Archive for the 'Easy idea' category

It is often difficult to recommend a way to publish your posts on your web site. But Raymond Chen enlightens us about a technique provably efficient to prepare in advance the posts that will be published later: “How does Raymond decide what to post on any particular day?“.

Do you want to make your web site compatible with the iPhone (or most of the intelligent mobile phones)? This is relatively easy. I found two good solutions for you:

1. For WordPress users, why not install and use WPtouch which will build a theme compatible with the small screens of these phones out of your web site?



2. For the others, there is DoYouFeed. It will take your RSS feed to present it right. Not hard if you have an RSS thread containing full posts (rather than summaries); But you already know that this is the right thing to do…

Do you want your blog to become visible to press people in the mainstream press media? This used to be nearly impossible, but the Internet is bringing a solution. Not perfect, but BlogBurst offers exactly that: International exposure into the small but influential world of big media (both paper press and some big Internet web sites).

Your content has to be very powerful and mere exposure does not mean that you will be immediately considered as a worldwide expert on the issue you blog about, but it could be a sort of blog-japckpot.

Technorati has quickly become the reference in blog tracking. You want happy visitors favoriting you on Technorati for others to know. Make it easy. First, claim your blog in your account. Then add a button like this:

(#if you click it you’ll favorite YWantVisits!)

It’s easy. Technorati provides the code of this button along with many other widgets.

I had told that you should have a special page to be contacted directly. But this is not sufficient to be easy to call.

It is also critical to let your visitors know who you are: A company, an association, a Church, an NGO, an individual. This is not because Internet allows you to appear whatever you’d want to be that you must hide behind a virtual mask. Many a visitor wish ti understand whose words they are reading. This adds credibility and supports your writing.

So, open an “About me” page. ou “A propos“. Present yourself, and make sure that you’re looking good in the context of your web site. Follow the advice from ProBlogger: How to Write Your “About Me” Page.

But never let you reveal information that you may be ashamed of, at any time, in any place, under any circumstances: What is published on the Internet will stay forever and may haunt you.

As a friend tells sometimes: You may find it funny to reveal how drunk you were in this gutter, but it won’t have the same appeal to your ex-future employer.

It’s not a matter of copying from them, but you don’t want to miss a new trend and be left behind. It is necessary to know what’s going on in your field and you cannot afford not knowing what your visitors read when they go to your competiors. I the industry it’s called “Strategic foresight“.

And you may even find reasons to link to them or to extend one of their posts with your own rant.

The Internet is based on cooperation and reciprocity. When you link to another web site, be as nice as possible:

• Mention the web site name if possible – no typos please
• Include a link not only an URL
• Keep the link in a readable position (in the post body, in normal text size)

In short: “Link as you would like to be linked.”

Technorati has quickly become the reference in blog tracking. Technorati users are exposed to blogs that have been claimed bytheir owner. Open an account on Technorati, go to the blogs tab and start the claim process. It may be as easy as getting the code, creating a claim post, informing Technorati, then removing the claim post. Mere seconds.

You may want to monopolize your visitors’ attention. But the fact is that they are also living out of your web site. One of the best way to stay in touch is to identify where they go. And be there. You’re supposed to share a lot with them, so it shouldn’t be a burden.

In my case, for YLovePhoto.com, I am spending pleasant time and energy in RedBubble and Flickr which are obvious hubs of Internet quality-oriented photographers.

Most blogging softwares give you the choice between RSS feeds providing the full contents of your posts or some sort of limited extract. While big time bloggers may wish to avoid loosing readers to their feed, most of us normal people should merely help our most technically-inclined visitors get the maximum from the RSS feed.

So, make sure that you publish full feeds. And if, later, you perceive some small loss, think about the fact that those visitors are the most influential ones (bringing a lot of other ones). Then, maybe, you will want to include a low level of advertising with the help of something like Feedburner and Google Adsense.