Archive for the Category »Plugins and Widgets «

In addition to making money, most bloggers want two things.

  1. Traffic
  2. BOXES The Game Of Either   Or

  3. Comments

Unfortunately, both depend on the actions of others, and those “others” are often fellow bloggers.

Today’s Lesson

When bloggers make the rounds to other blogs, they’re mentally asking themselves questions and/or making choices. For example,

  1. Do I have time to read this post in its entirety? Or will I skim it?
  2. Does it appear the blog author wants my opinion?
  3. If so, did they ask for it? Or is it implied?
  4. If I leave a comment, will it add value to the post?
  5. Is this post worthy of being promoted on my favorite social media site?

As blog authors, we can help make those decisions easier.

Such as,

  1. Are we asking for comments?
  2. Did we end our post with a question? Or does our post appear so “complete”, it sends a subliminal message comments aren’t welcome?

  3. How easy is it for others to leave a comment?
  4. Does the commenter have to register or jump through hoops to pass the security features of our blog? Or have we made the process of commenting as simple as possible?

  5. How easy have we made it for other bloggers to promote our work?
  6. Are we including buttons which take our visitors directly to Twitter, Facebook or StumbleUpon? Or do we expect them to “figure it out” on their own time?

  7. Is our post worthy of being shared?
  8. Does is hold value others can benefit from? Is it grammatically correct and void of typos? Are the facts correct?

  9. If a reader lands on our home page (www.ourblog.com) do they have to click again to read the full post?
  10. Are we using excerpts and the “continue reading/more” feature? If so, does this feature make it easier for our visitors to read our blog posts?

  11. If we’re showing a post in its entirety on our homepage and the reader does NOT click through to the post, does our homepage show the Retweet button or an application which will make it EASY for someone to share our article?
  12. Or does sharing our post require additional work on our readers part?

  13. Are we asking others to promote our posts on their favorite social media site?
  14. Or are we assuming our visitors are mind readers?

Truth be told, we can’t/shouldn’t expect our visitors to read, comment on, AND promote our blog posts each time we publish something new.

Just like with us, their time is limited.

If we’re lucky, they’ll do one; comment OR promote.

But usually not both.

Today’s Assignment

If you could only pick one, what would it be?

To receive comments?

To have your post promoted on a social media site?

I’d love to hear why you picked what you did.

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P.S. This post was inspired by what social media consultant Vered, shared in her comment on the Call Me A Hypocrite post:

…When time is short, I promote posts that I like on social media…

Thank you Vered.

I’ve kicked around the idea of writing a free ebook for quite some time.how to turn your blog into a book

My thought is to put some of my previous blog posts into book form for those who prefer not to dig through my archives. I’d like for the comments to be included since that is where most of the value lies and I’d also like to include links to the comment author’s sites.

I know I’ll turn some of my blog posts into a book sooner rather than later, however I’ve convinced myself there must be an easier way to do it rather than cutting, pasting, and re-editing before publishing.

My search to do so has taken me on an interesting journey.

Today’s Lesson

I first tried two different plugins for turning a blog into book form.

  1. Anthologize and
  2. Blog2Print

For reasons I can’t figure out, both plugins failed to work for me so my search continued.

Thanks to Rick of What’s On My PC? my first stop was

  1. BlogBooker
  2. I used my green blog, input the URL and a link to the XML file into their form. The process was quick and when complete, the ebook included photos, some of the links and comments. Unfortunately, only the CommentLuv links showed up. The blog which only has a handful of posts ended up being an ebook containing 23 pages including the cover and an index. Additional formatting would be required, however with this being a free service, I thought the results were quite impressive.

My search for more information lead me down an unexpected path. What I found were sites which let us self-publish, as well as sell our end product.

The links in Matt Cutt’s “Blog to Book” post led me to these sites.

  1. Fast Pencil
  2. On Fast Pencil I decided to turn my Observation Mountain blog into an ebook. Before “publishing” to draft, I deleted all spam comments, edited out approximately 30 of the 165 posts and ended up with a book which was 180 pages long.  The draft which was created was perfectly formatted with each post having it’s own page(s),  however no comments nor links were included.

  3. Lulu.com
  4. Lulu’s site includes a short video of the services they provide for self publishers, and although I’ve watched the video, I’m not sure this is the route I want to take.

  5. Blurb.com
  6. Blurb.com provides a free download of their “Blurb BookSmart” software. The software lets you create a book which can be sold on their site. After downloading and reviewing the software, it appears to be very comprehensive and helpful.

I also remembered George Angus of Tumblemoose used Smashwords to publish five ebooks.

Smashwords offers numerous possibilities and from reading the review of Smashwords on his blog, George is quite pleased with their service.

Knowing things aren’t always as they seem and wanting to be cautious, I also checked the website of watchdog Clark Howard. There I found these links:

  1. Absolute Write, a forum for writers and,
  2. Preditors & Editors

To repeat what is written in Clark Howard’s post:

Up until about 1998, the “vanity press” industry would charge people outrageous sums to publish a book. It wasn’t unusual for someone to pay $8,000 – $12,000 to these phony publishing houses.

The best advice Clark can offer is be skeptical. Use the collective wisdom of the Internet to help you steer clear of rip-off artists.

Although I haven’t found the perfect way to turn parts of my blog into an ebook, I feel I’m a few steps closer.

Today’s Assignment

Have you written a book or ebook? Or are you thinking of turning your blog into a book?

What platform did you use? Or will you use?

Care to share?

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P.S. For those of you who plan to either turn your blog into a book or write a book, having it proofread prior to publishing is essential. Davina is one of the best proofreaders in the field and can be found at  Shades of Crimson.

We can spend hours and hours searching for tools which will make blogging easier for us, or we can ask other bloggers what they use and like.

Today I’m sharing five of my favorite blogging tools.

Today’s Lessonwoopra homepage image

Although I continue to compare statistical programs, my favorite stats tracker is Woopra.

I’ve been using Woopra for over two years now and thoroughly enjoy all it offers. As the photos show, it’s colorful and has loads of options.

For blogs and websites woopra options My Fave Fivewith under 30,000 pages views per month, it’s free. After that, an upgrade is required (rates start at $4.95 per month).

Some of Woopra’s features are:

  1. Live, real time tracking
  2. Real-time analytics
  3. Ability to manage multiple blogs
  4. Deep analytic and search capabilities
  5. Live chat
  6. Rich user interface

Woopra also offers a plugin so you can easily review your Woopra stats from your dashboard, plus they also provide a desktop application for Windows, Mac & Linux, which I highly recommend.

A good spam blocker is essential to blogging.

I use Akismet which is preloaded in WordPress, in conjunction with Bad Behavior. If you look at the footer of this blog, you’ll see how Bad Behavior stopped over three thousand spam comments in the last week before they reached my spam filter. How cool is that?

CommentLuv is my all time favorite plugin.

I like how it rewards those who comment by adding a link to their latest post. With a catchy sounding title, chances are others will click through and this added exposure can possibly increase your readership, as well.

Gravatars, or avatars are another blogging favorite of mine. I like how just by using a small photo helps to brand us in blogosphere as well as on social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. The power of avatars was proven when we played a guessing game in the “Who’s Who In Blogosphere” post.

LinkWithin is a new favorite of mine. The thumbnails it produces and displays at the end of each post adds a little bit of pizazz, plus may inspire our readers to dig deeper into our blogs. Since adding it to this site and The Blog Boutique, I’ve seen an increase in my page views.

So there you have it. My fave five.

How about you?

Today’s Assignment

What blogging tools, plugins, or widgets can’t you live without?

Care to Share?

signature for blog post.

As I was working behind the scenes on the blogs, adding and deleting plugins, I ran across an interesting one. It’s named Greg’s Comment Length Limiter.

The premise behind this plugin is to limit the amount of characters a person who comments can enter. As they type their comment, the counter shows how many characters they have left remaining.
limit the number of characters in a comment

On the plugin page it states, in part,

Readers may be discouraged from commenting themselves (or reading comments at all) when they see very long entries left by others, and during times of high load, the significant performance overheads associated with retrieving and displaying long comments can slow even the speediest dedicated servers.

From the perspective of SEO (search engine optimization), very long comments also dilute the impact of the author’s original post by relegating it to a small proportion of the overall content available on the page.

Interestingly the plugin has been downloaded over 4000 times.

Today’s Lesson

Since we have been talking about post length, I thought it was ironic I landed on a comment length limiter.

Who knew?

With all of us enjoying comments from fellow bloggers, I would think the length of their comment(s) is the least of our concern.

The way I see it, if someone wants to leave a long comment on this blog, I have no problem with that. As I’ve said in the past and show in my welcome message, it’s in the comment section where most of this blog’s value lies.

I throw an idea out there and all of you contribute your thoughts. For myself and those reading the comments, there’s much to be gained.

I thought of how a person who is commenting might feel knowing their words have to be limited. As each character is entered, the counter is decreasing and possibly putting undue pressure on the commenter. I know for me, I’d be less likely to comment even though I normally don’t leave long comments.

Or, I might just say, “Great post” to keep it short.

What say you?

Today’s Assignment

Would you consider using a plugin which limits the number of characters a visitor can contribute?

How would you feel if a favorite blog of yours used this type of plugin?

Care to share?

signature for blog post.

I’ve been experimenting with related posts plugins.

The related posts plugin I have been using is “Contextual Related Posts“.

However, having seen the related posts on other blogs which include thumbnails, I decided to experiment with two of those.

Today’s Lesson

The two plugins I’ve been testing automatically add related posts in a horizontal strip at the end of each post.

LinkWithin is the one I have installed on this blog (see bottom of post), as well as on my green blog, “From Waste To Resource”.

LinkWithin did not produce the same results on The Blog Boutique, so on there I installed the Related Posts Thumbnails plugin.
Sample of what related posts with thumbnail looks like
The Contextual Related Posts plugin also offers the thumbnail option, however the posts are listed vertically with the adjustable size thumbnail being to the left of the title.

So, why use one or more of these plugins?

Advantages of using thumbnails with related posts plugins:

  1. Can increase page views by enticing readers to click on additional related and/or relevant posts
  2. More choices give readers the opportunity to choose other articles to comment on
  3. Adds more pizazz to our blogs via the use of a few more photos which break up the verbiage
  4. Might increase subscriptions to our blogs
  5. We can personalize the output, including the number of related posts we want to display.
  6. Easy to install
  7. Could increase advertising revenue if a visitor reads more than one post and is exposed to more of our ads
  8. LinkWithin is also compatible with WordPress (self-hosted), Blogger, Typepad and “Other” (not sure what “other” means)
  9. Support on all of these plugins appears to be strong.

Disadvantages

  1. May decrease the load time of our pages, as do most plugins and/or widgets
  2. Can be difficult to install for those who are not familiar with the process
  3. If no images are found in a blog post, only an empty square will show
  4. One or more of the plugins may not work properly if our theme does not support thumbnails

Interestingly, the posts linked to by Contextual Related Posts plugin are sometimes different than the posts linked to by LinkWithin. Although the posts may be similar, I feel the Contextual Related Posts plugin does a better job of linking to the most relevant related posts, plus it offers the greatest range of options for customization.

For now, I’ll leave both plugins activated on this blog, however, so as not to reduce my page loads times any further, I will not be using the thumbnails for the Contextual Related Posts at this time.

Today’s Assignment

If a blog displays related posts, do you click on the links?

Do you use a related posts plugin? If so, which one?

Care to share?

signature for blog post.

P.S. Although there are other related posts plugins with thumbnails, these are ones which have worked the best for me.

Related Posts with Thumbnails