Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words. If you prefer showing off your photography or art skills rather than your words, you can always make a photoblog.

A photoblog is a type of blog that gets regularly updated with photos, though it’s not the only content it can have. Offer a bit of poetry to go with the breathtaking mountain view you took on a vacation or explain what it means to you. Chronicle an event through a series of photographs and make your readers feel like they were there. Or simply share those cute cat pictures to everyone. Photoblogging platforms have a way of building communities. You can find enthusiasts who share your interests, comment on other people’s photographs and share tips.

Photoblogging services offer a wide range of features. Look at how they handle uploads and hosting. It’ll be much easier if they can host the photos on the site instead of having to look for a separate hosting service. If you sign up for free check out how many uploads you can make for a day and how the galleries are managed. Does it automatically generate thumbnails and how easy is it to put text to go with the photograph?

A few photoblogging sites like TextAmerica only allow comments from registered users; otherwise it’s open for everyone. Be aware that if you’re going to post photographs online it’s easy for others to get and claim them. Take that into consideration before posting – you’d never know where they might end up. Try watermarking the images to discourage them. Other than that photoblogging is a quick and fun way to be creative. So get that camera and start that photoblog today!

Here are some things that you ought to consider when writing a post series:

Dos:
-Choose a good topic and more than that, choose a topic that you can write a lot about. There is no hard and fast rule regarding the number of posts that you have to have in a series. However, common sense would tell you that you need at least 2, right? I suggest going for 3 – even 4 or 5.

-Have an outline. This simply means that you should have a general idea of the content of each of the posts in the series. As I mentioned before, you should have a really good first post as this is your “bait” – whether or not you will get readers wanting to read more about the topic depends on the first post.

It doesn’t mean, though, that you can let the rest of the series go. You have to be able to sustain the momentum until the last post, wherein you will give a satisfying conclusion to the series. That is why having a general outline about the whole series is important – to give you a clear idea regarding your direction.

In the following post, let’s look at more things you can do to make the most out of post series.

Your main topic, article or posts should always be focused on what the readers would want to read it should be helpful to them like How to Have the Perfect Body, How To Make Lots of Money Online, How to make an Award-Winning Resume, that my friends would mean that you would always think of ways on how you would help the readers, and give them to solutions to everyday problems.

The exact opposite of what I said above, the more you write about stuff that is irrelevant to what the readers want, just remember to always stay true to your goal ( your topic at hand) and never sway, don’t always write about the stuff you like but keep the flow by making your article fit your readers taste, by providing useful information to them.

Answer your Readers comments at your post or site, they provide valuable information. I know it’s impossible to answer all the comments your readers leave if your already racking up lots of readers, but for small, startup blogs, treat every reader/commentor as a king or queen. Communicate with your readers by letting them join a discussion via comments, and start by asking them question on your blog post. Also remember to listen to their complaints, don’t be offended. Your Reader’s complaints are clues to help you make your blog better.

This is a no-no, Don’t annoy your readers with whole lots of ads, lots of subscription buttons, irrelevant topics, or a page that’s just screaming “money-making”. If possible make your blog adapt a minimalist design that less ads, simple navigation, easy to see buttons, and links to related posts. Also your sidebar or any accessible part of your page, have links of your popular, recent and related post.

I know , I exagerated a bit but heck it did give me a whole lot of traffic, I didn’t lie. I just added a couple of hours, to make my post seem more exciting.

Plus, another successful form of link baiting is debunking rumors or news about something which is accepted as true by the public. For example we all know the world is round but we can create an article or post telling everyone that the world is really flat. OK you got me; I don’t have a post to back it up. But here’s another a really good example of a cute link bait.

We heard a lot of rumors that Windows Vista is a sh!tty OS, but I love Windows Vista and I’m trying to reach out to readers that it’s another great OS like in this post : Is your Windows Vista Healthy?

I gave tips on how to maintain Vista healthy and keeping it running smooth. Going against the flow generates more readers than staying with the trend, but be prepared for critics and angry readers with their opinions. It’s part of blogging life, after all.

Also add your own personalized logo or your picture and tell something about yourself. Advertise yourself : state your strengths, hobbies or anything you useful that you like to share the world. If your reader can relate to you then chance are they would definately come back and read your blog posts again.

Finally after months of trials and errors finally found a blogging gig and I’m starting to get the drift of it.

Now I know my tips may or may not work for you, but it sure did work for me. as you can see from my blog : the QuickStop, here’s my 11 hard learned tips,

1. KISS ( Keep It Simple, Stupid… hehehe ) no need to be technical, keep short, simple yet intelligent.
2. Blog in a topic you are comfortable and knowledgeable in.
3. Post Quality articles,
4. post at least twice a week and create a posting schedule
5. Post Original articles, if not then remember to state your source in respect to the one that posted it ( but remember original content is better)
6. Check for grammatical errors (be sure to proofread your article or better yet let another proofread it for you)
7. Be conversational, ( add humor, give a smart quote)
8. Read other related Blogs
9. Give intelligent Comments
10. Respond to the comments people posted on your blog
11. Accept constructive criticisms

It’s not much but its something…

There are so many ways to market a blog. However, to simplify things let us go back to the basics of marketing and tackle the 4 Ps one at a time. If you do not know the 4 Ps I am referring to the 4 Ps that Jerome McCarthy used to divide the four sets of activities associated with marketing, which are the:

Product;
Pricing;
Promotion; and
Placement or Distribution

Product – Since we are discussing about marketing your blog the product is obviously the blog itself. If you want your blog to be marketable, meaning that you want it to sell like hot donuts, then it should be a good product. For a blog to be a good product you should look at all the design elements including the layout, content, and the most importantly, the concept. Concept is important since there are millions of blogs and you need a good concept to stand out. For example, personal blogs though great just isn’t something that would sell unless you are someone famous or are impersonating someone famous, like Fake Steve Jobs did. You have to make sure that your blog has a topic or theme that has a wide audience and that you are presenting the theme in a way that will attract people, which equates to good writing and a good overall feel and look. Of course some blogs, because of the very unique or catchy concept gets people’s attentions even with a really boring format and even more boring entries (check out The Dullest Blog in the World). The whole point of the blog as a product is that if you want your blog to get a wide readership you’d better treat it like a product and think and think until you come up with a way to make it interesting to your target audience. Until then, like many inventions in this world your blog will only be seen and read by your family and friends.

Coming up…the rest of the 4 Ps.

1. Think of keywords for your blog. Keywords are important because we want our blog to be easily remembered by potential visitors. It is also great for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Figure out what’s apt for the blog you want to make. For instance, if you are going to blog about cars and you are located in Detroit, you can use ‘cars’ and ‘detroit’ in your keywords. You can get help from Yahoo’s overture tool for suggested keywords. For this example, let’s use ‘carsdetroit’.

2. Search for a domain name. You can use services like Godaddy for this. Type-in “carsdetroit” in the search domain box. If it is available, buy it. You can see that CarsDetroit.net is available in the image below. Buy your domain name with your trusty credit card. Take note, CarsDetroit.info is worth only $0.99! Get it!

3. Set up a blogger account. If you have a Google account, you can pretty much login with that and setting it up. Go to the publishing – settings page and edit the custom domain name field. Input your domain name (in our example, we should put carsdetroit.info) in this field. You can see the full instructions on blogger.

4. Login in to GoDaddy.com and set up your domain name to connect to the blogger website.

Congratulations! You now have a blog set up for less than a dollar.

Blogs are not meant to replace the usual definitions and terminologies that all of us are very much educated on today. They are mostly insights that expand beyond what bloggers want to put across. Blogs are flexible enough to note that viewpoints may not be accurate, but it is for the sake of argument to which they are being made.

They may not be perfect in extracting points and views but the bottom line is that they too are after clarification. This is one of the purposes of blogs and people just have to broaden their patience for such.

[tags]blogger, blogger jobs, blog marketing, blog discussions[/tags]

The issue here is that readers will not be too forgiving in making criticism, taking them to levels where they would bash bloggers at will once they have the chance. Not all readers have the patience to understand the area of thinking of bloggers and this has been proven time and again. Rarely would they be merciful once they see inconsistencies in the content provided as well as errors to which they would spot instantly.

Hence the best way to approach blogging is to compose everything as patiently and focused as possible. There will be little room for marginal errors if bloggers would apply this type of an approach.

[tags]blogging, blogger, problogger, problogging, content writing, article writing[/tags]