Blogging

Yesterday, I shared a series of questions to help those bloggers seeking a little clarity when it comes to what their blog could be about. Today, I wanted to share 3 more questions – these are not so much focused upon YOU as a blogger but upon your readers. Hopefully they’ll also help you achieve a little clarity. Who are your readers? What do they need? How will they change as a result of reading your blog? Answer these 3 questions and you will actually have a pretty good purpose statement for your blog. You could certainly go into some real depth on each question but even doing it at a low-level will be helpful. For example on dPS I would answer the questions as: My readers are camera owners (who they are) who are not using their cameras to their potential (their need). Reading dPS will help them to gain creative control over their cameras (the benefit). I shared these questions on my Google+ account a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I received an email from a blogger who set aside 15 minutes to answer them. She told me that in doing so she realised that she’d created a purpose statement for her blog which she also turned into a tagline for her blog. Give it a go and let us know how you answer the questions in comments below. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger How to Create a Blog Purpose Statement in 3 Simple Steps

At the moment you can find dozens of web design tools available on the web at low cost, or even for free. Some of these can be used by the professionals only, while others have been initially designed for non-techies. The latter are known as website builders or site constructors. These are extremely popular with [...]Author informationVictor MooreVictor Moore is the owner of EasyStepstoCreateaWebsite.com. He's a skilled webmaster who enjoys discovering new trends and approaches to SEO, webmastering and improving website usability. He runs his blog to prove that creating a website from scratch can be a piece of cake even for novices.TwitterFacebookGoogle+The post Create Your Personal Website Without Stress: Top 5 Website Builders Reviews appeared first on Dragon Blogger. Be the first to comment... Related Posts:Create Alexa Toolbar For Your Blog or Website4 Ways to Spot a Dodgy Webhosting CompanyBlogging Tip: Stress Test Your Blog For FreeWhere Has Software Quality Testing Gone?How to identify a Fraud website RSS Feed Powered by MaxBlogPress Bring My Blog Visitors Back

When Pinterest (a visual bookmarking tool) first made an appearance in the social media arena, people thought it was meant only for industries like fashion, design, travel, wedding and real estate. But the mindset gradually changed and today it’s quite evident that participating at Pinterest can be beneficial for almost any industry or any blogging niche. You’ll find tons of bloggers (regardless of what niche they belong to) using Pinterest effectively. Pinterest is today an ‘addiction’. Whether you want to reach out to a new audience, connect with influencers in your niche, promote a brand or attract traffic to your blog, spending some time on Pinterest will be truly worth the effort. So, how do you achieve success on Pinterest as a blogger? Given below are four essential tips that will be of great help to you. #1. Add Images to Every Blog Post If you are an active blogger, the first thing that you need to do is include engaging images to each of the posts that you publish on your blog. Depending on the topic you are writing on, you can always find one or two images that would be good enough to be pinned by others.  You can also create your own pinboards and pin these images yourself to your account. Pinterest is basically a social platform where users share all the wonderful images (and videos) they find across the web. By being a little more creative, you can benefit from this opportunity as well, in many different ways. #2. Pin Content from Other Blogs Too If your pin boards feature content (images and videos) only from your own blog, it might not look credible to others. In order to win the trust of your audience, you should never hesitate to pin images from other blogs on the same board where you have pinned your own images. By pinning content from other blogs in your niche, you can also build connections with influencers and fellow bloggers. #3. Run a Contest One of the best ideas to attract tons of eyeballs quickly is to run a contest or competition on Pinterest. First, you’ll first need to go through all the Pinterest terms so that you don’t violate the rules in any way. Second, you’ll need to choose a right type of competition – Best Pinboard, Most Repins and Sweepstakes Entries – and create them with your important goals in the mind. In any case, you should not forget to promote your Pinterest contest so that you can attract the maximum number of participants. With such contests, you can market your brand or product quickly, engage the target audience and attract lots of blog traffic within a short period of time. #4. Use Analytics Tool Google Analytics is a nice tool to find out which of the pages on your blog are getting the most traffic from Pinterest. With this tool, you can also check out which of the images on your site are being pinned the most. Such valuable data will help you tweak your Pinterest strategy. Apart from Google Analytics, you can also find many other tools that are specific to Pinterest. A good example is Curalate. Are you on Pinterest? How are you using this visual pinboard to your blogging benefits? Feel free to share your opinions. Copyright © 2013 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately. The post 4 Essential Pinterest Tips for Bloggers appeared first on Blogging Tips.

Inbox 0: in a bad way. Has your brilliant content still not scored you that dream writing position, lucrative business partnership, or sweet recognition among your peers and target audience? If you think your articles are top-notch, but there’s a lonely tumbleweed blowing through your barren website, it may be because you’re just a writer. You heard me, Gloria. If everybody wants you, why isn’t anybody calling? Once you create a blog or email newsletter, you need to also actively take part in its evolution. While keeping diligent focus on your content production, you must also review your past choices, looking for ways to allow more readers to engage with your writing. In other words, to take advantage of the year of the writer, you may need to think more like an editor. Here are 30 editing tips that will help you become a more effective editor-in-chief of the content you create. Fall in love with your website: Forget “like.” No one will be head-over-heels about your online space if you’re not thoroughly impressed with your presentation. Commit to making your site a masterpiece before you even think about your next post topic. Sit down; stay awhile. “Web furniture” sets the tone for visitors. These elements include your headshot, logo, and layout. Does your design welcome people into your hub and make them want to find out more? Turn the spotlight outward. Remember that a good About page is as much about your audience as it is about you. Highlight a reason to subscribe. Since your story continually unfolds, encourage visitors to stay in the loop and get your fresh content as soon as it’s published. Have discerning taste. Thoughtfully select the media that complements your writing. Stock photos can be used memorably, or they can look generic and bland. Break the rules for a good cause. If the latest and greatest widget, post formula, or social media app won’t benefit your readers, don’t use them. Don’t call it Google Minus. Claim Google Authorship and claim the authority that’s due you. Check your WordPress before you wreck your WordPress. Secure your website so that you feel confident about growing your web presence and readership. Tell them what you want. When someone arrives on your site, what do you want him to do next? Subscribe? Hire you? Collaborate? Explicitly state your website’s purpose as if it were a physical storefront. Say no to “yes men.” Friends and family will say “looks great!” without even clicking on your URL. Get objective feedback from professionals. Vamp up your editorial strategy Water the plant. Each edit you make to your content should directly contribute to the goal you’d like to accomplish. Prepare; don’t plan. Structure your editorial calendar in a way that allows you to adjust your posts if you naturally think of new ideas as you write. Take yourself out of the equation. If you’re preoccupied with “writing well” to impress others, you may feel pressure and get stuck. Concentrate on helping your audience instead. Research what’s hot. Get the right visitors to your blog by finding and using the keywords they use when they search online. Seduce your audience. Educate and entertain in equal measure. Diversify your topics. If you’re tired of your posts, it shows. You may need to switch topics completely or expand your approach to keep yourself motivated and readers enthusiastic. Look in nooks and crannies. Can you provide additional information in new posts that enhances content you’ve already published? Tighten up. Instead of writing many mediocre posts, dedicate your efforts to one powerful piece of content per week. Walk the line. Strike a balance between your passions and your audience’s dilemmas that positions you to provide practical relief. Log out and mute. Respect your blog and block distractions until you’re finished with your writing sessions. Make your words irresistible: Try the Fat Ass Fudge diet. Fat Ass Fudge says it all. Do your descriptions also convey a precise message? Di

Have you noticed? Big data is the new buzzword. Apparently, it’s so hot you should “make out with it,” according to Mitch Joel in his new book, CTR ALT DEL. But if you’re like most entrepreneurs, bloggers, or small business owners, you have no clue what big data is, or how it might apply to your business. So here is my all-access definition: “big data” is sets of information that are way too large to be accessed or analyzed on your average computer or set of servers. Think of data being fed from RFID tags globally, or all of the data in Facebook’s open graph, or earthquake sensor networks. You’re probably contributing to big data yourself, whenever you serve up an ad on your site from an ad network. Perhaps none of these big data sets apply to your blog site, but the wider discussion about how to draw business insights from big data absolutely does apply. Maybe we should call it “medium data.” Here are three ways you can use medium data to draw insights for your blog. Google Analytics It’s free, and it’s getting deeper every day. If you haven’t signed up yet, here’s a quick tutorial on how to get started with Google Analytics. At the most basic level, you can draw insights on who is visiting your blog, which content is the most popular, and where you can improve. Once you dive deeper into the data, you can figure out whether all that time you spend on Twitter is actually driving people to your blog using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics. Customer Surveys and Interaction If you’re a blogger, your customer is a reader, perhaps a commenter or member of your community. Maybe they downloaded your eBook or signed up for an online course. Every time you interact with them, you have an opportunity to gather intelligence. Whether it’s a quick one question “how did you like that book” sent in a followup email, or a more in-depth customer survey, you have the ability to pull together data to feed your future efforts. John Jantsch said in an article a year ago, “Until a business of any size gets serious about listening to their customers, talking to their customers, and measuring every possible data and touch point, the promise of more data will only serve to distract.” Accessing Big Data from Researchers All of the data you use doesn’t have to come from your own blog site or customers. There are myriad free or inexpensive resources out there that can help you build business insights on your subject area. Organizations like Edison Research, Gartner, and The Social Habit routinely produce scientifically valid research based on a much wider data set that you can access on your own. Find a research outlet that covers your industry or topic, and leverage their reports to come up with blog post ideas, watch for future trends, and increase your own utility to your audience. Are you using data (small, medium, or big) to draw insights for your blog? Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee Image: Flickr CC Related Posts:Do You Rely on Analytics to Tell the Whole Story?How to make your own rulesPro Data DoctorRules, Negative Data, and Incurable IdealistsHow to Decide if a New Social Tool is Relevant to Your Business

Here’s a nice quick hack that you can perform on your Blogger to force any links or hyperlinks in your blog to open in a new tab instead of the current window. It’s from a Blogger user named Mounish Venkat of Deminto blog and all it takes is inserting just one (that’s right, just one) short line of code into your template code. Plus, it’ll only take you less than five minutes to do it. Here are the steps to follow: Starting on your dashboard, go to Template. Click on the Edit HTML button then on Proceed. Using Ctrl+F, search for the tag in your template’s code. Copy/paste the following code right after or below it:       Hit Save Template and you’re done! See, didn’t I tell you that’s going to be easy and will only cost you a short amount of time? Have a good day!

Online file sharing is a simple process of uploading your files online and then sharing the links for their downloads via email, chat or other options with those whom you want to share your files with. There are a variety of websites available to share your files via them. Few provide limited access, with restrictions and require downloading softwares, while others do not require even SignUp, provide spam free service and have a large memory size available to be used without downloading any software, and they are also secured. Here you will get a list of websites that describe your purpose completely and easily. List of free and easy file sharing sites Dropbox: Dropbox is, currently ranked among the top online file sharing service providers available. With this you can synchronize your files very easily and then share it with anyone using its public or shared folders. You can create an account to manage your files and talking about size, you can upload individual files up to 300 MB file size to a maximum limit of 2 GB, which can be increased to multiple times also. Windows Live Skydrive: Microsoft isn’t quite famous in the market of web applications, but a few of the giant companies are exceptionally good at serving you the purpose, like the Microsoft’s Skydrive service, that allows you to send and receive large files via the internet. Here you can create an account and then enjoy 25 GB of free online available memory space to be used for sharing your files worth 50 MB of each file limit. Also, you can create personalized folders to restrict rights for users. ADrive: ADrive is the leader of the industry of the online sharing and backup creating service providers. They lead the industry due to the availability of the largest amount of online space to use and the simplest interfaces making the use of this website easy and fast. Oosah: Oosah is another website that provides an easy and fast access to the sharing purposes online. Apart from this, oosah serves its users with its rich in features website and also allows users to manage their content that may be any personal or private, might be photos, videos, music or other audio files. Mozy Online Backup: Mozy is a leader in the industry for providing secured service for the backup of your files including your important files, documents, pictures and other files in a simple and easy to use automatic manner. You can upload your files to make an online backup or you can share links for downloading the files to your friends or other known persons you want to share your uploaded files with. Fileai: Fileai is a website that provides you a secure way of sharing your content with others online. When a file is uploaded to this site, it isn’t uploaded to any server, rather, it is encrypted and sent directly without any storage online. Sharesend: Sharesend is a free and easy to use service providing website for sharing your files instantly. In this service you don’t need to create any account to upload your files and then share them with others. Here you simply need to upload the file, after the completion you will get a link, which allows others to directly download the files. Gigasize: Gigasize is another name in the list when it comes to easy and fast online sharing of your files. Large sized files, that cannot be uploaded or sent via emails can be uploaded to generate a download link by just a click of the mouse. Filebanker: Filebanker is a solution to online sharing, when it comes to sharing files that have a very large size. You don’t need to sign up for any paid options, nor you are irritated with repeated messages to use paid services. This site allows a spam free service with a storage capacity of 10 GB. Dropsend: Dropsend provides a fast, simple and a secured online service to send and receive files. Other than sharing, you can also store your files on the website. 11.  Badongo: Bodango is an online community allowing users to share large sized files by shari

Personal style blog My Vintage Curves is written in both English and Italian languages and focuses on vintage clothes, fashion, food and photography. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Windows 8 the newest operating system released by Microsoft has no support for DVD and Blu Ray. However if you buy Microsoft Media Center license for your Windows 8, then you can play DVDs and Blu Ray discs but only in the Media Center not Media Player. Although you can install free third party media players to play DVDs, for Blu-ray you need a paid player software program.Currently there are only few Blu-ray Media Players available in the market for Windows 8. The most popular and the best reviewed one is Leawo Blu-ray player.About Leawo Blu-ray PlayerLeawo is a professional multimedia solution provider which specializes in first class, ease to use and feature rich software for its customers. One of their most outstanding products is the “Leawo Blu-ray Player”, which had been tested by more than 50,000 users globally.Leawo Blu-ray Player is the All-In-One media player that can be used to play Blu-rays, DVDs and HD videos of upto 1080P smoothly on Windows 8 operating system. This software can play back almost any type of Blu-ray and DVD discs from any region and countries without quality loss. It offers features any other professional media player could provide, including:Full Screen PlaybackAudio SettingVideo SettingClick DisplayVolume ControlMain Menu ButtonFast Forward and Backward ButtonsNext, Last and Subtitle Selecting ButtonsImportant Features of Leawo Blu-ray PlayerIt can play any type of Blu-ray discs with AACS, BD+ and the latest MKB level protection, from any region and country, no matter the Blu-ray discs are freshly released or old collections. It also provides lifelong free DVD player for people to play DVD discs and IFO files for lifelong.Beside it is also a permanent free video player that can play common video formats (3GP, AVI, MP4, WMV, FLV etc) and audio files (ACC, MP3, MKA, WMA, WAV, AC3 etc.) for totally free.During playback you can also select subtitles and tracks to enjoy DVDs,Blu-ray or any other kind of videos to enjoy movies in familiar language. With the support to play backDTS-HD Master audio and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, it guarantees excellent audio and fantastic home theater entertainment.Apart from these features it comes with multilingual support. English, Dutch, French, Polish, Italian, Spanish and several other languages are supported.Supported Operating SystemsLeawo Blu-ray player is not only for windows 8, but it can also be used on the following operating systems.Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.However make sure that your PC or laptop has the following specifications.At least 1Ghz processor, 512 MB Ram, 5GB+ Disk Space,  ATI Radeon HD 4000, Intel G45, GeForce 8-Series or newer graphics support.The current version of Leawo Blu-ray is 1.2.0.11 and the support team always updates the player to ensure optimal performance for its users.67% OFF DiscountLeawo team is offering 67% discount on this very useful and feature rich all-in-one player. The regular price of this player is $59.95, but for a very limited time you can get the player for $19.95.>>> Get Leawo Blu-ray Player for just $19.95Drop comments below to share your thoughts about this player.

The mobile world is not only young, but it is changing and evolving at a very rapid rate.  As a tech community, we are all still trying to figure out how to make the most of it with our unique businesses. In this article, I will do my best to help...