of blogs constantly growing it can become increasingly difficult to keep your audience and attract new readers, so it doesn't hurt every now and then to give your site a quick ping across the major search engines and directories.Blogbuzzer is a free tool that can help you do this and give your sites' traffic a bit of a boost. It's very easy to use, just type in the name and URL of

From Information to Knowledge

2009-11-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

This posting is to follow up an online presentation I gave on Friday 6th November 09 for AVEALMEC at the Social Networking - Thriving as a Community of Practice online conference.The title of my presentation was 'from Information to Knowledge' and during the presentation I tried to look at a range of online tools and show how they could be used to help teachers tap into the vast amount of

Create a temporary bookmarks reading list

2009-10-27T02:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a problem that I have each day. If this sounds like your problem too, then reading the rest of this article might help you solve the problem and avoid having a whole load of garbage links in your bookmarks.I spend a lot of time multi-tasking at the computer, browsing articles and webs sites and scanning content whilst doing or between doing other tasks. Often I see things that are

How to create your own news portal

2009-10-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

For the last few weeks I've been trying out a free tool called Slinkset and I have found it to be pretty useful. Slinkset is a tool that enables you to create your own 'portal' site ( A 'portal' site is one that links to other content rather than a tool for producing content) and I've been using it to create a kind of educational technology news site. I've used it to keep track of the things that

How to create a visitor contact form

2009-10-08T01:31:00.000-07:00

Most bloggers welcome contact with there readers, but that doesn't mean we want to put our email address on every page of our site. I know that most of us want visitors to leave comments, but there are times when this isn't really appropriate (e.g. Someone likes your blog and wants some advice or to offer you some work etc.)Visitor contact offers a great free solution. You can see what it looks

What's your favourite widget?

2009-10-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

There are lots of different widegts out there that you can plug into your blog, but my favourite by far has to be the Wibiya tool bar. I have it in all of my blogs now (except at present this one) and I am so impressed. Wibiya has enables me to get rid of half a dozen other quite baisc but necessary widgets that were cluttering up my side bar and slowing down my site and has combined their

Get feedback on your site

2009-09-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

Getting really useful feedback on your site or blog can be difficult and expensive, but there are some free tools which can help you to find out what you are doing right or wrong and help you to make technical improvements that may well boost your search engine optimisation (SEO) and so the visibility of your site to new visitors.One tool that I have just tried is Website Grader and I was quite

Creating your broadcast network

2009-09-12T04:30:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot this week about the kinds of tools I use to put information 'out there' and looking at a few new ones that I'm trying to build in to my 'broadcast network', so I thought I would share a few of these and see what other educators out there think and use.I can put my broadcast network tools onto a kind of cline or scale based around the 'richness' of the content and this

10 free blogging tools for teachers

2009-09-09T01:29:00.000-07:00

Well it's high time I got this blog moving again and I'm grateful to Karen Schweitzer education writer and author for sending in this guest post to get me started. Here she presents 10 great tools ranging from the basics for getting your blog started to some really interesting tools for getting your blog noticed. Thanks Karen.Teachers who are interested in starting their own blogs or creating

How to add Google AdSense to your blog

2009-07-29T04:23:00.000-07:00

Making the decision to 'go commercial' with your blog is a big one. One of the most common dilemmas for educationalists, is 'Will it be worth the money?' This quick tutorial will show you how to add Google AdSense to your blog and should give you some idea of how much money it will help you to make.How to add Google AdSenseInserting AdSense advertisements to blogs made with blogger is very simple

Is your content being stolen?

2009-07-20T01:26:00.000-07:00

The Internet has revolutionised the way and amount of information that we can publish and share and being able to contribute your knowledge to the growth and development of others in your profession can be very rewarding, but once you’ve put your information out there, it’s wise to keep track of what happens to it and who is using it.Here are some tools to protect your copyrightFairshare is a

Selling your teaching materials online

2009-07-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that every teacher has at some point produced something that they have felt has commercial potential, but trying to earn money from your work through a publisher can be a slow, time consuming and ultimately frustrating experience because:Most publishers know what they want to produce and select the people they want to produce it.It is very unusual for a writer to approach the publisher

25 Twitter apps for exploiting your network

2009-06-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

Twitter is an enormously popular tool at the moment and literally thousands of third party companies have starting developing applications that can enhance its capabilities, but which of these are good and which ones can help teachers to grow their network and use this tool in a more effective way? Karen Schweitzer from the About.com Guide to Business School has volunteered the guest posting on

Google Webmaster Tools

2009-06-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

Another good reason for having a Google Account is that you can also get free access to Google's Webmaster Tools. These can give you valuable information about your site or blog and also help you to make sure that Google is indexing the pages from your site to their search engine.You have to register each individual site or blog to use the tools on it, but this only takes a few minutes, so

Sticky or Slow?

2009-06-19T01:20:00.000-07:00

One the most important KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that the success of a website or blog can be judged upon is the time a visitor spends on your site. The longer the time spent on your site the more interested and engaged the visitor is with your content.You can find out how sticky your site is using GoogleAnalytics. On the 'Dashboard' you should be able to find a section on 'Site usage'

Blogging as part of the community

2009-06-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

If you really want your blog or site to be useful, appreciated and get regular visitors then it’s vital that you are part of the community your serve. That means more than just pushing your content to places where you think potential visitors might be, but it means actually engaging with, understanding and being part of those communities.Whatever profession you are in, but particularly in

Compare your site using benchmarking

2009-06-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post I looked at how to add Google Analytics tracking to your site so that you can start getting some information about how many people are visiting your site and what they are doing there.Google Analytics gives you loads of information, which is great, but how can you tell if the your stats are good or bad? The answer to this is benchmarking.If you add benchmarking to your stats

How to make your first $1 through blogging

2009-06-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Many teachers who write blogs would like to make some money from their blogging to either supplement their income or even just cover the costs of some of their time. This isn't an area I really have any experience in, so I asked Miracel Juanta from A Teacher's Odyssey to write me some tips on this, so what follows is a guest posting with Miracel's advice on how to make your first dollar.You might

How much social noise are you creating?

2009-06-10T01:22:00.000-07:00

This tip is for more established bloggers and it's about a handy tool called Social Meter which can help you to measure how the kind of impact your blog or site is having around a number of various social platforms. It measures the number of links back to your site and allows you to click through to them to see who and how you are being referred to.It also you to check out other people's sites to

Structuring your posting

2009-06-08T01:20:00.000-07:00

If you want to build up a regular audience on your blog, it’s a good idea to try to standardise the structure of your postings. This helps your readers quickly understand what to expect from your blog and how to access the information they need quickly.You may find that a single standardised structure is enough for all your postings.On my Daily English Activities I have single structure for all

Promoting Your ELT Blog - Getting Listed

2009-06-05T01:21:00.000-07:00

Having spent a lot of time creating and writing your blog, you will probably want people to read it. Getting people to your blog can be one of the biggest challenges, especially when you are getting started and don't have enough content to really get noticed by the big search engines.One quite quick and easy way you can start getting people to your site is by getting your site listed on blog