Blogs

Many bloggers start out on the free blogging platform. I recommend WordPress.com because, if you decide to host your blog, it’s easily transferable to your own domain, is highly extendable and robust, especially for the non-programmer.

I find sometimes it’s hard to remember how to execute various tasks, and I’m helping my Leads Club Chapter Members learn how to blog.

This video tutorial is on creating a post at WordPress.com. Let me know if it helps by commenting below!

I found a great blog post on Copyright Laws for Bloggers that I wanted to share.

I also thought I’d share some of the sites I find the images I use, so I don’t violate any copyright laws (no, you can’t just google images and use them)! Two of the sites I use are:

iClipArt is holding a sale right now, $29.95 for a year. You can search for clipart, photos, sounds, video and web graphics. It’s easy to search across the categories and has a great variety of images.

Check this out if you want to add some "eye candy" to your posts.

iStockPhoto offers low cost photos for your commercial use. You need to purchase credits and a normal image costs 2 – 3 credits.

iStockPhoto also has videos and illustrations, which are really nice. If you are a photographer or graphic artist you can earn credits by offering up your work. It’s a great site, check it out.

What resources do you use for images and photos?

When you visit any of my sites, you’ll notice that I have a feature that, when you roll over the icon, a preview of the linked page will appear. It’s Snap Shots, and now you can use it on your site too!

Snap Shots is the world’s most popular way to give your users a more fun and interactive experience on your site or blog. Now with Snap Shares, you can monetize inventory you didn’t know you had. It’s a complete system designed to help you get more from your site.

• Snap Shots uses your links to bring the most appropriate information about the sites you’re pointing to. Your audience doesn’t even have to leave your site to get the best of other sites.
• Snap Shares gives you a portion of the ads that appear in Snap Shots and lets you do what you wish — serve ads through your regular provider, market yourself or share them with charity.
• Snap Shots Engage looks for certain key phrases within your site and connects them with the best content in the world. And you don’t even have to write a link.

There is also a WordPress Plugin for Snaps which makes it easy to add to your WordPress blog. Here’s the Snap Shot Guide for your use.

When you visit any of my sites, you’ll notice that I have a feature that, when you roll over the icon, a preview of the linked page will appear. It’s Snap Shots, and now you can use it on your site too!

Snap Shots is the world’s most popular way to give your users a more fun and interactive experience on your site or blog. Now with Snap Shares, you can monetize inventory you didn’t know you had. It’s a complete system designed to help you get more from your site.

• Snap Shots uses your links to bring the most appropriate information about the sites you’re pointing to. Your audience doesn’t even have to leave your site to get the best of other sites.
• Snap Shares gives you a portion of the ads that appear in Snap Shots and lets you do what you wish — serve ads through your regular provider, market yourself or share them with charity.
• Snap Shots Engage looks for certain key phrases within your site and connects them with the best content in the world. And you don’t even have to write a link.

There is also a WordPress Plugin for Snaps which makes it easy to add to your WordPress blog. Here’s the Snap Shot Guide for your use.

Here is a video tutorial on WordPress’ Blogroll, how to add a link and how to manage a link.

Blogrolls typically link to the blogs you, as the blogger, read. However, depending upon what your goal is for your blog, you may want to rename it from blogroll to something else. This tutorial will show you how to rename your bogroll too.

If this was helpful, please feel free to leave a comment below. If you need a specific WordPress task documented, please let me know.

This is the Heart Book Series site I programmed for Sheryl Roush. Sheryl has been an icon in the women’s community for many years now. Several years ago Sheryl complied a book full of inspirational passages, the Heart of the Mother. She’s also put together the Heart of a Woman and has just published the Heart of the Holidays.

She is using her Heart Book Series as the central internet site for an on-going conversation with the women who’s works are published in her three Heart books. Take a look at her site, and, given it’s the holiday season, pick up a couple of her fabulous books as gifts.

Sheryl Roush is an internationally adored inspirational speaker, helping to rekindle spirit, hope and love. Her own story is one of strong faith, overcoming rape, twice contemplating suicide, filing business bankruptcy, and surviving domestic violence. Today, she encourages women who have experienced similar, including battered and homeless women, bringing hope into their lives.

She is a 10-time author, her most recent and passionate work, Heart of the Holidays, is a touching collection of original poems, stories and tributes to our most holiday traditions. Her other books include Sparkle-Tudes (scripture plus quotations by and for women), and Heart of a Woman (stories and poems celebrating our inner strength, wisdom and faith). Sheryl is also a contributor to The Princess Principle: Women Helping Women Discovering their Royal Spirit.

Sheryl has presented throughout Canada and the US, as well as Southeast Asia, Australia, Middle East, and the U.K. She has on programs alongside: Olivia Newton-John, Art Linkletter, Good Morning America’s Joan Lunden, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul), and Commander in Chief’s Geena Davis.

Twice honored for her service to women in the community, Sheryl was crowned “Ms. Heart of San Diego” and is this year’s “Queen of Hope.”

This is the Heart Book Series site I programmed for Sheryl Roush. Sheryl has been an icon in the women’s community for many years now. Several years ago Sheryl complied a book full of inspirational passages, the Heart of the Mother. She’s also put together the Heart of a Woman and has just published the Heart of the Holidays.

She is using her Heart Book Series as the central internet site for an on-going conversation with the women who’s works are published in her three Heart books. Take a look at her site, and, given it’s the holiday season, pick up a couple of her fabulous books as gifts.

Sheryl Roush is an internationally adored inspirational speaker, helping to rekindle spirit, hope and love. Her own story is one of strong faith, overcoming rape, twice contemplating suicide, filing business bankruptcy, and surviving domestic violence. Today, she encourages women who have experienced similar, including battered and homeless women, bringing hope into their lives.

She is a 10-time author, her most recent and passionate work, Heart of the Holidays, is a touching collection of original poems, stories and tributes to our most holiday traditions. Her other books include Sparkle-Tudes (scripture plus quotations by and for women), and Heart of a Woman (stories and poems celebrating our inner strength, wisdom and faith). Sheryl is also a contributor to The Princess Principle: Women Helping Women Discovering their Royal Spirit.

Sheryl has presented throughout Canada and the US, as well as Southeast Asia, Australia, Middle East, and the U.K. She has on programs alongside: Olivia Newton-John, Art Linkletter, Good Morning America’s Joan Lunden, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul), and Commander in Chief’s Geena Davis.

Twice honored for her service to women in the community, Sheryl was crowned “Ms. Heart of San Diego” and is this year’s “Queen of Hope.”

Show Notes

An introduction to RSS and it’s ability to syndicate your content.

Here are 10 reasons you should consider using RSS on your blog,or website!

1. It’s easy and fast!
   Not to mention Free! You can use a free service like Feedburner and publish your Blog and RSS feed within minutes. You can even place or publish your Blog/RSS Feed on your own site without knowing ‘html’ or ‘xml’. It’s all done for you!
2. Syndicate Your Content.
   RSS stands for ‘really simple syndication’ (or, Read Some Stories) and it’s just another way of passing along your information. With the popularity of ‘MyYahoo’ and the ‘Firefox’ browser (which has a built-in RSS feed reader) increasing – syndicating your content has gotten even simpler.

   The next version of Windows is reportly scheduled to have an RSS feature. If this happens – RSS will explode.

3. Get Your Content Indexed.
   Using blogs to publish your content is an excellent way of side stepping the regular indexing procedure. Your content is indexed very quickly in most of the search engines.

   Search Engines are constantly looking for ‘fresh content’ – these ‘link rich’ blogs are a good source of this content. Because blogs are on specific topics – they have a concentrated source of good quality information!

4. Instant Contact.
   Blogs give you instant contact with your readers or viewers. We live in an ‘instant’ society – we want everything five minutes ago. Blogs provide this instant gratification. Readers or viewers using MyYahoo have an instant link to your information or postings.

   RSS Feeds will instantly spread your information to allinterested parties – bringing in targeted traffic.

5. Building Your List.
   People who pick up your RSS feed or add you to their MyYahoo site – become your subscribers. You are really building your contact list. Have a popular blog or RSS Feed and you can build a large targeted contact list very quickly.

   Might not replace your old opt-in email list – but it can be a lucrative addition to it! Take advantage of all those targeted contacts.

6. Link Building.
   Blogs are link heavens! Build your links thru blogs. All these links will boost your link popularity and increase your search engine rankings.

   Plus, by giving viewers/readers a way of adding your RSS Feed creates targeted links to your site. This reason alone is why your site should have RSS!

7. Viewer/Subscriber Feedback.
   Instant feedback from your subscribers or viewers is easy with blogs. Creating trust and credibility is so much easier when there is immediate communication between the two parties.
8. Keyword Content Building.
   Blogs are especially good for building ‘keyword targeted content’ for your site. All these links will boost your keyword rankings in the searchengines. Google places a high value on ‘anchor text’ and blogs are a good place to put all those links.

   You can also start different blogs targeted at specific related keywords covering the major topics of your site. Again, search engines love related keyword linking so you can boost your site’s rankings by using blogs.

9. Monetize Your Content.
   Blogs are an excellent way of monetizing your content. Blog sites like Eblogger (owned by Google) even encourages you to use the ‘adsense code’ in your blogs. If you have a popular blog – this may bring in extra income.

   Plus, publishing your ezine or newsletter in a blog can bring in revenue for months if not years to come. All those affiliate links and product promotions get indexed by the search engines and become accessible to a wider audience, i.e. market.

10. Because Everyone Else is Doing It!
    Might sound a bit ‘Jonesish’ but you do have to keep up with what other web sites are doing. To remain competitive – you must put RSS on your site.

    Sites without the ‘AddtoMyYahoo’ link or the ‘xml’ button will be the exception rather than the rule in just a few years – if not months. It’s simply another way of getting your information ‘out there’. It’s an opportunity and advantage that you cannot afford to miss.

In this episode we discussed blog directories, how to find them and how to subscribe to them.

GeekSpeak To English, 101 will meet on Wednesday, October 3rd at 6pm PT to discuss RSS feeds. They are what makes the blogosphere go ’round.

Ok, what’s a widget?

According to Wikipedia, a web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of reusable code that has existed for years. Nowadays other terms are used to describe a web widget including: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake.

YIKES!!! What does that mean to you? It means you can easily add fun stuff to your blog without having any programming knowledge.

Today I’m going to share with you a fun “widget” I recently discovered, My Blog Log. My Blog Log is more than a “widget”, it’s also a social networking site.

If you have a blog, well with the exception of wordpress.com blogs, you can add this “widget” to your blog. It shows which members of My Blog Log have visited your site. This is a great way to expand your online community. Why not try it out on your blog and participate over at My Blog Log by visiting other members logs.

I’ve written a “how to” for grabbing the code you need (it’s generated for you after you do some things, like pick colors) and putting it into a text widget. Try it out and if you have any questions, IM me at magicinwords on Skype or Yahoo, or comment on this post. Let’s hear from you. Did you try the widget? If you did, how do you like it?