All Blogging Tips

Why Bloggers Need To Be Heavy Smartphone Users

By Joe Pawlikowski / Blogging Tips, How To

Do you already own a smartphone? If you’re a blogger, chances are you do. After all, bloggers as a whole are technically adept people. But merely owning a smartphone isn’t enough for a blogger. We need to become heavy users, becoming attuned to all the little aspects of the smartphones. In other words, we need to become power users.

At this point you might be asking why we need to use our smartphones heavily. The answer is quite simple.

Our readers use smartphones

More and more people move from regular cell phones to smart phones every day. That means shifting behaviors in general. It also means changing behaviors for reading. People seem to enjoy reading on their smartphones. Web sites, particularly with mobile plug-ins, are laid out well. There are many RSS applications as well. Smartphones make reading easy.

If more and more people are reading your blog on your smartphone, shouldn’t you become familiar with their device of choice? That isn’t to say you should go rush out and buy the newest iPhone or Samsung cell phone just because your readers are using those devices. But it does mean you should be exploring all facets of the smartphone you do own.

Remember, blogging is about connecting with your audience. If your audience is reading on smartphones, you should become familiar with how they’re reading so you can create a deeper connection. Make sure you see what they see, how they see it. Here are a few tips for become more intimate with your smartphone.

Read your site often

If you do nothing else, you should be reading your own blog from your smartphone. Sure, you know all the content. You either wrote or edited it. But you probably did that right from your computer — you know, the one with the big screen and keyboard. Reading your site from your smartphone changes the experience, and gives you an idea of what your readers see when they visit you.

When you visit your blog on your smartphone you might start to realize some things. For instance, the first time I visited my site from my very first BlackBerry I realized that it looked like crap. It loaded slowly and was difficult to read. It was clear that we needed to install a mobile plugin. Now that I use Android phones and the iPhone, I make sure that my sites look good on both of those. That way my readers get the same experience.

You might be the person who creates the blog, but your blog is nothing without the audience. Make sure you see things how they see them.

Leave comments

While mobile plugins have made it more pleasant to view blogs on smartphones, they don’t necessarily make commenting easier. Since many of your readers will want to leave comments, you should make sure that it’s easy to do from a smartphone. The best way to accomplish this, unsurprisingly, is to leave comments yourself.

This doesn’t have to be anything time consuming. In fact, you can do it while waiting on line or on the train, since you’ll be doing it from your smartphone. But just make sure that you know how easy or difficult it is to comment on your blog from a smartphone. That will motivate you to make it easier for your readers.

While you can always ask for feedback, there is no substitute for first-hand testing. Since more and more people are reading on their smartphones, it is the blogger’s responsibility to ensure an easy mobile reading experience. It doesn’t even take that much effort. Just make sure that you’re reading and commenting on your blog with your smartphone. If it’s easy for you, it’s easy for your readers. They’ll thank you for it.

Another New Floating Facebook Like Box For WordPress

By Ammar Ali / WordPress, WordPress Widgets

Recently we shared simple yet stylish floating facebook like box widget. Now we came with Another New Floating Facebook Like Box Widget For WordPress ! This will Floating Facebook Button when to move your cursor on it it pop out with stylish floating facebook like box. Its widget for WordPress. You can find floating facebook like box here. Now lets move to how you can add this in blogger I will show you How You Can Add Another New Floating Facebook Like Box Widget To WordPress?

Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Available Widgets.
Drag Text widget into a sidebar.
Paste in the code.
Save.

<script type="text/javascript">
 /*<![CDATA[*/
 jQuery(document).ready(function() {jQuery(".abtlikebox").hover(function() {jQuery(this).stop().animate({right: "0"}, "medium");}, function() {jQuery(this).stop().animate({right: "-250"}, "medium");}, 500);});
 /*]]>*/
 </script>
 <style type="text/css">
 .abtlikebox{background: url("http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mMtB2ANqowQ/T6es-PuSR2I/AAAAAAAAAjM/LDamrUnMJJc/s320/fb1-right.png") no-repeat scroll left center transparent !important; float: right;height: 270px;padding: 0 5px 0 46px;width: 245px;z-index:  99999;position:fixed;right:-250px;top:20%;}
.abtlikebox div{ padding: 0; margin-right:-8px; border:4px solid  #3b5998; background:#fafafa;}
.abtlikebox span{bottom: 4px;font: 8px "lucida grande",tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif;position: absolute;right: 6px;text-align: right;z-index: 99999;}
 .abtlikebox span a{color: gray;text-decoration:none;}
 .abtlikebox span a:hover{text-decoration:underline;}
}
</style>
 <div class="abtlikebox" style="">
     <div>
     <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Ffacebook.com%2Fallbloggingtips&amp;width=245&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;show_faces=true&amp;border_color=white&amp;connections=9&amp;stream=false&amp;header=false&amp;height=270" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border: white; overflow: hidden; height: 270px; width: 245px;background:#fafafa;"></iframe><span></span>
     </div>
 </div>

5. Click on Save button and done !

Note:-Replace allbloggingtips With Your Facebook User name.

5. Save your widget.

Now this is most important part. If you missed it the widget will not works.

6. Goto Appearance > Editor

7. Than goto > Header.php

8. Now Place below code just before <head>

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

9. Click Save.

Now Visit your blog to see it that its working :D. Hope you enjoy the post.

Tips To Reduce Bounce Rate of Your blog – Part 2

By Arbaz Khan / Blogging, Blogging Tips

We all now know what bounce rate is and how it affects our blog. Some days back you might have seen an article with the same topic on how to reduce bounce rate of your blog. At that moment, when I was writing that post I missed out on some points that are also important in reducing your blog’s bounce rate. If you haven’t yet read it, I advice you to first read our first post.

The points I am going to write about are suggested by the readers via comments. Not everyone reads every comment so I thought of converting it into a post and discuss it in detail. I hope you will like it. So here goes Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate :D

Page Load Time

What you do when you open a website and it takes much time to load ?? You close it at once. Right ? So what do you expect from your readers. Will they wait for your blog to open if it is taking much time ? Of course, the answer is no. This is the biggest thing that directly affects your blog’s bounce rate. If your blog’s load time is very much then don’t expect a low bounce rate. You can reduce the load time by many methods. Just Google it and you would get people ready to help you with it. Once your blog’s page load time is less, then you can expect a to Reduce Bounce Rate.

Interlinking your posts

Do you know what interlinking means ?? Hell, yes. You know what interlinking of posts is and you have seen it on many blogs. You can see an example in this very post itself. By interlinking your old posts at appropriate words, you will compel your readers to click on the link and navigate to the other post. Now what else do you want ?? Imagine if you interlink all the posts then the probability of your readers staying glued to your blog for a long time. This is a very good news as your blog’s you will see that you had Reduce Bounce Rate.

Creating videos

This point I wasn’t knowing but found it useful after doing some search. How is it useful in decreasing the bounce rate ? Some of our readers (including me) love to learn something through a video presentation rather that reading a post. You can provide a video in some post to convey your message with more influence. You can easily create videos and upload them on Youtube. Isn’t that easy? Try it, it will work wonders for your blog to Reduce Bounce Rate.

Provide proper menu in your blog with links that point to different categories. Try to be clean with whichever method you use on your blog. The ‘Categories’ widget will also help. Don’t avoid such things considering it small because such ‘small’ things will make a big difference in the bounce rate.

Summary

I hope that by following and applying the above points to your blog you will see a great difference in your blog’s bounce rate. If still I am missing out on some point then please comment below and let us know about it. Happy Blogging :D

Arbaz Khan is a passionate blogger who loves to write about technology updates, social media, blogging and computers on his own blog TechBreach.net

Tactics Needed To Increase the Traffic to a Blog

By smartblogwriter / Blogger Tips, Free Traffic, Search Engine Optimization

For professional SEO firms, it is very easy to build a blog but it gets very difficult to maintain the correct amount of visitors. The art of tracking the right audience is rare and without it, blogs lack value. There are a few tactics which can help many people with their blogs. These tactics are divided into the following points.

Increasing Traffic Graph

1) When you are writing content for your blog, you must know the sort of audience you are targeting. When you are writing your blog you must always see if the audience has the ability to spread the word and share the information on your blog. There are certain types of writing styles, content, etc. Which attract a particular community or a certain group of people. For example, any review on the latest Gothic music might attract people who are interested in listening to dark music while videos related to dance might attract all the dancers out there. Targeting a group that would be interested in sharing your blog might help you make your blog become popular. While targeting people who are less likely to share might decrease the chances of your blog being famous across the web.

There are essentially three groups which you need to consider when you are targeting an audience for your blog:

i) Potential Consumers of the Blog
ii) Content Sharers
iii) Content Distributors

2) You can also share information regarding your blog on web communities where most of your target audience is present. For example, if a company wants to target an audience for sports good, you won’t obviously target a group of video game lovers. Rather you will target a group that is actively involved in some kind of sports. Now you do not have to spend a lot of time searching where your target audience is more likely to be found.

Audience that shares brings in more traffic

You can use the Madison Avenue or the Double Clicks Ad Planner to see where what sort of audience is found. Once you find out the correct target audience you can start communicating with them and start posting things. But you must always post things if you think that they are appropriate instead of creating a hotchpotch. If you do that you will get the reputation of an undeserving, infamous blogger. You must always try to respect the rules of web traffic and be a good web citizen.

3) You must always make the content of your blog SEO friendly as this would help you in finding the correct amount of traffic. Search engines are very easy in tracking the correct traffic and it can be made even better using SEO friendly platforms like Blogger, WordPress, etc.

4) You must use social communities like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. To spread the word about your blog. This would help you in getting the required traffic as well.

5) Another thing which is recommended by most successful bloggers is that they install Google Analytics which is free and very helpful. It helps in telling you where the target audience is.

6) You must allow guest posts on your blog as this would also attract visitors and help you increase the publicity of your blog.

7) You must be consistent in your blog posts. You must post the content of your blog regularly as any delay would result in your blog losing a large amount of target audience.

Incorporating the above tips will substantially increase the traffic to your blog. For more information, you can also contact professionals like the Simple SEO Group.

Five Tips to Write a Successful Blog Post

By harpermac11 / Blogger Tips, How To

A blog post is worthless if the reader clicks off after reading a few sentences. But with nothing more than a few paragraphs of text, how can a writer truly connect with an audience? Often, through improving their blogging style, decent writers can transform into amazing writers and build audiences that keep coming back for more. These tips will help writers kick their blog writing skills up a notch, making them better able to connect with their target audiences.

editing

Improve the Tone

Blogging is an excellent medium to connect with an audience, yet it can also be greatly abused by those who know nothing about writing. Because anyone with basic computer skills can put up a blog post, readers often find poor writing and are turned away from a particular post. Bloggers who want to make a good first impression on their readers can do so through well-crafted pieces. Those who need additional help to hone their writing skills can consider taking online classes in creative writing.

Proofread, Proofread, Proofread!

One simple typo can turn a blog post from something informative and helpful to something laughable. Proofreading may seem tedious, and it’s certainly not the most exciting part of the writing process, but it must be done. Bloggers need to proofread everything they post at least twice, and they may want to have someone else read through it once as well to be certain they have caught everything.

One way to proofread more successfully is to read the post out loud. Often, when a writer reads his or her work aloud, or has someone else do so, poor wording or confusing sentence structure pops off of the screen. Blog posts should be conversational and easy to understand, so reading them aloud can shed light on sections of text where the wording is awkward and detracts from the message.

Create a Killer Opening Sentence

Internet readers often skim an article to determine its worth before actually reading it. The opening sentence of a blog post needs to hook the reader. A great lead sentence will compel the reader to read the entire post. A good opening sentence will ask a question, use a statistic, present a quote, make a claim or tell a story. Spending time on that opening sentence is always a wise idea when writing a blog post.

Write Short Paragraphs

Blog writing is different than academic writing in that readers have different expectations. When writing a paper for a college professor, long, carefully crafted paragraphs are expected. This is not the case with blogging.

Readers prefer short, crisp paragraphs. Now, this doesn’t mean the paragraphs shouldn’t be structured well. It does mean, however, that the paragraphs need to be short and to the point. This also helps make the article easy to scan, which is beneficial to online readers.

Part of the reason this is important is that reading on a screen is harder on the eyes than reading on paper. Whereas a reader might be willing and able to persevere through a long paragraph in print, online it just serves to make the reader feel tired. This often translates into the reader clicking away from the blog post.

Focus on One Topic

Blog writing is a bit more informal than other types of writing, but that can be detrimental. Bloggers can too easily slip into rambling, and a long-winded, aimless post is boring to read. Writers who keep their posts focused on one particular concept or main thought will have a better chance of connecting with their readers.

When it comes to writing a blog post, clarity and brevity will keep readers interested. Add to that a grammatically accurate post that is thoroughly proofread and has a winning opening sentence, and the writer will succeed in connecting with the reader within just a few paragraphs of text.

Lindsey Harper Mac is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. She specializes in writing guest posts on social media and education on behalf of Colorado Technical University. Currently, Lindsey is completing work on her master’s degree.