Well, i finally got round to the redesign of my weblog. I had been planning to redesign this blog for a long time and also had drawn a rough sketch of how I wanted the new design to look like but it was delayed due to many reasons. After i decided to comit to blogging professionally, i thought id was time that i invest the time in creating a unique design, and saught the advice and recommendations of the people who really mattered. Our Readers.

I took all of the recommendations into consideration, and worked on the new design for about a week and finished with it yesterday. I did extensive testing with it using Firefox, Opera, IE 6 and 7. Everything looks fine so far but I still have a few things to do like optimizing the CSS, removal of useless plugins and some other things to decrease page load time.

Some of the changes made in the new design

• Switched from a 2 column to a 3 column for neater look
• We are now making use of the popular and & recent posts plugin to highlight some of our best content
• We have installed the Do-Follow plugin to reward users for leaving a comment on our posts. This means that when you comment, search engines will recognise your link and give you credit for it in their algorithms.
• Installed MyAvatars plugin which will display an avatar next to your name when leaving comments. This only works if you are a MyBlogLog user and have an avatar uploaded to your account.
• The design as a whole is slightly wider, and has incorporated a ‘web 2.0′ look as this seems to be popular at the moment, and i love the whole web 2.0 look.

I would really appreciate your feedback and what you think about our new design. Are there any areas you think could be further improved? If you spot any errors, please let me know that as well.

Popularity: 19% [?]

For some people, writing is as natural as talking. For others, it takes a little getting used to. If you are new to blogging and you’re not accustomed to writing for an audience, you might feel that your posts are awkward, clunky, and not really what you meant to say. This can result in a kind of writer’s block where you repeatedly start and then delete sentences because they don’t seem right.

Still other first time bloggers are afflicted with a kind of stage fright. Their thoughts, emotions, and opinions are going to be readily available to the entire world at the click of a button. And that can be intimidating. What if I come across as some kind of know-it-all? What if people don’t “get” me and just think I’m a jerk? What if my sixth grade English teacher reads my blog and finds out that I’m still a bad speller? There are a million reasons not to venture forth in your new independent publishing career.

Relax. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay if some people think you’re a jerk, and it’s fine if some people don’t “get” you. There will be others who do. And you’ll be happy once you get in and realize that the water’s warm.

You just need to find your voice. Write to your blog as you would talk with a friend. This is a good way to ensure that your personality comes through in the prose. You can always go back over your work and clean it up a bit, but it’s good to get it down initially in an off-the-cuff manner because that’s when the good stuff comes out.

The more you blog, the more you will discover about yourself. You might be surprised to find that you are linking and commenting about a certain subject that you wouldn’t ordinarily seek out. You might discover, like many people, that blogging is a path to new interests and a way to unlock thoughts otherwise lost in some corner of your brain. Blogging can take on a very intimate “journal” feel or a more “newsy” direction. Either way, the idea is that by putting your thoughts into words on a daily basis, you begin to see over time the kinds of things you gravitate toward. And those things often turn out to be different from what you expected them to be.

Finding your voice also makes for a good blog. Everyone is different, and blogs reflect their authors’ personalities and opinions. That’s why people read them, and that’s why they can be so addictive. Sometimes you just have to tune in to a favorite blog to see what that person has said about the latest news story or to read his or her take on a movie you’re thinking of seeing. Finding your voice is one of the perks of blogging that can really help you become a better writer. Don’t think about it too much; just blog every day, and your voice will develop.

What did you do when you first started out blogging, and how did you feel when you went to create your first blog post? Worried, happy, uncertain? Tell me your views by leaving us a comment.

Popularity: 8% [?]

There’s an old adage in the business world: If you want to improve something, you have to work at it some more. If you’re going to get serious about increasing your audience, you need to get from the how many read me” to the “what do they like” data, and that’s going to mean using some free tools and marketing methods.

Here’s a longer than usual list of small but useful things you can do to build your blog. We’ll start with some basic, cover-your-bases stuff and move on from there to more advanced techniques.

• Know your stats. At a bare minimum, you need to know where to find your stats in your blogging software and/or have a Site Meter badge. As RSS continues to ramp up, an absolute must, is a free or paid FeedBurner account!

• Who are you? Don’t be coy about your About page and profile if you want to garner readers. Even if you are blogging anonymously, give your readers something. Checkout Darren’s post, on How to Write Your “About Me” Page.

• Master basic social skills. Whether you love or hate social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us, at least some of your readers love them, so make it easy to vote for your posts. There’s a multitude of ways of doing this, but the easiest and the one i recommend is the ShareThis plugin which creates a popup menu when clicked, with links to all of the major social bookmarking sites to submit your content. You can see an example of this plugin at the bottom of this post. Try it out.

• RSS above the fold. For blogs, “above the fold” means before you need to scroll, and that’s where you want your RSS stuff. For example, this is the location you will want your standard, FeedBurner, or specific RSS reader badges to reside. Making it as easy as possible for readers to subscribe to your blog and save clicks pays off.

• Get listed. Multitudes of blog directories are out there. Three you should make the effort to check out and get listed in are MyBlogLog, Globe of Blogs, and Blogarama. Looking for more blog directories? See Kevin’s post, 75 Websites You Can Submit Your Blog To for an excellent list.

• Get listed, part 2. Don’t forget website directories that accept blogs, such as the Yahoo Directory (paid), the Open Directory Project, and specialty directories in your industry or geographic location.

• Respond to comments. At the risk of boring you, let me say it again: Blogs are a conversation, and that means you absolutely should respond to comments. Doing so will turn first-time visitors into loyal readers. For more information on getting more comments, see Start The Blogging Conversation.

• Post on weekends. Conventional blogging wisdom is you shouldn’t post on weekends because fewer people read blogs then. By the same token, there are fewer posts competing for attention.

• Show your back stock. One way or another, get a list of your best/most popular posts onto the front page of your blog. There’s no better way of turning a chance meeting into the start of a lasting relationship with your blog. A good wordpress plugin for this is MostWanted.

• Give credit and links where they are due. Simply put, the more links out of your blog, the more people will link to your blog. So even when you can’t pin to a specific post, link to that blog or website and give credit where it’s due.

• Post when your readers expect you to post. When you post creates expectations. If you post twice a day for months then not at all for two weeks, your readership will drift away. Know what your posting goal is and keep to it, and don’t be shy sharing that with your readers.

• Make use of trackbacks. When you’re blogging about some major blogger’s post, either positively or negatively, use your blogging software’s ability to send a trackback to that blogger. You will be surprised how often the trackback recipient will comment on your posts. This technique works only if you’re blogging in earnest, not fishing for links. For more on Trackbacks see Darren’s post, Introduction to Trackbacks.

All done? Here are more ways to get more readers that take more effort:

• Make friends with fellow bloggers. That means follow their blogs, be helpful, get to know them, and comment intelligently. Don’t ask for links up front. Don’t expect instant acceptance. Don’t be irrelevant. And don’t nag!

• Use photos. The right photo triples the impact of a good post. Take them yourself, find them at Flickr already permissioned at  (2.7 million and counting), or spend a dollar each at iStockPhoto.

• Post your photos at Flickr. People are interested in seeing themselves and other people. If you take digital photos, post them to Flickr and include a Flickr gallery on your blog.

• Participate in newsgroups. While newsgroups have faded in recent years, you’ll find at least one very active newsgroups covering just about every topic imaginable. Dive right in. And don’t forget to include your blog’s URL in your signature line.

• Use Squidoo. Build one or more lenses to showcase your best blogs about a given topic, or which together form a great tutorial, or just to establish your reputation as someone who knows a thing or two. Checkout Pigboom’s post on Improving SEO with Squidoo.

• Convert old posts into new ezine articles. What’s the difference between a great post you did on a subject six months ago and a free ezine article that drives traffic to your blog? About ten minutes’ effort on your part at ezine sites like iSnare, Ezine Articles, and especially the SiteProNews directory of article directories.

• Guest post. This technique has worked wonders for me over the last few months. Offer another (more influential) blogger guest posts to keep the content rolling while that blogger is on vacation, overextended, and so on. This technique presupposes you have some sort of relationship going, that the other blogger has either asked for guest posts or seems ready for the idea, and that you have at least a few posts that would fit the bill.

• Provide answers. In just about every area, there are current questions that need answers. Think about the subjects you blog on. What questions could a little non-blog research or data-gathering answer? A good tool for finding subjects that people are currently in need of answers for is Yahoo! Answers.

So there are my 20 top tips for building the reader base of your blog. Of course, there are many more methods available to bloggers to aid them in building their blog, whats your methods do you use? How did you generate the amount of subscribers you have at your blog, and how long did it take?

If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us or StumbleUpon. I’d appreciate it.

Popularity: 19% [?]

If there’s a single word we see associated more often than any other with the word blog, it’s conversation. Many serious bloggers firmly believe their companies need to “get on the Cluetrain,” and many have created blogs that are not only designed to invoke discussion, they are also almost exclusively written in a conversational style.

Engaging readers and inspiring them to get involved by commenting or linking is likely to be your goal. Having a clear, authentic, and approachable style is a great way to make that happen.

Authentic and Conversational

If you want to truly engage your readers, you’ll want to avoid the type of writing that has been the staple of corporate marketing and PR departments for years. The stilted “corpspeak” common to press releases and big business home pages will generally not be as well received by your readers as much as less formal copy with a more genuine voice.

A good reason to adopt a conversational approach is that it will likely help you and your organization create a stronger relationship with your readers. A human voice not only intuitively seems like a way to bond with your audience, there’s also concrete evidence backing up that assertion.

Conversational writing is not really the same as conversational speech. Writers still need to carefully craft what they write, and edit their copy thoroughly. The nature of conversational writing is really one of style. Conversational style is informal (avoids jargon and flowery language), inviting (friendly, prompts for feedback), transparent (candid, not promotional), direct (gets to the point), and engaging (invokes a sense of humor).

Compare “We discovered that the most prevalent cause of processor-based system failure involved read/write head engagement issues” to “Most computer breakdowns are caused by bad hard drives.” One is cumbersome and hard to interpret; the other is conversational, clear, and easy to understand.

Interesting and Expressive

One of the key reasons blogs became so popular in the early days had nothing to do with Google, RSS feeds, or any techie underpinnings. Both then and now, people read blogs because they express a personal experience. Blogs can provide an insider’s view, and that opens up a world not served by traditional journalism. This is the type of writing that readers seek out and embrace.

Expressive writers tap into their experiences and use anecdotes, humor, and emotion to make their personalities come alive in their writings. They take the time to use words that capture what they really feel, and avoid generalities. Was the evening merely “great” (yawn), or did it remind you of summer nights on the porch when you were a kid?

Brief and to the Point

Less is more. Long-winded posts are the hallmark of the amateur writer. Good bloggers strive for simplicity. Less copy not only makes it easier for your readers to understand your main points quickly and easily, but it also makes the job of writing easier.

Compare these two sentences:

• “Make sure you select blog software that contains community-oriented features that allow for a back-and-forth dialog between author and reader.”
• “Buy software that has commenting features.”

As you can see, careful pruning can make a big difference.

A good blogger is conversational, concise, and makes sure his or her writings convey a sense of who they are. If your personal writing style is something you are still trying to determine, checkout a recent post of mine, Find Your Blogging Voice for some useful tips on what approaches might best align with your personality.

Popularity: 7% [?]