Thursday 28 February 2013

5 Mistakes to avoid while using and starting a blog




A good number of people are interested in starting a new blog in this highly developing internet era. Some of them had taken it as a hobby while some as a daily profession. However as we know that nothing is easy, it also is applicable for blogging. Plan before you act as there are many things that you cannot modify or change when once done. A number of essential parameters are there that are to be considered before starting a new blog while some of them are discussed here in this post. Many new bloggers end up in taking those steps that are to be avoided while blogging. So, here in this post I would like to point out those aspects which are to be avoided preferably.

Let’s have a look at some of the commonly committed mistakes while starting a new blog:

Settle Down for the Best Niche and Stick to it!

The first thing you need to keep in mind in order to become a successful blogger is to settle down for the best niche. Most of the time new bloggers take up random topics and start to blog on those random topics. This approach usually fails to create an impact in the blogging field and make them to quit blogging. Do some research on the niche before taking up the task of blogging as it is one of the major aspects in the process of blogging. So, make sure that you settle down for the right and best niche.

Don’t Start a Blog Merely for Money

There are a number of new bloggers who start a blog for earning some quick money. However they are not successful in either getting money or getting the considerable amount of traffic. Stick to the topic and provide a good, useful and interesting content to attract more number of visitors and thereby earning money through monetising your blog. It is always advisable to concentrate more on the content and other aspects related to it rather than thinking in earning point of view. Your earnings start easily if you have considerable amount of daily traffic.

Say ‘No’ to Plagiarism

Plagiarism means copying the content from other blogs and websites and posting it on your blog. In simple words the using of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V combinations. Some of the new bloggers who usually don’t want to put in some hard work in research about a particular problem or topic follow these shortcut ways. During the starting days it will be easy but as the time goes on they face the difficulties in that shortcut path. The quality of the content is the main root of the blog. So, don’t opt for any shortcut ways for the blog content. Do some research before posting something on your blog and your aim should be is to generate good quality original content.

Don’t fall for Showy or Garish Blog Designs

One of the major mistakes bloggers generally commit is to fall for showy template designs. Most of the times they tend to use fancy and colourful templates. However these templates lack the official look. Many readers may find it difficult to read your posts and may also miss the important content and complain about the appearance of your blog. So it is always advisable to stick with a highly professional and simple light kind of template. It may increase the chance of getting more number of return visitors.

Avoid Complex Categorizing and Tagging

Categories and tags usually refer to the table of contents of your blog. They help the visitors or readers to find the content needed to them with ease. This is another aspect in which most of the new bloggers tend to make mistakes in.

The problem with them is that they fail to understand the mere purpose of categories and tags is to simplify your blog visitor’s visit to your blog. They try to use the maximum number of keywords related to the post that may result in a huge number of tags which is so confusing. 

Many a time in the process of keeping things organized, new bloggers forget to take into consideration this parameter, which is exactly why categories and tags come out to be of no use to them. This is why you need to be very careful while choosing categories and tags. Maintain balance while using these parameters. You must plan categories well in advance as they need to possess a meaning. On the other hand the tags that you need must be based on the keywords that are likely to be searched by the visitors.

So, if you are starting a new blog try to avoid these aspects. If you already started blogging stick with your niche and avoid making mistakes like changing the theme or posting something that is not related to your niche or the theme.

If you think there are also other aspects that are need to be discussed but are left, please feel free to let me know by posting in the comment section below. I wish you all the best and for a grand success in the field of blogging.



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Tuesday 26 February 2013

Submit your site to Search engines like Google and Bing.



The first step to getting your site online and to get better rankings in Google is to submit your URL to search engines. An example of an URL is www.blogger.com. Eventually the search engines will find your site but this will help expedite the process.
Once you submit your URL, it could take several days, weeks, or months for the search engines to index your page(s). Results may vary so don’t write this in stone. Factors such as other websites pointing to your site can affect this time as well.
Submitting to Google:
 1. Go to the following link: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
2. Type in your URL, example: http://www.yoursite.com
3. Enter comments about your site. This is optional. Usually I enter the genre of the site and a few keywords. Example: Blogger tips and tricks.
4. Enter the captcha text shown in the box
5. Select “Add URL”
 Submitting to Bing:
 1. Go to the following link: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
2. Enter the captcha text shown in the box
3. Type in your URL, example: http://www.yoursite.com
4. Select “Submit URL”
 Ask does not have an URL submit feature. Until recently, you could submit your sitemap to them. But Ask.com has now retired this feature and says they will be crawling sites instead. So, the next best thing is to add a directive in your robots.txt file that specifies auto-discovery of the XML sitemap.Like this:SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml. The sitemap location should be the full sitemap URL.
That’s it! Once you complete the above steps, just sit back and be patient. It takes time for the search engines to index your pages. If you submit more than once, some search engines may consider this spamming which could result in not indexing your site at all.


Saturday 23 February 2013

5 'essentials' that blogger should concentrate on!


So you want to become a popular blogger in your niche?
 Well your popularity begins with the blog topic you choose to blog about, since people must first have an interest in the subject they want to post. The fact is that people read blogs not out of loyalty to the blogger but rather for the information it provides. The 'role' of the blogger is to create content that is relevant and interesting enough to get return visitors.

Here are the 5 'essentials' elements you should concentrate on, if you hope to get return visitors:

Content:

Content is the main soul of the blog. Your content should be relevant enough to attract more number of visitors. In three simple words your content needs to be useful, relevant and informative! Remember people read blogs out of curiosity and interest and if you can't provide updates that satisfy their needs, you will be facing some problems concerning the visitors!

Commitment towards your blog:

It is important to realize that even the top blogging sites took plenty of time to establish a large and loyal following! Loyalty does not occur overnight therefore the efforts you do invest need to be long term since blogging is a process!

Effort:

You should put maximum effort to establish a loyal following. Your effort should be in the right direction. You should take good care of the amount of time available with you for maintaining your blog. You have to update your blog with posts more often to attract more number of return visitors. Remember not to change the topic or field of the blog in course of time. It would be foolish and damaging to the growth of your blog!

Navigation:

Working hard to develop content around the blog topic you've chosen only makes sense to make it all available to visitors. Arrange your posts into categories while also linking together any posts that contain related or relevant information. This makes navigation on your site more easy and make the visitors to spend more amount of time on your blog.

Hospitality:

A large part of the popularity associated with blogging platforms is the ability for people to interact by leaving comments! If you want to be a good blogger you should allow people to share their opinions and their thoughts towards the content provided by you. Most of the people who read blogs assume and expect that they can also participate as well, so don't disappoint them!

To become one of the top blogging sites in any niche, there needs to be a certain commitment by the blogger, as described above in the 5 ‘essentials’ we discussed. Over time your efforts will result in building a loyal following along with reputation as being one of the top blogging sites.

If you have more information regarding the essential components for a blog please feel free to post through the comment box below.


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Friday 22 February 2013

Amazing 'Facebook Fan Page Like Slide Out' For Blogger




In the earlier post I had given a Facebook Like Box for blogger. Now in this post a similar one with some change in type i.e a slide out box will appear after clicking on the image.



Now navigate to Layout and click on Add a Gadget and select HTML/Javascript.



Paste the code given below.

Code:



Replace techpro365 <iframe src="//www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FTechpro365 >with your Facebook fan page name in the following code.
Click on save and you are done.
If you are facing any problem in adding the code please feel free to let me know by leaving a comment or contact me.





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Thursday 21 February 2013

How to add 'Facebook Like Box' for blogger


Facebook like box


If you had the thought of adding a plugin or widget of facebook like box you came to the right place. Here in this tutorial I would like to take you through the process of adding 'Facebook Like Box' for blogger.

·         Login to your Blogger Dashboard, and navigate to Template > Edit HTML.
·         Click on the checkbox which says “Expand Widget Templates”.
·         Now search for <body> and paste the following code immediately after it.

Code:

<!-- .fb code starts -->
<div id='fb-root'/>
<script>(function(d, s, id) {
  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
  js.src = &quot;//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&quot;;
  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, &#39;script&#39;, &#39;facebook-jssdk&#39;));</script>
<!-- .fb code ends -->

    ·         After adding this code save the template.
    ·         Now navigate to Layout and click on Add a Gadget and select HTML/Javascript.
    ·         Paste the code given below.

Code:

<div class="fb-like-box" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/Techpro365" data-width="256" data-height="260" data-show-faces="true" data-colorscheme="dark" data-stream="true" data-border-color="black" data-header="true"></div>

          ·     Replace https://www.facebook.com/Techpro365 with your facebook fanpage link or url.
          ·         Click on save and you are done.

      Customization:

       You can place this gadget anywhere according to your convenience of your blog.
·         You can change the dimensions of the data-height and data-width fields according to the dimensions required for your blog.
·         With data-stream=”true” it shows the posts of your blog, if you don’t want to show your post simply remove it. Same thing can be done with data-border-color="black".
·         We have two choices with colour scheme dark and light, modifications can be done as per your choice.

If you are facing any problems in adding the code please feel free to let me know through comment or contact me.




Wednesday 20 February 2013

How to out stand your blogging competition


Have you ever thought of standing first out of the competition among all the blogs? Did you know there are a number of essential ways to beat the other bloggers by becoming a better blogger?

The most critical ways to out-blog other blogs are described below. The best part is that they are all free and you can begin implementing them as part of your blogging journey immediately.

1. Be More Useful
Make your blog so useful to visitors that they can’t resist themselves from visiting it. And also make them feel that not visiting would mean they could miss something very important or big. Always keep in mind, usefulness comes first and is available in a lot of different forms, shapes, and sizes. Your blog could be useful because it delivers breaking news, health-tips, blogging-tips, in-depth tutorials, expert advice, and more. Even entertainment can be useful for people who want and need it. Check out other blogs and figure out how you can be more useful, and then deliver that added value of usefulness on an ongoing basis.

2. Be More Trustworthy and Reliable
If people can trust that your blog will deliver that useful information they need, and they can rely on you, they'll come back again and again. If you can be more trustworthy and reliable than other blogs, then you'll be able to beat them by attracting and retaining more visitors.

3. Look Better
Your blog design should match your theme and also the promise to visitors. Make sure you live up to it by playing and looking the part in every interaction and experience that people have with your blog through comments or any other means. Confusion is a big enemy to bloggers, so make sure your blog is consistent in every way. Select a good blog design that sets expectations immediately when people visit.

4. Get Better Connections and More of Them
You should always build good relationships with your blog visitors and with people across the social web. Also, connect with other bloggers who can help to boost your online content by sharing them either directly or indirectly. These relationships help to increase sharing of your blog content, boost conversations about your blog, jump start comments for each of your blog posts, and there-by increasing traffic to your blog.

5. Care More
You should care more about your blog. That means you should take care about:
Ø  Your visitors by acknowledging them when they publish comments on your blog posts, thanking them for sharing your content with their own audiences, responding to their email messages, and so on.

Ø  Your content by publishing consistently with useful and trustworthy information on a reliable basis that meets your audience's expectations.

Ø  Your blog's performance by monitoring your traffic and publishing more of the type of content your audiences wants.


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Tuesday 19 February 2013

Attractive Social Sharing Set for blogger


Social sharing icons


Hello! Here in this post I would like to present you with a set of social sharing icons. Adding them to blogger is a simple and small task and can be done in a matter of minutes.In an earlier post i had given a set of ice cube social icons.

1. Log in to blogger  Design > Page Element.

2. Click Add Gadget and select 'HTML/Javascript

3. Now Paste Below code.


<a href='http://twitter.com/' target='_blank'><img alt='twitter' src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51VUSqLftRysqUBWjqfb-4SCNptRhuNkYxKEPDIkIwsA47TcAPldCh7crqsj3DMKw2xroOodPxxrwCzwrXajpu5A-JAbrZIjRptQd4rLQ6gRNT4O8o4A03l045tvZcqE_hoo9gVDqiZg/s1600/twitter.png" title='twitter'/></a>&nbsp;
<a href='http://facebook.com/' target='_blank'><img alt='facebook' src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHWYwplzf45iOcJZZGPWtXNRMwnwrgksa1buU5ZFGJDbvmHh_YJZMBpOsW9OQ0gTOWIYJgw9D4d3qAdnDeFVPnkCMTWDkELQHUNQJB6-OtE1NsNedonffuW7aZQ5Is4MHKzo8P84_4ekg/s1600/facebook.png" title='facebook'/></a>&nbsp;
<a href='https://plus.google.com/' target='_blank'><img alt='google plus' src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh50rYw3pFA2pF_eQPgtjTTM-BNVSw5V-x5xCyv1ETFI2E80UAnXHyD5MOtyShqhygPa9arGPuhybV8i1SFkcLlRNVih8ta3ijZZD5AI5-cE06RFm0-GbZ57Qpseb9oFbU26KDzFfmInNY/s1600/gplus.png" title='google plus'/></a>&nbsp;
<a href='http://www.linkedin.com/' target='_blank'><img alt='linkedin' src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqQ13nwjqirf9hIt4HVXAyooNauee2jHqaG610nkeX_hR99HQl_uCb4qq-BNL5SMI2792HTCH3vjt0miyLMFVBwHwTT73JFNrLHLVKNVWuKblSW4HyoiIevBu0b29puuJXxRhSNkbVYEA/s1600/linkedin.png" title='linkedin'/></a>&nbsp;
<a href='http://feedburner.com' target='_blank'><img alt='rss feed' src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxWHlHoQhCHdINkSDyAHEp-KE-BEl3BYpfiq7YNGM_wM0bknJ7UPlSMXOSs3k3rpjsULnqtupztWz5rPUejCFmKkF_Y9SdBL-xvEA-nl0T2LHR9hty42Nquq9NUw1veqdWL90jHrSMDu4/s1600/rss.png" title='rss feed'/></a>&nbsp;
<a href='mailto:techpro4u@gmail.com' target='_blank'><img alt='email' src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4T5SDOCCn8VVilve9K974sD8WHA1FepepkYo_oK3meWK4B5TCdcYeCexMlHsGC6gbz6ip1dX7NGOshMEkrMHbbEXKa0sj2b9MB5e1LRHoBnSp-7CEVULFt6u7abb-ytWYmFKskmlkjyE/s1600/email.png" title='email'/></a>


4. Now save it and give it a title like “share it” or anything you like.

Before adding this code please change the red coloured code with the concerned link of your blog.

If you are having any problems while adding the code please feel free to ask through comments or contact me.


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Monday 18 February 2013

How to add 'Facebook Popout Likebox' for blogger


facebook popout like box


Hello, in this post I would like to tell you how to “How to add 'Facebook Popout Likebox' for blogger”.


First you need to have a jQuery Plugin in your Blog template.


This Step is Required, If your Blog already have this plugin then Ignore this Step.


If your Blog Don’t have this Plugin, Install the jQuery Plugin.


Add the below line of code before </head> tag.



<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js"></script




Adding this to your blog is so simple and can be done in a very few minutes.



1. Log in to blogger  Design > Page Element.

2. Click Add Gadget and select 'HTML/Javascript

3.Now Paste Below code and save it. Don’t give any title to the widget.



<style type="text/css">

/* techpro365.blogspot.in */

/*<![CDATA[*/

#fbplikebox{display: block;padding: 0;z-index: 99999;position: fixed;}

.fbplbadge {background-color:#3B5998;display: block;height: 150px;top: 50%;margin-top: -75px;position: absolute;right: -47px;width: 47px;background-image: url("https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtcu26C7QKA004uW9Mi0OOpvImTS-78i19DL2WCJXa_JbpKVYP2mOjIHmC3pqptZGiKv4MWcCEpbmrSw7GVFqyzBlnPhRrDuNlIh7o2KQ1XnrkOWyq4j6DjMimwnwvIAv2cE7Mh2hV1WHh/s1600/w2b_vertical-left.png");background-repeat: no-repeat;overflow: hidden;-webkit-border-top-right-radius: 8px;-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 8px;-moz-border-radius-topright: 8px;-moz-border-radius-bottomright: 8px;border-top-right-radius: 8px;border-bottom-right-radius: 8px;}

/*]]>*/

</style>

<script type="text/javascript">

/*<![CDATA[*/
    (function(w2b){
        w2b(document).ready(function(){
            var $dur = "medium"; // Duration of Animation
            w2b("#fbplikebox").css({left: -250, "top" : 100 })
            w2b("#fbplikebox").hover(function () {
                w2b(this).stop().animate({
                    left: 0
                }, $dur);
            }, function () {
                w2b(this).stop().animate({
                    left: -250
                }, $dur);
            });
            w2b("#fbplikebox").show();
        });
    })(jQuery);
/*]]>*/
</script>
<div id="fbplikebox" style="display:none;">
    <div class="fbplbadge"></div>
    <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FTechpro365&amp;width=250&amp;height=250&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;show_faces=true&amp;border_color=%23C4C4C4&amp;stream=false&amp;header=false" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:250px; height:250px;background:#F5EBF5;" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
</div>



Before adding the following code please make the changes you want like width, height, background colour.

It is important to change Techpro365 with your bloggers facebook page name.

By default the position of the widget is at the left side of the blog.If you want to change the position of the widget from left to right  you should change right to left and left to right. This

background-image: url("https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtcu26C7QKA004uW9Mi0OOpvImTS-78i19DL2WCJXa_JbpKVYP2mOjIHmC3pqptZGiKv4MWcCEpbmrSw7GVFqyzBlnPhRrDuNlIh7o2KQ1XnrkOWyq4j6DjMimwnwvIAv2cE7Mh2hV1WHh/s1600/w2b_vertical-left.png");

Should be changed with

background-image: url("https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg7REOdnzO1Uff4ZpWHdsDQNCzCdm9oFjJaD2wQzpyco7qFAs2MQ4FW5sBBWr7IXIXac-kQnoYDYN-oZn2zpumN819EsCKWftuWvEzXXK66rmNQPZP5G_NG1rO0jGW4Y269RPEUTrOWyFx/s1600/w2b_vertical-right.png");

If you are facing any problem with your blog for this post please let me know through a comment or contact me.