Blogging Tips for You and Any Other Blogger

The following paragraphs are here to uncover a few important tips that can literally teach you how to make money with the help of your blog. Although many marketers already know that creating presentations, videos and articles represents a very important point of online marketing, they do not really comprehend that there are a few more things that they must do. In order to start, you should know that building a large customer list and driving traffic towards your blog are not enough to become successful and make money blogging. If you want to turn your blog into a money-making machine, you should:

• Get as many high quality backlinks as possible. You can achieve this goal by looking for blogs that operate within the same niche as you do. You can start commenting on their posts.  Make sure that you are adding your URL address in the “website” section, if the blogs allow you to do this thing. You will see that your rankings will improve in only a few weeks time.
• Give Something Away for FREE.  Giving something on your blog for free that creates value is a great way to get additional readership to your blog while creating a customer that now trusts every word that you say.  Once your readers trust what you say, they will buy anything you put in-front of them.

• Look for massive exposure. You can do this thing by using free syndication tools, which can help you to find different business prospects. And even greater is the fact that you can get most of these tools for free. Thus, you can finally promote you videos and articles on different social bookmarking and media websites in a truly professional manner.

• Choose pop-up autopilot formats. This can help you to get free leads through automatic tools. There are a few things that you can complete with the help of the automatic tools, including auto responses and pre written follow up messages. This way, anyone who subscribes for any items that exist on your blog becomes a new lead on your mailing list.  A good system for this is aWeber for an autopilot system.

• Have a professional header. Although most bloggers consider that the most important thing is the content that exists on their blogs, you must bear in mind that a professional image can always help you to get what you want faster than many other marketing strategies. For this reason, make sure that your blog is very appealing, with a professional header and the tools that you provide are fast and reliable. This is a great way to get new clients that will visit your blog over and over again.

You can implement these simple blogging tips right now and start reaping the rewards of your online business. Although it might take some time until you will get the expected results, you must know that the sooner you implement the aforementioned blogging tips, the faster the benefits will come along.  If you’re looking for additional tips on how to promote your blog check out “5 things you need to know about your website visitors” that will teach you what to do with your website visitors once you have them!

When it comes to getting traffic you need to go where the traffic already is, Google. Everybody uses Google, so why not use one of their own websites to help you get traffic? The two best websites that Google has in order to get traffic are Youtube.com and Blogger.com, for the sake of this article I am going to focus on Blogger to help you get traffic. The reason why Blogger is such a great way to get traffic is because they have a high page rank, lots of viewers each month, it will pass some link juice, and it is very easy to set and forget.

The first thing you need to understand is how to setup a Blogger blog to work the way that you want it to. What I always do is I build a 10 post blog about whatever the topic is that my website is on and then I interlink all the pages together. The trick here is to target 10 different keywords, my advice would be to target keywords with at least 1000 local monthly searches each. The reason why you want this much traffic is because not everyone will go to your site if it is found on the search engines and an even smaller amount of people will click on your link. Just remember that this strategy along with the following 4 tips will get you more free traffic in a short amount of time than you have ever thought possible.

Tips To Increase Traffic From A Blogger Blog

Promote The Blog

Everybody knows that you need to promote your own site to get traffic but for some odd reason they think they don’t have to promote other blogs or Web 2.0 properties. Trust me, when it comes to getting traffic even Blogger blogs need to be promoted. What I do is I will write articles for article directories and other blogs and I will use 1 link for my Blogger blog and the other link for my actual website. Another thing you can do to promote the blog is to use social bookmarking, it is easy and if done right will actually get you a decent amount of traffic.

Add Pictures And Videos

Have you ever gone to a website that didn’t have any pictures, videos, or anything other than text? Don’t you get tired of just reading? It has been proven that pictures and videos will keep a reader on your site roughly 37% longer and that is why you need them on your blog. Not only will pictures and videos keep your readers on the site longer but they will also make the site feel more lived in so that it doesn’t just look like it is there acting as a portal to your main site.

Keep Adding Content

If you want to get the most traffic as possible then you need to keep adding content to your Blogger blog. I am not saying you need to write 1 new blog post every day but you at least need to add 1 new post each month. All you need to do is make it look like the site was not forgotten about because search engines dislike sites that never offer any new information.

Build More Blogs

Do you have more than 1 website that you want to promote? If you have a few websites then you don’t want to use the same Blogger blog for all your sites, build more blogs. People are always looking for a shortcut but when it comes to getting quality traffic there really aren’t any shortcuts.

Do yourself a favor, get out there and see for yourself how powerful this technique is while you are thinking about it. I am not saying that I am the best blogger out there and I know for a fact that I don’t get as much traffic as many other sites out there but I know what works and this is one of those methods.

If you have had experience with Blogger and it is sending you a decent amount of traffic then let us know about your experiences in the comments below.

About the author:
Adam Snyder has been able to earn cash online through his service business and through online marketing for many years now, if you want to see how he makes over $6000 a month online then check him out at DormRoomCash.com

Understanding the Real Value of Your Traffic and Time

How do you generate traffic to your blog every month and how much time do your invest into generating this traffic?

This is a critical question you must first ask yourself when trying to decide if to focus on SEO for your blog or not. There’s no point in writing great content on your blog if it won’t be read and when trying to market your content it is only wise to think about what will deliver the best result for your time.

Investing your time in SEO might be a wise decision because it will only take little efforts from your side in terms of time and once you’ve done the necessary things you will start getting the traffic to your blog without doing anything.

I write a lot of guest posts and one thing I have noticed is that the traffic to my blog from my guest posts vary from month to month due to the number of guest posts I write in a particular month but the traffic to my blog from search engines is always increasing even if I only post half of the content I normally post in a particular month. In other words, traffic from search engines is highly consistent so it can be a great investment in terms of the time put in.

Don’t Dilute Your Content

Even though SEO is great and traffic from search engines can be one of the best forms of traffic to your blog it is very critical to ensure you don’t just write your content purely because of the SEO benefit. You can easily optimize your post titles, do some necessary on page SEO to ensure you get the right results but the most important element that will determine how fast you will rank and how long you will stay in that position is the number of quality backlinks to your articles. Each link is like a vote telling the search engines that your content is reputable and should be ranked and each vote isn’t equal. You can easily build comment backlinks to your article or do some article marketing but it isn’t the same as you getting a link back to your article from an authority domain.

Search engines don’t read your content and with a lot of improvements being consistently made everyday search engines are now favoring content that readers’ favor. Do your best to make sure your content is well written for your readers while also keeping SEO in mind.

Not All Traffic is Equal

It is also very important for you to understand that not all traffic is equal. People can easily come to your site from other sources and not take your content serious but most people coming from the search engines have a particular need they are desperate to get a solution for so this makes the search engine traffic more valuable compared to other types of traffic.

Conclusion

SEO isn’t some shady tactic and depending on how it is being used, it can make the difference in you being rich or broke as a blogger. Write great content, and don’t ever neglect the SEO of your blog.

The power to efficiently communicate and persuade people can make all the difference between a boring speech that puts people to sleep and a powerful one that leaves a lasting impression. If your speech contains powerful content but is delivered poorly, you’ll miss out on an opportunity to impact the lives of your audience in a positive way.

Try these tips to turn your next presentation from a drab, boring affair to a dynamic, powerful presentation that your audience will remember for a long time to come:

Prepare thoroughly. Preparation is the key to a successful presentation. If you speak with authority, people will listen. The only way to speak with authority, however, is to know the material of your speech backwards and forwards. Rehearse your speech many times. Practice in front of a mirror and in front of others.

Move your body with confidence. If you’re slouched over and your hands are shaking, your audience will get the impression that you lack the knowledge that makes you worthy of listening to. Gesture confidently with your hands as you speak and use eye contact with your audience.

Use very few notes. The more familiar you are with your speech’s content, the more interesting your speech becomes to your audience. Reading your speech is boring, but speaking from an outline of key points in a natural, conversational way draws your crowd in so they are encouraged to listen closely.

• If you’re passionate and knowledgeable about your subject, learn your speech well and deliver it without any notes. This will impress your audience and make your material more believable. It’ll make you look like you know what you’re talking about.

Dress to impress. If your dress is too casual or inappropriate in any way, your audience will quickly turn away and become bored. Ensure your clothes are as comfortable as possible, but just a little bit nicer than the occasion calls for.

Anticipate questions and answer them. What are the most frequently asked questions about your topic? When you present the material, what challenges can you imagine coming from your audience? Prepare for these objections and questions, and address them in the body of your speech.

Answer the most important questions. When people hear you speak, they’re really looking for you to answer only two questions. Answer those questions, and your speech will be remembered fondly for a long time to come.

• First, your audience wants to know, “What’s in it for me?” Answer that question in your speech. Simply ask yourself what the members of your audience will gain from applying the ideas you talk about or listening to your perspective.

• Second, they want to know, “Why should I care?” You may be passionate about the subject of your presentation, but you must communicate why the members of your audience should be just as passionate about your subject as you are.

Speaking in public is one of the biggest fears of our society. With solid preparation and wise choices on the day of your presentation, however, you can create a lasting impression in the hearts and minds of your audience.

Remember to leave a comment and share your favourite Blogger themes with other readers

10 Beautiful Blogger Templates

1. Masinop

Info & Download | Demo

2. WP Polaroid

Info & Download | Demo

3. Blogging Pro

Info & Download | Demo

4. Dreamwork Redux

Info & Download | Demo

5. White Over Black

Info & Download | Demo

6. Revolution Church

Info & Download | Demo

7. Keep It Simple

Info & Download | Demo

8. Notepad Chaos

Info & Download | Demo

9. Probama

Info & Download | Demo

10. Showcase

Info & Download | Demo

Blogger

Whilst doing research for these articles I quickly realised that designers can achieve a lot with the Blogger platform and can design fantastic looking themes once they know the platform well. Ironically, most of the best Blogger templates seem to have been converted from templates for Bloggers blogging rival WordPress.

I really don’t see this changing in the future as there is not a good premium template market for Blogger. Which is why most Blogger templates have a lot more copyright links in the footer compared to WordPress themes i.e. designers are including links back to themselves and selling links in the designs too.

One thing is for sure – you can do a lot more with Blogger than people give it credit for

Good luck,
Kevin

This week I will be showing you another 10 beautiful blogger templates. Enjoy

10 Beautiful Blogger Templates

1. Acosmin Tech

Info & Download | Demo

2. Firebug

Info & Download | Demo

3. Photoplus Light

Info & Download | Demo

4. Daily Notes

Info & Download | Demo

5. Community

Info & Download | Demo

6. Grunge Floral

Info & Download | Demo

7. Zinmag Remedy

Info & Download | Demo

8. Gallery

Info & Download | Demo

9. Mainstream

Info & Download | Demo

10.

Info & Download | Demo

I hope you enjoyed part two of my beautiful blogger templates series. Remember to Subscribe to Blogging Tips as I will be showcasing another 10 beautiful blogger themes next week.

Good luck

Kevin

Therefore over the next few weeks I will be showing you some of my favourite templates available for Blogger. I hope you enjoy todays list

10 Beautiful Blogger Templates

1. Imprezz

Info & Download | Demo

2. Evidens

Info & Download | Demo

3. Iirresistible

Info & Download | Demo

4. FalknerPress

Info & Download | Demo

5. Personal Blog

Info & Download | Demo

6. Mosaicus

Info & Download | Demo

7. SchemerMag

Info & Download | Demo

8. Rockstar

Info & Download | Demo

9. Twitter Blogger

Info & Download | Demo

10. BloggerTube

Info & Download | Demo

Make sure you Subscribe to Blogging Tips as I will be showcasing another 10 beautiful blogger themes next week.

Thanks for reading

Kevin

Those of us who are still with Blogger or plan to shift to Blogger(or Blogspot) will find the following snapshots enlightening and amusing. The first snapshot is of the Official Google blog (439 errors, 171 warnings) and the second one is of the Gmail blog (464 errors, 214 warnings) analyses from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Markup Validation Service. Read the help page on the said site if you are wondering about markup validation and would like to know more. All snapshots are dated 12 February 2010.

Let’s try WordPress.com now (with the default doctype). See the result below (though with XHTML 1.0 strict doctype it gave 14 errors and 1 warning).

Thanks to Richard for the hat tip.

In the spring, it rains a lot but it usually doesn’t flood.
And in the winter, it snows, but we’re not snowed in.

That is, until the snows started about two weeks ago. The first night, it was kind of fun. It was a Friday night, so we all holed in with our beers, our movies and plenty of milk, bread and toilet paper to keep any families happy.

One foot of snow later, thousands of us were sitting in the dark. The rest of us didn’t have cable television that worked. We’re not hardy people here in Ohio, and we’ve got short attention spans. It doesn’t take long before we start getting bored — usually about a half hour after the lights go out, in fact. But that’s usually okay, because, again, we don’t have extreme weather patterns here. A weekend snow is plowed away by Monday, and life goes on as usual.Yeah, right.
It has not stopped snowing here in more than two weeks. The kids have only gone to school one day. I have two 100-pound Labs that normally love playing in the snow.
It’s up to their chests now. The thrill is gone.
Our parking lots have snow mountains in them. We actually had someone get in trouble with the law a couple of days ago for smacking someone with a snow shovel who had dared to take his dug-out on-street parking space.
And the fun goes on.
The latest Facebook rumor going on amongst my contacts and friends is that there is a mammoth snowstorm coming. The biggest snow in years! We’re getting 40 inches of snow in one night! Fifty inches! It won’t all melt until JULY, for heaven’s sake!
So being the kind of geeky computer blogging person I am, I decided that enough was enough of the rumors. I decided to go on an Internet search and find some of the more creative ways other people around the country are passing their snowbound days.
And now in addition to being bored, I’m impressed and intimidated by the sites and articles I’ve found. You folks have some great ways of passing your snowed-in days.
So here’s some funnies I’ve found so far:

http://www.snowpanic.com/ This blog’s owners say they’ve been tracking the  “Snowpocalypse” since 2009, and freely invite visitors to send in some of the best examples of panic and dismay brought about because of the ongoing snow falls. There’s photos of bread aisles where the bread’s all been sold, tales of neighborhood people threatening plow drivers with bodily harm, and many more all-too-funny examples of the ways these snow storms are causing panic in even the more seasoned weather watchers. Pretty funny stuff!

http://vondrook.com OK, I love a good zombie movie. So when I came across this very creative snow post, “In Preparation of Snowstorm, Citizens Go Out for Eggs, Cannibalism,” I naturally had to stop to enjoy it.  After all, how can you pass up an article that starts out “As a major winter storm was heading towards the east coast, citizens ventured to their nearest grocery stores in hopes of stocking up on foodstuffs, which typically turned into violent bloodshed and cannibalism … The lines were long, sure, but at least everyone was patient; that is, until, the Weather Service declared a ‘Winter Storm Watch.’ After that, it was every man, woman, and child for themselves.” Very funny stuff! And so descriptive of the lines I see at the local grocery store every time the forecasters get too excited.

And if you think you’re safe from ridicule, you’re not, as long as so many people have cell phones with cameras on them. Don’t believe me? Check out this slice of life photograph of snow panic at the grocery store.

What’s really great about all these blogs and bloggers? They’ve taken what the rest of us only sit around and complain about, and made something entertaining out of it.  Those blogs might not make their owners a lot of money, but they are entertaining, they get lots of traffic, and best of all, they’re good examples of what blogging is really all about — using the Internet to communicate the goings-on of the day.

Seen any good winter blogs lately? We’d love to hear about them!

Here is the Issue

When you simply install TweetMeme and you don’t get into the settings then every RT will show up as “RT @tweetmeme… your blog post and link“. So, when someone re-tweets your post you don’t get the mention in the twitter stream. So their followers don’t know that you were the one who wrote the post. If you want the credit then you need to change the attribution field in the TweetMeme settings to your twitter id. That way when someone clicks the TweetMeme Retweet button you see “RT @BenSpark… my post and link“.

Edit your TweetMeme Options in WordPress

I wrote about this on my blog BenSpark.com in post titled You Are Using TweetMeme Wrong. That post explains thoroughly how to make changes and edits to TweetMeme on your WordPress Blog. After I wrote that post I was on a mission to educate as many people as I could about this error that many were perpetuating. The thing is, many people are using TweetMeme on Blogger. With Blogger things are a little different. I didn’t know how to make things work in Blogger so I went and looked into the issue.

Edit your TweetMeme Options in Blogger

I believe that this will work for any blogging platform that you use where you post this TweetMeme code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

However, if you simply attach this code then you get the same issue as I described above. You have to add some additional code to make this TweetMeme button your own.

All you need to do to get the TweetMeme button is install this code below:

<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_source = 'tweetmeme';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

Once you install this you just need to change this line of code tweetmeme_source = ‘tweetmeme’; to tweetmeme_source = ‘Your Twitter Name’. Once you do that you are good to go. Now when people use your TweetMeme button you will get the credit for the posts that you write.

For more options to edit the code for the TweetMeme button please check out the TweetMeme help page.

After all, I’m getting ready to celebrate the 10th anniversary of my 37th birthday (you do the math), so of course, anything that seems like it’s age-related is just jumping out at me.

So the headline “Is blogging a slog? Some young people think so” hit me almost as hard as the ma’ams do when I’m out buying groceries.

According to a study done by a group at Harvard, kids just aren’t finding blogging cool anymore. Since they’re all so busy texting away, their forms of communication have also become a lot shorter.

Instead of putting their efforts into maintaining blog entries, they’re putting their thoughts, aspirations and advertising copy out there on places like Twitter, where they can do them in 140 character bits, rather than on websites that require more work and time.

But just what is everyone tweeting about? The best tweets — and the ones that get re-tweeted — are about, you guessed it, blogs.

So even with this disheartening news about the younger Internet users turning to quicker takes for more instant gratification, is there still room for good blogging?

Of course there is. Because, with all the quickness and immediacy of tweeting and texting, there remains one thing missing — great content.

After all, while you can get your points out there really fast with a quick text, there really isn’t room for much more than a few words by doing that.

How can you share your political thoughts, your how-tos, or even a great recipe for homemade salsa when you’re limiting yourself to just a few choice words?

According to the article, younger people haven’t entirely abandoned blogging. They’re still using it for working purposes. However, the thrill has gone for those users, and they’re turning to more immediate communications and video to communicate their most pressing issues.

So how do we bring it all together again? The answer is simple — take a look at your blog and see if it’s keeping up with the times.

Are your posts way too long? Are you taking forever to get to the point?

And when you’re writing, are you paying close attention to what someone could grab onto and retweet? Or are you just going on and on about subjects that nobody really cares about but you?

When was the last time you updated your blog? I mean really updated it? When did you make your graphics easy to use? Include a video or a game that readers would find entertaining?

And are you using those new-fangled ways to communicate yourself? Do you have a Twitter account? They’re great for contacting other professionals in your field, and for putting the word out there yourself about what you’ve written.

Keeping your blogs exciting does take a lot of work. However, abandoning the use of a good blog is a big mistake. After all, we all have something to share — and blogs give all of us a great opportunity to share what we know with the world.

Our wonder at this particular phenomenon of 2009 has caused us to speak about the very thing we’re using to speak about things, creating a dizzying cycle of correspondence, self-promotion and link leads. More importantly to you, however, is whether or not Twitter’s status as the most spoken word of 2009 can be of benefit to you as a blogger.

If you blog about the right stuff, then any topic of interest could be of benefit to you. Depending on the area in which you blog, Twitter could be a very useful topic for gaining the attention of your readers, and luring in new audiences. The very act of talking about Twitter makes for a double-take on any headline running through a person’s news feed. Being such a prominent topic of interest means that it’s hard to go wrong when talking about Twitter. So why not join the bandwagon?

Blogging about Twitter is particularly enticing because it always seems to be in the news. If you blog ofen about current events, then you will have daily fodder for your blog as long as Twitter is around (theoretically speaking). Twitter is making its way into nearly every aspect of our lives, touching us on the mobile and web front, penetrating our news channel discussions and becoming the butt of jokes made on mobile network commercials. The fact of the matter remains–Twitter is a very relevant topic for just about anything you desire to discuss.

That makes it a very appealing topic for a blogger of any sort. Whether you talk about fashion or marketing, current events or tools of the trade, there is likely to be some way in which you can relate a blog article right back to Twitter. This is a dangerous trap if you fall prey to it on a regular basis, as you can overspecialize your content and find yourself in a writing rut.

As a social media blogger I often find myself writing about Twitter all too often. It seems as though there is only so much one can say about a microblogging platform that has finally hit the J curve. Nevertheless, i recognize its place in the future of social media and recognize the importance of mentioning its ongoing development as it pertains to my line of work.

If you are looking to increase your viewership, I would recommend writing about Twitter whenever it is relevant to your existing mission for your blog. This means that you should first use Twitter on a regular enough basis that you familiarize yourself with the microblgging platform as much as possible. From there you will be better able to speak on Twitter as it comes up in the news or as an area of interest for your blogging needs.

Latching heavily onto the bandwagon of heavily discussed topics on the web, however, is very similar to chasing money. If your primary goal with blogging about Twitter is to generate more revenue from your blog, then the sincerity surrounding your article about Twitter will likely be a dismal front. As with Twitter interactions, remaining genuine in your approach to blogging about any topic will convey an enrgy that your readers will pick up on, appreciate, and return to your blog for at a later time.

Before I jump in, I would also like to note that writing can improve with practice and exercise. As with learning to ride a bike, repeated and dedicated behavior towards the act of writing can help you improve your skills. You may find that certain aspects of your writing seem to take a life on their own, presenting some of the perks of having a portion of your brain operate on auto-pilot.

I am not saying that creating a comprehensive sentence, paragraph or article is a process that can be placed successfully on auto-pilot, as much as term paper-writing high school students would love to have such a service. I am merely pointing out that, as a writer, you can focus on the creative side of transcribing your thoughts if you have reached a certain point where things like grammar become an afterthought.

Sentence structure is particularly important for writers, and it is a particularly difficult concept to fully appreciate for many that were never taught about such things. When broken down, however, it is easier to recognize the parts that make up a sentence, and how to best use a sentence’s structure for conveying one’s thoughts.

Tarrying Tenses

When breaking up a sentence with commas, it is easy to lose yourself in the actual structure of that sentence. The trick I remember is to carry over your tense once you pass a comma (or merely continue a sentence). If you began a sentence in past tense, continue the sentence in past tense. When using multiple adjectives or verbs, make sure that the tense used remains the same throughout the entire sentence. A sentence flows better if you use the tense in the same format throughout the entire sentence.

Take the following sentence for example:

“The dog ran across the field, jumped over a fallen tree and hid behind the shed.”

The verbs used are in past tense. If the word “jumping” had been used instead of “jumped.” It is not so important to remember if a verb is phrasal, or if you are using past present tense precisely. Just remember to carry on whichever tense you are using, throughout the entire sentence.

Pronouns are Parallel

Similar to the trick of tarrying tenses, pronouns in a sentence also need to be carried through a sentence correctly. This is especially easy to pick out when a sentence has a list of some sort.

Take the following sentence for example:

“The rose is particularly beautiful in the summer, and a plant to be fully appreciated when nurtured and cared for.”

The rose itself has the starring role in your sentence, giving you a foundation around which to build your sentence. The trick here is to (mentally) remove the comma and create two separate sentences in order to ensure that your pronouns, verbs and adjectives are being used correctly. If the sentence were broken into two, they would read as follows:

“The rose is particularly beautiful in the summer.”
“The rose is a plant to be fully appreciated when nurtured and cared for.”

You will note that if the word “is” or “a” is taken out of the second sentence, then it would no longer make sense. Likewise, removing these words from the initial sentence would not make sense either.

If you take the first three words of the sentence, you will notice that those three words can create a sentence independently. The rest of the sentence is mere description, and needs to be aligned to fit the tense of your sentence core. Breaking down a sentence into these readily recognizable components makes it easier to see where you need to align your pronouns, giving your sentences speedy cohesiveness.

Run-ons Ruin

Have you ever listened to a compulsive story-teller that spends ten minutes just getting to the point of their tale? Run-ons are much like these story-tellers; they are full of unnecessary redundancies. It is easier for readers to consume your content when they do not have to process such large sentences.

The trick here is to figure out the best place to break up your sentence. A run-on can easily be broken down into two sentences or more. Just ensure that your new, broken-up sentences still make sense in their independence. Keep things simple. This simplicity will maintain the flow of your article, and make it easier for people to read your content.

I came across a question recently regarding the text used to invite a user to sign up to a websites newsletter. There are many examples of this and many sites do it in a different way. Here on blogging tips for example there is no text next for the icons at the top for Twitter or Facebook but further down the sidebar is an inviting form asking if you would like to sign up to the newsletter. It is better to have a clear call to action but do icons do enough to convince your users to signup? The icons representing Twitter, Facebook and RSS are all icons that for many are a standard image that is seen on the Internet and will be enough for a user to understand that they can use those to view the respective information. However is this enough for a user that is not a regular internet user?

The most popular call to action we see on the Internet is “Click here”. This is by far one of the most frustrating things I see on the Internet, yet so many people still use it. Why do I detest it so much? With a call to action like this it doesn’t convey anything there is no message as why they should click here or any thought about any users who are not using a web browser. If you read this out of context then what does Click here actually mean? Not only does it not help a user but if you are doing this then you are also missing out on an opportunity to help your search results with relative linking.

A lot of people do believe this is enough to motivate a person to click but if you think about it does it mean that your website is not designed in such a way that the user doesn’t know what a link is? Your website should be intuitive for the user to know what to click and what not click then all you need to worry about is the content that they will be reading.

A “Click here” link doesn’t give your user enough information on actions you expect him or her to make. It also doesn’t show clearly the benefits subscriber will get if they finally click on it.

While designing a particular call to action you should not forget to think about three elements:

• The action you want the subscriber to take
• The reason why they should take this action
• The design (text, image, location).

The design of the call to action is just as important as the action itself. The colours you choose to use for the link or for a button for example can be the key to a user finding the link and thinking about clicking it.

Different colours have different effects on your users.

Using red for example on a link can be a good way to attract your users to the link in the first place as it is very bright. Yellow is another great colour to use as it one of the first colours the eye picks up, of course this also depends on the surrounding colours on your website. Orange is a good colour to use as it is bright and cheerful. Blue is not a great colour to use for buy it now buttons as it is a very calm colour. Have a play with some different colours on your website and see how each colour works for you.

Once you have your call to action ready you also need think about how the call to action will guide the user around the website. You need to think about the path they will go on as they go from one page to another. You may want them to see a service you offer on the homepage but on the service page you will want them to contact you or buy from you so think about each page they will encounter.

In this post, I’ll explain how to create a very simple Gadget which draws upon Blogger feeds to create a simple “subscription” gadget which you can install in your Blogger blog. Unlike regular “widget installers”, anyone who installs this gadget in their blog will not need to input their blog’s URL in order to retrieve the blog feeds: instead, the blog feed will be generated automatically by the gadget.

The basic structure of a Blogger gadget

To create a gadget for Blogger, we first need to understand the basic structure we will be working with.

Gadgets for Blogger (and Google) are constructed of XML files. Don’t worry if you have no experience with XML – provided you can use a bit of HTML you can easily create a gadget using this tutorial!

This is how a really basic gadget is coded:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget">
   // More Module Preferences go here
</ModulePrefs>

 <Content type="html">
 <![CDATA[

    HTML content goes here

 ]]>

 </Content>
</Module>

We’re going to use this structure to build a simple gadget which wil retrieve the posts feed of the Blogger blog it is installed on to create a “subscription” link.

To achieve this, we need to utilize some “Module Preferences” for the Gadget, and a little bit of JavaScript.

Module Preferences for creating our simple subscription gadget

When we create our gadget, we can add a number of “module preferences” to our gadget which create interactive functions.

In the example above, you can see I added a title to the gadget (title=”A Sample Gadget”).  We could also add the name and URL of the author, like this:

<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget"
author="Amanda Fazani"
description="Testing a sample gadget"
author_email="foobar@mail.com"
height="200">

Beneath this section in the example gadget above, you will notice a section where we can add more Module Preferences.

Here we can add some “required features” which enable us to parse and display aspects of the blog feed in which the gadget is installed.

To create our simple subscription gadget, we need to use the google.blog feature. This feature relies on the opensocial-0.7 feature (a current bug in the system, which should be resolved soon) so we need to include this feature too.

Here’s how to include these required features in our sample gadget:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget">
 <Require feature="opensocial-0.7"/>
 <Require feature="google.blog"/>
</ModulePrefs>

 <Content type="html">
 <![CDATA[

HTML content goes here

 ]]>

 </Content>
</Module>

The google.blog function enables us to retrieve elements of the blog feed. Using this feature, we can call:

• The main posts feed URL
• The main posts feed as JSON
• The main comments feed URL
• The main comments feed as JSON
• Post and comment feeds for individual post pages, as both the feed URL and JSON

These elements (and the code required to call them) are documented fully in the Blogger Gadgets documentation. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll concentrate only on retrieving the URL of the main posts feed.

Retrieving the URL of the Blog Post Feed

In order to retrieve the URL of the post feed, we need to tell the google.blog function to retrieve the URL for us, which we can then display in the gadget.

Here’s where it gets a little complicated

In order to retrieve the blog feed from google.blog, we need to pass a pair of arguments. This is because google.blog loads the feeds asynchronously, so it doesn’t stop the browser from “hanging” (freezing the page).

The pair of arguments consists of:

• A function to call after the blog is loaded: this will tell the gadget to retrieve the feed URL and what we want to do with this URL
• a call to google.blog and window.name (which prevents the browser from hanging).

We’re going to call these functions using JavaScript, which is added between the <![CDATA[ and ]]> tags, like this:

<script type="text/javascript">

 function getFeedUrl() {
 document.write(viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl());   // This gets the posts feed and writes it in the gadget
}

 var viewFeeds = new google.Blog(getFeedUrl, window.name);  // This tells the gadget to load the function (getFeedUrl) after the blog is loaded

 </script>

The tag

viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl()
  

is the function we use to collect the URL of the posts feed.

When we add this script to our sample gadget, this should output something like this:

Now that we’ve been able to get the URL of the posts feed and write it in our gadget, we can make this URL into a clickable link using a little more JavaScript, like this:

<script type="text/javascript">

 function getFeedUrl() {
 document.write("<a href='" + viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl() + "'>Subscribe to Posts<\/a>");
}

 var viewFeeds = new google.Blog(getFeedUrl, window.name);

 </script>

With this extra JavaScript, the output of our gadget will look like this:

Here is the complete XML code for our simple subscription widget:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget">
 <Require feature="opensocial-0.7"/>
 <Require feature="google.blog"/>
 </ModulePrefs>

 <Content type="html">
 <![CDATA[
 <script type="text/javascript">

 function getFeedUrl() {
 document.write("<a href='" + viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl() + "'>Subscribe to Posts<\/a>");
}

 var viewFeeds = new google.Blog(getFeedUrl, window.name);

 </script>

 ]]>

 </Content>
</Module>

To test this gadget, copy the code above into a simple text editor (my favourite is Notepad ++) and save the file as sample.xml.

You can then upload your XML file to your web host, and note down the URL of your gadget which will enable you to add this gadget to your blog. Alternatively you can download/use the URL for this sample gadget: download sample gadget (XML file).

Adding Blogger Gadgets to your Blog

To add (or test) Blogger gadgets in your blog, go to Layout>Page Elements in your Blogger dashboard. Choose the section where you would like to add your gadget and click on the “Add a gadget” link.

On the pop-up page, you need to click the link which says:  “Add your own”.

Then paste the URL of your gadget in the space provided:

When you click “Add by URL” you should be presented with a preview of how the gadget will appear in your blog. You can then click “Save” to place the gadget in your Blogger layout, and move the position as with any regular widgets/gadgets that you add.

What else can we do with this gadget?

In the second part of this mini-series, I’ll explain how to utilise “User preferences” to create interactive elements for your gadget. This tutorial will enable you to write a more complex gadget where users can change the “Subscribe to Posts” link to whatever text is preferred, and also to add an optional feed icon to the widget.

You may have also noticed that the Gadget uses default styles for the background, text and link color. Blogger’s new API for gadgets enables us to parse the colour scheme of the blog and style our gadgets so they blend with the overall layout. So in part three of this series, I’ll explain how to utilize the “skins” feature to create gadgets which blend with the layout of the blog in which they are produced.

Final thoughts

I hope this tutorial has provided enough information to use the updated API to create gadgets for Blogger which use the google.blog function to retrieve the URL of the posts feed.

Please feel free to build upon this basic gadget for your own purposes and let me know what you think by leaving your comments below.