by Darnell Clayton on March 31st, 2011 
5 Comments
Although I have been impressed with many features from Blogger.com (ranging from Live Stats to their theme creator), Google’s latest feature appeals to the inner photo blogger within me.
Dubbed Dynamic Views, the new layout lets readers view a stunning photo summary of your site by simply adding /view at the end of the blog (example: blog.blogspot.com/view). Read More
by Darnell Clayton on March 30th, 2011 2 Comments
After settling upon a web domain, selecting a theme and choosing a niche for your blog, one decision that bloggers eventually have to make is, “which stat tool should I use to measure traffic upon my blog?”
Although analytical tools will not by themselves boost your blog’s SEO, they can provide invaluable information on how many people are visiting your blog (as well as from where).
Although everyone has their own preference for which tool they used (based upon price, features and UI), here are a few general rules you should follow when selecting a stat tool. Read More
by Jonathan Bailey on March 30th, 2011 2 Comments
It can be easy to forget that the Web is a truly international phenomenon and that people visit and view our sites from every continent and from all over the world.
While this is a truly amazing thing as it means that our message and our information can, quite literally, spread all across the globe in the blink of an eye, not everyone comes to your site with the same mindset and background. In fact, every person who approaches your site brings with them their cultural, personal, political and even religious background.
This means that, even if we completely ignore or overcome the language barriers that exist on the Web, no two people read the same piece of content the same way. Everything we read is colored by our background and the same holds true for each of the other 6 billion people on the planet.
This can create a very serious problem. What might be simply hilarious to you and your friends could be brazingly offensive to someone in another country. While this might be fine if you’re trying to be somewhat offensive with your humor, it can be disastrous if you’re trying to get information across or win people over to your viewpoint.
This alone makes cultural differences and important problem to be aware of and a pitfall that is critical to avoid.
by Darnell Clayton on March 29th, 2011 3 Comments
Despite being dethroned by Tumblr (not to mention surviving a merger), Typepad is still a popular option for many bloggers despite the entrance fee.
While it might be too late for the platform to challenge WordPress and Blogger, there are a few things Say Media can do to revive Typepad in order to maintain their current position as a premium blogging service. Read More
by Darnell Clayton on March 25th, 2011 2 Comments
WordPress fans sporting a Palm Pre 2 will be pleased to hear that we may see an app courting webOS in the not so distant future!
Upon visiting webOS.wordpress.org, WordPress fans are greeted with this message:
The blog http://webos.wordpress.org was marked private by its owner. If you were invited to view this blog, please log in below. For more information about blog privacy settings, please visit our support site.
This is the nearly the same message that appeared when WordPress was working upon Windows Phone 7, Nokia and Android before launching them to the public.
Although there are blogging apps upon webOS, most (if not all) of them are from third party developers as the mobile OS has been ignored by all of the major blogging platforms until now.
By courting webOS, WordPress will extend its influence upon every major mobile OS save Bada (from Samsung), helping to strengthen their position as the dominant mobile platform (at least when it comes to blogging upon a smartphone).
WordPress has yet to reveal any details regarding their webOS app, although for those of you sporting the Palm Pre 2 what features would you like to see included within the app?
by James Dunaway on March 25th, 2011 2 Comments
So your book is published and now what? Do you sit back and let the book sell itself? In a recent interview with Brad Grochowski from the Indie Book Man show, I mentioned that my book, ‘Day of Revenge’ was not getting much exposure on Amazon. What I really meant to say is the marketing of your book does not stop once it is listed on Amazon. Unfortunately, Amazon does not have a marketing team that will market books. It is up to you to market your own book.
In a world where the internet dictates our professional and personal lives, a presence on the web is very critical. It is the only way to market your book abroad without having to travel from place to place to sell your book. The question is, where do you start? The best way to start is to set up a blog. Having a blog gives you a platform to promote yourself and your brand which is your book. A blog is a place where people can find out about your book and where it is available for purchase. Read More
by Darnell Clayton on March 24th, 2011 4 Comments
Whenever a major event occurs (such as Apple unveiling the latest iPad or a natural disaster), many bloggers on site set up “live blogs” in order to provide real time coverage (minus the lengthy and formal blog postings of course).
While everyone has their own preference as to how one should setup a live blog, here are a few tips (as well as a couple of tools) for those of you seeking a way to update your readers in real time without using external tools (like Twitter and Cover It Live). Read More
by Andrew G. Rosen on March 24th, 2011 5 Comments
Blogs are built on content, consistency and hard work . Â If you have a solid foundation and a healthy following, there might be someone out there who wants to buy your blog.
Even if you have not considered selling, you SHOULD consider selling.  The reason being that you never know when an offer can come in.  When it does, you don’t want to get caught with your pants down.
A blog is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and sometimes, bloggers are sitting on a larger asset than they realize.  I’ve heard several cases of bloggers receiving unsolicited offers for their blogs over the past few weeks, and I’ve had it happen to me.  In case it happens to you, here are several basic ways to make sure you are prepared. Read More
by Darnell Clayton on March 23rd, 2011 4 Comments
In an attempt to help broaden their appeal amongst bloggers and news organizations, Disqus has announced that they are now including the search engine giant as an ID option for commenters.
Nearly 13% of users choose to login through Twitter or Facebook when participating in Disqus communities. Today, we’re happy to introduce another recognizable choice: Google accounts. Millions upon millions of people are already logged into their Google accounts, and now they can easily use those accounts to jump into discussions all over the web. (Official Disqus Blog) Read More
by Jonathan Bailey on March 23rd, 2011 6 Comments
What terms someone can use your content? Can they post your articles on their blog? What if the blog is commercial? What if they don’t give attribution? Can they share it on Facebook? What about printing out copies to give to friends?
If you don’t have a clear, ready answer for these questions, your visitors won’t either and that, in turn, means they will make mistakes. Whether they are taking liberties with your content you don’t approve of or avoiding sharing content in ways you do want, they will make mistakes with your content and hurt its chances of being used properly.
As such, you need to quickly and easily convey to your readers what your rules are regarding your content if you ever hope for them to be followed.
Unfortunately, most bloggers don’t think about content licensing and the issue doesn’t come up until they find their work on a spam site or plagiarized on another blog. By that time, however, it’s often too late as the situation is likely already out of hand.
This makes now, before there is a problem, the time to think about content licensing as tomorrow may simply be too late.
Receive the top stories from BloggingPro and the Splashpress Media network every week, right in your Inbox. Relevant and timely content is yours for FREE!
