Posted by scoop on January 29th, 2010 in Splogs, Tips, Word Press | No Comments »
I was browsing the net yesterday when I stumbled on this page:
The ironic thing was that I clicked on a link that was supposed to be giving tips on blogging and contests. I guess the blogger, whose good enough to give tips, didn’t even know the first rule of blogging: Don’t violate rules and if you do, don’t get caught! I mean isn’t that the rule in life?
Anyway this made me think and I realized that I personally haven’t even read Wordpress fine print in its entirety. Come on, who has? The fact that no one really reads every site’s Terms and Conditions doesn’t excuse anyone from suffering the consequences when rules are violated. We all know after all that ignorance of the law excuses no one.
So what does this mean? It simply means that we should all get our act together and start reading the fine print. Starting with that of the services we use to create and maintain our blog – from the hosting service to feed readers and search engines. At least read the most important parts, which for me is the privacy part and the responsibilities part, which is where we find the DONTs.
For now here are some of the DONTs listed on Wordpress’ Terms and Conditions:
1. infringing on proprietary rights
2. content that contains or installs any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content
3. spam
4. content that is pornographic, libelous or defamatory, contains threats or incites violence towards individuals or entities, and violates the privacy or publicity rights of any third party
5. blog name that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company
Posted by scoop on January 25th, 2010 in Tips | No Comments »
Launching a new blog can be very discouraging, especially if you’re starting from scratch.
You might be wondering how some blogs take off immediately but what you should realize is that the keyword here is SOME because most blogs really do take time before getting the traffic and readership to achieve the blogger’s desired goals: popularity, reputation, or conversions. Furthermore if you look at the reasons why these blog get a lot of readership almost instantaneously you’ll find that it’s highly likely that:
1. the blogger is already famous in his niche and has another popular blog/website. In short the blog’s “new readers” are already old followers (whether offline or online) of the blogger.
2. the blog is a newly bought but old has an old and established URL. This takes care of the “aging” part so that the blogger need only take care of other SEO efforts and of course churn our good content.
3. it’s due to good old plain luck. It just so happened that the blog’s recent launch coincided with some event that drew lots of people’s attention to the blog’s particular theme or even a single post.
The point is that as a blogger you have to be realistic in setting goals. Do not expect to be a famous blog within several month’s time. If you’re starting from scratch it will take several months just to start ranking decently. However, this fact should not discourage you but make you realize that your efforts will start bearing fruit in time. For now, make sure you’re doing everything you can to ensure that success will come sooner than later.
Posted by scoop on December 29th, 2009 in Adsense, Blog Advertising | No Comments »
If you are planning on monetizing your blog you’d better know the ins and out of AdSense. After all it doesn’t make any sense to go into something uninformed. However, if you already make money from your blog with or without the using AdSense it will still makes perfect sense to know more about this income stream. Really what do you have to lose? The more you know the better equipped you are to make decisions regarding your blog monetization.
If you are interested in learning more and getting more out of Google AdSense then the perfect place to start would be by getting your info straight from the most reliable and knowledgeable source – Google’s Adsense Team.
This past year the Adsense Team has been working to make information more accessible and easy to understand by offering FREE webinars. The good news is that even if you missed the webinars they are all available at AdSense Help: Past Webinars.
As of today the topics you can watch there include:
1. Adsense Optimization – Everything you need to know
2. Teaching our teachers: AdSense on your Education site
3. AdSense for Search: Improve the user experience and generate revenue
4. Using Analytics to optimize your AdSense performance
5. Why AdSense is right for Retail
6. Maximize your AdSense revenue on your Home and Garden site
7. Make the most of your forum with AdSense
8. Improving AdSense performance using Google Ad Manager
9. Market your site to Advertisers using Google Ad Planner
10. Optimizing AdSense on your Business and Finance site
11. AdSense Optimization – Everything you need to know
12. Market your site to Advertisers using Google Ad Planner
13. AdSense for Search: Improve the user experience and generate revenue
14. Using Analytics to optimize your AdSense performance
Posted by scoop on November 30th, 2009 in Professional Blogging, Tips, Word Press | No Comments »
Yesterday I recounted a story on how embarrassing an inappropriate comment can be. I then said that it should serve as a cautionary tale on being more careful about editing yourself when it comes to leaving comments. After all, especially as a professional blogger, you don’t want to end up tarnishing your hard earned reputation online merely by one comment that you didn’t think really think about.
Just an added warning: Don’t post comments in the heat of the moment. If you will be commenting on something controversial or simply disagree with a blogger or another commenter pause first and process things before you reply. First of all you don’t want to sound idiotic. Secondly you don’t want to sound unprofessional. Remember you can disagree without being argumentative. And third, you want to be persuasive and witty so that your comment will catch people’s attention (in a positive way) and hopefully end up in more traffic for you.
As a blogger, yesterday’s tale serves as a reminder for us to be more vigilant in moderating comments. If your blog is hosted by Blogger comment deletion is that big a problem since commenters can delete their own comments on their own (except for anonymous comments). If you are using Wordpress and don’t moderate comments (require author approval before publishing of comments) make sure you check in on your comment section regularly. You want to not only keep track of the discussion in your comment section but also clean it up. You should delete comments not only when asked by commenters but also when you see spam, and accidentally repeatedly published comments.
Posted by scoop on November 29th, 2009 in Tips | No Comments »
Have you ever regretted posting a comment on anyone’s blog and really really wanted to delete it?
Having made a mistake of clicking on the SUBMIT COMMENT button just a few minutes ago and then realizing I have more to say (no problem I just left another comment), I remembered an incident a couple of year back. A tragedy happened to a friend’s family when their baby died. They announced it on their blog a few days later to tell people the funeral service schedule and to assure everyone they were coping fine despite the grief. Comments started pouring in and while I was scanning through them a comment that was so completely out of place caught my eye. This guy (a close friend of the dad) left a comment that was not only really cheeky but was also calling the blogger out for backing out of their supposed night out. Everyone was appalled but none more than the commenter. Apparently he was multi-tasking and ended up switching comments on the two blogs he was reading simultaneously. He ended up scampering around for a way to delete his comment but since the blog was hosted by Wordpress there was no way to do so. In the end he left another comment apologizing for his mistake and asking the blogger to delete his comment as soon as he had time for inane stuff like that. The blogger did moderate his comments weeks later (understandably he went on a hiatus to mourn his loss) and deleted the comments to his friend’s relief, but not until everyone read the booboo.
My point in this long story is simple. When commenting on blogs make sure you double check not only the contents of your comment (from wording to spelling) but also make sure that you are leaving your comment on the right blog.
Most of the time our comment mistakes will not be as embarrassing as the one above but remember leaving an unprofessional comment will reflect on you as a blogger.
Posted by scoop on October 30th, 2009 in Design, Technical, Tips, Writing | No Comments »
Time and again advice is given to bloggers to know or identify their target audience. This is sound advice. However, you should also remember that the reason why you need to know who your target audience/readers are is to be able to adjust to their needs. Here are a several aspects you should consider when thinking of adjusting to your readers’ needs.
Technical knowhow and capabilities – Consider your readers’ technical limitations. If your target audience are techies chances are that you won’t have to consider limiting your blog design to accommodate slow internet connections. However, since they know more about technical matters they will also be more critical of such facts and will probably be using a more varied set of web browsers. If you have audience from the older generation do consider internet connection speed and possible outdated browsers and computer specs. Make sure you also consider the user interface for the sake of usability.
Tone – If you have an industry-specific blog make sure your blog has a tone suitable to the general personality of the people in that industry. For example, a law blog means formal and deep content. An entertainment blog, on the other hand, calls for a laid back writing style.
Length – The length of your blog posts will also be determined by your target audience. In general blog posts shouldn’t be long but if your audience expects in depth discussions then you have to adjust accordingly. A kids blog will obviously need consistently short posts using age-appropriate words.
These are just some of the ways knowing your audience will help you adjust to make your blog more suitable and appealing to your readers. The important thing is that, as soon as you realize that there’s an aspect of your blog you can tweak to serve your readers better, you do something to address your readers’ needs.
