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Effective Blog Promotions with Blog Search Engine

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Blogs have proliferated on the internet to such an astounding degree that it is hard to separate the chaff from the grain. There are so many blogs out there that you wouldn’t know which ones are good or which ones are not worth your time. It’s so hard to rise above the din of the millions of blogs that are clogging the netosphere. What you need is a way to be heard and be seen.

There are many strategies you can take in order to make your blog more visible and gain more traffic, which is the lifeblood of any web site or blog. One of the most effective ways to increase traffic to your blog is by enrolling in blog directories. This is a service that can have a tremendous positive effect on your blog. Blog directories showcase blogs so that it can be seen by more people.

What are the benefits of a blog directory? [Read more…]

Originally posted on November 8, 2011 @ 11:52 am

5 Twitter Etiquettes You Should Care About

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For businesses that maintain twitter presence, there is an unspoken list of etiquettes that one must adhere to. These etiquettes arise out of a need to acknowledge your target audience and give respect to all those who interact with you using the medium of twitter. Some of these etiquettes are pretty simple and do not consume much time. Let us discuss these over the following points:

1. Acknowledge those followers who send a message to you. While there may be automated bots that could have been used to follow your account, there is a chance that many genuine followers will use a manual effort to follow your tweets. And these visitors and followers need to be acknowledged to offer them the respect they deserve.

2. If you run a business, then your twitter language must adhere to professional levels of excellence. You must try to avoid language that is mostly abbreviated.  The language being used must be clear, concise and crisp.  [Read more…]

Originally posted on October 10, 2011 @ 7:00 am

Twitter Tweaks its Homepage a Bit

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In case you’re visiting Twitter.com right now and you happen to be not signed in to your account, don’t be surprise to see a different Twitter.com homepage (see image above).  Twitter has just rolled a new interface design for its homepage, this is the main page that you see when you’re not logged in to Twitter.com.

Actually in terms of look and feel the new Twitter.com homepage is not really that different from the old design.  The large blue banner on top of the page is still there, although some phrases and branding statement where tweaked a bit.

Here’s  the old Twitter.com:

If you’re a keen observer, the first thing that you notice is the change in the Twitter tagline – from “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world” to “What’s happening anywhere in the world, right now.” Obviously the word “share” was omitted. The Twitter blog didn’t directly give an explanation, although a line in the post announcing this change might have suggested the reason for deleting “share” from the tagline.

All of our recent changes embrace the notion that Twitter is not just for status updates anymore. It’s a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day. With so much being shared, we know that there’s something of value for everyone. People who internalize the value of Twitter understand the power of this simple medium. But it hasn’t been easy to make that value transparent or obvious for curious folks coming to Twitter for the first time.

In other words, Twitter is trying to underscore the “sharing” aspect of Twitter and highlights the fact that Twitter is now a place were discussions among Twitter members are held, what people are tweeting about, and who are the Twitter members who just visited Twitter.com.

So below the huge blue-themed banner on top, you’d see dynamic content highlighting the top tweets at Twitter right now as well as some famous Twitter members.

Generally, Twitter wants to give first time Twitter.com visitors some compelling reasons to sign up for Twitter while maintaining interests among current members.

Originally posted on March 30, 2010 @ 5:11 pm

Google Rolls Out New Blogger Template Designer

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For all those who stuck around with Google’s free blog hosting service Blogger, Google has just rolled out the new Template Designer. Finally, the folks at Blogger.com realized that the old selection of templates are too outdated and decided to introduced some new templates that you can use on your blogs as well as a new set of tools for customizing your blogs including designing your own Blogger template. This is also good news for those who wants to start their own blogs just now but don’t want to use WordPress.com.

Google’s Blogger Template Designer currently offers 15 new professional templates, custom blog layouts that you can apply in each of the new templates, professional background images coming from iStockphoto plus several color, fonts and other customization features that you can use.

If you have an existing Blogger account, you can try the Template Designer out by going to Blogger in Draft. Once you’ve come up with a great design, you can simply save it

The Blogger Template Designer is  currently hosted in Blogger in Draft where you are free to try it out on your blog. You can see the Template Designer if you click on the Layout link. Once you’ve come up with the best template and design for your blog you can opt to apply it on your blog.

It would be interesting to note why it took Google this long to come up with such features. I almost thought that Google is about to shut down Blogger since it has not been given too much attention the past few months. But then again, given the millions of blogs hosted on Blogger.com, Google will definitely put this service down.

If you are currently maintaining a Blogger blog, check out the new Template Designer and share with us your experience.

Originally posted on March 11, 2010 @ 5:34 pm

WordPress 1.0 for Android Released

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Automattic just added a new application to the many available WordPress versions. This time the target are mobile bloggers using Android Phones. The new WordPress 1.0 app for Android has just been released and one thing I can say is that – this app is definitely a good one.

I don’t know if I’m just really excited to use the app on my new Nexus One although I’ve already installed a similar app called wpToGo. But having a mobile version of a WordPress from the official developer is certainly different.

Anyway if you’ve used wpToGo for Android before, WordPress 1.0 is almost the same since it was used as the foundation for this app. In fact, wpToGo will now be discontinued because all the development efforts will now be focused on WordPress 1.0 for Android.

So, if you haven’t used any mobile version on WordPress, now maybe the right time to try one out. If you’ve got any Android device download the app and enjoy these key features:

  • Configure and manage multiple blogs
  • Comment moderation including the ability to reply to comments
  • Create and Edit Posts including categories, tags and photos
  • Create and Edit Pages
  • Get notified of new comments in the Android notification bar

I’ve just installed the app on my Nexus One and it’s pretty cool. Setting up multiple blog accounts is a breeze. Likewise posting new blog post is also fast. My only gripe is that the app does not allow you to publish post quickly. You need to save it first to local draft before you can push it to your blog. But it’s just a minor issue and does not really affect the app’s usability.

 

Originally posted on February 2, 2010 @ 4:37 pm