Archive for the ‘Blogging Tools’ Category
by Amanda DiSilvestro on December 14th, 2011
I spent two years teaching International students English at my University, and I truthfully feel that they taught me more in those two years than I taught them (although they will tell you, in English, this is not true). Although what I learned was not quite as clear cut as a language, I learned a lot about different countries and their Internet habits. During my time at The English Language Institute, I taught students from Japan, Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, France, Venezuela, Columbia, and Mexico. I discovered that in most of these countries, surfing the Internet in their native language was not quite as overwhelming as it is in English. They informed me that there is less content produced in their own languages, and this made sense. Now that I am a blogger, I cannot help but remember these students and ask myself: Should I be writing my content for languages other than English?
According to the Internet World Stats, English is the most used language on the Internet at 536.6 million users (Chinese comes in second with 444.9 million users). In this sense, we are lucky that we speak English fluently (as my students consistently reminded me) because we are able to write for a larger audience. However, there is no denying that reading something in your own language is preferred (ask anyone who is bilingual). Consider a few of the reasons translating your blog into other languages is worth your time. Read More
Categories: Blogger Tools, Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools
Tags: blogger tips, language, readability
by James Dunaway on December 5th, 2011
For anyone just starting out in SEO or even existing SEO professionals, there’s arguably no quicker or easier way to experiment and learn than by running your own blog. In fact, I’m of the opinion that ALL SEO professionals should have their own side projects. If you don’t, you spend your entire full time job just keeping up with competition and never eclipsing them. Running your own site gives you more freedom and exposure to techniques you wouldn’t use on client sites. So don’t wait, it takes just minutes to set up a WordPress site and here are the first plug ins you should add to kick off your SEO campaign: Read More
Categories: Blogger Tools, Blogging Resources, Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools, WordPress Plugins
Tags: blog, plugins, seo, wordpress
by James Dunaway on October 10th, 2011
As organizations look to continue pushing their online presence, their websites are likely to see an influx of page tags. These tags can vary from affiliate marketing to web analytics. As the tags stockpile on the site, marketing teams may experience some difficulty keeping up. A tag management system can be used to resolve this issue.
A tag management system helps a company turn the managing of tags over to the marketing team. These systems allow for a managing interface which allows a marketing team to easily keep their obligations fulfilled. Read More
Categories: Blog Statistics, Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools, WordPress Tips
Tags: blogs, tag management, tag words, tags, web site
by James Dunaway on October 7th, 2011
Blogging has so many uses in business and social arenas. Businesses use blogging to increase web traffic and awareness about a company, product or service. Others use blogging to keep their friends and family informed about their lives. Blogging on a Blackberry device has never been simpler. New applications have increased the ability to blog. Blackberry SIM cards make it easy to select new plans while keeping applications stored on the Blackberry device. Read More
Categories: Blogger Tools, Blogging Tools
Tags: Blackberry, blogging, how-to, technology, tips
by Darnell Clayton on June 16th, 2011
Despite the wide adoption of RSS throughout blog platforms and social networks, RSS readers (such as Google Reader) are still mainly used by geeks and political junkies.
While yours truly thinks RSS readers are the best way to stay updated with what’s happening around the blogosphere, blog streams (a feature popularized by Tumblr and social networks) could further marginalized the need for RSS readers in the future. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: Blog Streams, RSS Readers
by Darnell Clayton on May 18th, 2011
In one corner, weighing in at 600 million plus users is the social behemoth known as Facebook, a Jedi Master when it comes to all things social, but a novice when it comes to the commenting arena.
In the other corner is Disqus, weighing in at 35 million active users, and who currently sits as king of third party commenting systems.
Although there are other commenting systems such as Echo and IntenseDebate (the latter which is owned by Automattic), I’m coming across more sites and blogs adopting either Disqus or Facebook comments so for now I’ll focus on these two titans.
Since both services have advantages as well as disadvantages against each other, we’ve decided to put each through 7 rounds to see which service is more suitable for your site. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
Tags: disqus, Facebook
by Andrew G. Rosen on March 4th, 2011
As far back as 1998 when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) took effect, individuals and companies have been fighting to protect their images online and have been known to sue if they believe copyright infringement has taken place. Whether or not there is a real liable risk to the everyday blogger looking to promote their blog using images from other sites in their posts, this is not for me to say. However, I think there is a real fear amongst bloggers and webmaster who would rather err on the side of caution than risk being taken to court. One way of ensuring that you remain on the right side of the law, whilst at the same time providing stimulating images in your blog posts, is to use screen shots/screen grabs instead. FYI – don’t think you can just take a screen shot of another image to claim it as your own, this is still copyright infringement.
As the use of screen shots in blog posts continues to increase, a number of software developers have released free tools that offer more functionality than the simple “Prt Scr†button on your keyword, allowing you to produce blog-quality images. Here is a breakdown of 5 popular free screen-grab tools and a suggestion of who they might suit best. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools
Tags: Free, screen-grab, screengrab, tool
by Franky Branckaute on January 26th, 2011
Paul Stamatiou has switched his site from WordPress to Jekyll. In this extensive review he features a step-by-step how to switch from WordPress to Jekyll, a new static generator. Paul mentions also some interesting details and reasons why his traffic dwindled and how this had a massive impact on his earnings.
What is Jekyll
Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator. It takes a template directory (representing the raw form of a website), runs it through Textile or Markdown and Liquid converters, and spits out a complete, static website suitable for serving with Apache or your favorite web server.
Find out more about Jekyll at Github and read Paul’s excellent write-up here.
Categories: Blogging Tools, Linking, WordPress Tutorials
Tags: Conversion, File Management, Jekyll, Paul Stamatiou, wordpress
by Jonathan Bailey on December 1st, 2010
It’s happened to virtually every blogger at least once. As you lie awake at night, preparing to drift off to sleep, you come up with a great idea for a blog post or a change to your site and promise to remember it.
However, when you go to actually flesh out the idea the next morning or other opportunity, it’s gone. Unable to remember what the great idea was, only that you had one, you’re forced to start over and try to come up with something new.
The truth is that ideas are often times fleeting things. Much like the air we breathe, ideas drift from place to place, often coming and going at will. However, also like air, we don’t give them much thought or care until we find ourselves cut off from our supply, suffocating and struggling to breathe.
Previously we talked about how to generate new ideas and never run out, but how do you make sure the ideas you create are available when you’re ready?
After all, having all the ideas in the world is meaningless if they’re all gone when you sit down to get things done. This makes holding onto your inspiration that much more important. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools, General
Tags: Blogging Pitfalls, Brainstorming, evernote, getting things done, Ideas, remember the milk, simplenote
by Darnell Clayton on October 19th, 2010
In an age where everyone wants to be first, many bloggers are sacrificing elegance for speed in a vain attempt to break the news before their rivals get a chance to analyze the story.
While bloggers should always attempt to break a story (as doing so can result in a massive amount of traffic), bloggers should also try to make sure their post is presentable to the world, lest they hear rebukes from their readers in the comment section.
Since many bloggers are pressed for time (especially those of you who write upon multiple blogs), here are 4 things you should do before hitting the “Publish” button on your blog. Read More
Categories: Blogging Tools
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