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How to beat blogger's block?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:31:33 PST

Image by: re birf
Imagine a situation. You are about to write your next post on your blog. You prepare yourself and place yourself in front of your computer.And suddenly you experience a total mind block. You have no idea what and how to write. You try hard to write something only to make situation worse. You start banging your head on the wall but this doesn't help as well. You have no clue what has gone wrong with you and how to combat it. And then after sometime (usually after 2-3 days) everything becomes fine.

Have you experienced such thing while blogging? Well, I am sure you have. This is called blogger's block and is a normal thing and happens to every blogger including the top tier bloggers.

I was going through the same shit for last few days. I spent hours in front of screen and produced nothing. I am writing this post to help anyone who experiences or has experienced blogger's block while blogging.Although a lot has been said on the subject on many blogs but I want to add fresh perspectives to it.

What causes blogger's block?

Blogger's block can be compared to a similar situation occurring in writers called writer's block.The causes of these two similar phenomena are also same.
According to wikipedia the most common cause of writer's block is stress, anxiety or fear. Here are the lines I have quoted from wikipedia-

Writer's block can be closely related to depression and anxiety, two mood disorders that reflect environmentally caused or spontaneous changes in the brain's frontal lobe.
Source

Apart from stress , partial or no research on the topic , monotonous life styles and loss of motivation may also lead to blogger's block. Other less important cause is blogging in a niche that is not of your interest.( I say it less important because most of the bloggers blog in their area of interest)

I am telling you all these things because it is necessary to identify the cause in order to beat the blogger's block phenomenon. With this said, let us now head over to the steps to follow to beat this.

How to beat blogger's block?

The things you do while going through this phenomenon can either make things better or worsen it. For example, getting panicked in this situation can worsen it.So ,it is necessary to face it in tactical way to get rid of it at soonest possible. Here are some of the tips that you can follow to beat the blogger's block phenomenon.

Don't panic just relax-

As I have said earlier,stress and fear are the triggering events of blogger's block. More fear and stress will make the situation last longer. Relax yourself. Do the things you love to do. Play your favorite game or watch TV and movies or go out for a walk or eat your favorite dishes in your favorite restaurant. Just do what you love to do. This will dispel your fear and relieve the stressed situation to some extent.

Change environment-

I live in a flat located in the heart of my hospital campus. So, there is much din and bustle going on near me everytime. Although I am accustomed to it but sometimes I am not able to concentrate in this surrounding. This is the time when I go out in a peaceful environment with my laptop.
Your surroundings has direct impingement on your brain's activity.Changing your environment has a positive impact on your mind. This freshens your mind and you can concentrate better in the new surroundings.

Change your writing schedule-

Mind works at different pace at different times in a day .Normally, brain slows down after long day's work and it works most efficiently when you have just woke up in the morning. You should select a time that tunes up well with your brain's activity. For example, I work most efficiently during night when everything around me has calmed down and my mind works well in this environment. Most others feel energized in morning when they are fresh like morning petals.

Just think when your mind is fresh and you feel like you are energized from within. This is the time when you should start writing your posts.

Prepare yourself beforehand-

Blogger's block is like Tsunami, you never know when it appears before you. It is nice to plan your future posts beforehand. So that, you have ample ideas to work on with even when you are going through blogger's block kinda thing.

Always take a pen and a notebook with you ,so that, you are able to note down every idea that comes to your mind. It is easy to lose future post ideas just because you were not able to note it when it came.I have lost many ideas by not doing this.

Now just start looking into your notebook when you experience blogger's block. The ideas noted down in your notebook can help you break loose of mind block. This can help you craft a post even when you are going through blogger's block.

Engage youself in free writing-

Free writing is a writing technique in which a person impulsively write whatever comes to his mind for set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar or topic.A brief period of free writing helps fight blogger's block and helps the brain to tone up. Free writing can be regarded as an exercise of mind.

Schedule a time for free writing session on a daily basis. You don't have to do it for hours, a 15-20 minutes session of free writing is enough. Apart from beating blogger's block it also helps in preventing it and sharpening your writing skills.

Read your favorite blogs and visit different forums of your niche-

If writer's block comes from a lack of new ideas, attempts to spark creativity by visiting your favorite blogs and different forums of your niche can be useful.The posts on blogs and forums can trigger new idea formation. This has happened to me time and again.Many of the ideas on this blog has emanated while reading other blogs or feeds in google reader or forums.

Ideas need a triggering event to come through. Of course ,sometimes they may come spontaneously but most of the times they are result of some event like, going through a post on a blog or a thread in a forum.

Throw negative thoughts out of your mind-

Blogger's block also occur due to too many negative thoughts hovering in your mind.If this is the case with you ,you have to get rid of them as soon as possible.I know getting rid of negative thoughts is easy said than done. But some of the things that you can do to throw out negative thoughts are-

Focus on the good things that has occured to you. Has a reader appreciated your work or did you get many votes on some of your posts in social media sites?Just remember those moments and soon you will start thinking in positive way.
Read the top posts you have written. What are the posts that got maximum coments or managed to get extra votes on social media sites? Read out your own posts loudly and soon you may start feeling flow of positive energy in yourself.

Research if you already have an idea-

Sometimes blogger's block doesn't occur because of lack of ideas but because of failure to expand upon the existing ideas to make up a post. This usually points lack of research.In this case you have to do a thorough research to beat the blogger's block. Google the topic ,read relevant articles and visit different forums and sites to make an in depth research.

Organise the points once you are finished researching.Many a times you are not able to write just because you are not able plot your post. Organising your points can help you to beat the blogger's block in this case.

Chat with other bloggers in your niche-

A nice and productive chat with other bloggers can trigger your idea engine to get some ideas. Recently I had a nice chat with one of my friends (who is also a blogger but doesn't blogs in my niche). We were discussing the cases where bloggers were sued.It sparked of an idea and I finished writing the post- "How to blog without getting sued?"

So, getting involved in a chat does help in beating the blogger's block. Apart from triggering your idea engine it also helps in relaxing your mind.

Is there anything to add?

Everyone has different tactics to get rid of blogger' block. Things I discussed above are the ones that I practice. I know many of you can add some more tactics to beat blogger's block. You are most welcome to discuss it if you have one. It is highly appreciated.

How to blog without getting sued?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:46:29 PST

Internet used to be the playground of a few handful of people a few years ago. But now everyone has their say, thanks to blogs and social media sites. Social media sites in general and blogs in particular has transformed internet into a democratic media. The 'freedom of speech' that everybody talks about can now be seen on virtual world of internet as well.

Although this advancement has been quite exceptional but the so called 'freedom of speech' has also created situations where bloggers got sued because of it (mostly due to misuse of it). The fine line between being critical and being defamatory is obscure and has added to the plight of bloggers. As a result, the cases of bloggers getting sued has been on rise since last couple of years.

For past few weeks I have been studying some of the cases where bloggers were sued and came to a conclusion that in most of the cases a blogger can avoid the trauma of getting into the courtroom by following some simple steps. This is what I am going to talk off in today's post.

Take care of following points while blogging to avoid getting sued-

1) Don't write defamatory posts-
While as a human being every blogger has right to criticise a person or a company ,criticism based on false facts is something you should refrain from doing. Furthermore, if you are criticising someone and some company time and again on your blog, you are inviting a problem.

In 2007, a blogger named Joe Albero was sued because he made fun of Salisbury police chief time and again in his blog ,Salisbury news blog. Police chief, Allen Webster sued him because he repeatedly made fun of him sometimes calling him "Chief Jack and coke". (Source)

Take another example, in July 2008, one of the blogger from Malaysia, Raja Petra was sued by two army officials when he declared the officials to be involved in murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu.The blogger made this statement without backing his statement with citations and proofs from reliable sources and did it repeatedly on his blog. He was charged RM 1 million in damages. (source)

In both these cases bloggers were sued because they criticised someone and the statements were based on either false facts or without citations and proofs from reliable sources.Furthermore, they did it repeatedly on their blog.

So, to not get litigated for defamation you need to-

Criticise someone only when you have solid backings in the form of solid citations, quotes or proofs from authority sources.
Refrain from criticising someone repeatedly on your blog.
Refrain from making false statements on your blog.

Don't infringe copyright policies-
While researching the topic last week, I found copyright infringement to be second most common cause of getting sued.

The hottest example of this would be perezhilton.com. The author was sued by a Los Angeles based photo agency company, X17 Inc. for illegally using some of the photographs on the blog. The company charged the blog author, Mario Lavandeira with accusations of using 51 images without permission , payment or credit. (Source)

Another example, Britney spears' label record sued a Los Angeles based popular gossip blogger for illegally posting tracks from her album even before it was released. The company demanded unspecified damages plus legal cost for this copyright infringement. (Source)

The lessons to take from these two cases are-

Read the copyright policies before using any rich media on your blog.
Don't indulge yourself in plagiarism.
Take permission of copyright holder before using something in your blog.

Don't disclose other people's secret-
While it is OK to break news of your niche, it is not good to disclose secrets of either an individual's personal life or a company's policies or product secrets.

There was a case when the computer giant company, Apple charged an owner of blog to divulge secrets of the products even before the products were officially launched. Although the company and blogger agreed upon a settlement after 2 years but the mental trauma that the blogger would have suffered during these two years can be imagined. ( Source)

Although divulging someone's secret can give you overnight popularity but it would be nice to not indulge in such things to avoid future problems.

Take a close look at the comments appearing on your blog-
Once the famous blogger, Aaron Wall of SeoBook.com was sued for the comments that appeared in his blog. One of the Las Vegas based company, trafficpower.com charged Aaron Wall because some of the comments submitted by readers were defamatory for the company.

Some visitors to Mr. Wall's blog had posted comments complaining about what they said were unprofessional business practices by Traffic-Power.com, while others said they didn't think the tools sold by Traffic-Power.com were effective in boosting search-engine rankings.
Source

As a blog owner you are responsible for the things that appear on your blog (including comments). So, to avoid getting sued for comments appearing on your blog you should-

Moderate all the comments that are inappropriate or possibly defamatory and harsh.
Disallow anonymous comments on your blog.
Make a comment policy for your blog stating the types of comment that are allowed or not allowed on your blog.

Don't write anti-government posts if your government forbids it-
There has been cases where bloggers were sued and tried for writing anti-government posts. While it is allowed to criticise government policies in most of the countries, it can't be said for all countries of the world. If writing against government policies is not allowed in your country , you should not write about it to avoid getting into a problem.Please make a note that the freedom of speech I talked about earlier is not followed in all countries of the world.

Although there has been situations when bloggers has been sued for quite absurd and obscure reasons but by following the points I discussed above you can avoid running into a problem in most circumstances.

Basic SEO tips for blogging beginners

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:51:02 PST

SEO is quite a favorite topic between internet marketers and bloggers alike and many websites are in place focusing only on SEO. So, it won't be possible to discuss it all in one post. In this post, I will deal about very basic of SEO. I will not dive into advanced things and craft this post with a newbie in mind.

With this said, let us now jump off to know some basic SEO.

What is SEO and how a blogger can benefit from it?
Although this might not be a difficult question to answer for many of you but let me answer this for someone who has just joined the internet world and has no idea about it.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In its simplest form it is the things you do on your site and off it to get high search engine rankings. Search engines rank websites by taking certain factors into account. SEO is just knowing those factors and applying that knowledge to attain a high search engine rankings.

Now let us take the other part of the question. How SEO can benefit a blogger?
Well, the success of a blog depends upon the traffic it gets.You are a successful blogger if you are getting more hits on your blog.Furthermore, search engines are one of the best sources of traffic. So, by attaining a high search engine ranking you can assure you find readers to your blog.

So How can I optimize my blog for search engines?

As I have said earlier, search engine optimization is a vast topic to deal with in one post. But in most of the cases a basic knowledge of SEO is just enough to get high rankings.Here are some of the points that you should know to make your blog more search engine friendly.

Do a solid keyword research- Keywords are the words or phrases that are used by people to make searches. A keyword used time and again to make searches and with less website using it in their pages is better. Now, to find such a keyword you have to do a keyword research.Here is the link of the post where I have discussed keyword research in some detail. Choose three keywords for your post ,one primary and other two secondary.
Use your keyword in title ,sub-title and uniformly in the content- Titles are the part that get most attention by the search engines. So, it would always be good idea to use your primary keyword in title.Furthermore, use your secondary keywords in subtitles and all of them through out the content.
Make use of html tags- Search engines take a close look at the things written in bold, italic or in heading. So, make use of bold and italic Html tags to emphasize your important points. Just make sure your important lines contain your keywords.
Add fresh content regularly- Search engines in general and Google in particular love fresh added content. A site/blog with regularly updated posts get some preference by search engines.So, write more content and add pages to your blog regularly.
Make navigation easy- Search engines (and also humans) love easily navigable sites. Make sure you have interlinked your related posts with each other. Navigation makes crawling easy and also that your pages are crawled properly. Other things you can do is, list your top and popular posts from your sidebar.Details in the post-"Organic search engine optimization part-3- internal linking".
Don't use java and flash overly- Unllike humans search engines are blind to javascripts and flash. So, keep use of javascripts and flash to bare minimum.Furthermore, java and flash cause delay in page loading this will cause improper crawling of your blog and is also irritating for most visitors.
Build links for your website- A link from other website is seen as a vote to your page by search engines. More votes to your blog mean you have worth content and deserve a high high search engine ranking.Furthermore, a vote (link) from an authority site has more weightage than a link from 'C' grade site.Links increase Pagerank of your blog which is one of the metric used by Google to rank websites. For details read the post- "Pagerank Explained." Read the post " 10 powerful ways to build links" for details of link building.
Use keywords in the anchor text- Anchor texts are the words used to link a page from another one.Having your keyword in your anchor text is seen as search engines as the page being relevant for that keyword. So, instead of using 'click here' or 'here' use your keywords as anchor text.

I think this much is the basics of the search engine optimization every blogger should know. I would like to say here that often there is temptation to write with your keywords and search engines in centre of your mind. My word of advice here would be to write content for humans and use your keywords in a way that it does't interferes with the user experience.

How to get traffic to your blog through Stumble Upon [Video post]

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:29:24 PST

One of the challenges , most of the bloggers face is, getting traffic to a new blog (sometimes even old blog if you are not doing things right). You try hard and hard writing useful content , do some SEO and comment in forums and other blogs.

Still you wonder why the traffic is not coming .Here is the solution.One of the easiest way to get traffic to blog is through Stumble Upon. The traffic from StumbleUpon is quick and unlike other social media sites you don't require a lot of votes to get visitors.

You just submit your blog or blog posts and manage to get some votes and see visitors coming to your blog. Another good thing with stumbleUpon is traffic is sustained.This means you will get traffic as long as people keep on giving thumbs up to your posts.

The video below shows how you can generate traffic to your blog through stumbleUpon. This is somewhat long video (9:54 minutes) but is worth watching.Hope you would enjoy watching this one.

The video was prepared by MakeMoneyOnline and was taken from Youtube.The video was originally prepared for Web2Marketer.com.

Getting started with Stumble Upon [Video post]

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:43:00 PST

I am posting two videos here in this post for someone who is a beginner and joined the internet world just a few days ago. These first videos shows how you sign up and submit a page to stumble upon and the other one shows how you use the Stumble Upon toolbar.

But before you watch these videos let me give you some basic ideas about Stumble Upon.

Stumble Upon is a social bookmarking site and a way to randomly discover and surf col websites on the net.The site has a virtual community behind it who discover ,vote and review the pages and based upon votings and reviews the websites are presented to an user.

So how as a blogger you will be benefitted from stumble upon. You can benefit by three ways-

Discover cool websites- For being a blogger you have to be a learner first. You will get immense learning opportunity here by discovering some websites or pages having ocean of knowledge on almost all topics.
Network with others- Success as a blogger depends upon your networking capabilities with both your readers and other bloggers in your niche.Stumble Upon provides you with excellent opportunity to network with like minded people.
Traffic building opportunity- Stumble Upon can be used to get instant traffic to your blog.One of the best features of this social media site is it gives quick and good results in terms of traffic.You can get hundreds of visitors even if you manage to get only 2-3 votes from your friends or other members of the community.(this is a clue)

Now just watch these videos to get started with stumble upon.

Video by Mauibob33 and taken via YouTube.This video was originally prepared for RecognizedExpert.com

The video below shows how to use the Stumble Upon toolbar.This is 2.43 minutes video and worth watching if you are a beginner. The video was prepared by casttv and was taken from YouTube.

How your Tweets and Twitter followers are correlated? [Case Study]

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:04:14 PST

It has been a week since I became active on Twitter and I have devoted this time in learning the etiquette of this social media site. This also allowed me some time to observe some correlation between the tweets and followers you get subsequent to those tweets.

First let me give you some stats of my Twitter usage during the week. At the time of writing this post , I had made 170 updates (tweets) ,I have 57 people following me and I am following 32 people. I got 12 @ replies and sent 17 . I got 4 DMs (direct messages) and sent out 4 to others.These numbers are not great but since I have been there only for a week and mostly as bystander, so, these numbers are all expected.

During these one week I noticed some specific type of tweets getting me more followers than others. Furthermore, this has been a repetitive phenomenon ,meaning this phenomenon has been reproducible time and again. This led me to think that there certainly is some correlation between tweets and follower number.

With that said, I would now move on to the things I have observed.
The first surge in the followers number came in when I tweeted a famous humorous quote by Albert Einstein.Here is the screenshot of the tweet I am talking about.

I got 10 followers within an hour of posting the quote. I wondered ,if that was due to the quote I just posted. I was not sure of it. So, I posted another humorous quote to check if it was the earlier quote that caused the surge.Here is the screenshot of that another tweet.

This one got me 8 followers about half an hour after it was posted.

So,I was wondering what caused these two tweets to get some followers? Well, I am not sure. But my obvious guess is , these tweets were humorous in nature and humorous things are quite popular in social media. I guess, the followers picked this up from public timeline and followed me because they found those tweets entertaining.

Now take a look at the screenshots of these two tweets that were posted hours after the earlier ones.

These two tweets were made at an interval of an hour between them.The "blogging news" tweet was earlier to go.With this one I got 7 followers within half an hour. Another thing that I noted with this one was most of the followers were bloggers and most said they were passionate about blogging in their profiles.

Now I think you are correlating it well. By using the word "blogging news" , I got followers who were bloggers. My explanation for this one is- these followers made twitter search using the term "blogging" or "blogging news" and saw my tweet there, got interested and followed me afterwards( I am not sure of my explanation though).

Now take the case of "twitter news" tweet (screenshot above). This one caused the steepest spike in followers count. It got me 17 followers just after it was posted.(May be because it involved three celebrities- "Obama" ,"Britney Spears" and "Twitter". Furthermore, it was about a news that was red hot when it was posted.

I posted another newsy material to test this hypothesis further. This time I tweeted this news-

Although in terms of numbers it didn't bring me more followers ( I got 4 subscribers after this one) but I noted an interesting thing here. This time 3 out of those 4 followers were interested in Search engines and SEO (the news I tweeted was about google). I think you are getting the correlation right.

Conclusion-
The number of Tweeter followers increases when you tweet about something that is popular in social media. In my case it was humour and breaking news. Furthermore , you get targeted followers if you just tweet about the topic you are interested in. In my case I got bloggers as followers when I tweeted about blogging news and Search engine marketers when I tweeted about Google.

P.S.- These datas are based on my usage for past one week only. This certainly is not reliable and it has to be supported by further datas. I will keep you updated on how it goes. In the meantime, I would like to get some feedback from you about your experiences with twitter and some correlation between your tweets and followers if you have seen it happen.

8 reasons why a blogger should be on Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 11:25:51 PST

Image by: Mykl Roventin
I came to know about Twitter last year in March through some of the posts on Problogger. But for some strange reasons those 140 characters appeared less to me and I decided not to tweet. I can tell you, I was such a dumb ass to make such a decision and deserved to be kicked on my backside.
Anyways ,it is better to be late than never.

Twitter has shown tremendous growth last year and tweeting phenomena has taken over every other social media site. I have become a part of Twitter community only recently and I have discovered some areas where Twitter can be beneficial from a blogger's perspective. This is what I am going to deal in here today.( I have also posted a video at the end of the post on the topic and hope you would enoy watching this.)

OK, then, let's discover the 8 reasons why a blogger should be on Twitter?

Networking opportunity-

In some ways blogging is like running a business. Just like businesses make relations with their customers and prospects ,a blogger has to interact with his readers. Twitter can be used as a platform to communicate with your readers and also with other fellow bloggers in your niche.

You can have a nice chit chat with others or answer reader's questions or even ask questions to others. Tremendous !! I mean ,you can do miracles with those 140 characters in terms of building relationship.

Updating your readers-

You can make use of Twitter to update your readers. You can share your latest posts with them by twitting the link. Or you can share a link of a nice article you just found while surfing or you can share the breaking news with your fellow tweeterers.
Just see, how easily you can update your readers about the latest happenings in your niche.Isn't this fantastic?

Learning opportunities-

I have found some great articles when someone else tweeted about it and I feel ,I couldn't have found those articles Googling.
So, you can also get some learning opportunities through Twitter.Afterall a blogger has to learn before he delivers.

Posting ideas for future-

A nice chit chat can transform into an idea for your future post. Although this hasn't happened to me yet but I have heard some bloggers talking about getting ideas from a tweet or communication they had on the Twitter.

Making new friends-

Just like any other social media site, you can make friends on twitter from areas which are out of your reach. You can track other people's conversations and befriend someone who is involved in useful and interesting conversation.

Finding new reader-

Although I am using twitter for last few days only, but Twitter has provided me with some visitors.The numbers are understandably not great right now but I expect some more visitors to my blog once I become more involved.

Traffic from twitter is usually achieved by tweeting about one of your posts. You can also request your friends to tweet about your posts (not every one only those which are interesting).You never know when some of your post goes viral this way.So, twitter can also be beneficial in increaseing hits on your blog.

Tracking conversations about your blog-

You can track the conversations involving your blog.You can know what people are saying about your blog and this can be a nice feedback to improve your blog.
This is done by making use of the twitter search.Type in your blog's url or title and see what people are saying about your blog. Easiest way to get feedback from a community, isnt it?

Networking on the move-

Imagine ,you are in a restaurant eating delicious recipes and something interesting happens around you.Now, if you are on any social media other than twitter you have to rush to your computer or nearest cafe to share the event. But with twitter you can share the incident instantly using your mobile phone.
From a bloggers perspective, you don't lose contact with your readers even when you are on a holiday or in a train or plane.

Here is one of the videos that effectively answers the question - 'why you should use Twitter?'. I find this video extremely beneficial and interesting. The video has been prepared by jeffBT and was taken from youtube. Jeff is a young entrepreneur and runs the site besttechie.net. Hope you would enjoy and learn from this video.

How to drive traffic to a very new blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:41:53 PST

image by- Juhansonin
I started my first blog back in 2006 about two and half years ago from now.The blog was about 'Tourist places in India".This was followed by two other blogs, one on 'Medical studies' and another one on 'Hill-stations in India". Although I have abandoned these blogs now but I learnt a lot from them.Particularly the first one.One thing that was common to all these three blogs was there were no visitors until a few months of starting these blogs.

While running those blogs I learnt a lot about driving traffic to new blog and this is what I am going to discuss in this post.I have learnt these tips from my earlier experiences as well as by taking a look at activities of other bloggers in the blogosphere.

Indeed, it is quite a difficult task to drive traffic to a new blog.You don't get anything from search engines as a new blog is never ranked higher or may be not even indexed. You might not get direct traffic and links from other blogs as word about a new blog is never out until a few weeks (or even months) has elapsed since starting it.

Timing of promotion of a new blog is important-

Timing of starting blog promotion is very important. In my opinion you should not jump off to a promotion campaign until you have published 20-25 pillar posts .By being early in promotion you might disappoint the visitors if they find just 1 or 2 meaningful posts on your blog.
So, my advice here would be to accumulate some quality content and then get your hands into the promotion.

Having said this, I would now set off quickly to actual tips.

Tip #-1- Announce your new blog from an existing blog-

According to one of the surveys conducted by Technorati, vast majority of bloggers write on more than one blogs. So, I will presume that most of you already have a blog.You can just capitalise on your existing blog to drive traffic to the newer one.

Take an example, Just about a few weeks ago Darren (the man behind Problogger) launched his new blog- TwiTip.com.And guess what, he announced his new blog from Problogger.net. Now, see the results.At the time of writing this post, Twitip.com has 3529 subscribers.This,I think, is enormous figure for a blog just about a few weeks old. You can yourself watch this tip in action.

Of course, majority of you don't have that much reader base as Darren but even 50- 100 visitors coming to your new blog matters.
Alternatively, you may also place a banner-link of your new blog on your older blog.

Tip #2- Be a guest blogger in an already established blog-

Recently I came across a very nice but relatively new blog- howtomakemyblog.com.This blog is written by a very nice guy Marko. The blog came to my knowledge because Marko featured as as a guest blogger at probloggr.net.

Here is that guest post I am talking about. According to Marko ,he got 287 visitors from that guest post and also 60 subscribers just after his post was published (source). Now, these figures might not sound like great but it is really great figure for a blog which is relatively new. At the time of writing this post Marko has more than 200 subscribers to his blog.

My conclusion on this is, a new blog requires an initial offshoot to take off in the blogosphere and I reckon guest posts to be the fastest and relatively easier way to provide that off shoot.

Tip #3- Start commenting on related and well established blogs-

Commenting is the easiest method to drive traffic to a blog. Although you won't get flood of visitors to your blog by commenting but by being a consistent comment maker you can gradually build traffic to your blog. Just take care of following points while commenting-

Comment on blogs with high readership
Be first to comment on a post.
Make your comments useful and unique
Make your comments eye catching by making use of bold and italic tags.

More details on comment making in this post- "How to master the art of comment making on other blogs?"

Tip #4- Make full use of social media-

Web 2.0 has already taken its full effect and it would be insane not to use social media sites in the era of web 2.0. One of the biggest reason why I am a fan of the social media sites is because they give instant results. You submit your pages to these sites and manage to get some votes and booom, you start seeing a lot of visitors coming to your pages.

Again I will take the example of Twitip.com. One of the reasons why twitip.com took off too quickly is because Darren made use of his strong profiles on social media sites to drive traffic to this blog. I have often seen Darren voting his posts on Stumble Upon. Furthermore, he always announces his new posts on Twitter. Here is the screenshot of one of the updates Darren made on Twitter-

Now, Darren has more than 25,000 followers on Twitter and announcing his new post updates to those thousands of followers means thousands of visitors to his blog.

Apart from Stumble upon and twitter many other social sites are there on internet and making use of these sites is an excellent way to generate some traffic to your blog. Also a blog needs to have an unique content to get viral in these sites but I have seen many average and some below average posts also getting some traffic from social media sites.

Tip #5- Advertise through Adwords-

Personally I don't prefer this method but many bloggers advertise their blogs during early days and once they accumulate some readers they pull off those ads. This can be an excellent way to drive traffic to anew blog but it is not free and might not be suited for many of us.

These are a few ways a new blog generates some traffic. Driving traffic to a new blog is pretty difficult undertaking but it can be achieved by keeping yourself motivated and trying hard. The initial times are hardest in a bloggers life and if you win this situation ,I am sure you can cruise along nicely later.

My blogging plans for 2009 (It can be your plan as well)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:02:12 PST

Slowly and slowly we are heading towards the end of the year to welcome the new one.And while lazing in the sun and doing some preparation for new year ,today I thought seriously about the plans for the next year.

I have learnt a lot in 2008 and my next move in 2009 would be to capitalize on this knowledge to make my blog more worthy than before.I jotted down some of my mistakes ,experiences and some experiments that I havn't done yet or didn't get time to work out.

I spent about 4 hrs. thinking over the issue and came up with a big fat list of 56 things which I need to do in the coming year (the list will grow as the year passes on).Next, I spent about one extra hour to arrange the list according to priority.

Today in this post I would talk about my top 5 plans for 2009. I am not sure how many of you would be benefitted from my plannings but I think some of you might get some ideas from this post.

Here comes my top priority-

1) Regular and frequent posting-
This is in top of my agenda. My posting frequency and more importantly regularity has been dismal all the year round in 2008. I have always adviced everyone to be regular in posting but I myself has not acted on my own advice. I can tell you, this is real bad feeling.(I have no excuses to make though)

In 2009, I will be getting some relieving from work load off my shoulders and I am quite serious to act on my own advice. Still ,I will not be able to maintain the daily post frequency but yes, it will be around 3-4 posts a week.

2) More laser targeted but short posts-
In 2008, I have written pretty long posts. Most of my posts are of 1000 words or longer. This has also been a reason why my post frequency has been so poor in 2008. I never cared about the post length in 2008 but I am planning to get more serious over it.

While I will still write long pithy posts atleast once a week ,my focus in 2009 would be laser targeted short posts discussing one issue at a time. Don't worry though, the short posts still will be of great value.I will not compromise with the quality.

3) No monetization in 2009-
I will not monetize my blog in the coming year at least until August. I want to focus my attention in growing the blog next year.I don't want to dissipate my energy in monetization ,rather I am willing to apply my full energy in growing my blog.

I have some plans to grow my blog and those will take some time to work on. I will pore whole of my energy working on those plan. Money is still, no no for me !!

4) More twittering-
Twitter has been the biggest sensation in 2008. According to one of the stats most of the Twitter users (about 70%) registered in 2008 and about 5000-10,000 new users join it per day.

I am seeing Twitter as one of the places where I can find new readers for my blog as well as network with those who already are readers. I have registered an account in Twitter a few months back but I have never been active there.

Next year, I am planning to do some Twittering.I am checking out some tools and plugins to make Twittering more fun and productive.By the way, you can follow me on Twitter if you desire to get connected with me there.

5) A better blog design-
In offline world the first impression is created by your face or the way you dress yourself or the way you walk. But on the internet, you don't have a face to show . The design of your blog is what that creates the initial impression about you and your blog.

I have decided to revamp my blog design to make it more professional while retaining the simplicity. I hve already changed the template of my blog and I am working to give a tinge of professionalism in it.

These are my top priorities in the coming year. The list may grow in coming few days but for now this is it !!

70 top tips to generate blog traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:06:28 PST

Image via WikipediaTraffic is the key to success of any blog and blogger. It is the measure of success of a blog. One of the greatest advices that I usually give to other bloggers is- "Be involved in building traffic first. Everything else come along with traffic."

No matter what your objectives as a blogger are, you have to think in terms of traffic and visitors. In today's post I will tell you 75 traffic generation techniques that I learned while blogging.Here is the list-

Do a solid keyword research before writing your posts.

Use your primary keyword in title

Use your secondary keywords in subtitles.

Use all your keywords throughout your content.

Build links for each of your posts with your keywords in anchor text.

Build some more links.

Write articles in other people's Ezines.

Write and submit articles in top article directories.

Build a very useful lens at Squidoo.com

Build a useful hub at hubpages.com

Submit your blog in top web directories like Dmoz and Yahoo directory.

Write useful and unique content.

Write some more.

Write list type posts.

Write about Obama.

Tag your posts.

Be first to mention an update or an interesting news.

Even better. Be first and best to write about an update or an interesting news.

Write controversial but well backed posts.

Run contests on your blog.

Request other bloggers to announce your contest.

Be active on StumbleUpon

Submit your own top posts to StumbleUpon

Exchange stumbles with other fellow stumblers

Submit your pages in Digg and Reddit

Start Twittering at Twitter.com

Twitter more.

Answer questions in Yahoo answers with a link back to your related posts.

Answer questions in Help.com with a link back to your related posts.

Answer questions in Wiki.answers.com with a link back to your related posts.

Repeat tip #28, 29 and 30 daily.

Leave some useful and unique comments on other blogs of your niche.

Make your comments attention grabbing stuff.

Make use of trackbacks.

Be a guest-poster in a bigger blog of your niche.

Do some more guest posting.

Network with other fellow bloggers.

Announce your new blogs from your existing related blog.

Exchange posts with like minded fellow bloggers.

Be active in well trafficked forums in your niche.

Leave your link in signature in forums.

Be helpful and ask questions in forum.

Write unique articles in forums.

Give a viral ebook for free with free give away rights.

Place a "tell a friend" script at the bottom of your posts.

Give away free ebooks to some one who uses "tell a friend" script.

Be active in google groups. Ask questions and answer questions.

Be active in Yahoo groups

Be active in MSN groups.

Make some useful microblogs and funnel traffic to your main blog from micro blogs.

Make friends at BlogCatalog.

Join some groups at BlogCatalog and be active there.

Make friends at Mybloglog.

Tell other bloggers about a top post or great post you have written.

Research and make free reports .

Distribute those reports for free and mail it to fellow bloggers.

Upload some interesting photographs in flickr with link back to your blog in description.

Make some interesting videos and upload them on Youtube.

Upload those videos to Google videos and Metacafe as well.

Ask your readers to bookmark your posts (No ask no gain.)

Make wordpress templates.

Make use of press releases to announce your blog or contests or anything else worth aqnnouncing.

Build lists using Aweber.

Giveaway free ebooks to those who subscribes to your newsletter.

Interview fellow top bloggers in your niche.

Create viral softwares and tool.

Take part in webinars.

Write post about what you learned in a webinar.

Make use of craiglist.

Network through Myspace.

Steps to write better posts on your blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:22:53 PST

Image by: Dabawenya
Content is the soul of any blog. Without real unique and useful content a blog is a dead blog. This is why most of the successful bloggers stress upon an useful content which is of value to the readers. In this post I will talk about the things you should do to make your posts more admirable and worthy.

Writing content is not an easy task specially when you are burdened with loads of expectations from your readers. But this can be made easy by following the basic steps every expert writers talk off. The process of writing can be divided into three steps-

Pre-writing- Things you do before writing
Writing- Things you do during writing
Post-writing- Things you do after writing

These basic steps apply to all kinds of writing like, fiction writing, journal writing and even blog writing. Following these steps can make your posts better, well laid out and interesting for your readers. But don't expect things to happen in seconds or overnight because although these steps are essential ,practice also plays its part to make your writing better.So, if you just write more and more with these basic steps in mind you can make a good writer in yourself.

I hope you are getting what I mean to say. In very short, These basic steps plus a lot of practice makes your writing rise above the level of mediocrity. Furthermore, while I can tell a bit about these three steps I have listed above, practicing is something that is completely under your control. So, just take a look at these steps as I describe them below and start practicing. Let us start with the first step- Pre-writing.

Pre-writing-

Pre-writing is the thing you do before you start writing the post. This consists a variety of things like, choosing a topic, researching, outlining and researching the keywords. Pre-writing can be considered as the foundation of your post. Without this you may fail in your endeavour. Let us take look at the things you do before writing a post-

Find a topic or an idea to write about-

Every posts or any writing starts with an idea or topic. An unique idea or a well sought for topic is admired and others are just overlooked. So, try to choose a topic that people are looking for or if you have an unique idea in your mind just go on with it.

One of the finest way to do this is by taking a look into the forums and blogs in your niche. Just try to figure out what are the things people are asking for and choose it as your topic.

Research the topic-

Half cooked food is always bad to eat, isn't it? In a similar way , a post having incomplete facts and no solid backing is way too boring to read. As a blogger you should try to present quality content to your readers with solid facts and back it with solid citations and links. This is where, researching becomes so essential.

Read articles ,books and other blogs to have a clearer idea on the topic. Note down the points that you would like to mention in your article. Talk with experts and other bloggers to get an idea about their opinion on the topic. These are some of the ways you can research the topic. Researching is an ultra essential part of pre-writing and in any case it should not be omitted.

Outline your post-

Have you seen a painter painting or an artists making his art piece. Well ,I am sure most of you would have. Just take a close look next time a painter paints. A painting or an artwork starts with an outline. Even the masterpiece of Da Vinci, the Monalisa would have started with an outline.

The purpose of telling you all this is, a good article or a blogspot starts with an outline just like a good painting. The points or facts that you have collected while researching is obscure unless it is arranged in a meaningful way. This makes your article well laid out and easy to understand. But the question is, how an article is outlined?

Well, Just think of the sub-headings ,you would like to mention in your post. Once you have your sub-headings, list the points you would mention in each of these sub-headings. This is the staple element of outlining an article. Other advanced outlining methods include,picking out images and videos to be embedded in the post, the sentences to be cited or links to be given under each of these sub-headings.

Writing-

Writing means giving ideas the shape of words. For many of us it might be an easy thing to do but for most of us including me it is pretty tedious job. But if you just try and practice more you can become a better writer.

Now, for purpose of simplicity ,I would classify a post into two parts-

Title or headline of post
General body of the post

Both these parts has some importance. Title helps grab the attention of visitors while the rest of the post is for holding that attention.
I have already written detailed post on both of these parts and would suggest you to go through these posts if you are interested. Here are the links-
How to write articles on blog- Part-5 (Writing Title)
How to write articles on blog- Part-6 (Writing Content)

Post-writing -

Post-writing is largely concerned with proof reading and editing. No film is complete without editing- cutting some scenes and adding others. Similarly, apost has to be edited before being published. Read your post time and again before publishing. Look out for any grammatical and spelling mistakes you have committed and correct them.

Apart from mistakes also look for words and sentences that are useless or otherwise not in good shape. If you are not satisfied with your own writing, chances are there that your readers won't be either. So, cut the useless sentences and add some colorful ones to make your post more appealing. I have details about proof reading a post in the post- "How to write article on blogs?- Part-7 (proof reaing)"

Once again I would like to mention, these steps are just to help you learn blog-writing and are not an alternative to practice. Remember the the phrase that you have heard so many times during your lifetime- "Practice makes a man perfect."

How to choose domain name of your blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:26:02 PST

Image by: cogdogblog
So you have decided to start a blog and would like to have your own domain name but you are not sure how to do this? Your conventional wisdom says to keep your domain name short and memorable but you are unable to find one as all short ones are already in use and not available. Then things like SEO and keywords, personal branding come into play and you get totally confused. You are left in a total mesh and experiencing a total mind block. If this is what you are feeling now or has felt in the past then this post has been specially written for you.

Actually I have experienced the same sort of things when I decided to have my own domain name for this blog. The disarrayed situation led me to make many mistakes and ignorance also played its part to make the situation worse. I am writing this post to share the things that I experienced an year ago in a hope that you will learn from the mistakes I made. But before I go on , I would like to start the things from very basic.

What is a domain name?

Just like your letters need an address to reach your home or office ,your domain name is the address that tells where your blog /site would be found. For example, if you type in dr-sandy.net into address bar of your browser you will reach on my blog. So, dr-sandy.net is the domain name for my blog.

Why should you have your own domain name?

Most of the free and semi-free blogging platforms like blogger, wordpress.com ,livejournal and many others provide you with a name. But that is with their own extension and you don't own it. The domain name will look like this-
Myblog.blogprovider.com and in some cases
blogprovider.com/myblog

For example, a blog on blogger will have a blogspot extension, like, myblog.blogspot.com

Now this name can be used if you are blogging for fun and you are not willing to pay for domain name but if you are looking for a long haul with some other objectives other than fun then you should consider having your own domain name.

Your own domain name gives a sense of professionalism and also helps to build a buzz around you. Furthermore, you won't lose your readers and back links when you plan to move your blog from one platform to other.

This is why every serious blogger with long term objectives should get serious about having his own domain name.

How to choose a domain name of your blog?

Many factors has to be considered while choosing a domain name. Some of them are absolutely needed while most others are based on your personal preferences. Here I am providing you with a list of things to be considered while deciding a domain name for your blog.

A domain name should be short and easy to remember- You should think off a memorable domain name so that anyone can reach your blog by typing in your blog's domain name in the address bar. For example, if I would have registered a domain name like DoctorSandeepKumar.com then probably I would have lost many direct visitors.
A domain name should communicate straight way-This is where I made a mistake while choosing the domain name.A domain name should tell what a blog is about. For example, if somebody says DailyBlogTips.com then you straight way know the blog is about blog tips.
A Domain name should have your keywords incorporated- For past few years the internet has become pretty competitive as more and more bloggers have joined the blogging bandwagon. The scenario will become more and more worse in the near future. So, it would be a nice thing to have an edge over rest. Domain names with keywords in it do well in search engines. So, having them would always give you a competitive edge over others blogging in the same niche.
A domain should be brandable-More and more bloggers are getting serious over branding their blog and guess what, domain name helps a lot in branding a blog. Think about problogger or TechCrunch, they have built a brand around their blog names.
The other school of thought is to make a brand around blog authors name. A nice example would be Chrisg.com of Chris Garrett. Even this blog can be regarded as an example of this thought.
A domain name with numbers or hyphens-Personally ,I don't like numbers and hyphens in the domain name. But many a times you have to choose a domain name with hyphen or numbers because of non-availability of non-hyphenated and non-numbered versions of domain names. I bought a hyphenated domain name (dr-sandy.net) because of this reason.
A domain name should have preferably .com ,.net or .org extension-Personally I prefer a domain name with .com ,.net or .org extensions. There has been reports about these extensions working well in search engines although there haven't been any reports from experts on the issue. But it would be nice to play it safe by buying a domain name with above mentioned extensions.

You may think of getting a country specific extension if you are willing to target a certain geographical area. For example, if you think your audience will be from USA then you might think of a .us extension or for india it would be .in extension. It depends on your personal preference. Their are no hard and fast rules for this.

In my opinion you should spend some time to give a thought over the selection of domain name. A carefully selected domain name will always benefit you in some way. Furthermore, apart from some essential factors much of the decision of domain name selection depends on your personal preferences. I would love to know about your personal preferences as well as your own thoughts regarding choice of domain names through comment section.

Is Bounce Rate a ranking factor in Google?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:04:47 PST

Image via WikipediaJust about a couple of days back SEOBlackhat has triggered a new debate. QuadsZilla the writer has noted some correlation between bounce rate and search engine ranking. He has presented some interesting images of his analytics stats that points bounce rate to be correlative with Google ranking. The debate has also been taken over to one of the articles in WebProNews here.

I wanted to take this topic on this blog as I think the discussion is still red and hot and I should post my own thoughts on the issue.

Although QuadsZilla has supported his views with some solid snapshots of his stats but still I feel bounce rate can't be a ranking factor. Furthermore, I don't see it as a strong and influential factor which can make a large difference to search engine rankings even if it happened to be a part of Google algo .I have many facts to support my point of view but before I go on with those facts it would be better to get some basic ideas about Bounce Rate.

What actually is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of vists in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.For example, if 3 persons out of 10 visited just single page (the landing page) of your site then your Bounce rate would be 30%.

A high bounce rate means most of the visits generated a single pageview. A lower bounce rate would mean most of the visitors are visiting more than one pages on your site.

Can Bounce Rate be a ranking factor?

At first instance it may seem like bounce rate can be a factor for search engine ranking. A high bounce rate mean that you don't have a stuff users were looking for. That is why they left your blog without visiting other pages of your blog.

Take a look at the way Google has defined Bounce rate in their help page of Analytics-

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.
Source

So, from above sentences it is clear that google relates bounce rate with the relevancy and quality of the webpage and relevancy as such is a ranking factor in google.They may have included bounce rate based on this hypothesis. But still there are reasons why bounce rate can't ba an effective metric to rank websites.

Not all webmasters use google analytics. Although there are many other ways to collect data about visitors activity (like GToolbar, Firefox and Chrome) this information covers no more than 50% of the sites.

Many of the top blogs get much of their traffic from social media sites. Furthermore, social media site users are very notorious groups because they are not interested in your blog as a whole but just one post which has been bookmarked or shared.They would visit the shared item and then move on to other website.So, most of the blogs getting traffic from social sites will have a high bounce rates and lower ranking if i believe this hypothesis).

On a blog many people find the site with a search for specific information. Typically they read the article they found, then move on to the next search result. Usually people are looking specifically for the info they land on. They don't usually start reading all sorts of other posts on the site. Penalizing for this sort of traffic does not make sense.

Blogs usually have high bounce rate which is easily explained, by the fact that loyal users come to the blog (usually coming from RSS reader), read the newest article and leave.

Based on above mentioned reasoning ,I don't see Bounce Rate as a metric to rank websites.Remember, Google itself has to compete with other search engines like Yahoo and MSN and if they start including these absurd metrics in their algorithm, they know they will be on a loser side.

What is your opinion on the topic? I would love to hear your opinion on the topic.Do you think Bounce Rate can be a measure of site's quality and relevancy and can act as a factor for ranking?Or, are you of belief that this can't be included as ranking factor?
Over to you !!

Adsense Optimisation Tips from Adsense team

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:14:18 PST

For past few weeks people in the adsense team has been releasing some nice videos showing how a publisher can improve earnings by following some simple and basic Adsense optimisation tips. They released a series of three videos in three weeks. The first video showed how placing bigger ad units help increase the earnings. The second video was about blending the ads and how blending the ads increase your Adsense income. The third video and last video in the series showed some positioning techniques.

All those videos were nice to watch with some basic valuable message in them. Here is the first video that was released about 2 weeks ago.

I would also like to mention some of the sentences that they mentioned while releasing this first video.

Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site's design, and we always point them to these three:
300x250 medium rectangle
728x90 leaderboard
160x600 skyscraper
These ad units have proven in the past to deliver better results for both publishers and advertisers. Advertisers favour these formats, and if you've receiving all ad types, you'll find that advertisers will specifically target your sites more often. If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they're interested in.
Source

The second video was released a week ago. Here is that second video.

Here is what Adsense team mentioned while releasing this video-

When you design your AdSense ads, keep these tips in mind:
Use colours that either blend with or complement your site's colours. Make the ads a part of your site.
Use lighter colours for borders, or no border at all.
Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.
Save sets of frequently-used colours as a palette.
Source

The last video of this series was released about three days back and it contained some valuable information regarding positioning of the adsense ads. Here is the third video that Adsense team released.

I would like to mention some of the sentences that the adsense team had said on Official Adsense Blog while releasing this third video.

Great positions include:
Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see without scrolling)
At the end of an article
Aligned with content
But don't just take our word for it - every website is different. Make sure you use your judgment of how visitors interact with your pages to determine good ad placements.
Source

These videos have some great tips shown in them and are worth watching.
HAPPY EARNING !!

How to promote your blog through other blogs in your niche?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:57:07 PST

Other blogs in the niche are excellent source to promote your own blog.This is usually done by commenting on other blogs discussing same topics as yours. I think you already have commented on a number of blogs in a hope to get some traffic to your own blog. But my question here is- Did you get the traffic you were eying at? Many of you might have answered it in an affirmative way. OK, you did got some visitors but did you get A LOT of visitors to your blog?

Not exactly, most of you would have got some 10 or 20 odd visitors to your blog a day (through other blogs ofcourse). And I think 10 -20 visitors a day is nowhere near to "a lot of visitors" I am talking about.What I would discuss here in this post is getting a lot of visitors to your blog from other blogs and not just 10-20 odd visitors.

First of all let me ask a question. Why does other blogs send such a less amount of traffic even when you do a lot of commenting on them?

The reason, as I see it, is one (or more) of the following three-

You didn't pick up right blogs to comment on
Your comments were not unique and useful
You didn't made your comment noticeable

Now I think you are getting some clearer idea on what you have to do to promote your blog through other blogs. What you have to do is-

Comment on blogs having high readership
Make your comments unique and useful
Make use of bold and italic tags to make your comments noticeable

Why should you focus upon blogs with high readership only?

I don't have enough time and always run out of time when it comes to posting on my blog and promoting it. This is not just my story but it is a story of majority of us. So, you should focus upon a blog that saves your time and energy. It is better to post one insightful comment in a top blog rather than commenting on hundreds of low quality blogs.

Of course, low quality blogs can send in some traffic but it is not worth your time and energy. If you are like me you should aspire more for little work and that can be done by commenting on a blog with high readership.

Just make a list of 20 - 30 blogs in your niche and be a regular commenter on those.

Why should you care about unique and useful comments?

Nobody cares about "great post" type of comments. When you have to attract some visitors to your blog, you have to be useful. Why should people care about you and your blog if you don't have anything exciting to offer? Useful and unique comments are the only way through which you can tell others that you have something great to offer.

An useful comment makes people inquisitive and if they become curious enough they might click your link to reach your blog.

Why should you make your comment noticeable?

Earlier in this post I have said , you should comment on a top blog to get better results. Now, a blog with high readership also gets more number of comments. Most of the bigger blogs get more than 100 comments on an average. Your comment should stand out of other 100 comments to get noticed. How can you get a visitor when they are not able to see your comment a t first place?

Furthermore, people tend to skip comments very often when there is higher number of those. If you are making your comments noticeable they might have a good look at it even when they were scrolling down carelessly. So, making your comments noticeable helps grab visitors attention.

A good question that might arise here is-

How can I make my comments noticeable?

Well most of blogs allow some basic html tags in the comment section , such as, bold and italic. Just make your important points bold or make the font-size bigger. This is one excellent way to make your comments an attention grabbing stuff.

One other way to do this is making a longer comments.This is based on my own behaviour on the net. I tend to read longer comments and skip one and two liner comments. On an average most of the comments are about 4-5 sentences long. If you can just post a comment having 10 or more sentences it might grab attention of people (like me).

I think these are the ways you can make your comment more productive and draw in more visitors to your blog. These are my own opinion and you may differ from me on the issue. If that is the case , I will be more than happy to take a note of your angle of perception on the topic.

How to choose niche of your blog ?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:24:35 PST

Selection of a niche is the first step once you decide to start your own blog. Niche should be regarded as the foundation on which your blog would stand and grow. A stronger foundation in the form of well researched niche selection will make sure that your blog grows (or at least has potential to grow). on the contrary, a weaker selection of niche would mean that your blog would crumble due to one reason or other.

This is why an intensive research and at least a few session of brainstorming is essential when you start choosing the niche of your blog. A wrong selection of niche will mean no or little growth of your blog in the long run. Proper selection becomes more important when you have long term plans with your blog.

Before I go on with the points it would be nice to explain the meaning of 'niche' to someone who is new to the blogging thing or new to internet world.

What is niche?

Niche is a term that emanated from ecology.In ecology, a niche refers to the place or position occupied by an organism or a population within an ecological community called the ecosystem.

In internet world, niche refers to the specific areas or topics that the blog/site covers. Let us suppose you write (or plan to write) about Basketball in your blog then it becomes your niche.

Depending on the size the niche can be larger and less specific or smaller and more specific. Let us again take the example of Basketball. Your niche would be larger and less specific if you discuss everything about Basketball in your blog. On the other hand, it would be smaller and more specific if you just cover one smaller topic about Basketball like, 'Great players of Basketball'.

How to choose niche of your blog?

First let me ask a question to you.

What a good niche should be like?

Personally I define a good niche as one which -

interests you
has lesser competition
has more number of audience
is profitable and,
big enough so that you can write indefinitely and small enough so that you have lesser competition to face.

Of course some other points are also there which influence niche selection but the points listed above are most basic and should always be kept in mind once you start brainstorming for your niche selection. Right through this post I would be expanding upon these basic points to help you make proper selection of niche.

Now let us come back to the question. How to choose niche of your blog?

What I am going to tell here is about a series of steps that you should go through to make proper selection of niche.Those steps can be summarized as

Make list of things you are passionate about
Research the search volume
Research the competition
Research the market for profitability
Select the niche

All these steps are important and skipping any one of them may result in improper niche selection. Now I would deal with each of these steps in detail in the following paragraphs.

Step-1 Make list of things you are passionate about-

In any case I would advice you to choose a niche you are interested in (and not people are interested in). This point of view has certainly got some solid facts in its backing. By choosing a topic of your interest you make sure that-

You enjoy your blogging even for years
You are kept motivated as the niche is of your interest
You already have some basic knowledge about your niche
You might evolve as an expert just because it is of your interest

Just make a list of things you love to do. Ask following questions to yourself and note down the answers of these questions in a piece of paper or in a text file-

What is your full time job?
What is your favorite pastime?
What are your hobbies?
What are the games that you love to play?
Do you have some qualities that make you different from others? Like, are you a better painter or an artist or a musician?
In which subject did you graduated?
Do you like to travel and travel many times in a year?
What are the things you love to do?

Once you have compiled the list of your answers ,you have got some idea about the the probable niche that your blog should cover. For example, you may like to write about CSS and codings if you happen to be a web designer by profession or you may like to write about Basketball in your blog if you love to play this game or you may like to write about tourist places if you are a frequent traveller.

Just see how the things you do in your day to day life affect the niche selection. I would once again would like to repeat, choose a niche you are interested in. This will make blogging more easier and more enjoyable.

Step-2 Research the search volume

Search volume gives an idea about the number of audience you have. The most tragic thing about blogging would be not getting any audience or getting little of them. So, you should choose a niche where you have wider audience to present your content to. Without audiences you would be blogging for yourself which doesn't make sense.

Researching the search volume helps you by giving a broader idea about the size of visitors that you might get on your blog. But the big question here is, How to research the search volume of a particular niche?

Well this can be done by making use of one of the free tools available on the net- Google Adwords Keyword tool.

So, How do you make use of this tool?

I would suppose that you have already made a list of things you are passionate about as stated in the previous step. Let us suppose you are interested in- "pet care" , "computer languages" and " Skin care"

Now just go to the Adwords keyword tool and type in these terms in the box provided as shown in the figure below.(marked by a red arrow)

Now if I type in "pet care" in the box, this tool presents me with the search volume of this word and other related terms, like, "dog pet care", "pet care tips" etc. The list looks as shown in the image below-

Now choose the words or phrases that have highest search volumes in the list. Choose at least 10 such phrases. Repeat the procedure for other topics also. Now you will have a comprehensive lists of topics with the search volumes of each of them. This completes this step.

Step-3 Research the competition

No matter on what topic you start your blog upon, there will always be other blogs and websites to compete with you. Getting your feet into a highly competitive niche will dwindle the chances of your blog being noticed. So, you should always target a niche having lesser competition. This will brighten the chances ofyour being noticed.

Now, the question here is how the competition is researched?

The best place to research competition is the search engines. Just type in the words or phrase you have compied in previous steps and notice the following things-

The number of website competing for the phrase.
The pageranks of the top websites for each phrase.

The number of website competing for a phrase can be seen on the top right corner of the search results page. The pagerank of top websites can be seen by opening each page in separate window and looking at the pagerank bar in the google toolbar. Both of these has been depicted in the picture below.(click the images to see the enlarged view)

Just note down these stats in an excel sheet for each of the phrases you have discovered in previous step.
Now analyze the data and choose the phrases with lesser competition (as reflected by by lesser number of websites and lesser pagerank of the competing website).This completes this step.Now I would move on to the next step- researching the profitability of niche.

Step-4 Research the profitability of niche

Most of the bloggers blog for money. You may not think of money while starting your blog but down the road money factor come into play. That is the time when many bloggers start remorsing of not having a blog in profitable niche. So, here my advice would be to think of a profitable niche even if you are not interested in money making while starting your blog. This ,of course , is my personal view and many of you might differ from me in this context.

I will suppose here that you are blogging for money and for that you need a profitable niche.But the question here is how one can know whether a niche is profitable or not. I make use of two websites fior this. One is Adwords keyword tool and other is Clickbank. Here is what you have to do.

Open Adwords keyword tool by following the link and type in the phrases you have compiled in the above steps. Choose "show all" from the drop down menu once the list of keywords start showing in your browser. See the picture below.

After clicking "show all" tab the tool shows the bidding amount (Avg. CPC) in one of the column as shown in the picture below. In general keywords with high bidding amount are more profitable.

The otherway to check the profitability of a niche is through clickbank.com. This is a portal for affiliate marketers and this can be used to check profitability. In the marketplace of this website type in the phrases you have chosen in the keyword field. The niche can be regarded as profitable if it shows a lot of related products.

Step- 5 Select the Niche

Now after following these above four steps you have a lot of data on the individual niches you have selected. Just compare the data you have collected uptill now and choose the one which suits you best. Make sure your niche your niche is not too large nor too small.

Proper niche selection is the basic step to succed as a blogger. Failing to choose a proper niche can make blogging disgusting and more like a burden rather than a fun.Remember one thing niche is the base of your blog. A weaker base will never help your blog grow.So, just spend some time to research a better niche for you.

Tips to increase CTR of Adsense ads by 500%

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:38:09 PST

Image via WikipediaOne of the factors that can increase your adsense income is the CTR. Although it is not the sole factor and other factors like Traffic, relevant ads and CPC also play their part in increasing the adsense income but CTR is clearly one of the most important of them. The reason why I identify CTR as one of the most important factors is because it can only be manipulated in part. Other factors like traffic , relevant ads and CPC can be achieved if you have a basic knowledge of blogging and adsense and how it works. But CTR is something that requires a fair bit of research and some understanding of your visitors and where they are focussed on your blog. It varies on different blogs and different pages of same blog and also during different months in a year.

I have already explained these factors in detail in some of my posts .Just start with this post- "How to increase Adsense income?". I have also discussed about CTR and and how to increase CTR earlier on this blog. If you haven't read this post ,I would advice you to go through that post before switching to this one.

Now let us come to the point. How to increase Adsense CTR by 500%. There are couple of things that I have tried during last couple of months and the results I got was quite gratifying. Here is the screenshot of my CTR during the months of August, September and October.

Picture showing my CTR in August

Picture showing my CTR in September

Picture showing my CTR in October

As you can see in the picture the CTR in the months of August, September and October was 0.5 %, 1.66% and 2.84%. So, the increase in CTR from the months of August to October has been roughly around 550% ,i.e., five times increase in CTR. In this post I would tell you about the steps I have followed in order to achieve this substantial increase in CTR. I hope you are ready to go and discover the secret, right? Right, OK ,lets proceed now.

First let me tell you about some of the factors that tend to influence the CTR of the adsense ads. These factors are-

Ad Type ,i.e., image ads or text ads
Ad format ,i.e., the size of ad blocks
The colour and background of the ads
Ad positioning
Seasonal variation

Now I will expand upon these points and will explain what and how I did things that resulted in increased CTR (by more than 500%). So let us take each point one by one.

Ad Type-

The type of ads that you place on your pages has a direct impact on your CTR. Presently adsense for content has three ad types - Text Ads, Image Ads and Video Ads. I haven't tried Video ad units as they are still new and I will get to them soon. I have compared the performances of image ads and text ads.

I have found that text ads perform better than the their image counterpart. The reason I guess for that is, I have a blog that is mainly rich in text with very little images. So, the image ads stand out of rest of the things and say it loud and clear that "I am an ad ,don't click me". While the text ads can be blended well with a content rich pages and will result in higher CTR.

Image ads tend to perform well on a page that has a number of images. For example, just take a look at the snapshot of a greeting site with a lot of images.

I have marked the ad with an arrow. The page contains a lot of images and the image ads has really blended well with this page. At first glance the ads doesn't really look like an ad but gives an impression of being a greeting card.

I have consistently found that the text ads do better on a page rich in text and image ads on a page rich in images. So, if you have a page with a lot of texts you should try text ads and if you have a page rich in images you should try image ads. The idea is to blend the ads with the things that exist on your pages.

Ad format-

Just like ad type, ad format has got some direct impact on the CTR. I have tried four formats during last couple of months- 336x280 Large Rectangle, 160x600 Wide Skyscraper, 468 x 60 banner and 125x125 button. Out of these 336 x 280 large rectangle were the one that performed best followed by 468 x 60 banner.

The reasoning for these ads performing better has been quite well described by the Adsense help centre.

As a rule of thumb, wider ad formats tend to outperform their taller counterparts, due to their reader-friendly format. Readers absorb information in thought units (that is, several words at a time). The wider format lets them comfortably read more text at a glance without having to skip a line and return to the left margin every few words as they would be forced to do with a narrower ad. The wider ad format also lessens the likelihood of readers leaving the ad unit altogether.
Source

Indeed the people at google has come up with a good explanation but I am not sure why the 468x60 banners performed well on my page. I think it is due to the placement of the ads that caused it and not the ad size.( these ads were placed on the top of the page just above the title of the posts).

The colour and the background of the ads-

I find colour of the ads together with the positioning as the most important determinants of the CTR. This is because they require a great deal of research and also are the most important factors that make the ads blend with the page's content. The google people has come up with three colour strategies- Blending , complementing and contrasting the ads.

Blending the ads mean to make the background and the borders of the ads the same as the background of the page of your blog.See the picture below.

Complementing the ads mean to use the colour that already exist on your pages and not essentially matching the background.Look at the picture below to see this type of ads in action.

Contrasting the ads mean making the ads stand out of the background by choosing a background colour of the ads different from the one of your page.

I tried two of these colour schemes Blending and complementing. Blending gave me slightly better results than the complementing. I only once tried the contrasting feature (for a few minutes) on my page but it ruined the look of my pages and so I removed it. The contrasting of ads works well when the page has a dark background.

The colour of the title-

It is not just the colour of background and border that affects the CTR but the colour of the title also has some role to play in increasing the CTR. Now most of the bloggers are of the opinion of making the color of the ads the same as the color of your links. But I differ from them. Actually a small story is attached with this and I would like to tell this story to you before explaining my point.

When I was a kid one of my teachers used to play a game with me. He used to write some words on a paper (all in different colours) and then asked me to see that paper for just a second and remember what word came before my eyes first. I like a good student used to obey him. Then my teacher used to tell me the word that first came before my eyes (without me telling him the word). At that time I was surprised and also regarded my teacher as magician but then one day he revealed the secret to me. He told me that in a page containing many colours the one that draws our attention first is the red.

I made use of this knowledge in adsense. I made the title colour red. You can see this in action on this blog at the bottom of the page. The colour scheme of the adsense ads should help draw the attention of the visitors and making the title red helps in drawing the attention of the blog visitors. You may give it a try. It may work well for you.

Ad positioning-

Ad positioning is one of the most important factor to increase the CTR and requires a great deal of research to find out the better positioning of your adsense ads. Now research for ad positioning can be done in two ways.

One is by trial and error method which is advised by most of the bloggers. You just position the ads at different places and see the results.If one position fails you try another until you are able to find a position that suits well for your site. While this method may work for you as it has worked well for many but it takes too long to get the results and it often becomes cumbersome to compile and compare the data of different ad positions.

The other method (the easier one) is guiding your research through some of your stats of google analytics. The most important stats shown in analytics (which help in positioning of ads) are

Average time spent on the page
Visitor type

Average time spent on the page-
The analytics account shows the time spent by the visitors on your pages. This can be found on your dashboard (dashboard shows the average value) and details of it can be found by clicking the 'Visitor'> 'Time on site' link located in the sidebar on the left side.

Snapshot showing the dashboard of analytics with average time spent (on the right side)

Snapshot showing details of time spent on the blog

Just observe the average time spent by the visitors for one week. Now, if the average time spent is greater than 2 minutes that means people visiting your blog are scrolling down upto the bottom of your page. You might think that 2 minutes is somewhat lesser time to read a post but remember majoity of people on net scan through the pages and not necessarily read your post word by word. 2 minutes time is enough to scan through a page.

I am of opinion that you should place your ads on the bottom of your posts if average time spent on your site is greater than 2 minutes or place it on the top if it is lesser tha 2 minutes. As for me average time spent by a visitor on my blog is greater than 3 minutes so, I have placed the ads at the bottom of pages.

Visitor type-
The visitor type stat shows the number of new and repeat visitors on your blog. You need to shuffle your ads and colour of your ads if you are getting too many repeat visitors on your blog to counteract the phenomenon called as 'Ad Blindness'. My analytics account shows that I have a high percentage of new visitors so I don't shuffle my ads too many times.

Some more points regarding Ad positioning-

People tend to be focussed in and around the content area so placing ads near the content will help draw there attention towards the ads and they might click an ad if they find it appealing.

Placing an ad on the top tend to do better than the one placed on the footer and ads placed towards left tend to perform better than the one in right. But this is a generalisation rather than universal and you have to research and find what works best for you.

The ads placed just below the title of your post and towards the left tend to do give better results than those placed away from it. I have placed adsense ads at this place on one of my blogs and it is getting more clicks than any other blog even when the traffic to that blog is lesser than others. Here is th screenshot of that blog.

You have to take care of all the points that I have discussed here in order to see a drastic increase in your CTR and thus your adsense earnings. Before closing this post I would like to mention one last tip. Think like visitor of your blog. Just think where people will be focussed on your blog and place your ads there.

How to get traffic to your blog through social network marketing ??

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:38:09 PST

In the previous few posts I have been talking about Social network marketing and what you should do to take advantage of social media sites and to drive more traffic to your blog. Earlier have talked about how you should choose a social network site that suits your blog's need. I have discussed this in three posts-
How to choose most popular social network for your blog-#1
How to choose most popular social network for your blog-#2
How to choose most popular social network for your blog-#3

In this post I will talk about some of the steps that you should follow to get maximum from social media sites once you are complete choosing a social media site. To get maximum advantage from the social media sites you need to follow three steps-

Create the hook
Communicate in such a way as to make your interaction productive
Redirect the social site users to your blog

Create the hook-
No matter what topic you cover in your blog, there are thousands of blogs and websites to compete with. So, the chances of reaping benefits from social sites are meagre unless you create the hook.Creating the hook simply means telling others how you and your blog is different from whole lot of other blogs and sites on the topic.Social sites are of little benefit unless your blog stands out of the crowd.

There are certain ways that you can make a good impression on the social media site users. Firstly create quality ,original and useful content.Remember that age old phrase- 'Content is King'.

Secondly research in your niche and find out what are the areas that has been little covered by your competitors.Just focus on those areas and congratulations you have created the hook.

Although I know creating hook for social networking sites is not that easy as it sounds but to get success in these sites you have to sound different from whole bunch of other blogs.

Communicate to make your interaction productive in social networking sites-

A productive interaction is one that makes interaction beneficial for you. For example ,if you are blogging to sell your products then a productive interaction would be one that makes other social site users to buy from you.If you are on social networking sites for traffic then a productive interaction is one that makes others to visit your site.

In one of the earlier posts in the series I have told , Social networking should be done to build trust and not essentially to build links and traffic.Just keep this thing in mind while interacting with social site users.The easiest way to do so is by giving useful advices and helping others without expecting or demanding anything in return. Social sites should essentially be used to make relations without promoting your blog or products directly.

Follow the following points while interacting with other social networking sites users-

Say no to affiliate links in social sites. While giving affiliate links in social sites may make a few dollars for you but this way you will loose your credibility very fast.Don't use affiliate links in social sites.
Be helpful to others and always be keen to help others in whatever manner you can. Give impartial opinions and genuine advices to users if they are seeking one from you.
Be courteous and polite. Your words are the only weapon when you are interacting on social networking sites.People can't see your faces and can't hear your voice.So, your words are the only weapon you have. Use good ,polite and be courteous.Your words should reflect that you are courteous and friendly towards other social site users.
Don't demand something in your first meeting (rather avoid demanding anything anytime during your interaction) .I remember an interaction with a blogger on blogcatalog when she requested a link exchange in the very first chat she had. Although I am not against link exchanges but requesting it even before we know each other well is something I can't digest.
Don't spam social networking sites.Social sites are a potent way to build loyal readers but if you start spamming it , you would loose most of the loyal readers.Social networking sites are meant to be used not abused.

These are some well known points but very useful points that can make your interaction positive and productive.Keep these points in your back of the mind while interacting in social sites.

Redirect users to your blog-

Once you have interacted in a positive way with keeping the above points in mind, you now need to make the social sites users to visit your blog.In most of the cases you can skip this step as the social site users will visit your blog once you have interacted in right way. But in general keep these following points in your mind-

If there is a discussion going on about a topic on which you have written a post then it would be good thing to provide the link of the post with a short description of what you have discussed in that post.
The easiest way to get some visitors from social sites is by leaving a signature link or a link of your blog in your profile.People who are inquisitive about you would certainly visit your site.
If you have written a post that you think would help others then it would be nice to let others know about it.

This way you can make full use of the social networking sites.Remember, social sites have big potential to drive traffic to your blog but it should be done in right way.Don't abuse the service just to make some short term benefits instead go for a long haul by interacting in a nice courteous way.Build trust through the social sites and keep everything else in back of your mind.

What are the methods that you use to get benefits from social sites.I would be happy to know your tactics and methodology of using social sites.Just comment to let me know about your methods.

How to choose most popular social network for your blog # 3

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:38:09 PST

Earlier I have talked and helped you in answering two questions that help you in choosing right social network for your blog.In this post I would talk off third and the last question- What niche do you cover in your blog?

Niche is important for deciding the right social site for your blog.Different social media users have different tastes. For example, Digg users like tech and news related topics.So, it is of prime importance to know the tastes of the social sites user. If you have a blog on history and you are using a social site with majority of users inclined towards geography then you will hardly get any purchase from that site.

So, just do a research on different media sites and try to find out what topics are liked by the users of a particular social site.But the qquestion that arises here is ,How can I know the tastes of the users of a social site?

Well that is not a difficult task but it requires a lot of work to research it.There are different methods I employ to research this but none of them is perfect.So, what I do is combine different methods to research.I use a combination of three methods to find the tastes of the users.By doing this I reduce the errors in research and thus try to reach a near correct result.I would talk about these methods in following paragraph.

Take a look at the frontpage of social sites you are researching-

This I think is simplest method and and gives best and nearest results among the three.Just take a look at the front page of the social sites and see what sites are appearing there.Note down the site title and niche.Do this for minimum of one week.After you are done doing this, just see what niche or category has most featured on front pages of a particular site. This is most suited for social bookmarking sites like digg.

Take a look at the tag cloud of the social site-

Tag cloud give you a broader idea about the likings of a social site user.You may wonder how tag cloud can help you in choosing the right social site for your blog?? OK, let me explain the things in some detail. Take a look on this image of one of the pages of stumble upon.

Click to enlarge

On the right side of this image you can see the tag cloud. Just see the words that are written in bigger font in this cloud.Then see whether your your blog is about this.For example, one of the words in tag cloud is business (written in bigger font). So, if your blog is about business the social site can be of your choice.

Take a look at the categories-

Categories can be quite helpful in deciding the social site.Just ask a question to yourself. Is there any category which describes your blog or in which your blog can be fitted? If you don't find any category for your blog then probably your blog is not suited for that social site.

Based on these three factors and others I have discussed in earlier posts you can reach to social media site of your choice.In any case go for 2-3 best suited social sites to get maximum from social networking.Social networking is all about communicating with your target audience and the first step is choosing a social site where you can find plenty of target audience.Once you are not taking this first step with caution ,you may fail in social network marketing.

How to choose most popular social network for your blog- #2

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:38:09 PST

Image via WikipediaEarlier in the series of this post ,I have helped you to answer one of the questions to choose most popular social network for your blog. Now I will move on to the next question- What do you want social sites to do for your blog?

As I have said earlier , social sites can be used in a variety of ways. They can be used to drive traffic to your blog, they can be used to build relationships and increase sales or they can even be used to build links for your blog. So, answer of this question is quite important for choosing right social media site. Let us expand this in foollowing paragraphs.

Social sites of choice if you are there to drive traffic-

This is probably most important reason why bloggers participate actively in social sites. The most efficient social sites in this regard are stumble upon and digg. Of course, there are some other second tier choices like reddit and newsvine. So, if you are there for traffic you should focus on these sites.You don't have to actively participate in conversations here, only thing you have to do is bookmark your posts and encourage your readers to do the same.

Social media sites of choice to build relationships-

One of the reasons why you need to build relationships with others is because you want to win trust or you want to highlight yourself as an expert of some field.For this you need to be personal with your target audience.You have to converse with them. And that is why, you have to choose a social media site that has a messaging interface to make connections with others.Facebook ,orkut and different forums in your niche are excellent examples where you can communicate with others.

Social media site of choice to build links-

Yeah !!! social media sites can be used effectively to build links and increase your pagerank.For this you need to research and find out which bookmarking sites don't use "no follow". Some of the examples of social media sites that don't use "nofollow" are furl and blinklist.There are still some more and I am working on it.I will produce a list of dofollow social sites soon.

So, you can see ,how the answer to the above mentioned question dictates the choice of the social media site. Most of the times you have many reasons to use social sites.For example ,you wish to increase hits on your blog as well as build links from social sites.In this case the choice can be different.Just find out what do you want from social site and choose the one that fulfills your need.In every case, focus your attention only on 2-3 social sites as it is not possible to focus on every site that comes your way.

How to choose the most popular social network for your blog?- #1

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:38:09 PST

One of the main reasons why many bloggers fail in social networking is, they don't choose a social site which suits their blog's need.For example ,it is unlikely to get purchase from digg if you have a blog on history because Digg users love tech stuff and newzy material.That is why choosing a right social media site is of paramount importance if you wish to market you blog socially.In this post and two other posts of this series you would learn to choose a right platform to network.

In the earlier post of this series I have given an outline of social network marketing.I have talked about three questions you should ask to yourself to be able to to choose a right social platform.In this post I will talk of first question and how the answer of this question helps you in choosing the most popular social site for your blog.

The first question was-

What do you want your blog to do?

Whether you want your blog to make money for you through adsense or through affiliate marketing or you just want your blog to make you famous through your opinions or is it just a fun for you.

The answer to this question is vital in choosing right network for your blog.Why ?? well, I will show you the reason in the paragraphs that follow.

Social media of choice if you want your blog to make money through adsense-

If you are planning to make money through adsense then you should care about traffic.More traffic means more clicks and more clicks mean more money, isn't it? So, if this is the case you would go for a social media site that brings in a lot of traffic to your blog like, stumble upon and digg.

Social media site of choice if you want to be an affiliate marketer-

As an affiliate marketer you need to build trust because people seldom buy from someone whom they don't trust. So, in this case your social media site of choice would be one that allows you to communicate with others through a messaging interface, like facebook, orkut etc. You can't build trust unless you talk to your target audience.Social bookmarking sites like,digg won't help an affiliate marketer in building trust.

Social media site of choice if you want to be famous-

Many people blog to build a profile or to become famous.If this is the case with you ,you need to communicate with other people in your niche.This can be done through comments in blogs and forums of those people.Once people in your niche come to recognise you as an expert you would become famous in your field.

So, you can see how answer to this question help you in choosing the most suited social platform for your blog.I will suppose that you would have answered this question for yourself.Many a times you blog for more than one reasons.For example, you may wish to make money through adsense as well as an affiliate.In that case you can choose a combination of two social sites or even one if it is there.

In any case you have to choose a social site that suits your need.

Social network marketing: Taking your blog to next level

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:38:09 PST

Image by glenn.batuyong via FlickrOne of the reasons most successful bloggers are successful is because they market their blog through social networking.The reverse is also true, most bloggers fail because they don't market their blog socially.Social network marketing ,also called as social media marketing, is one of the arsenals that web 2.0 has given us to promote our blog.But most of you are not able to take full advantage of it because you simply don't have an idea how to use it.

I am writing a series of post where you can learn about social network marketing and thus, you will be able to promote your blog socially. This is the first post of the series and in this post I will just outline the things that you would discover in the rest of the posts of this series.But before I would do this, it would be nice thing to define social network marketing.

What is Social network marketing?

"Social network marketing is a process of building relationships with target audience, to market principles and ideas for the purpose of societal benefit by winning trust."

If you take a close look onto the definition ,you will find three key factors of social network marketing-

Building relationships with target audience.
Marketing for purpose of societal benefit.
Winning trust.

These three points are key to social marketing and through out this series I will expand upon these three key factors only.

Now the next question that would be hovering in your mind is- What should I do to market my blog through social networks or social media sites? Well, social media sites are complex to deal with as you have to deal with a variety of people having different behaviours and opinions.But this can be made easy if you can follow a couple of steps.These couple of steps are part of social media optimisation.

Social media Optimisation-

Social media optimisation is simply the things you do to market your blog or products socially.You have to follow just a couple of steps (with a few sub-steps) to successfully market your blog socially. These steps are-

Choose most popular social network that suits your blog's need.
Apply some social media marketing tactics.

Choosing the most popular social network-

One of the mistakes most of you do while using social media sites is, you don't research to find out which network site is suited for your need. I have seen many bloggers using all the social networking sites that come their way.So, they will stumble, digg , and reddit and will twitter also without researching what they really need to use.

Choosing the most suited social sites is not hard either. Just you have to answer some questions-

What do you want your blog to do? Whether you want to make money through adsense or through affiliate or you just want to get noticed or is it just a fun for you.
What niche do you cover in your blog? Whether you write about computers or making money or news orany other thing in this world.
What do you want the social sites to do for your blog? Whether you want to build links or get subscribers or generate some traffic through social sites.

The answer to these three questions are vital to select suitable social sites for you and your blog.I have separate posts on these questions where I shown you how answers to these questions affect the choice of social networking sites.

Applying social media marketing tactics

Once you are done choosing a social site for you, the next step is applying some tactics to make your social network marketing campaign more effective. I have categorised these tactics into three steps-

Creating the hook- This is basically a tactics to tell others , how you are different from your competitors.
Communicating like a skilled person-The way you should communicate online to make an impression and win trusts of others.
Redirecting the users to your blog- It is quite easy to redirect users to your blog once you have won the trust. But you need to be careful while doing this as you may loose the trust by doing it wrong way.

I will discuss these three points in separate posts.

This post was just an outline about what you will learn about social network marketing in this series of posts. Social network marketing is crucial for success as a blogger.Without networking it is impossible to be successful so, you must learn the art of networking on popular media ssites.

I hope you would enjoy this series and be benefited from it.If you fear loosing a part or whole of the series , you may subscribe via email to get the posts delivered in your inbox.

Drive traffic to blogs through search engines: Tips SEOs forgot to tell you

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:38:09 PST

Image by ocean.flynn via FlickrAfter reading out the title you may have guessed , I would talk about search engine optimization.But in this post I would not say a word about it. I would not talk of keyword research or anchor text optimization or anything else about SEO. Instead I will talk of how you can apply SEO techniques to get more hits (not high search engine rankings).There is some difference between getting more hits and getting high search engine rankings.You will unfold the difference between the two somewhere in the following paragraphs.

Optimizing just your home page is biggest mistake-

I have seen many bloggers who have optimized their homepage quite well but if you take a look at inner pages they are poorly optimized.Even the best of your keywords can't drive loads of traffic if you have just optimized your main page.To drive more traffic from search engines you need to optimize many of your pages. Just create many entry points to enter your blog.

Let us take an example. Suppose you have one page beautifully optimized and it gets 50 visitors per day from search engines.50 visitors from one page is impressive ,isn't it?But since you have just one optimized page , you will not be able to go beyond that number. Will you? Now what happens if you have 10 such optimized pages.Do the simple maths and calculate.You will get 500 visitors and what if you have 50 optimized pages.My god!!! you have thousands of visitor just from search engines.....

So, the first lesson is optimize SOME OF YOUR inner pages apart from your home-page.

Optimizing all your pages is not easy (possible) either-

To succeed as a blogger you have to update your blog frequently, means, you have to write daily ,right? Right!! So, you are already in a pressure of writing daily and once you start optimizing each of your pages ,you will feel additional pressure. The pressure of doing keyword researches and building links for all your posts.

But all SEO experts told you to optimize your all pages, isn't it? Ok ,they are right. But they write for all the pages on internet and they most importantly write for websites which are not updated as frequently as blogs. So, a website owner can afford to optimize all of his/her pages but same can't be said about blogs.

So, What the hell should I do to drive traffic through search engines-

From above paragraphs it is clear that you can't drive traffic by optimizing just your home page and optimizing all your pages is not possible. So, the big question is - What you should do to drive traffic to your blog from search engines?

Here comes the secret-

Classify your blog pages into three tiers or strata. Your home page comprise the first strata ,some of your long, tutorial type posts (pillar posts) will come in the second strata and short posts and newsy posts in the third strata. I have shown this in the figure below.

Once you have classified your posts ,focus your attention on tier-1 and tier-2, that is, your homepage and your pillar posts.Optimize these two tiers with best keywords and get some links for them. Make sure all your pillar posts are accessible from your homepage and all relevant pillar posts exchange links between themselves.

So, what is the use of tier-3? Well, tier-3 (the short articles and newsy items) are just meant to provide internal links for your home page and your pillar posts. They feed your important posts with links without getting link from them.Thus, your pillar posts get one-way internal links from these posts. Isn't this cool.

If you write a pillar post each week, you will have 24 posts in six months and if you can manage to write two, you will have 48 pillar posts.If you can optimize all these posts you will create 48 entry points for your blog. Another good news , you will have a lot of newsy items or short posts to get your pillar posts linked.

Does creating entry points drives more traffic to blogs-

In the first paragraph i have said, "there is difference between getting more hits and getting high search engine rankings."I know you are getting confused here because you have been told that higher ranks mean more hits.OK let me clarify the things.

Let us suppose you are in the top ten (1st page) for a term in google results page.Well, you have 10 other sites to compete with even if you are in top ten for your targeted keyword. Furthermore, these competitors are often the toughest one.I know you can still get some traffic competing with them but my point is to leverage your high rankings to get maximum you can get from search engines.

How can I do this?

You have to simply focus your attention on search snippet. A search snippet looks something like this-

You can see here, a search snippet has two parts-

The title which is written in blue colour.
Description which is written in black.

Both these parts are quite important as it reflects the stuff in your blog.Many people decide whether they should click the link or not on the basis of this snippet.Thus, if you can assure people that you have the stuff they were looking for ,you can make them to visit your blog.

Make sure you have written an intriguing and 'killing' title. Also , make use of meta tags to describe each of your page.This way you can get more traffic from search engines.

These are all little things but are most often not given the attention they deserve.If you have some fantastic ideas to share or otherwise my points were not clear to you then you are most welcome to start a discussion here in the comment section.I look in to every comment i get and personally answer those.

5 unique traffic generation posts from 5 unique bloggers

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:13:05 PDT

Image via WikipediaEvery blogger wants traffic, only some of them constantly and seriously try to generate it and still fewer get it.This is the real picture of blogosphere in terms of traffic generation.If you are quite serious to generate some quality traffic for your blog ,then check out the links to the posts of some successful blogger and learn some unique and innovative ideas to build traffic.

Traffic building through offline blog promotion- By Darren Rowse

Most of the bloggers and webmasters are centered on online blog promotions.OK, online blog promotion can bring in some traffic to you but to really get piles of visitors on your blog you have to complement it with some offline blog promotion strategies.Darren has pointed out some good reasons to consider offline blog promotion and also has listed some great tips to do so.You can find the post here.

Traffic generation through google image search- By Maki

You read it right!!!!! Traffic from google image search is something that I have never thought of getting.Although I get some traffic from google inage search but I can't expect heaps of traffic from this.But, Maki , the man behind doshdosh has some ground-breaking tips to build a great deal of traffic from google image search.He has discussed a series of steps optimize your blog for google's search engine for images. You can find the article here.

Traffic generation through stumble upon- By Mani Karthik

This may sound like a repetitive and regurgitated list of tips but believe me Mani has got some useful techniques to get traffic from stumble upon.The post has been written on bloggingtips and can be found here.

5 traffic generation tips from Skellie Wag-

Skellie has got 5 great and unique tips to build traffic for your blog. All the five tips are singular and has great thoughts behind them.Read this post here.

30 Traffic building tips on daily blog tips-

This post is a bit different from others listed above.It contains views and ideas of thirty people on traffic generation techniques.Many of them are quite innovative and easy to follow.Check out this post here.

These are the unparalleled posts on the topic of traffic generation.Read them, follow them and enjoy getting more hits on your blog.If you have got some unique ideas on traffic building ,you can share it here through comment section.

Blogs I read

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:13:34 PDT

Blogs on blogging-

Blogs on Making money-

Others-