Basic Blog Tips for New Bloggers

After one year I started BASIC BLOG TIPS!

Today is the one year anniversary of Ms. Ileane Speaks! The year went by quickly and it seems like I spent a great deal of it learning how to blog.  The first road block came with the realization that WordPress and WordPress.com are NOT the same thing.  Since I’m using WordPress.com here at Ms. Ileane Speaks, I constantly struggle to find tutorials strictly for WordPress.com!

Lynda.com To The Rescue

Lucky for me, I gained access to a 30-day free pass to the Lynda.com online learning library. Right away I completed the module called WordPress.com 2.7 Essential Training and wrote the post 5 WordPress Secrets You Need To Know. But more importantly, a seed was planted and I felt the need to share what I learned.

Blogger vs. WordPress.com

I soon discovered that Google offers free blogging software that rivals WordPress.com so I established Ms. Ileane’s Blog. It started out as a challenge from my friend Kissie to prove the superiority of WP, yet I was surprised to learn that arguments can be made on both sides. First and foremost, I was able to easily access TONS of tutorials, tips, themes and hacks dedicated to using Blogger.

Basic Blog Tips

After one year of learning the ropes of using free blogging software I decided to acquire a domain and hosting provider as a gift to myself.

I’m super excited to tell you that Basic Blog Tips is now open for business!

The goal of Basic Blog Tips is to provide one central location to find tips, tutorials and resources for WordPress.com AND Blogger users. I want this site to be the one I was looking for this time last year.  Happy Blogging Anniversary to me!

But Basic Blog Tips is  also my gift – to you.

UPDATE: Currently the most popular post on Basic Blog Tips by far includes a video tutorial and it’s called Install CommentLuv on Blogger

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Find Fonts on Your Computer

Finding the right font to use on a project just got a little easier.  This is a quick post to tell you about Flipping Typical. [tweetmeme source=”Ileane”]

“A way to explore the popular typefaces you have on your computer”.

Once you are on the Flipping Typical site, at the top of the screen type in the words you want to see and Flipping Typical will generate a display that allows you to preview those words in a sampling of the different typefaces available on your computer. It’s fun to play with this site and it just might come in handy if you want to quickly pick typefaces to use on your email signature, a blog post, logo, banner or advertisement. Here is an example of what my name looks like in some of the fonts I have on my computer. Notice that it is important that I use the correct font because my name starts with an I.

If I use Arial it looks like my name starts with a lower case “L”, but in the Georgia font the capital “I” looks great!

Check out Flipping Typical and find some fonts to play around with, then stop back here and let me know what you found.

Smooches!

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How To…Keep A Conversation Going on a Blog You Have Commented On!

Image by antigone78 via Flickr

This is the third guest post by Karen from Blazing Minds. She’s a recording artist with the Electronica Duo band Remergence and a top-notch blogger. Karen’s blog is DoFollow.

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Most of us who are reading this blog have commented on a lot of blogs and sometimes it can be quite hectic trying to remember where you may of last posted a comment and sometimes you would like to keep an eye on the conversation that you may have started.

My tip for anyone who is new to blogging and even those have blogged for a while is this:

When you are commenting on a blog, look out for tick box that says something in the lines of “email me with follow-up comments” or something along those lines, these are really useful as these are perfect to keep an eye on what is going on the blog post you have commented on.

From the moment you submit your comment, you are now ready to receive followup comments made, there are also other options that you may see on blogs that ask if you want to receive all new comments made on the post you have commented on, I would recommend using these options.

Not only does this bring you more chances of commenting on the blog and the possibility of giving you some more back links from the blog as you reply to comments made to your comment or other comments made on the post.

So don’t lose out when you see these tick boxes on blogs, tick them and don’t just comment and run, never to return again, as a blogger myself I appreciate the constant return of many of the commentators on my blog and I know other bloggers generally feel the same.

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Chrome Extension For Improved Readability

Image via CrunchBase

The Google Chrome Extensions library is filled with many of the same add-ins that FireFox users have enjoyed all along. My favorite Chrome Extentions Zemanta, Diigo, Chome SEO and SEO Site Tools. [tweetmeme source=”ileane”]

I recently installed a Google Chrome extension called Readability Redux. I learned about this plugin from Bruce Ganek in Making Webpages Easier to Read – The Readability Bookmarklet. Here’s  the installation demo from the developer Arc90, and here’s a closer look at Readability in Episode #021 of  Ms. Ileane Speaks Podcast.

I hope that using this tool will address the concerns of some website owners over the unfair use of browser adblockers. With Readability users will catch a glimpse of the ads served on monetized sites before switching to an uncluttered ad-free, sidebar-free view of any blog post. You can also email the post to others from the Readability view.  Why don’t you give it a try?

Do you have favorite extension for Google Chrome?

UPDATE: On June 15, Arc90 announced 2 features have been added to the Readability extension for Chrome:

1. Converts links in text to footnotes
2. Keyboard Shortcuts

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What’s More Important? Your SEO or Your Readers?

Image by marciookabe via Flickr

This is the second guest post by Karen from Blazing Minds. She’s a recording artist with the Electronica Duo band Remergence and a top-notch blogger. Karen’s blog is DoFollow.

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We all consider the SEO of our blogs and I have personally found that sometimes it takes a lot effort to find those correct keyword and or key phrases to add in to your blog post to try to produce those magic results for the search engines to pick you up and give you a good SERP.

Then you have to work on which search engines you want higher rankings on and work on producing your posts to gain better SERP in each engine. But, is this really that important, isn’t there something else you should be considering as well, your readers!

Take into consideration that it is your blogs readers that bring you the traffic and by keeping in contact with them via replying to their comments and finding out what your readers are saying as well as what they are searching for also helps with the overall way that your blog is purveyed.

Ok, so I know that a lot of bloggers will say, “keep to your niche” but, what if you enjoy blogging about anything and everything, I know I do, so I look at my stats in WordPress and see what everyone is looking for and usually go from there with my ideas for a blog post and recently I don’t try to go to over the top with searching for those magically keywords, I now have the tendency to look for related searches in Google and go from there and since doing this my hits from Google have improved as those of you who read my blog will have noticed from the weekly round-up that I post.

So at the end of the day my recommendation is listen to your readers, communicate with them via the comments they leave and find out what they find interesting, your blog stats will show the posts that get more hits than others, check those out and see what caused them to get more traffic/comments than others and use this information to improve your overall blogging.

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Dealing with Negative Blog Comments

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This is a guest post from Alison Moore Smith. Alison is a homeschooling mom of six amazing children, ages 6-22. Married for over 24 years, she and he husband are best friends and business partners. Alison is a public speaker, author, blogger, web designer, singer, actress, ballroom dancer, and chocolate lover. She helps people start blogging and wants you to make your life amazing.

Her goal is to be ready for anything!

The first time I ever spoke at a convention, my intent was to get through the ordeal without being pelted with overripe fruit. The fact that attendees would later vote on the speakers was a tidbit I chose to pay as little conscious attention to as possible.

A number of weeks later I was informed that I had been voted favorite speaker of the convention. But it could easily have been otherwise.

Currently I’m performing as Buttercup in Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. Having spent most of the last 20 years behind the scenes, I’m greatly relieved to know that the community theater I’m performing in gets fact-related newspaper coverage as opposed to serious arts reviews! I’m not sure I’m ready for a prime time critique.

Blogging is the most public of venues. Forget “worldwide web,” it’s a worldwide stage. And when you decide to blog, the very format of blogging software says that you are not only committing to share you thoughts and ideas with the world, but you’re open to hearing the world share back with you.

If you write interesting and insightful posts, if you make claims — if you have an opinion about anything — someone will have an opposing view. And if you can broaden your circle of readers beyond those reading out of familial obligation (generally a desired goal!) your readers might speak up to challenge you.

Are you ready to handle that with civility?

Blogging Legacy – Have You Considered Yours?

[tweetmeme source=”ileane” style=”compact”]This is a guest post from Jimi Jones. Jimi is an Internet Entrepreneur and his blog is Jimi Jones Dot Com and on his about page he states “My focus is Online Business Start-ups and Branding.“ You can also find Jimi on Blogging Wire at Jimi Jones.

As bloggers we are often too close to the content we produce to realize it’s true value, not in a monetary way, but from a historical aspect.

When we think about our ancestors there are often huge voids in the timeline of their lives and we turn to family Bibles and old photo albums in an attempt to fill in those gaps and have a better understanding of who these people really were and what life for them was like.

For many, we only know of the stories shared by family elders at reunions, cookouts and those sad final goodbyes.

In today’s technologically advanced world we can leave a full and complete story for future generations. Passing on our life’s values and stories can more accurately depict the times in which we live.

The written word is an all powerful thing, communicating ethics, religion, love for family and yes, even the negative aspects of the times. But these things are more valuable than any fortune of money.

Have you considered your legacy?

As a blogger we write with great regularity about tips and techniques, ways to broaden our social footprint and a host of other topics. We should also write for those beyond the audience of our blogs, those yet to be born into the world.

Think ahead 75 or 100 years, what would you like for your descendants to know about you and the quality of life you experienced? Would you like to be more than a long ago placed photograph in the family album?

Legacies are extremely important and are influential to those who are a part of the family bloodlines. Everyone wants to know where they came from and what drove their ancestors to be who they were. It is a powerful thing to know your family history and for far too many, this history is incomplete.

Our blogging skills can be a tool of rediscovery, a way to close the gap. Legacies are a gift to be handed down to future generations. Our legacies are gifts that reward today and tomorrow. You benefit now while building something for future generations.

Step back from the keyboard for a moment and think about your family members that you will never meet in your lifetime. Think about what you could do to contribute to them.

We are all somebody so be somebody not only today, but well into the future.

Keep Blogging!

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Google Page Rank on a WordPress.com Blog

[tweetmeme source=”ileane”]Using free blogging software from WordPress known as WordPress.com, such as I do here on this blog Ms. Ileane Speaks,  is a great way to get started with blogging.  I discuss the debate about blogging on WordPress.com over other free platforms like Blogger over at Ms. Ileane’s Blog, but using any free blogging software platform has several disadvantages. It’s much better to register a domain name, acquire a web host and download the software for a self-hosted WordPress blog.

I won’t list all of the disadvantages for using WordPress.com here, but one of the primary arguments against having a free blog is the fact that you cannot use plugins or various themes that can improve your SEO and Page Rank with Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines.

For those of us that continue to use the free WordPress.com service you can rest assured, there is still hope.  This morning I checked the page rank for this blog using Google Page Rank checker and I was pleased to see a score of 4 out of 10.

This is a pretty good score considering I haven’t applied many SEO strategies. I mentioned previously in Top 5 Blog Topics, that page rank has not been a huge concern for me on this blog.

In the upcoming year, I’ve made a resolution to learn more about SEO.  I’m finding some of the SEO techniques pretty easy to do and you can get started today. Here’s a short video from Chuck at CyberSmartMarketing called Link Surfing Your Website for On-Page SEO to give you a hand.

If you are considering the move to a self-hosted WordPress blog or website, contact Chuck at CyberSmartMarketing. You can also follow him on Twitter @MrCyberSmartSEO

In the meantime, take a look at your page rank and leave a comment to let me know where you stand.

Smooches!

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Fun Twitter Promotions for Your Blog

[tweetmeme source=”ileane” style=”compact”]Using social media to promote your blog is a must. If Twitter is your social media outlet of choice, it pays to keep up with the latest Twitter tools and applications. Some are better than others, and not to long ago I talked about using Buzzom to manage your following. Here are a couple of tools that I think are fun to try.

Twitter Meets Screenr

Check out this short podcast I created and find out how to quickly send video tweets with Screenr, a web-based video recording application from Articulate.  Screenr is surprisingly easy, fast and convenient to use.  You can create an introduction video for your newest blog post, a quick tutorial, or share a slide show featuring scenes from your vacation. Be creative, video is a great way to personalize your blog and add something unique and memorable to your twitter stream.

For more information, check out the review of Screenr that I did over at Shvoong.

Blog Engagers That Make My Day!

Developing a quality blog is hard work for some and second nature to others. Yet most bloggers all have one thing in common. We want people to read our blogs. Wether you make money with your blog or have an ad-free WordPress.com blog like myself, it’s nice to know that someone out there is paying your blog some attention and even better if they end up giving it some tender “link” loving care.

I was fortunate enough to find the Blog Engage community and if you are blogging, and you’re not already a member, I encourage you to join today.  I became an instant fan and a huge supporter of the Blog Engage community. I created two introductory videos that can be viewed on Blip.tv and posted a monthly recap of my Blog Engage activity for November.