Ask The Blogger

Blogging Tips & Strategies

Blogging

Do You Need A Blog Afterall?

By

Unless you have been under a rock these past 5 or 6 years than you absolutely have heard about how critical a blog is to your website and your business.

You’ve heard that it will pull in targeted, interested traffic that converts. You’ve heard that it will help you build a brand and a reputation for yourself that is unparalleled and more importantly, unreplaceable. You’ve heard that it is the key to building a responsive email list full of eager buyers just waiting to hear from you every day…

… And I’m here to tell you that this is absolutely true. All of it. Every single last bit.

blog

Why Having A Blog Is Critical

If you still aren’t convinced that having a blog is important – I can understand your skepticism. When I first started out with building websites and trying to get traffic to them, I thought blogs were just for trendy hipsters with some social or politic message to spread. I couldn’t be more wrong.

The fact is that a blog is the best tool you can have in your marketing arsenal. There is nothing that you can ever buy that will replace it. There is nothing you will ever find that will compliment your goals, no matter what they are, as well as a fully function and interactive blog will.

In fact, without a blog I’m not entirely sure what you or your business is doing online at all… I’m sure that sounds harsh but let me give you some reasons for understanding why a blog is so critical to what you do online.

Reasons Your Website Needs A Blog

SEO and Search Engine Traffic

Your are going to want to actually have people come to your site and see what you have to say or what you are offering to them. There are a few ways you can get traffic to your site but nothing really beats search engine traffic.

  • It’s Free
  • It’s Targeted
  • It Responds To Your Offers
  • It Spreads Your Brand & Message

You can imagine search engine traffic as the life giving nectar to your website. Without a presence in engines like Google and Bing, it will be much harder for people to find your website. If they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.

SEO

But not only is important for people to find you, those people also need to be engaged in what you are doing or what you are offering. Traffic from search engines is the cream-of-the-crop when it comes to being highly engaged and responsive. They already want to know what you have, all you have to do is offer it to them in such a way that they respond to it. Normally speaking a blog is great for providing that kind of presentation that people respond it. [Read more…] about Do You Need A Blog Afterall?

The Best 5 Third Party Blog Comment Systems

By

Interaction is always a big part of successful blogs. Users love to post comments and discuss the subject of top blogs’ contents and articles. This is part of the reasons why making commenting as easy as it can be is very important. Each CMS has its own comment system already built-in, but third-party blog comment systems can help take the discussions to a whole new level. We reviewed 5 of the best third-party blog comment systems in this article.

IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate is actually made by the same people behind the famous blogging platform WordPress. It is a product of Automattic and has been one of the most popular third-party blog comment systems today.

As you would expect, IntenseDebate works seamlessly with WordPress. However, it also works with various other blogging platforms, including Blogger. The comment system is also very easy to install. All you have to do is define your blog URL, select the platform you use for your blog and follow the provided step-by-step guide to get IntenseDebate installed.
IntenseDebate is very popular mainly thanks to its Reputation system. Users who comment on your – and many other – blogs get the chance to earn reputation points given by other users. This allows users to focus on providing the best comments and having a truly good quality discussion.

The comment system also sends an email every time a comment is replied. This email notification helps keep users in the discussion, which means you can expect them to return frequently as long as the discussion is alive.

Disqus

Disqus

Disqus is perhaps one of the oldest third-party comment systems out there. It is used by more than 750,000 websites – according to the official website – and accounts for more than 50% of today’s third-party comment system usage.

I do love how Disqus makes importing existing comments very easy to do and if you’re not sure how to do it yourself it has a ton of tutorials like this one. In fact when it comes to comment system tutorials, you will always find one for Disqus before all others!

When you have a matured blog and you want to switch to using Disqus to manage comments, you can easily import old comments to the system in just a few clicks. It also supports importing comments from IntenseDebate, which is a lucrative offering for those switching to Disqus.

Aside from its mobile-friendliness and lightweight user interface, Disqus is also very fluid. Users can attach files, have a truly active discussion, reward other users for their replies and answers, and even have a real-time discussion thanks to Disqus’s Ajax-based interface. I also love the fact that users can reply to comments by directly replying to the notification emails sent by Disqus, but this also means users are less inclined to visit the site frequently.

Facebook Comments

Facebook Comments

This next third-party comment system is very effective for new and existing blogs for one main reason: it has its own user base for you to tap on. Yes, Facebook allows site and blog owners to allow Facebook users to give comments on their site. With more than 1.5 billion active users, Facebook Comments is a very attractive source of traffic nonetheless.

Users don’t need to sign up for a new account to comment. They can use their existing Facebook accounts directly; since most users don’t really sign out of Facebook, this means they can always comment on blogs that use Facebook Comments immediately.

Whenever a user posts a comment, the comment gets automatically posted on their wall as well, complete with a link to the page he or she is commenting. This is a good way to promote your site to an even wider audience.

Livefyre

Among many other third-party comment systems, Livefyre is perhaps the youngest; it is far from being the worse, though. The whole comment system is very easy to use, easy to the eyes and highly engaging. These three traits make Livefyre suitable for a wide range of blogs.

The comment system is also quick to support existing social networks. For example, Livefyre allows users to tag other users in their comments. It works very similarly to Mentions on Twitter. You can add an ‘@’ symbol followed by the tagged user’s name. The function works with Facebook and Twitter accounts as well.

It is also possible to automatically post comments to Facebook and Twitter. On top of that, users can follow a conversation without having to leave a comment first.

Vicomi

The last comment system in our list is Vicomi. Vicomi is particularly unique because of its Emotions feature. It basically allows users to tell site owners how they feel about the content or the subject of the content. There are five emotions to choose from on top of every Comments section.

The setup process is also very easy to complete. Vicomi integrates well with many blogging platforms, including WordPress and Blogger. The comment system can be used for free and users can use their existing social media accounts to log in before commenting.

Cloud Storage – Choosing Wisely

By

Cloud storage is a type of data and information storage option that is obtainable on the net, i.e. “the cloud”. Cloud storage service providers usually offer many different services which mostly revolve around providing data backup for one’s system. Cloud storage services are usually considered to be exceptional substitutes to the normal storage options such as the use of hard disks, DVDs and other media..

There are many different advantages of the cloud storage option. To begin with, storing in the cloud provides a level of security against acts of God and natural disasters such as fire, earthquakes, floods and other unpredictable calamities.

In addition, it allows you to avoid having to install and monitor different storage devices in your limited space, since all the storage transactions will be done by the service provider you have hired. As more and more users and creators of data move to the cloud, it will become more and more the norm for data storage, if for no other reason than it saves space and worry.

Getting just the right cloud storage service provider can sometimes be a challenge. Running into unexpected costs or service interruptions is not something customers want to experience. So, how can you as a client end up hiring the right cloud storage service provider?

Types of Service

Identify the different types of service providers that are ready to help you out. Some providers have complete turnkey systems for their clients. Such providers usually feature applications that move sensitive data to their storage assets in the cloud.

Cloud Storage

Security

You should also try to understand the provider’s level of security. One of the main aims of hiring a cloud storage service provider is to safely store all the confidential or valuable data that you have. It is therefore paramount to your needs that the provider has a robust security system that includes sophisticated encryption safeguards.

Cost

Thirdly, it is important to consider the cost of the prospective service. Encrypting and storing data using different data storage software is usually not cheap. In many cases , the higher the levels of security, and encryption, the higher the costs. There are of course exceptions. Nevertheless, your budget and risk tolerance should guide you as you compare prices.

Reviews

There are many providers out there and it can be hard to pick one without any previous experience with cloud storage. Here is where reviews from experts and users comes in handy. You can read reviews of top cloud storage providers on cloudstorage.co.uk and find the perfect provider for your storage needs.

For those who have the highest demands for security, safety and risk exposure, it is becoming more and more common to approach cloud storage the same way you would approach terrestrial storage—be redundant. What this means is that it might not be a bad idea to host your data on multiple cloud platforms, rather than rely only on one. System failures, software glitches, viruses do happen, and therefore the only true protection is to not have all your eggs in any one provider’s basket.

Best WordPress Caching Plugins

By

WordPress page load speed can be frustrating, especially if you use a lot of plugins or images on your site. WordPress is a resource intensive way to create a webpage, because every single page is built on the fly using a programming language called PHP, pulling information from multiple files and a MySQL database. This means that a WordPress page can take a lot longer to load than a traditional HTML webpage. Its worth it though, because WordPress lets us create very powerful and complex websites which are easily modified or able to change quickly.

WordPress

Web page loading speed is a very important aspect of your visitor’s experience of your site. Its so important that Google actually considers it a significant factor for search result ranking: Google knows that slow pages are less popular. This is based on their own research, which has led to their very stripped down home page and a limit of 10 results per page. Google discovered that as page load times increased, the number of searches decreased, and so did their ad sales and thus profitability.

WordPress Caching plugins turn dynamic web pages into static pages

WordPress caching plugins make your site faster by serving cached static web pages, rather than creating dynamic pages every time a visitor requests a new page. Caching your WordPress content has several benefits:

  • Pages load faster.
  • Thus your visitors are happier, and more likely to stick around and explore your site.
  • Conversions increased because your bounce rate falls (people stay on your site).
  • The load on your server is reduced: its much easier to serve up a static web page than to run WordPress and build a dynamic one for each page load.

Best Caching Plugins for WordPress

There are a lot of WordPress caching plugins, offering a range of features. Its actually impossible to choose a single best WordPress caching plugin because the performance of these plugins varies a lot depending on their configurations and your web hosting server. Also, most WordPress users would prefer a simple plugin which is set and forget, while others have more time, skill and interest in optimising their WordPress caching plugin.

Choosing a WordPress caching plugin

Choose the best WordPress caching plugin for your server.

Lets keep it simple:

wp-super-cache

  • If your WordPress site is hosted on shared hosting then use WP-Super Cache.

    • WP-Super Cache is relatively easy to set up and performs well in a shared hosting environment.
    • It definitely works better with configuration beyond the default settings
    • You can largely just select all the “Recommended” settings in the advanced options tab.
    • WP-Super Cache doesn’t have a built in minify function. There are separate plugins for this, but be aware minification can break your site.

w3-total-cache

  • If your WordPress site is hosted on a VPS, dedicated or some types of managed WordPress Hosting and cloud hosting then use W3 Total Cache

    • Be prepared to tweak your server substantially to harness the full benefits of W3 Total Cache
    • W3 Total Cache is substantially more challenging to set up, especially if you don’t know the configuration and capabilities of your server (like most people on shared hosting)
    • Setting up W3TC can take quite a lot of time and trial and error to get right. What works on one server won’t work on the next, due to different configuration.
    • Shared hosting greatly limits the extra features the extra features
    • When not set up properly, caching programs can actually make your site run faster. This is more of a risk with W3TC than with WP-Super Cache due to it’s complexity.
    • Some of the options on W3 total cache will break your site (temporarily), so you need to test it as you configure the settings. The minify settings especially often break the CSS of the site, as can other minification plugins.
    • W3 Total cache needs to be set with different setting depending on your server. If you are serious about site speed, it can be worth getting this done professionally.

[Read more…] about Best WordPress Caching Plugins

Top 9 Raw Powers of Social Media while Blogging

By

Social media has gone above and beyond anyone’s demands as to just how popular it would become. I don’t think anyone knew just how huge Facebook or networks like Twitter would become and how much of an opportunity they are for traffic.

There are different ways to utilize the traffic that you can obtain from both but to properly optimize the blog traffic; you have to understand the power behind social media in order to effectively manipulate it.

Social Media

There’s also quite a lot of things you must remember when utilizing social media as well because everyone thinks their content is viral worthy. What exactly makes something viral and what exactly determines what will go viral? No one honestly knows for sure and that’s the beauty of the internet, we can’t exactly determine what will and won’t go viral. It could happen to anyone and at most times, it seems to happen to random people that weren’t even trying to get their name out there.

  1. It’s free traffic – This means that you didn’t pay a dime for the traffic. Social media is usually spread around by hand and this means that people like your content enough to spread it around.
  2. It can go viral – Let’s face it, a lot of things that end up going viral, aren’t exactly things we predict or expect to go viral. All it takes is one person to share something and you could be behind the next big hit.
  3. Social media has huge influence – People trust links they find on social media websites far more than they do on say Google or anywhere else. People seem to put a lot of trust into social media websites.
  4. It’s like a train that you can’t turn off – This might sound awful but it’s actually a good thing. If something of yours happens to go viral, then you all of a sudden have this rush of traffic coming in and there’s nothing you can do about it.
  5. There’s far more to share – Unlike a normal static page website or a sales page, people can share each post, each page or even each category if you set it up that way. This way, there’s a lot more content to share and more opportunity for your blog to get out there.
  6. People like to read – Not everyone likes to read but people on social media sites love going through other people’s walls, profiles and what not. Social media websites are filled with people who love to read blogs based on things that they want to know more information on.
  7. Google trusts you – Google may not exactly be best friends with Facebook behind the scenes, but Google holds a lot of rapport and authority behind social media website backlinks. There are plenty of different backlinks out there but if you can happen to get a backlink to stick on a major social networking site, then that is absolutely golden. Sites like those are usually well kept so Google knows if one of those sites is referring a link, then it has to be good.
  8. You connect with other bloggers – Networking is a fantastic idea no matter what field you’re in. When you’re sharing your blog out there on the social media networks, it also gives you an opportunity to meet other bloggers in your particular niche and you never know what that could lead to. Perhaps a traffic swap partnership could be in the future.
  9. You’re an authority figure – The funny thing about owning a website or a blog is, when you tell people something and they see other websites and people saying the same thing, they come to think of you as an authority figure and will believe whatever you say. You can become an expert just by telling people you’re an expert.

The social media outlet has been around for a while now but has just recently started booming in the last few years. No one knows how long it’s going to stay, just how popular it’s going to become and if it will ever have a downfall, so it’s best to take advantage of social media now before it’s too late. However, it doesn’t really seem like it’s going anywhere anytime soon and it expands rapidly.

Just a mere few years ago, you would’ve never thought that you’d be using an app like Twitter to talk to people but now it’s a major form of communication for companies and even celebrities. Tweet this, Hash tag this, reply to this, etc is what you hear commonly from these places. The best thing to do when you see a brand new social media platform pop up is to jump on it ASAP before it becomes widely popular so you’ll be on top of the roster for the brand new platform.

(Still) New to Blogging? Better Make Your Own WordPress Site Instead

By

With the rise of the blogger generation over the past few years, it is not possible that somepeople may still be new to the topic of making your own blog or website. Do you want to setup a blog but are not sure where to host it? There are certainly numerous options for you to choose from but we of course recommend using the WordPress platform to host your blog. User experience wise, it is completely free and it offers features that many blogs either do not have or do not have in abundance. Below are our reasons you should host your own blog using WordPress.

1 – You Own Your Blog

The number one reason to choose WordPress over the others for your blog is that with WordPress, you are in charge of what you want to feature, and how you want to do it. By downloading a number of useful plugins at WordPress.org, you can install them yourself on your own web server and then you are free to do whatever you want with the content.

2 – Easy Bookmarking and Social Media Integration

It is well known that WordPress is a preferred blogging platform for bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and for social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Blogger and other blogging platforms are not nearly as favored and WordPress has become somewhat of the global standard for social networking sites.

blog

3 – Easy Customization Via Themes

Hands down, WordPress far exceeds Blogger and other platforms with regard to the number and style of themes available to users.  There is a theme available for just about every style and themes are fairly easy to install. Just find the theme, click install, then click activate, and you’re done.

4 – Easier to go forth with Search Engine Optimization

WordPress far exceeds other platforms in regards to SEO. The program has a very robust built in system, and this can actually be improved via the use of additional SEO related plugins. SEO is very important if you want the right readers to find your site and the ability to optimize your site via SEO is among the most important things you can do to boost traffic.

5 – Blog Reselling

If your Blogger blog has become popular and you want to sell it to make money, you can do this. Google owns Blogger and does not permit the sale of Blogger sites. On the other hand, WordPress does not have restrictions when you host your own site. If your blog becomes popular and you want to sell out, you are free to do so.

6 – Mobile Customization

WordPress has perhaps the best options for mobile customization thanks to both plugins and themes available to users. Using the WPtouch plugin, simpler sites can be automatically rendered for most mobile devices. For those wanting to reach the greatest number of mobile users, a responsive design template is best for your site as your content will automatically re-size and rearrange based on the device it is being displayed on. You can check also check out an easy video tutorial on how to make a mobile friendly WordPress site, like this one, to know the steps on how you can do it yourself.

Lastly, having your own blog reflects on how you are moving forward with your passions in life. With a wide variety of topics to choose from, in time, who knows? Your blog might stand out among the rest of them all over the world. This is the most important factor that you have to consider, so feel free to explore and start making your own website instead.