You see, experimentation is not the first thing to do when you’re stuck.

Search for a solution. Someone might have already had the same problem as you are facing and maybe someone already found a way out of trouble. Now, how you search matters.

The first thing I do when I am stuck is (not panicking, actually.. but) to ask some of my online chat buddies who I think might have the solution to the problem. I ask my programmer friends when I am tweaking wordpress plugins and themes to my advantage, the seniors from college when I need to fix something up with the Training and Placement Cell, classmates if I am in a rut with the homework and they happen to be online. And then there was this very recent case when one I needed to talk to one of my ex-girlfriends who is leaving for Delhi in a few days time for higher studies and I couldn’t think of the best words to talk to her. One of the girls in my yahoo contacts helped me with that.

Google is just a click away, but I prefer IM chats as the primary option because:

1. Anyone who has a first hand experience can guide you out better than a static tutorial. In case the issue is technical, the platform on which the tutorial is based might be different, or it might be that the solution provided for your problem on your platform is outdated. Or even, that the tutorial is not comprehensive, or not complete, or whatever. If someone can dynamically help you out its well and good. If not, Google is anyone’s buddy
2. Sometimes, I may not get time to talk to my online chat buddies if I am caught up with my work. Whether you’re going to chat about your problems and solutions – you get a chance to say a quick hello and most of the times, it has a positive impact and assists in healthy social networking.

Now, what if I need to go retrieve my chats for reference at a later point of time? Searching for a page on the internet, and bookmarking it (if useful) is pretty easy (CTRL + D). You can chose to archive (save) your chats in almost any Instant Messenger you might be using- Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, etc. The method of archiving might be different. For me, because I discuss so many issues which are important to me (regarding my blog, programming, college, friends, life, etc.) archiving chats becomes as important as backing up my databases!  I might need to use these saved chats for reference any time.

TUTORIAL :

Archiving Chat in Yahoo Messenger

You can not only save all of your chat history in Yahoo messenger but also your voice call history! To save your chats in Yahoo archive :

Sign into your account using the messenger. When signed in, click on the messenger tab in the menu bar. From there, choose Preferences. In the preferences dialog window, navigate to Archive. And you’ll see something like this:

Chose the options “Yes, Save all of my messages” and “Yes, Save my call history” and Apply the changes. You can view your saved chat history from this very place, as you can see in the image above.

Archiving Chat in MSN (Windows Live Messenger)

Chat history in MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger) is saved in XML files at a location that you specify. These XML files can then be opened in your browser and they’ll show you the chat history in tabular form – From, To, Message, Sent On, etc.

Let us first see how to enable saving chats in MSN :

Sign in to MSN messenger using your username and password and once logged in, click on Tools in the Menu Bar. From the drop down menu that opens, choose Options. In the options dialog window, navigate to the tab called Messages. This image will show you what to do next:

You select the option to keep a history of your chat messages, and also specify the location where you wish to save the chat history. To view the chats later, you goto the location you specify here and open the XML file in your browser (I recommend that you use Mozilla Firefox over Internet Explorer. You can get it from the badge in the sidebar.)

Archiving Chat in Google Talk

The chats in Google Talk are not saved on your hard disk, if you enable archiving them – but in your GMail account as emails with the title Chat With [PersonName]. To save chats in Google Talk, you need to sign into your account using the messenger. Then you click on settings on the top right of GTalk window. Further, under the chat tab you choose to save chat history in GMail account:

Apply the settings, and you’re done.

Not Archiving Chat History but Only Saving Specific Chats

In case you don’t wish to save each and every chat session you ever had, you can just save a specific chat as a text file (.txt) onto your computer. To do this, when you’re chatting with someone and wish to save the chat, simply press CTRL + S and a familiar Save As dialog box will open. Specifiy where you want to save the file, save and there you are! And the good thing about this method of saving chats is that this works on any instant messenger.

So now whenever you need to look back into your chat histories for reference; it’ll be easy and convenient. Did you like this post? Drop a comment using the form below.

In the previous articles at Inspirit, concerning RSS Feed and Email Subscriptions, we have discussed:

* why should you start working to increase your email subscribers because they are so important, and
* how to customize the FeedBurner email subscription form.

Considering that a blog’s feed count i.e the number of subscribers at a blog are so significant in deciding the popularity of a blog, I and Audee (from Graphic Identity) have worked out this article that tells you some of the most effective tips on increasing the number of email subscribers at your blog.

Yes, these 8 tips are not the only ways you can boost the number of email subscribers at your blog, but are just a few of them. I’ll be touching this topic again in my future posts with more ideas to help you market you blog’s content by increasing your number of (RSS and) Email subscribers.

Before you go, implement anything else.. here’s one Universal Tip (Thanks for the heads-up, Michael ) that you should always bear in mind:

Write Killer Content or Any other Tips Won’t Help Much.

If you are fairly serious about promoting your blog then go right through the entire length of this post and learn from this 8 points compilation that we have put together after spending a great deal of our time.

1. Accessibility: Placing the Subscription Form at the right place

Your email subscription form should be such placed that it is most easily noticed and can be reached without any hassles. The top of the sidebar is a good place to put up the subscription options. Some bloggers choose to add the subscribe-by-email form on the top of the blog post (below the header), but for many… this is more of a distraction.

Placement of the subscription form is one of the most important but often over-looked factors that can greatly affect your feed-count in either positive or negative way.

2. Asking your reader to subscribe

It’s a good practice to append a short-note to the end of your post reminding the reader about the available subscription options. You should customize this note in a way that proves the most effective for you.

Try to read and learn how other bloggers around you are doing it. Play around a bit, till you find something that really works for you.

3. Customizing the Email Subscription Form

In one of my tutorial posts about Customizing the FeedBurner Email Subscription Form at your Blog, you can see how I added a simple subscribe-via-email form to the end of my post. If you can customize your email subscription form just the right way, you can empower yourself to place it anywhere on your blog and reap its benefits.

This serves the purpose of asking your readers for subscribing to your feed (see #2 above), as well as is a good placement tactic (see #1 above.)

4. Customize the Post Footer with better CSS

The best way to highlight your email subscription form is to customize your post footer with better CSS design. Just create a box with different background color and border for your note.

Even if you don’t have any idea about how to customize CSS, don’t worry. Just make sure that you set your note apart from the rest of the post with different headings or font colors.

5. Adding an attractive image and linking it to the subscribe page.

If you take a look at my recent post about why email subscribers are important and why should you starting working on increasing them, you’ll see that I have added fancy RSS buttons to the post itself and linked them to the email subscription page. If someone finds these graphic buttons attractive, most probably they’ll click on them and convert into a subscriber.

6. Email Branding: Customize the RSS you mail out as an e-Newsletter

Add some spice to a subscriber’s reading experience by pimping, the email updates you send out, like an e-Newsletter. You can customize the title of your RSS Feed, add a logo to the header or show related posts in the footer (options available with FeedBurner.) People will help you in your marketing campaign if they like what they see.

7. Writing Often: Keeping your blog updated

I am often asked a question by my readers that how do the posting frequency at a blog affect the number of subscribers at your blog. A point they put forward is if someone gets an email once in a while, why one would want to unsubscribe from your blog even when you’re delivering quality content.

My answer to this question is that if one has subscribed to your blog knowing that you offer quality content, one would want to receive it! And if it doesn’t come over for days or weeks together, why should he be wasting time and mailbox space for you, when he can get as good content from numerous other blogs around more frequently.

Well, this doesn’t really mean that you have to publish 2 or 3 posts everyday! Posting every day, on alternate days, 4-5 days a week or whatever way you’re comfortable but update your blog so often that your readers do not opt-out of the subscription.

8. Submit your feed URL to Feed Directories and RSS Aggregators

Submitting your feed URLs to feed directories and RSS aggregators can help you get more exposure to your feed and to the blog itself. If you have good content to offer, chances of visitors subscribing to your blog increase manifolds.

Submitting your blog’s RSS feed URL to sites like Feedest (Social Feed Reader and Directory) even boosts your Technorati authority by giving you a valid link back and helps widening your blog’s reach and popularity. Email subscribers generally increase in direct proportion to these metrics.

—

This is not the first time that anyone is touching this topic, and there are a number of other good resources where you can find interesting and useful tips on increasing your RSS subscribers. These are some articles from the blogosphere that you might find resourceful:

* 35 Guaranteed Ways to Increase Your RSS Subscribers
* Remind the unverified users to verify their Email Subscription
* 11 ways to find new RSS subscribers
* How to use Feedburner to bring in more Subscribers

Hoping that you found this post useful, I’d recommend you subscribe to our RSS feed by Email so that we can deliver the latest updates from Inspirit right into your email account. Use the form below

A template file of a WordPress blog is basically a PHP file and the way your single post page displays is determined by a file called single.php which is present in your \wp-content\themes\yourtheme\ directory. So, you get an idea that for adding the previous and next post links (or buttons, whatever you choose) , we’ll have to edit this file called single.php

Now let’s see how we do it. Take a look at how a most basic single.php file can look like

<!–single.php–>

<!–This is the loop that checks if there are any posts to display. If there’s no post a custom error message is displayed.Else the requested post shows up!–>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<!–This is the navigation that we intend to add to a blog entry. As this is placed above the title of my post (see the next piece of code) , the previous and next buttons appear above the title of my blog post–>
<p><?php previous_post_link(‘« %link |’) ?> <a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>”>Home</a> <?php next_post_link(‘| %link »’) ?></p>

<!–This shows the post title–>
<h1 id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?>”><a href=”<?php echo get_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link: <?php the_title(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

<!–This displays the author name below the title of the post–>
<p><b>By <?php the_author(); ?></b> | <?php the_time(‘F j, Y’); ?></p>

<!–This part shows the main blog entry–>
<div class=”postspace2″>
</div>
<!–content with more link–>
<?php the_content(‘<p class=”serif”>Read the rest of this entry »</p>’); ?>
<!–for paginate posts–>

<!–This part is the footer of the blog-post that shows the categories and comments–>
<?php link_pages(‘<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ‘, ‘</p>’, ‘number’); ?>
<p><b>Topics:</b> <?php the_category(‘, ‘) ?> | <?php edit_post_link(‘Edit’, ”, ‘ | ‘); ?> <?php comments_popup_link(‘No Comments »’, ’1 Comment »’, ‘% Comments »’); ?></p>

<div class=”postspace”>
</div>
<!–almost all options over and out–>

The text inside <!– –> in the code are comments that only describe what a piece of code does. I have elaborated them for your convenience, here. They may not be exactly the same in your template.

So what you basically need to add navigation (like on my blog’s single blog entry) is this piece of code:

<p><?php previous_post_link(‘« %link |’) ?> <a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>”>Home</a> <?php next_post_link(‘| %link »’) ?></p>

<?php previous_post_link(‘« %link |’) ?> : This part shows the name of the previous post, hyperlinked to it. The | character after %link shows as | to separate this link from the rest of the links we are going to add. That is link to the home page and to the next post.

<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>”>Home</a> : This part shows the text Home linked to the home page

<?php next_post_link(‘| %link »’) ?> : This part shows the name of the next post, hyperlinked to it after the | symbol.

This is a simple and very useful navigational aid. But thats not all about it. Only a few people know that this is a good way to improve your internal linking for SEO purposes. Your post will always link to two posts and the homepage with the very appropriate anchor text, that is the title itself.

So, if you don’t have this feature on your blog’s single blog entry page, go ahead, add it as shown above and reap the benefits I hope this PHP tutorial helps you.

Subscribe to Inspirit’s RSS feed for receiving any future updates right in your e-mail.

We all know the people who visit our blog, that most of them are having an acute shortage of time! Especially the Stumble Upon and EntreCard traffic, which you know is so valuable to make your blog popular and statistics, attractive. If they could skip the time taken in loading a page, somehow, you’d have seen them going away from your blog in less than 2 seconds! If you have got them into reading your blog.. with your quality content.. Still no! they don’t want to right-click on the links in the post and chose to “Open this link in a new window” and keep reading you till the other page has finished loading completely.

When I am reading blogs and quick-click a link to see what’s in there, I feel too distracted if it opens in the same window! Opening links simultaneously in separate windows is much more convenient as you can read whenever and whatever you wish to without having to navigate away from the main page. This is especially good when you’re trying to understand some thing and have to go like to-and-fro between the main page and the reference page often.

Whenever I publish a blog-post or drop a comment at other blogs with some kind of reference link to some other website or a blog, I try my best that I hyper link to a blog/website in such a way that the link opens in a separate browser window or tab (different pages within the same browser window).

How to link?

Whenever you are hyper-linking to any page in a blog post or a comment, care to do it by using the anchor tag (HTML). Links that are automatically parsed by various blogging platforms will open in the same window itself. The use of target=”_blank” attribute within the anchor tag makes the difference, which is not added by default.

Structure of anchor tag:
<a href=”http://www.inspiritblog.com” title=”Inspirit | Blog by Abhinav Sood” target=”_blank”>Click Here to Visit Inspirit</a>

Understanding the anchor tag:
<a></a> : is known as the anchor tag, that is used for converting simple text into links that can be clicked on.
href=”Site URL here” : This attribute defines which web page should open when you click on a link.
title=”Add any kind of description here” : The description inserted in this attribute displays as a tool-tip when you hover your mouse-pointer over the link. Skipping this attribute will not show any description on “mouse-over”.
target=”_blank” : This attribute makes a link load the web page in a separate window or a tab when you click on it. Skipping this attribute means that the page will load in the same window.
<a .. .. .. >ANY TEXT HERE </a> : Any text inserted between <a> and </a> appears as the hyper link that can be clicked.

When writing a post, WordPress offers you to chose whether a link should open in the same window or a new window when you are inserting a link using the visual interface. However, Blogger/Blogspot does not. Also, TypePad doesn’t allow the use of HTML in comments, so you have no choice but to simply write down the site URL as it is. Blogger/Blogspot allows the use of anchor tag in comments but doesn’t allow target attribute, so any link on a blogger/blogspot blog will open in the same window unless you right click on it and chose to open it in a new window. But you can make the best use of this technique of hyper-linking which is probably the most efficient and useful way.

After all, readers are the most valued!

Ask yourself a question? How did you start blogging?
I came to know of the word “blog”, when I was reading a website that talked about it. It was actually a blog itself, but I didn’t have the slightest idea of it at that time. That was when I started reading more and more blogs. I read on many topics like life, sports, technology, culture, food, etc. and it was through reading so many blogs in different niches that I was able to discover my interest primarily in technology and meta-blogging than anything else. Its not that I don’t read blogs in any other niches now! Will Taft’s healthy living for people that talks about food, health & fitness and environment, and though written in broken English, Graphic-Identity’s design blog are one of my favorites to read being very informative!

Helping you find your interests is not the only way in which reading blogs helps. Reading is what helps you to learn how to write and more importantly how to do it effectively. Do you know of a person who learned to write meaningfully without learning to read? Let me know if you know any such person as I will be glad to feature him here at Inspirit.

Let us now look at a few important aspects of reading blogs, and learn how reading can positively impact our blog’s content, promotion and traffic:

Learn to market better: When you read various blogs, you get to know how people market themselves or the content/ideas they are trying to sell and have successfully become some kind of micro-celebrities in the blogosphere.

Improve your grammatical skills: Improve your grammar, vocabulary and formatting skills by reading various blogs. If you read good blogs and try to learn from someone’s style of writing… you’ll definitely see your blog entries getting better every time you publish.

Learn to communicate effectively: I think that in a large number of cases, writer’s block is not experienced because of lack of ideas for writing but because bloggers do not understand how to communicate to the target audience effectively. You’ll observe means and methods employed by bloggers to present their ideas only by knowing how they write.

Build a social network and a stronger readership base: Being displayed on someone’s BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog widgets often, can help you get more visits from the blog where you are displayed. Being a frequent reader and an active participant at a blog helps the blog owner to know you better. It helps you to socialize and make friends with other bloggers and increases your chances of being read by a wider audience.

Reap the EntreCard benefit: You’ll all agree that chain-dropping on EntreCard widgets is actually a misuse of the concept, even though it maybe beneficial to both the parties! Dropping cards at the blog to read is a wiser and healthier practice. EntreCard is now well-known for bringing in a lot of traffic to your blog and why won’t you want to benefit from it.

Pass your time: Whether you are experiencing the writers’ block, or you’re not feeling well or simply don’t have the mood to write… spend some time in reading blogs. By reading different kinds of blogs, you can boost your knowledge, sharpen your thinking capability, have an hearty laugh on reading a fresh joke or simply pass time. An Idle Mind is a Devil’s Workshop! Spending your free time of reading blogs is not that bad an idea!

Gather new ideas: Honestly speaking, most of my ideas come from reading other blogs. In fact, this very post comes as a result of my observation of benefits of reading, when I was reading other blogs! Even, in case you don’t get any new ideas to write about on your blog, from reading… you can write about what you read. Such reviews are generally interesting to read and are a channel of sharing valuable resources across the blogosphere.

When it comes down to making a decision, it all depends on why you are blogging. Decide what is important to you and what you hope to achieve.Every minute you spend in reading will pay you back in the same coin as a positive impact on your blog’s readability, subscriber base and ranks, etc. Finding some time for reading is definitely good. However do not cut on something more important that you might have got to do.

* Was this article useful? Subscribe for more from Inspirit.

The popularity of adding videos to blog posts has been increasing tremendously, especially for those blog posts that serve the purpose of tutorials, step by step illustrations. Of course, they are used for other purposes like video clips on entertainment and media blogs, etc.

Adding a video to your blog is not difficult. You can simply embed flash or videos from sites like YouTube or MetaCafe, easily by copy pasting the codes provided by them. WordPress users also have the options to use plugins for taking care of all this. However, how you use videos in your blog posts is important!

Here are 7 Golden Guidelines to use videos in your blog posts effectively:

1. Video Inline to the Post: Do not link to a video and expect many of your readers will visit them. The time of any reader is precious and most of them will not like to digg too deep for watching a video. Remember, something about anything from nothing to everything is available on the internet . You have to take care of how you are going to make the visitors to you blog stay.Always offer the juicy content right in the hands of your visitors. Embed the videos inline to the post instead of placing the video somewhere else and linking to it with some hypertext. Chances are that people will overlook the link to the video in order to save themselves a few extra clicks and a lots of time.
2. Quality of Video: This is a very obvious, yet much overlooked point that you should always bear in mind while adding a video to your post. They should run without pauses. Good quality videos should be used so that they do not stress the eyes and brains of the viewer.
3. Dimensions of Video: I have seen many blogs with videos of such large sizes that they literally break the frames of content block! Resize the dimensions of the videos before you use them in a blog post such that they fit well inside the content block. Smaller dimensions also mean quicker loading and thus, save your readers valuable time.
4. File Size of Video: Smaller is the file size of the original uploaded (and embedded) video, the lesser is the bandwidth consumption. So try to convert your video to a smaller bit-rate (and hence smaller file size!) without compromising on the quality. Various video converters are available which can be used for the purpose (Some of the Open Source Video Converters are available for Free.)
5. Textual Description: Always add a brief textual description about the video you are posting. This is the most effective way of using videos in your blog posts effectively. This will make the visitors stick to your post by developing and holding their interest in your video till it loads.I have explained this aspect in detail in my guest post: Adding Textual Description to a Video in your Blog Post at Another Pointless Blog, and I really recommend you to go through it once.
6. Vertical Alignment of Video: Try to align your videos properly relative to the text contained in the post and also relative to the layout of the rest of the blog.When you are using a distinct introduction and an end-note for your post, align the video in the middle of these two parts. Also, when you are going to post a brief textual description about the video, its a good practice to place the video on the top of the text.
7. Horizontal Alignment of the Video: The left, right or centered placement of the video depends on the layout of your blog. If you use a 3- column blog that has the content block in the center then center-aligning your videos is the best idea. In case the content block is on the left and the two sidebars are on the right, left aligning the video in the post is the most effective placement strategy. In these ways, the videos will not mess with the sidebars and will be easily viewable, without any distractions.

If you use videos in your posts, and follow these general rules when embedding them… Nothing can stop the visitors to your blog from sticking to you.

You’re blogging, that is not important. What is important is that you blog effectively.

A Sitemap is a well structure and an organized model of a Web site’s content that allows the users to navigate through the site to find the information they are looking for, just as a traditional geographical map helps people find places they are looking for in the real world. Thus, a sitemap is a hierarchical visual model of all the pages of a Web site.

In general, there are two types of sitemaps. The first type of sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of your site – often by section – and is meant to help users find the information they need. The second type of sitemap is an XML document.

According to Google Support,

XML Sitemaps – usually called Sitemaps are a way for you to give Google information about your site. In its simplest terms, a Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.

The first type of sitemap, i.e. HTML sitemap can be added as a page to your blog or website and can be used by your visitors to see the structure and organization of your blog or website and to help them easily navigate through the various categorized posts and pages.

The second type of sitemap, i.e XML sitemap can be submitted to search engines like Google and thus are for search engines to see.

Why Should You Have a Sitemap?

Creating and submitting a Sitemap (Google Sitemap) helps make sure that a search engine gets to know about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may have been left out in the normal crawling process! Sitemaps are extremely useful to submit when your website has dynamic content as in a regularly updated blog or a website with lots of AJAX or Flash.

A Google sitemap can contain a list of URL’s (or even a list of sitemaps!) and to be exact, up to 50,000 URL’s! This means you can potentially expose a large number of URL’s from your site to Google. Though it is not necessary that all of those pages in the sitemap will be indexed but most of them are! and this increases your chance to get a place in search results and also helps you build some traffic for your blog.

Adding a Google Sitemap also helps Google Webmaster Tools also helps you to see the stats about your site like how many pages are getting indexed and internal and external linking and thus serve the purpose of an analytical tool.

How to add a Sitemap to your Blog?

We already discussed in brief about the two types of sitemaps and I have already cleared the purpose of each of them. A quick recap: The HTML sitemaps are for the human eyes, while the XML sitemaps are for the Search Engines.

If you run an eye over the navigation bar at the top, you’ll see a page called Sitemap. That is my HTML sitemap actually and it lets you view my posts categorized easily and thus increases the readability and usability of my blog. Similarly, I also have an XML sitemap made for Inspirit that I have submitted to Google Webmaster Tools.

It is very easy to generate and add a sitemap to your blog. XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps can easily be generated by using many free sitemap generators available online. Doing a Google search for free sitemap generators can be really helpful.

And, Who said Life is not a Bed of Roses? It indeed is a bed of roses, for WordPress users. Here are two awesome (must-have) WordPress plugins that will automatically publish and update the sitemaps for you and will keep the search engines as well as the human eyes happy. One is Google Sitemap Generator and the other is Dagon Design Sitemap Generator.

Download the plugins by following the links provided above (and follow the installation and usage instructions provided along with them). Extract the contents of the .zip in the plugins directory of your WordPress install and then activate them from the plugins section of the dashboard. After you have activated the plugins from the dashboard, you can configure them to suit your needs from the Options page.

I was quite unaware of the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator until I came across this discussion at Authority Blogger forums. In fact, the Sitemap Page you see on the top is made using this plugin, without which I couldn’t have gathered my stuff together in a lifetime! And XML sitemap for Inspirit, that I have submitted to Google is generated from Google Sitemap Generator.

All you have to do after a one time effort is to sit back and relax, and keep updating your blog. Your sitemaps will get updated every time you make any changes to your blog. This will accelerate the indexing of the pages from your blog in a great way and you’ll notice a measurable difference in search engine traffic and page views per visit, almost immediately after installing these!

Out of the many, one reason I particularly like BlogCatalog over MyBlogLog is the ability to shout out messages to everyone in your friends-list (mutual friends, actually!), which is more properly termed as “Broadcast” over there. Ability to broadcast a message helps you to engage actively inside the social network that you have created for yourself by interacting with other bloggers.

You can use Broadcasts to share the latest post on your blog or to notify/announce something to your friends who can potentially be the readers at your blog (or the to-be-readers, if you do it right!) But like everything else, this can be done effectively only if you don’t misuse this feature.

Try broadcasting every time you pick your nose or brush your teeth and soon your broadcasts will find a place in nothing better than the recipients’ trash folder in his mailbox. Then, it’s quite probable that your broadcasts won’t even be read before deletion, later, even if they might contain something that deserve their attention.

So, let us discuss how to create an effective BlogCatalog broadcast that will potentially bring in readers & comments to a blog-post and probably even more subscribers to your blog.

There are 5 prime aspects to creating an effective broadcast that you should take care of while writing one for sending out to your friends.

• · Title of the Broadcast: Some bloggers in my network are in the habit of posting broadcasts with titles such as “Hi, Please Read This”, “Ultra-Useful Post” or “Check my latest post out!” etc. I click the delete button the very instant I see such broadcasts. I may like your site for the great content I saw when I visited once… But such broadcasts can never bring me back to your blog to read a post that you linked to in the broadcast!Generally, non-informative and non-descriptive titles are irritating and tend to be ignored very easily. Write the title of your broadcast wisely. You can safely use the title of your post itself as the title of your broadcast. In the simplest terms you should chose such a title that relates to and describes your blog post nicely. It’s very obvious that catchy titles will bring in more readers. But take care, be catchy but not confusing!
• · Structure of the Broadcast:
  Refrain from writing very long broadcasts. Giving away the entire post in broadcast defeats the meaning of this feature to help you promote your blog/blog-post. Bloggers can reply to broadcasts just as they can comment to your blog-entry. Where do you want them to leave some feedback and share their opinion?You can follow my 3-parts rule in structuring your broadcast to make it all the more effective.The simple 3-parts rule goes as follows:
  Write your broadcast in 3 short parts, namely
  1) the content,
  2) the link, and
  3) the end-note.By the use of short parts, I mean to say that you should only outline the very necessary elements of your blog post in such a way that it catches a recipient’s attention. But, it’s important that you take care not to eat up the vital description or someone might not be able to comprehend the message you want to convey. Be Short yet so Complete.Let us now see, how to use these 3 aspects of the 3-part rule as the elements of your broadcast.
• · Content of the Broadcast:
  The content of your broadcast should only be a brief introduction to the subject of your blog post. Instead of copy-pasting a part of your blog entry as the content of your broadcast, try reviewing your own post and describe it in your own few words. You can explain the objective of the particular blog entry you are promoting and how it can interest the recipients of your broadcast such that it compels them to check out your blog entry at once.
  DO NOT make it too long and DO NOT give away your entire post as I have fore-stated.
• · Linking to your Blog/Blog Post:
  If you review some of the broadcasts that you receive, you’ll notice that some bloggers post broadcasts with nothing except the title and a link to their blog post. This is a bad strategy and will not help you much with your blog promotion. The only readers who might visit you will, generally, be those who read your blog regularly and find this way of notification better than checking your blog out every other time, manually.The best way to link to your blog/blog-entry is to write the title of your post and then providing the link to it in the next line. This can add to the “catchiness” of your blog-post when combined with the content that you include in your broadcast (as stated above.)
• · Add an end-note to your broadcast:
  Adding an end-note to your broadcast is generally a very good idea. Use a one sentence footer to thank your readers who’ll take time to read your blog entry, ask them to share their opinions and experiences regarding the subject of your post or ask them for feedback and criticism through a comment. You may even ask your readers to bookmark your post at their favorite social networks or subscribe to your RSS feed if they like what they read.

This is your guide to posting powerful and effective broadcasts at BlogCatalog.

Also, if you write multiple posts a day, do not post a broadcast for each of them. Instead, prepare a compilation of all in a single broadcast using the guide-lines I shared above, and post the broadcast at the end of your blogging day. This way, you can make the maximum out of your BlogCatalog broadcasts and feed your blog with more readers, comments and some respect from your social circle at BlogCatalog.

Recommended:

• This post may be a bit lengthy, so if you find it hard to read in one go then read in parts.
• If any part of this post is unclear, give it another quick read. If something is still unclear, feel free to ask it in a comment.
• Read the review and comparison test of MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog & BlogRush to educate yourself about various features available with these social networks, in case you don’t know and decide what will be the best for your blog.
• You can bookmark this page for reading in future by pressing CTRL + D
• If you liked this blog entry, bookmarking it to various social networks by using the buttons below would be so cool.

I was specifically on a look-out for an effective way of making maximum money out of banner ads displayed on websites and blogs (like the Google Adsense, also based on Pay-Per-Click model) but couldn’t find much, other than suggestions and tips on lay-out and positioning of ads or blending them with the design, which we come across at just every other make-money blog.

But there is another aspect to blending the ad units with the blog or placing it at hot-spots than just design enhancement. Have you ever given a thought to what kind of traffic clicks on your Adsense or similar banner advertisements?

Web-savvy people know what Google Adsense or any banner ad is and will generally avoid clicking your ads, while the non-web-savvy people can not easily make out ads from other links, content or a piece of interesting information. As a reader with a blogger mindset, when I am reading your blog, ads may even be a distraction for me when what I am interested in is your content actually. I may not click your ads unless or otherwise I often shop online and am really interested in buying something!

Whereas, you can expect a kid to click on an ad unit in the header showing his favorite game flashing with a free-for -download tag, or a music freak cum noobie clicking the adsense unit in the sidebar to know about a store that provides electronic guitars at rock-bottom prices. This may sound senseless but you can actually expect the clicking visitor to navigate around the advertiser’s page and stay there for some time there out of curiosity to find something he is looking for.

* Believe it or not! But if you can target Non-Web-Savvy audience through your blog or website, you can make more money out of your Pay-Per-Click services like Adsense, etc. than from targeting web-savvy audience at a similar scale.

Do you have two blogs targeting these two different segments? Notice any differences between the money you make from each of these blogs? It’d be so lovely if you share your experiences and opinions with me and other readers of Inspirit. Take some time to drop a comment below.

Guest-Blogging means authoring a post or a blog-entry at someone else’s blog without involving monetary issues. When paid for writing a post, it is then called a paid-post or a sponsored post rather than a guest post.

Here are,

7 ultimate reasons, why you should guest author at a blog:

1. Vent your thoughts outside your niche:
   Packing yourself tightly in your own niche, for life, is not very healthy and not cent per cent comfortably possible even! You can restrict your writing to your blog’s niche but can not restrict your thoughts that keep coming to your mind all the time. Sometimes you may have as much of such off-(your)-topic stuff in your head that you might make a brilliant post out of it. You may not want to disturb the theme of your own blog for posting it and here’s where guest authoring at a blog themed in sync to your thoughts can help you vent out your ideas and creativity. Opportunities for guest-blogging are not limited in your own niche as well.
2. Get opinion and feedback on your other side:
   As I cleared out in the previous point, you can comfortably go off your blog’s niche as a guest blogger from where you can gather opinion and feedback on your other side. You can know how well you can do in unexplored dimensions. You get comments on your story and realize the positives and negatives in your style of writing and way of communicating your ideas to the readers.
3. Get Noticed:
   Guest blogging is one of the fastest ways to reach a new audience. Get exposure to a wider audience than just your own readership base. You are noticed and even rated by this foreign audience. Your writing skills, thoughts and ideas get recognition and may even be promoted by the host and the new readers alike.
4. Drive traffic and readers to your own blog:
   With all the exposure your guest-posts can get you, you can drive a considerable amount of traffic to your own blog through the host blog. Generally, a link back to your blog is a gift of gratitude by the host in your guest post. But of course, the traffic and readership you get depends on the popularity of the blog you are writing on, your style of writing, your communication skills, your language and tone as the prime factors.
5. Social Networking:
   Guest blogging nicely helps you to connect with a wide audience and also the host you are writing for. Guest blogging helps you to better-up communication with new people, helps you to know them and understand their tastes and also help them to know more about you as a blogger. You are likely to make new friends at social networks like Blog Engage, BlogCatalog, Digg, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog and probably many more depending on what you are using for promotion purposes. This can be of great utility in blog branding and promotion in the long run.
6. Improve yourself:
   You learn with every reaction you get to a guest post, and always try to improve with every post you write after that, whether on your own blog or at someone else’s. You may not take anything seriously when said about you on your own blog (ok! you do… cool) but when something is said at some other place that can have a different and mighty effect.
7. It is fun:
   If you are too free some time, then guest blogging can help you get busy and dock your mind. An idle mind, we all know, is a devil’s workshop. Besides, there’s nothing like experimenting with new things (if you haven’t tried it yet!) Having fun & adventure is the key to enjoy blogging- whether you are doing it at your blog or someone else’s.

Personally, I found early recognition for myself as a blogger by guest authoring at RT’s Untwisted Vortex. I did it for the sake of trying out a new thing for fun and adventure, but it turned out to be a great learning experience. It also drove a good deal of his readership to my blog and helped me getting noticed. It helped me improve myself in a great way. You see me writing here, the way I can because I was exposed to a different atmosphere than the small world I was living in.

Amanda Nicole, of from Ink to Ether, guest authors Inspirit and the two posts that she has made have made quite a mark on Inspirit readership and continue to get good deal of traffic everyday. I have also wanted myself to get into Guest-Blogging again, but some personal problems like long college timings and other stuff keep me occupied day and night. I am trying to manage my time as effectively as I can, and I hope to just make it soon.

I have just explained to you some great reasons why you should be guest blogging. Do you have any more? Have you been guest blogging for someone? Or have any guest bloggers for yourself? Feel free to drop a comment and share your experiences.