This post is in continuation of my earlier posts on simple tips & tricks on blogging.

What do you see here ?

This is called a feed counter or a feed chicklet. Many of us think this feed counter is not reliable because it keeps fluctuating and doesn’t give a correct and steady count. How can one have Read the rest of this entry »

This post is in continuation of earlier posts on simple tips & tricks on blogging.

Now read further…..
Do not put too many widgets on your site to make it slow. A page usually loads from top down in the order that the HTML is written, so when the browser encounters slow loading javascript, the page stops rendering for sometime. It’s generally easy to identify slow loading part of the page to figure out who exactly the culprit is.

If you are posting some images then Read the rest of this entry »

Contd from Part VIII

In last post I mentioned about plagiarism. Here is my article, a slightly different version of which was published in Blogadda.com a few months back.

You must have heard the word plagiarism. Ever wonder what does it mean and why we should know about it ?

Any of the following is considered plagiarism. Read the rest of this entry »

Contd from Part VII

Negative side of providing full feeds.

In one of the earlier posts of this series I spoke about providing full feeds. But do you know it has some negatives as well ?

Full feed makes it easier to keep up with many blogs but it also has a negative side to it. Your Read the rest of this entry »

Contd from Part VI

Mind your language
I lyk ur blg itz smth kewl
My gurlz imho cn do dis
1 of d bst blog I eva cn
I ws msg u
hw do u lyk dis
wtng fr nu pst
itz fukkin gud

Oh please ! This is NOT your chat window where you are dealing with multiple people at a given time and have to take short-cuts. This is your blog which reflects your personality and Read the rest of this entry »

Contd from Part V

Strike a chord or Stay connected
You need to give others a reason to visit your blog. Further, you also need to give others a reason to continue reading your blog. Focus on finding that reason and, once you do find it, let your readers know.

You have to strike a chord, a connectivity with the reader. Some of your readers will connect while others will not, however hard they try. No power or widget on earth can do this for them. And this happens naturally.

Connectivity means if you Read the rest of this entry »

This series is on simple tips for making our blogs more reader friendly.

Contd from Part IV

Don’t go off topic. There’s nothing wrong having a personal blog that covers many aspects of your life but if you have decided to start a blog with a sole focus that sets out to cover a particular niche (E.g. a mommy blog or a movie, cricket, travel or a pet blog)  and you have been doing so, it can be quite frustrating for readers to suddenly see other aspects of your life in every second post. Occasionally it is okay to write some off-topics but try to stick to your main theme if you have defined one.

The remedy is to identify what you want to write about (the general idea) and let your readers know what to expect and then to stick to that topic as far as possible. Does your reader know Read the rest of this entry »

Contd from Part III

Contents & originality
Be original and put your stamp. Write what YOU want to write and not what others are writing. Do not write a serious or funny post just because someone else has also done so. Work on quality and originality of posts. Originality not only in textual context but the way you put it across.

Of course, your thoughts are generated after you saw some incidents on TV or read in newspapers and you think on the same lines as I or hundreds of others do, but give your own language and style to your thoughts. That’s your originality.
This is something similar to writing an essay in exam or writing movie reviews. Same topic but different perceptions, different tone.
Choose a language, a tone but write in your own voice, in your own way.

Here again I’ll cite my example. I wrote Crime & Punishment based on Read the rest of this entry »

Contd from Part II
Now, after deciding & setting up the feeds what kind of feed to provide to my readers ? Full feed, short feed or no feed at all ? As I mentioned earlier, most of the time I’ll cite my own examples unless you ask me to use yours. So let us take my case both as a reader and a blogger.

As a reader I always first read the posts through my Google reader and as an RSS user I like it to be able to read the whole post in my reader, for the simple reason that most of the times I may not be able to visit the sites. Reasons could be many… work place doesn’t allow, traveling, lack of time or my convenience etc.

While reading, if I come across Read the rest of this entry »

Contd from Part I

I think in last post people got me wrong. It is not about what to write or for whom to write, it is about how to present your contents or how to make your blog reader friendly.

Ok now, here goes the first best practice…

Three weeks back, I had helped one of the new bloggers to setup RSS feeds. So, the very first point I am going to mention is feeds. Make sure that RSS feeds are setup on your blog so that people know how to get the contents easily. They don’t have to visit your site daily to check for new updates.

Believe me, there are some bloggers who either Read the rest of this entry »