feedburner Archives - Fairy Blog Mother

Magic Moments: Restricted use of HTML

Posted on Wednesday 30 May 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

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One of the differences between WordPress.com and .org is what you can or can’t do with HTML and widgets.

refers to .com blog

Widgets are small pieces of programming or applications that are designed to be placed in the sidebars. WordPress.com provides a very good selection for you to use, all perfectly satisfactory for creating a basic blog. But these do have some restrictions for what you can do with them, and placing HTML that hasn’t been approved by WordPress in the text widgets is one of them.

This has caused many disgruntled bloggers to come to me to say “it’s not working properly!” They see the wonderful results of HTML that does work on WordPress.org blogs, and when they try to produce the same results they are bitterly disappointed.

You can’t expect all the singing-and-dancing benefits from WordPress.org on your .com blog if you are not playing for it. Be grateful that you get Akismet for free, and accept that the Twitter Badges’ code cannot be placed into the text widgets and allowed to work, likewise with videos and podcasts placed inside posts (this facility has been withdrawn as a result of the most recent WordPress.com redesign).

But certain widgets have been created as compensation. It used to be almost impossible to place an image within a text widget, because it required simple HTML. Now there is an Image widget that allows you to upload the URL of a previously uploaded image from the media gallery, and everything is done for you, including title, alt tags, caption, alignment, dimensions and a link to elsewhere, all perfect for enhancing your SEO.

There is a Facebook Like Box widget that connects with your Facebook Page and a link to the page and how many have ‘liked’ it. You have the choice of showing some examples of your fans’ avatars, your profile stream or your Page’s wall activity.

The Follow Blog widget allows your readers to subscribe to your latest posts, instead of having to create a Feedburner RSS feed and placing the code in a text widget (although this HTML is generally allowed). You can change the wording and call to action within the sign up box without having to worry about HTML.

And even if you can’t place a Twitter Badge on your WordPress.com blog, the Twitter widget that displays your latest tweets is a very good substitute, accompanied by a good choice of beneficial add-ons.

I’m amazed at what you can do to optimise your WordPress.com blog. But – if you still hanker after all the other gimzos that you see on other blogs, then you will have to take the leap and transfer your posts and pages onto a WordPress.org blog, and then the world will be your oyster!

Make it easy for your readers to take action

Posted on Thursday 25 August 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

The whole point of a blog is that it enables your readers to interact with you. That is the beauty of Web2.0, and sets it apart from static websites that just sit there looking pretty (if you’re lucky) and boring (if you’re complacent).

So to make the experience of visiting your blog exciting for your readers, there are loads of apps and widgets at your disposal to upload and activate, which will keep your visitors really busy!

I don’t expect you to put everything available into your blog, or it will look like a dog’s breakfast and nobody will be able to choose what to do next, and will probably result in them running away! But there are some elements that should be present if you are to maintain the interaction a blog deserves.

One is to encourage some sort of subscription service. There are so many ways of doing this, varying from sophisticated sign up boxes to buttons you press after making a comment. For me it is important to make it very obvious to the reader that you want them to subscribe, and to stage it so they literally fall over the methods for doing so. I have often landed on a really good blog that has interested me, and wanted to keep in touch with the latest posts, only to hunt drastically around the site to look for a method of subscription, even to sign up to a RSS feed.

Of course RSS feeds always don’t fulfill my needs. I hate it when it merely leads to bookmarking the blog from my browser bar – I can’t be bothered to check that every day for new posts. What I am looking for is something that sends the newly-published posts to my in-box or to a reader in my search engine provider. This can be accomplished by creating a RSS URL through Feedburner (or equivalent), or using the various plugins or widgets available from WordPress. Read about one of them here: Don’t leave your WP greet box plugin undone.

Sharing is almost a requisite for blogs, as it has become commonplace to retweet a good post on Twitter or to share it on one of the many social bookmarking sites. This should definitely be encouraged, especially if you want to increase the traffic to your blog or expose it to a larger audience. There are lots of apps available to enable sharing, from individual transactions to collective mechanisms that allow the reader a choice in wherever he wants to promote your post. Even WordPress.com have a simple version: read Sharing is easy on WordPress.com to learn more.

These are just two interactive activities you could place on your blog, and there are many more to choose from which can enhance your blog’s performance and increase its interest factor. Just examine the widgets available for WordPress.com, and check out the myriad of plugins available for WordPress.org, and do a bit of experimenting. If you don’t know what to expect, take a look at other blogs you admire to find out what they have to offer, and then see if you can find a way of emulating the same functions that take your fancy or stimulate you to take action!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, social networking

Magic Moment: Sidebar subscription service

Posted on Tuesday 16 August 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

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In the e-course ‘Setting up a RSS feed’, I show you how to go into Feedburner, create a RSS URL, and how to paste the code for a subscription form for your blog into your sidebar.

But since I wrote the above, WordPress has created an easier way to add a subscription form to your blog. This is a follow-on from Magic Moment #1 when I showed you how to catch subscribers to your blog through the comments box.

Magic Moment #6 shows you how to install the widget (special blogging application) for a subscription form into your sidebar.

Look for ‘Appearance’ on your left sidebar and open it to reveal ‘Widgets’.

It will open into the Widgets page:

Look for the widget called ‘Blog Subscriptions’ in the main body of the page, and drag it to the top of the sidebar on the right:

It will open up to look like this:

Change the wording to suit your requirements:

And don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button. Now go to your blog’s index page (by clicking on the name of your blog at the top of the WordPress page) and look at the new widget in the sidebar:

This is a simple subscription service that delivers your new post in email format to your subscribers’ in-boxes. It is much easier than the widget below created from my e-course stated at the beginning of this post. Nevertheless, if you want to create a RSS URL and have your posts automatically sent to search engine readers and homepage cookies, then the procedures in the e-course will provide the answer.

Filed Under: Blogging help, Free Wordpress blogs, marketing methods, online marketing

Don’t leave your WP greet box plugin undone

Posted on Thursday 21 July 2011 by Alice • 5 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

I often get frustrated when I find an excellent blog I want to subscribe to, only to find the RSS button or link leads to the bookmarking option. I hate bookmarking blogs, as it requires me to make an effort to click on my bookmarking tab, which I am obviously not going to do on a regular basis.

refers to WP.org

The default bookmarking feed is YourBlogURL/feed/rss, so I suggest this needs to be changed to a proper RSS feed via Google Feedburner (if you want to learn how to create a Feedburner RSS URL, then read the beginning of this e-course ‘Setting up a RSS feed’) which give the subscriber a choice of how they want to receive new posts – through a reader page or cookie on their Google Homepage. There I can glance over each day to see if any new posts have been published, keeping me in touch with what my fellow bloggers have been up to!

What is even more frustrating is when I come across WP Greet Boxes that are still in default mode, eg only leading to the bookmarking option. I, of course, have fully optimised my WP Greet Box (see the bottom of this post), so this post is to show you how to do the same.

Here is an unoptimised WP Greet Box:

And if you click on the link, you get the bookmarking option:

Location in 'Settings'

So after you’ve installed and activated your WP Greet Box plugin, you need to go into the settings of your WP Greet Box plugin to optimise it. Find its link in ‘Settings’ on the left hand sidebar:

Click on the link to go to the WP Greet Box page:

Here you have a complete list of all the different social media platforms your WP Greet Box will work in (there is a much more extensive list than shown here). You will need your RSS URL and other feed and social networking URLs at your disposal, as each entry can be optimised according to its nature.

Let’s concentrate on the default option at the top:

You can see I have optimised it, compared to the example at the beginning of this post. To do this, click on ‘Edit’ at the top right:

The simplest thing you can do is to change the Greeting Icon Link to your Feedburner RSS URL, so the subscriber will have more options to subscribe to your blog.

And if you’re feeling more adventurous, why not change the Greeting message to something more personal, including your Feedburner RSS URL within it. It requires only simple HTML, and can make all the difference to the subscriber.

Once you’ve finished, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button, and then start optimising the next entry. It can take a bit of time, but let me assure you it is worth it!

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

What is RSS and what does it do?

Posted on Wednesday 13 April 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

One of the things I mentioned in my last post was RSS, or Really Simple Syndication.

Some people ‘get’ RSS, and there are others that don’t. It took me a while, partly because of the word ‘syndication’. Myriam Webster’s Learning Dictionary’s definition is: “to sell (something, such as a piece of writing, comic strip, or photograph) to many different newspapers or magazines for publication at the same time”.

It’s the words “at the same time” that is the crux. By using RSS, you are able to publish your posts not only in your blog, but in many different places simultaneously. Everyone who has subscribed to your blog (sort of like a magazine) will have requested to receive a copy of your latest post delivered to their inboxes or their search engine readers.

It doesn’t have to be your subscribing readership, you can use RSS to deliver your post to other media where it will be read by new, different, uninvolved, exciting people. This is a brilliant way of exposing your post to a myriad of potential subscribers, if not followers, even if it is in passing.

This is where your headline comes into play – that is why I’ve been stressing it needs to be catchy, informative, intriguing, educational, pertinent, inviting – it must strike a chord with its potential audience immediately or the opportunity will be lost, especially in social media where the pace is so fast.

You can get a RSS URL (special domain name for your blog’s RSS feed) from Google Feedburner, but most blogs provide a simple version automatically. It depends what you want to do with it.

The simple version opens the facility for you to bookmark the post – something I find unsatisfactory because you have to make the effort to click on the link to find out the latest contribution.

The RSS URL not only sets up the subscription service, but allows you to activate posting applications throughout social media so you can ‘syndicate’ (publish immediately in several places at once) your latest post automatically to an alternative audience who wouldn’t get the chance to see it otherwise.

It also means you don’t have to actively go around all the social media sites you are connected to, pasting up your post’s URL manually every time you publish, saving you time, inconvenience and not forgetting their access details.

And if you schedule your posts to publish to a more appropriate or convenient time, they will automatically appear when you’re busy doing something else more profitable. (I have a scheduling your posts e-course for that too!)

Of course this blog is meant to be a resource, so you can find out more by using the search facility, or by clicking on the following links: RSS Simply Explained, Setting up a RSS feed, and How to use Feedburner to feed into Twitter – enjoy!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, social networking

Blog review 3: dark, left and cloudy

Posted on Saturday 4 September 2010 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

One of the comments on another blog I write for requested a review of the blog pictured below, so here it is.

refers to .com blog

My first impression: it’s a bit dark. This is my personal opinion, as I have never liked dark backgrounds; I think they make reading text difficult (books have white backgrounds, so why not websites and blogs?). Also the white headlines are difficult to read against the grey background, which makes them not prominent or noticeable enough.

http://ogirlsays.wordpress.com

There is a trend towards having lots of black in web material, as many people prefer it. WordPress have increased the amount of templates available for their free blogs recently, many of which are excellent, while others accommodate different tastes.

This particular template has a left sidebar. Psychologists have discussed recently how a website’s or blog’s visitor perceives the content on their first visit, and a left sidebar has proven to be beneficial to presenting important material immediately, as we naturally read left to right (in the Western world).

Therefore it is necessary to place the most important elements of your sidebar at the top, such as the sign up form or link to subscribe to the blog (and not have it languishing forgotten at the bottom where it never gets noticed). This is a sure-fire way of increasing your readership, as subscribers will be notified whenever you next publish a new post. This facility can be improved via Feedburner from Google, to provide a RSS URL (to feed your blog into social networking sites).

I’ve just noticed the blog’s title, which is ‘Thinking of…’. This is pretty meaningless, especially as the page’s title is extremely important for SEO reasons. I suggest this should be changed to a phrase that succinctly describes the blog’s content, preferably using keywords, and this can be done in the Settings section found in the Dashboard’s left sidebar.

The elements at the top of this sidebar are a ‘Snoopy’ icon which does nothing, and a very large calendar. I suggest these are removed, as they are not necessary, to be replaced by the subscription button. The next item should be a widget which shows the most recent posts, encouraging the reader to venture further into your blog. The tag cloud is good, but the category cloud doesn’t work in this template, it should be changed to a simple category list. The Twitter feed app is also good, but is placed too far down. There is no widget that shows recent comments (unless you are not encouraging them) or a blogroll of recommended blogs and websites (all help towards out-going links and therefore SEO).

The content includes many links, which is very good, for the same reasons just stated above. Big bright pictures help maintain the interest factor and help emphasise what you are saying. You could increase your chances of a higher search engine take-up by including relevant and up-to-date keywords, as these will correspond with what people are talking about, and the popularity will pay off.

And don’t forget to post consistently – which is more important than frequently – and keep the content quality high. An interesting, well maintained blog will soon get the readership it deserves.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs

com versus org: which WordPress to use

Posted on Monday 12 April 2010 by Alice • 13 Comments

Both kinds of blog

WordPress is an extremely powerful yet very easy to manage blogging platform, or as Wikipedia describes it: “an open source blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL which can also be used for content management”. It is offered to the public in two forms.

First, there is the ‘free’ version (WordPress.com), where you don’t have to pay anything to set it up (very useful for blogging beginners), and there is the ‘self hosted’ version (WordPress.org), where you use your own host and domain name, with WordPress providing the software and accompanying applications (but you do need a certain amount of technical know-how to set it up).

free blogging platform

WordPress.com (‘free’) has many benefits. It is an excellent platform to learn how to blog. It is designed for the beginner or those with restricted budgets to get into the blogging world. It can be created in a matter of minutes with very limited technicalities, and everything is updated to the latest version automatically. WordPress provide a good selection of widgets (blogging features) and themes (templates), and the methods of creating and updating your blog have been made as easy as possible.

The disadvantages are that this kind of blog cannot be monetized. With strict blog police WordPress has the power to shut down your blog at any time. You lose control over your domain name as WordPress is always part of it. There are also restrictions on what you can put in your sidebar, as only certain HTML scripts are accepted; no sign-up forms, affiliate links or similar functions are possible. Other social media providers have recognized this, such as Feedburner, and alternative arrangements are offered.

self-hosted blogging platform

But once you’ve used the ‘free’ version for a while, and have got used to how WordPress works, then you can move on to the ‘self-hosted’ version. If you are not technically minded (understand the basics of HTML and PHP), or don’t have the patience to find out how, it would be wise to get someone to create this kind of blog for you. I spent many hours screaming at my computer while I was learning how to set up WordPress.org; it is by no means as easy as the ‘free’ alternative.

It does have many advantages. You can use your own domain name, so your blog can become a ‘blogsite’, with the pages performing as a website, but with far more search engine power. There are a variety of hosts who are compatible with WordPress, and my advice would be to use those who offer the ‘one click’ system through ‘Fantastico’. It will save you plenty of heart-ache and angst as much of the hard work is done for you automatically.

FileZilla

You can manage your blog through an FTP system (I use FileZilla) so you can upload themes, plug-ins and pictures. There are plenty of extra applications you could include on your blog, obtainable from WordPress for free, all designed to help with maximizing the performance of your blog and its relation to social media, plus thousands of different kinds of themes (templates) to choose from, both free and paid for.

The sidebars can accept most programming languages, so they can be easily monetized. You can put in social networking badges, picture links, sign-up forms, RSS feeds to Twitter and other blogs, affiliate links, advertisements, and much more besides. There is a huge quantity of plug-ins available to download from WordPress that will help enhance your blog. You can also change many features of your themes, to rearrange how your blog looks to match your corporate image or preferred style.

So which one is best? It depends what you want your blog for: just somewhere to post your thoughts and aspirations, or a powerful alternative to a website with an integrated content management system, search engine compatibility and many other features to blast your way through the web. Both will raise your profile, expose your expertise and, with longevity and consistent content, will gain high status in the search engines; both will look good, perform well and satisfy your blogging needs; and, depending on your blogging past history, one will be the right one for you at this time.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, online marketing, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Widgets and more for WaltonPR

Posted on Tuesday 6 April 2010 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

I do like the chance to review a blog from time to time, so that I can show what elements of a blog could be added to enhance it and improve it to make it more successful.

But ‘successful’ is so subjective. It’s important never to lose sight of the fact that people have different perceptions of what their blog should be, what’s it for, what they are trying to achieve, what they think looks nice. Does your blog have to look nice to guarantee it does incredibly well? Usually success is due to the personality and reputation of the author, plus the quality and consistency of the posts, how old the blog is (longevity certainly stimulates the search engine index criteria), the subject matter or niche, and how extensively the blog has been fed to the blogging directories and other social networks.

I look forward to reviewing other blogs (with the author’s permission) in the future, but today I shall use a brand new blog to highlight a few things that could be done to enhance it.

Both kinds of blog

First of all I would like to congratulate Emma on starting her blog. This is a fantastic step she’s taken, and her first post is extremely good. She’s avoided the boring ‘welcome to my blog’ post, and has launched into her news with great gusto! Long may it continue Emma, I look forward to the next one. (Incidently, by the time you read this post I sincerely hope she will have written many more!)

The theme’s colour matches her website, and I note that she has a pink flamingo for her logo: perhaps some more attention could be drawn it. The descriptive header has a quote explaining her profession and her logo links back to her website.

RSS from Feedburner

I note she hasn’t put many widgets in her sidebar. One of the most important elements to include would be a RSS feed. Subscribe to Feedburner to create a RSS URL, and obtain a chicklit (the litttle orange square so commonly recognised as RSS) to feed her blog to a search engine reader page, plus a sign-up form to collect readers’ email addresses so they can receive her new posts in their in-boxes.

social media links

Emma, why not encourage your readers to connect with you on social networking sites? Use the relevant badges and buttons that are available, or alternatively use images of each social media and link them to your relevant profile page. You could also use a widget to show your latest Twitter feeds, obtainable from the ‘Goodies’ link right at the bottom of your Twitter profile, which can be customised accordingly.

Widgets used so far on her sidebar

If you’re new to blogging, think carefully about your categories, or topics, that subdivide your blog’s niche or subject into manageable chunks. These are used for archiving or finding posts within a particular area, and also help the search engines to search for new content. Once created they will be listed in the categories widget, and remember to allocate your posts to them before you publish. I also note you’ve included a tag (keywords) cloud widget; when you post more you’ll see the most frequently used tags increase in size to show their importance.

share your post on social media

Add to your recent posts widget one for the most popular posts, and one to show the comments your readers leave you. Text widgets are suitable for pictures, icons linking to elsewhere, to contain code for special effects or badges, list testimonials or quotes, and anything else you’d like to share with your readers. Use a plug-in (blog application available from WordPress.org) to enable your readers to share your post on social media if they like what they read, excellent for wider exposure and to increase your audience.

And last, but not least, don’t forget to update your About page. People like reading about the author, and it gives you a chance to plug your business, add in testimonials, and paste in a nice picture of yourself. And there is no reason why you can’t add in more pages that could enhance your blog’s subject matter, or explain your business further. This blog has over 20 pages (so far) to present my free blogging resources, so the world could be your oyster!

If you would like to learn more about any of these suggestions, ask the fairy blog mother by clicking on her logo at the top!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, social networking

How to use Feedburner to feed into Twitter

Posted on Monday 21 December 2009 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

This is yet another way to feed your blog posts into Twitter, along with Tweetmeme, Twitterfeed.com and a plug-in called ‘WP to Twitter’.

You should subscribe to Feedburner to activate subscriptions to your blog. Any followers who want to keep an eye on your blogging activities will then be able to receive new posts once they are published, either direct into their search engine readers or as emails into their in-boxes.

The ‘Publicize’ tag makes available a number of extras to help promote your blog, and one of them is called ‘Socialize’ (the highlighted one in the left hand sidebar in the picture below) which allows your new posts to be published in Twitter.

Your Twitter followers will then be able to read your latest blog post, which is automatically tweeted with a shortened link. As you can see at the bottom, you can adapt the tweet with a pre-text message if necessary.

You will need to allow Feedburner to communicate with your Twitter account, and tick the ‘include link’ and ‘leave room for retweets’ boxes. Don’t forget to activate the application, and the job is done!

So why should you feed your posts into Twitter? This increases your blog’s audience through your Twitter followers, therefore exposing it to a higher number of possible subscribers and commenters.

Never be worried about multiple tweets of your blog posts, as Twitter is an ever-moving phenomenon that has continuous traffic (a bit like a train station) that never stands still, so mass tweeting will always catch someone new who is passing by who might just appreciate your post enough to subscribe to your blog.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, online marketing

Blogging less can be effective too

Posted on Friday 3 July 2009 by Alice • 2 Comments

I would like to reprint a portion of a post How to get more time to blog by Michael Martine of Remarkablogger, Blog Consultant and Blog Coach. I hope he doesn’t mind, but it raised some points that I wanted to share with you and hope you would find interesting.

Blog Less

Despite the fact that nearly every blog-advice blogger on the planet says you should blog every day, quality is much more important than quantity when it comes to blogging (most people aren’t successful, so why is doing everything they do a good idea? Hmm?). I’ve seen this first hand for myself, ever since I dropped down from seven posts a week to 5, and now I’m down to a whopping single post per week. Did I kill my business? No! In fact, my subscriber count and my income are up, up, up! (Some of you are aware of FeedBurner recently adding FriendFeed subscribers in with feed counts, which raised everyone’s feed subscriber counts overnight — I’m talking about an increase I saw before FeedBurner made this change.)

It’s true that in some ways, posting every day or even more than once a day can grow your blog’s audience. Certainly it will help with blog SEO, but maybe not as much as you might think. In my own example, I’m writing bigger, meatier blog posts that are absolutely my best writing. The result is that each post gets more trackbacks and more traffic. The more backlinks a webpage gets, the more authority it has in Google’s eyes, which is ultimately better for SEO.

Having more posts indexed by Google but getting fewer trackbacks or less influence & reach is not an even trade. Quality is better than quantity. If you make people happy, you’ll also make Google happy. And if you make Google happy, Google will make you happy when you see your PageRank numbers and search engine rankings.

Blogging less leaves me more time to do important stuff like spend time with my granddaughter and really be there for her in her life as she grows up (I just got her her first kite, and now we’re waiting for a day with some breeze in it — I can’t wait!). Blogging less also allows me to make more money, because I have more time to create and promote information products or maintain my network.

You just don’t need to blog everyday (but you do need to be consistent). What you need is to blog about stuff your audience can’t live without. You need to blog about stuff they want to spread to their friends and link to in their own blogs and on social media.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging

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