You may not be thinking about this, and I admit that I haven’t been either. Yes, it’s true. I’ve been forgetting that people read blogs on mobile devices — iPhones, Kindles, etc. and we really need to consider how our subscribers are accessing our blogs. More than 20 million people are using mobile devices for blog reading nowadays and it’s just rude not to accommodate their needs. So, if you’re one of my mobile subscribers, mea maxima culpa. So sorry.
But…
You’re in good shape now!
I just added the plugin for WordPress called appropriately, “WordPress Mobile Pack,” right from my blog, and now, it’s all ready to go mobile. It was simple, and the results (I hope) on the other end will be stellar. I think I’ll have to subscribe from my Kindle just to see the results.
I don’t have a clue what the thing does, really. I’m only soooo techno-geek, you know. When it comes to stuff like this, I’m a luddite. So, my advice is just to get the plugin and install it. You’ll be making your mobile subscribers MUCH happier than they are now.
Seriously. I juts added ScribeFire Blog Editor to Firefox. I’ve been hesitating doing this because I’m right at home with my blog. I use Fast Dial as my homepage, so it’s really easy to get to. One click on my Fast Dial page or one click in my lower toolbar… what’s the diff, eh?
But I’m hearing all kinds of great things about this add-on, and there are times when I’m at a web page and want to blog about it, but think… I’ll get to it later and never do. Maybe this will stop that arrested intent blogging.
Here are some cool features:
You can preview the post in your blog template or just in the Scribefire template. Kind of cool, but I rarely preview my posts. I hit send very quick and then, am glad that I have MaxBlog Press’s Ping Optimizer installed so that edits don’t matter to the blog directories since they’re only pinged once.
It shows you the last several posts you have made in the “Entries” tab.
You can select which category you want the post to fall into.
It allows you to add TrackBack URLs, which I think is kind of redundant for WordPress, which does that automatically.
Allows you to add images.
Has a special button for YouTube video additions
Will find related articles for you with Zemanta (notice the links at the end of this post leading to other articles), which is kind of cool
You can make money with in-text links from InLinks.com
You can bookmark at Propeller, Facebook, Digg, Fark, StumbleUpon, and Newsvine from the “promote” tab.
God, don’t people get it? I mean, they buy this spammy software that tells them they can “advertise” on a bazillion blogs out there at the push of a button. All they have to do is write some inane, generic comment, and send it out.
Those don’t work, people!
They suck.
Blogs have spam filters and I know that every bogus comment I get from these brilliant schemes gets nuked into oblivion. They never make it to my blog. So, stop wasting my time and yours.
And stop tracking back to me from your spammy blogs that you never tend, too. I don’t create MY content for You, you lazy person. Go get your own. Learn to write. Pay a writer. Use videos. Whatever. Just stop trying to create a blog that I and a bunch of other legitimate bloggers have written for you.
If you want to use my content, please write something about it. It doesn’t have to be glowing. You can write that I’m full of it. At least if you write something that makes sense and then, refer to my blog, I’ll love you for it. Well, unless your blog is about porn or gambling. I wouldn’t be loving you for that much. But really, all bloggers want are relevent trackbacks and comments. Is that too much to ask?
OK… rant mode off for now.
But seriously, don’t waste your money. You’re more than welcome to comment honestly. I ‘ll give you the link, and it won’t be a “nofollow,” either. My links are leaded, brothers and sistahs! But when you use these crappy tools, you’re just pissing people off… me, for instance.
Just when we get used to WordPress 2.8, the developers over at WordPress are already working to release WP 2.9. I think that’s neat-o, but for the casual blog user, it may mean upgrades they don’t want to make and plugins that aren’t compatible. These changes often put normal folks into a tizzy.
But, I’m not normal. I was excited when I saw that they were working on a new version! They made some stellar changes in the past two major upgrades, and so, I can’t wait to see the newest release, though I can’t say when that will happen.
Here are some of the new features coming:
Trash Status: You can move pages and other stuff to a trash bin, much like the recycle before permanently deleting. Interesting, but not killer.
rel=canonical for single pages (the page you get to when you click on the title or your “permalink” page): Cool… Gives the search spiders a clear view of what’s going on.
The ability to select “Allow My Blog to Appear in Search Engines” during installation. Well… who wouldn’t want their blog in the SERPs? Some, I’m guessing, and for those folks this is cool. This will block all your pages from spider view. continue reading »
I had a question today over at the ListBuilding Club Discussion Forum about shortening long posts. You know, so that only a portion of them appear on your front page?
Some of the folks in the forum gave various answers, but the discussion was focusing on changing the theme. So, it occurred to me that folks don’t really know how simple this is. In fact, I’ve been writing some longer posts (like yesterday’s) and it just never occurs to me to use the tools I have at hand. Duh. But I did it for illustration purposes.
All you have to do is use the comment <!–more–> where you want to break your post off. It’s really that simple. But, you have to do it in the HTML tab or it won’t work.
People often tell me, “I can’t blog. I don’t know what to write about.” And I always go into my spiel about how people don’t have to write to blog. You can talk and have an audio blog. You can make videos to blog, and so on. Though that’s some help for the reluctant, it doesn’t totally solve the problem.
There’s still the question of, “What do I write about?” or make a video about, etc.
You can get around this. There are all kinds of things you can do and some are easier than others.
How about running a survey for your list? It’s really easy to set one up at Survey Monkey, and it’s free! Just ask them, “What’s your single biggest question about…” whatever your niche is. When they answer, you’ll have all sorts of things to write about.
You can go to a forum for your niche and look at the problems people are talking about. Write about those problems and your take on them.
Or, you can join Skribit, and without doing a thing, except adding a widget to your sidebar, let your readers suggest topics for you. It’s free to join, and you can make a suggestion. Check out the widget in my sidebar. It’s simple to add and much easier than setting up a survey.
But will people use it? The answer remains to be seen, but it would really help me to know what you like me to write about.
I enjoy writing news, like what’s going on with SEO and WordPress. Readers seem to enjoy those posts, too, but let me know. I’m really happy to write about things when I know people are excited to read them.
As you know, I’m a HUGE fan of WordPress. Not only do the search spiders love the platform, but it’s so easy to use and so extremely customizable that you can find plugins that help you to do just about anything you want to do with your blog. It’s just incredible!
Anyway, I’m always checking out new stuff, and am excited about a few new plugins I just heard about and thought I’d pass the information around. I have to admit that I haven’t tested them myself yet, but I have every intention of installing and using them as soon as I’m done writing this post. So, here we go:
WP-Contact Form: I do use this one. It’s awesome! If you go to my top nav menu, you can see it. Setting it up is just a matter of making a new page, and plugging a little code into the HTML tab. Simple and one of the things that spiders look for in a web site. If you don’t have a contact form of some kind, you should and this plugin makes it easy for you.
Scissors: Allows you to do some sweet photo editing from your blog, like resizing and cropping. And it helps make the image smaller, which WordPress doesn’t do. It just resizes the image but keeps the size intact. That could mean MB for scanned images, for example. Better to resize before uploading or with this plugin, do it from your blog. A little more convenient, I’d say.
Lifestream: Add as many of your social feeds as you want. Each time you post to Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc. your updates can immediately be posted to your blog as well. This isn’t for me, though. I like to give a digest on the weekend, when I”m not posting content, but you really don’t want to know every time when I tell someone I hope they feel better, now do you? Be sensible about this. Too much la-di-dah won’t be good for your credibility.
N-Voice: This is a great plugin for folks who’d rather talk than type. It’s great for people who can’t type or people who are handicapped and unable to type. Blogging can be writing, but it can also be talking or video or whatever you want it to be, as long as it’s valuable content.
Redirection: Change your permalink format after making several posts in your blog? This plugin will make your 404 errors 301 redirects, and allows you to point the pages wherever you want them to be. Spiders really don’t like dead ends. This plugin helps stop them from happening.
PayPal Donations: Is your content really good? Do people tweet about it? Do they make comments and tell you how much you’ve helped them? Well… maybe it’s time you started accepting donations. Couldn’t hurt to have a button that lets people decide how good your content really is for them, right? You’ll be seeing one in a widget in my sidebar very soon, I think.
Daiko’s Text Widget: I’ve been using this one for quite some time, and it’s great! It allows you to add php code to your widgets. If you set up a text widget and it doesn’t work… this is your solution. Just add a Daiko’s and you’re probably going to be all set!
So, there are seven really cool plugins that will help you to make your blog awesome and save you a ton of work on some fronts. Try them out, one at a time. If you install more than one and your blog goes kablooey, you’ll know which plugin did it, and you’ll be able to uninstall it and go along your merry way. I’m not saying that any of these will be problematic, but you never know. Sometimes a plugin won’t work with your theme or your version of WordPress. Update to the latest version first, of course, and then… let ‘em rip!
There’s a worm circulating that can totally infect your WordPress blog, unless you upgrade it to its current version (2.8.4). This is pretty easy to do manually. I listed all of the steps here: http://ovblogger.com/473/upgrading-wordpress/ that will guide you through.
It’s important to have a backup, just in case something goes wrong, and that’s easy with the WP-Database Backup plugin. Since this blog was hacked a couple of years ago, I’ve had a backup sent to me via email every week. Thank heaven, I’ve not had to use the backups, but you just never know. Believe me, it really sucks when everything you’ve posted for a couple of years is wiped out. And you know that I post a lot.
But if you installed your WordPress blog via Fantastico, it’s even simpler to upgrade. Just go into cPanel, and check to see if you can get the upgraded version. Then, it’s a matter of just clicking a button to have Fantastico do the upgrade.
The only problem there is that it often takes Fantastico a while to get the newer versions installed. That’s why it’s good to learn manual upgrading because then, you’re not hanging out to dry while Fantastico does it stuff. Manual installation and upgrade isn’t at all as hard as you think. WordPress has some excellent tutorials on the process, too.
The worm in question wipes out archives, which is bad in terms of your search engine standing. When Google sees too many pages of any site not working, they tend to remove it from their index, which can cost you lots of traffic. Don’t let hackers do to you what they did to me. Get yourself upgraded, and always, always be sure to back things up.
When I tell people to do that, I can usually hear the gears turning in their brain… EVERY DAY!?!
Well… yeah. Every single day.
The more you blog, the more subscribers you’ll get, the more traction you’ll have with the search engines and the benefits are HUGE. That’s to get your blog started. After you’ve built an audience, you can cut back to three times a week and then, maybe once a week. It’s all in what your niche is and what your readers expect from you. But here’s the deal…
If you blog once a month or even once a week or you’re inconsistent with your posts, you’re training an audience to ignore you. People want fresh content, and if they like what you provide in your blog, they’ll come back regularly to read your stuff, if YOU are regular about getting it up there.
In terms of search engines, pages equal page rank. Since each post you make has its own separate page, you’re adding pages to your site. (This isn’t to confuse you with the “Page” feature in WordPress. Those are pages, too, but they’re more like static information, like “About,” calendars, and such. Posts are continually updating content.) Plus, you’re updating content often, and the spiders just eat that up.
So, how can you post every day and not feel like a gerbil on a constantly spinning wheel?
Simple.
Make videos. They’re easy to do. You can make them with Flip Cams, Camcorders, or cheap old webcams like mine and put them up on YouTube or Seesmic and then, just embed them in your blog. They can teach people something or you can just talk into the camera. Have you checked out “Dear Tellman” lately? All video.
Make voice recordings and post those to your blog. Podcasting blogs are great, and if you’ve ever been to Stephen Pierce’s blog DTAlpha Talkback, you’ll see how easy they can be to do. His stuff is killer! But then, he’s Stephen Pierce, right?
You don’t have to write every day.
But you can get people to write for you. Hire folks at Elance.com and have them write for a small fee.
Or, here’s one I like a lot… get guest bloggers. You don’t have to pay for them, and it’s a win-win situation. They get exposure on a different venue and YOU get a blog post. Sweet! You link to their site from your blog and the guest blogger has a backlink, too. Nice! Plus, their working with a new audience to get readers for their own blogs. It’s great!
You don’t have to make videos, either. You can grab videos from YouTube or another directory and just post them.
The caveats are:
1. Be sure that the content is is consistently about the niche your blog lives in. Don’t have a fishing buddy post something about fishing to your Internet marketing blog. Bad, bad, bad.
2. Don’t use other people’s stuff ALL the time. Just now and then to take the load off. People are coming to your blog to learn about YOU and what you have to say. Don’t always be leaning on others.
3. Mix things up. Unless you’re going to have a pure video blog or a pure podcast blog, then try adding different types of content at reasonable intervals. You’ll notice that most of my posts are written because well… I’m a writer. But I do add videos now and again. When I’m really busy, those are a godsend.
So, see? When you think of blogging every day in those terms… it’s not so overwhelming, is it?
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