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

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

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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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An Introduction From Karen @ Blazing Minds

This is the first guest post by Karen from Blazing Minds.  She’s a recording artist with the Electronica Duo band Remergence and a premier blogger. I did a guest post on her blog, the WordPress Plugin Video Tutorial and I hope we will do many more of these guest posts in the future.  So without further adieu…

Hey there everyone, the other day Ileane asked if I would graciously, stop by and do some Guest Posting on her blog.

So I accepted and thought I would start by introducing myself to Ileane’s blog readers.

My name is Karen and I’ve blogged on Blazing Minds since July 2008 and started blogging original as a laugh with the aim to create some really crazy posts, but decided to use my blog for more interesting posts and over time I have blogged about almost everything, so I’ll probably doing the same here, I’ll be posting articles that are hopefully interesting and something that Ileane’s readers can comment on and have a discussion about.

Other projects of mine, besides the addiction to blogging, include producing music in the electronica and going to the movies to see as many 3D films as I possibly can 😉 Oh! and review them of course 😆 So as I said early I post about anything really and hopefully via me doing this here, Ileane can get a little well deserved break 😉

So all I’ve got left to say is: Thanks Ileane and I hope you like my future posts and that goes for the readers as well.

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.

Blog Engage Activity for Ms. Ileane Speaks in November

Joining a Community of Bloggers

In early November, I became an active member of the Blog Engage Community and it has been an amazing journey and an extremely rewarding experience. This image represents a small sampling of the bloggers that I’ve networked with since joining Blog Engage.

I was somewhat timid in my initial approach because I’d heard talk that it is not a good idea to join a lot of blog directories. You know, everyone is afraid of the big, bad, wolf known as Google and what might happen to you if you don’t follow every rule they make to a “T”.  Yet, for every article that talks about not submitting your blog with too many directories, I find another that says directory submissions are the best thing since sliced bread.  So I have to go with my gut, forget all about Google’s rules, and just “do me“.

Building a Social Network at Blog Engage

I looked around the Blog Engage site and right away I noticed something unique. I quickly caught on to the the fact that BE doesn’t look or feel at all like a directory but more like a place to hang out and rub shoulders with some of the finest bloggers on the planet!