RSS Underground - RSS Resources - Dynamic Directory - Article MenuFeatured RSS Underground Blogging ArticleWeblogging: an Extra Internet Dimension or Just Attracting Attention?The number of weblogs – or blogs – on the internet is growing rapidly. In the beginning of 1997 there were just a handful of these sites and they mainly consisted of a collection of links, enriched by comments, thoughts and ideas of the writer (the blogger). At this moment there are all kinds of weblogs and there are millions of them. Together they form the “blogosphere”, the web of blogs. Made you curious? If you want to explore the blogosphere or start a weblog yourself, maybe this article is a useful introduction. What are weblogs? A weblog contains messages and reactions on these messages, all arranged chronologically. In many cases there is a calendar so one can look for older messages. Further you will find a list with links to other weblogs (the blogroll). A list with referrers, links from other sites to this weblog, may also be included. Most blogs are updated very frequently, daily or even several times a day. And as they are often linked to other blogs, remarkable events and news can spread very rapidly – much faster than with the conventional media. The majority of weblogs are “lifelogs” or personal diaries, maintained by one person and not very frequently visited by others. To the blogger the lack of visits often doesn’t matter. Writing is a nice hobby and it’s fun to publish your very own content on the web. Writing down your own thoughts and ideas also gives you a better insight into your interests. For writers, journalists, celebrities and anyone who has already raised the attention of an audience, weblogs are a cheap and fast way to reach their public. There are also weblogs that deal with a specific subject such as Formula 1, cats , political events ore whatever. Relevant news items are often included. And there are of course weblogs based entirely on news items. The Dutch newsweblog Geenstijl.nl is a good example of this category. In business the popularity of weblogs is growing too. Companies can present themselves or their employes or they can sponsor a weblog. Most weblogs contain only text but there are also photoblogs and blogs that are based on audio and video. Relatively new is the moblog, a weblog that is updated with a mobile phone. Surfing on the blogosphere Suppose I want to search the blogosphere, would my webbrowser be the best choice? Well, it can do the job, but other search engines will find more actual information for you, such as Feedster (www.feedster.com), Technorati (www.technorati.com) or BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com).
Blogpulse has an interesting option, Trend Search. This valuable tool can tell you how often a certain subject was mentioned in the blogosphere and that’s nice if you’re doing some marketing investment. When you read many different weblogs, you must visit them frequently to check for new messages. When these messages are offered in a special format, a feed, there are programs by which you can read those feeds without having to visit each weblog. If you want to work with feeds, Feedreader is a handy program. It can be downloaded at www.feedreader.com. Your own weblog If you want to start your own weblog, there are two options: Either you can start your weblog with help of an online blogserver or you can install blogsoftware on your own web site. If you choose the last option, you first need a webserver or an account on a hosting provider. Furthermore you must have technical knowledge of HTML, PHP and MySQL. After installing the blogsoftware, you can organize the database for your messages and build your site. The advantage of working with your own blogtools is the freedom you have when determining the looks and functionality of your site. There are several opensource weblog programs, such as Pivot (www.pivotlog.net), Textpattern (www.textpattern.com) and WordPress (wordpress.org). As already mentioned, you can also open an account on an online blogserver. The server creates a weblog for you and offers templates to design your weblog . Thus it’s easy to start your own weblog without much technical knowledge. Often you can even include photos or video in your messages. If you take the restrictions in design and possibilities for granted, an online blogserver offers you an easy way to start your weblog within minutes. Free online blogservers are: Blogger (www.blogger.com), MSN Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com), Web-log.nl (http://web-log.nl) and the free lite-version of MovableType (www.sixapart.com/movabletype). If you want to know more about weblogs: In the year 2000 Rebecca Blood has written a book on blogging. More info can be found at: (www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html). The next site offers short info and many links: (http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/). And for the Dutch readers: Rogier Mostert has written a book “Weblogs” ISBN 90-430-1127-4 (www.mostert.org/boek/weblogs). This article is based on information in Computer Totaal, nr.11, November 2005 Related: Adding Fresh Content - Renting Blog Space RSS Underground Featured Article Author BoxThis article was originally written to inform the visitors of our downloadsites, http://www.hotdownloads.org and http://www.fast64.com Feel free to visit them as many more articles, videoclips and video tutorials will follow. Secrets to Successful BloggingBlogs have become very successful and popular lately, and SEO consultants say that they can be very profitable if they are managed and marketed the right way. Generating profits from a weblog doesn't require selling anything. Profits can be from ad placements, banners, or contextual advertising. The best blogs draw the attention of a large audience and keep them coming back for more. There are many types of blogs available. The most common types are: - Professional blogs: These blogs are focused on discussions about professions, job aspects and career building - Personal blogs: These blogs take the form of an online diary and contains thoughts, poems, experiences, and other personal matters - Topical blogs: These blogs focus on a certain topic or niche, discussing specific aspects of the chosen subject - Business blogs: As its name suggests, these are discussions about business and/or stock market Other types of blogs include but are not limited to science blogs, cultural blogs, educational blogs, and photo blogs. In order to have a successful weblog that attracts a lot of visitors and keep them coming back, you need to follow some simple rules. Here are some tips from SEO consultants: Before you begin blogging, carefully consider what you are going to write about in your weblog as there are lots of interesting topics out there, waiting to be discussed. You can find them in every day life, in the media, in the news - anything that attracts attention and a loyal following is good. You can look for weblog subjects in many places, the most important being the Internet of course. Put quality content in your weblog . If you have quality content people like to read, they will return to your weblog and tell other people about it as well. Posting articles containing useful information on your weblog is very beneficial for attracting more traffic. Make sure you add your URL address below your posted article! If other web site owners find your articles useful and decide to include them within the content of their web pages, the added link will contribute to increasing your popularity every time it is hyperlinked. Update the weblog on a regular basis. If you don't do this, visitors will not return and they will move on to reading another weblog that is updated more often. You should try to update your weblog daily. Many newcomers have blogging fear, fearing their inability to update it daily. If your weblog is interesting enough, offer your readers the ability to keep it updated by posting their own personal thoughts and share stories so you won't have to do all the updating work yourself. Listen to what your readers have to say. Always pay attention to the readers' suggestions and try to find out what people were actually searching for when they found your weblog . Try to focus on that theme and even consider developing it by encouraging the visitors to discuss new aspects of that particular theme. Keep it short and concise - You don't need material that takes hours to read, people usually like to quickly skim a weblog for quick tidbits of useful information and if you post materials that are difficult or take a long time to read, you will most likely drive them away. You can also include some artistic work or pictures in the weblog , to make it more visually appealing. Blog picture managers such as Picasa are freely available on the Internet to accomplish this. If your weblog has interesting, original content, bloggers might decide to add links to it on their web sites and comment on your suggested topic. By gaining back-links to your weblog from other web sites, your web site will place higher within search engine queries, thus boosting your link popularity. Announce the launch of any new weblog with press releases. Free publicity through press releases are powerful tools for increasing incoming traffic. Search engines love press releases and it gives them a good reason to spider and to index your site quickly. Include free downloadable viral reports on your weblog to turbo-charge visitor traffic and build a subscriber/viewer base quickly. In order to simplify the creating and updating process of a weblog , take advantage of the many blogging tools and software readily available, a number of them are free. Blogging software such as WordPress or Movable Type helps you update a weblog easily. There are even free weblog generators such as Blogger which allow you to host your content on Google’s servers without having to install any software or obtain a domain and host content. Offer to inform readers of your weblog with free email management services like Feedblitz (if you don’t have an email list management solution) in addition to offering RSS feeds for subscription. Readers and visitors can be kept updated of any new information being added to your weblog without having to check the site constantly. Utilize weblog and ping to get sites indexed quickly by the search engines. By notifying popular ping servers monitored by weblog search services such as Google Blog Search, you attract search engine spiders to a weblog . A weblog can automatically be setup to ping certain web sites. An easy method of doing this is by adding the Pingomatic service to the sites to ping in the weblog software which pings many popular ping servers at once. Finally, remember to submit to popular, high quality weblog directories such as Feedster, Technorati, Blogstreet, and Best of the Web Blog Directory to boost your web traffic and link popularity! If you respect these rules you will most likely have a successful weblog , and you will be rewarded in the process. Ask a SEO consultant for further information and assistance if you are stuck for ideas to promote your new weblog .
Blogging Bliss: Bloggers & News Sites to Marry Web ContentWeb content for newspapers online has been limited to repeating what paid staff writes for the print editions of their papers or material coming from one or another of the wire services to which the parent organization subscribes. We're all familiar with seeing Associated Press or Reuters stories running in our local paper and posted online at various news organizations. Imagine a news wire service for blogs which could syndicate your weblog to appear on online news sites. A new service called BlogBurst has emerged to help bring blogging and news together on the web sites of major media. http://www.blogburst.com/ Its easy to make money blogging! Anybody can do it Blogburst makes the writings of a select group of bloggers available to news organizations by aggregating the musings of selected weblog writers into a feed made available to major papers. The news organizations can apparently choose from among the topic areas and bloggers offered via the BlogBurst feed. Some bloggers have launched news commentary blogs with groups of bloggers commenting on news. There already exist several attempts to popularize what has become known as "Citizen Journalism" by such notable groups as "We the Media and Dan Gillmore's Bayosphere which seems to have been taken over by BackFence. Relevant links below: http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/ What is often lacking for bloggers who provide commentary on the news is an audience. Those experiments mentioned above have been available on small sites, which are otherwise unknown to the world. Struggling to gain readers is the bane of blogging, since people can't read what they don't know exists. Some well known bloggers have found their audience through writing compelling content and being discovered by major media when they break their own news stories. Others gain that audience through connections or through fame, but most bloggers toil away daily for the pure love of a topic while gathering small and loyal followings. The pro bloggers say we can all make money online BlogBurst promises to make web content from the blogosphere discoverable by the media by limiting the availability and vetting the sources, so accuracy and truthfulness is maintained and the weblog can be trusted. It's an interesting experiment and may be the route to bloggers earning a living from their blogs by gaining an audience they previously had little access to - major newspaper web site visitors. Since unknown bloggers appear to need the media in order to spread the word (becoming well known in the process) and newspaper web sites appear to want blogs associated with their site, BlogBurst is filling that need. Since a lack of income is what haunts many bloggers hoping to earn from their commentary, BlogBurst will allow those bloggers to both reach an audience and capitalize on their own traffic via their own advertising, whether that is Google Adsense, Blogads, or some other agreement with individual advertisers. News sites have launched blogs written by volunteers, some have offered staff journalists a weblog , others have tried allowing "Comments" from readers. But volunteers appear unreliable, staffers have little incentive to weblog without pay and comment sections are subject to abuse by comment spam. ZDNet is currently offering bloggers in popular technology topic areas and is apparently providing payment from advertising revenue generated by those blogs. http://blogs.zdnet.com/ One of the most common questions in blogging is, “How do I make money blogging?” BlogBurst is taking an interesting approach by offering online news organizations filtered and verified news commentary from bloggers. Presumably, this content will be available directly on the news sites, such as the Washington Post, Gannet News sites, San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle news sites. A blog about how to make money online BlogBurst is reviewing proposed blogs currently and will announce the engagement in a live trial with major news sites in May. Will the love of blogs by major media result in a spring wedding? BlogBurst appears to be offering to serve as minister to a marriage made in heaven. Stay tuned, to see if this will be a long lasting marriage.
Hey, please visit the Internet Marketing web sites: Recently Added Internet Related Articles: Relevant Content - Many search engine optimization companies will sell you a search engine optimization package that addresses many of the major aspects of search engine optimization. These aspects include, but are not limited to, use of file names, alt tags, h1 tags, keyphrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and the like. Content Creators - As the market floods with CMS solutions offered by a hundred different companies, one may start thinking "How in the world am I going to find a CMS that will firstly gives me what I want and need now and secondly will that system be able to provide me with what I am going to need in say 4 to 10 years from now?". Using Rss Feeds - You can use RSS to provide interesting news links which will keep your pages fresh and attract additional search engine traffic. If you are a small business and need more traffic and visitors, try using RSS feeds to display fresh, on topic news and see if it boosts your targeted traffic. Niche Blogging - So you want to make money with blogs? Good decision! Blogging for money is a simple and enjoyable way to build a presence online and make some cash while you’re at it. Actually, blogging for money is the bread and butter of internet marketing in this day and age, and there are millions of people making a small fortune doing it. Web Site Content - As the saying goes on the web "Content is King." There is no argument that if you are going to have an effective Internet presence you must have current, dynamic content that gives your visitors reasons to come back time and again. While content may be king there seems to be little discussion about the optimal way to manage this content for small to medium sized businesses. Fresh Content - Fresh content - that is the grail of the Internet. Everyone wants to have it on their site, everyone wants to be able to access it on other sites. Audiences are hungry for it. But how do you manage it? And how do you ensure your traffic keeps coming back for it? Blogging Productivity - In the 'good old days' - about three years ago - you used to keep in-touch with your customers using phone calls, email messages and face to face meetings. Nowadays the world has changed. People expect even more frequent updates, yet it's nearly impossible to meet with every business contact on a regular basis. Scan Able Web Content - Fresh content The age old question keeps coming up, how do you retain web site visitors, how do you make visitors return to your web site? The answer should come as no surprise, fresh content. Content is truly king, the fresher the content the better the site. "Business Blog - From CNN News feeds to suicide blogs in Japan. If people are remotely interested in a subject there is at lest one weblog for it, if not several hundred blogs on the topic. With blogging being the all the buzz these days many people [who secretly don't know what the heck a ""Blog"" is] are wondering… Articles on the web
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