Blogging Tips and Social Media | Mint Blogger

Image Credit: jmille

Whenever someone follows you, he scans your twitter profile and creates an impression about you before pressing the follow button. For example, my twitter profile gives an impression of a person who will tweet about bloggings tips and social media marketing techniques. When someone is following me, he is expecting to get relevant tweets from me as mentioned in my profile. What will happen if I start to tweet just about anything under the sun?

Get Involved in Twam (Twitter Spam)

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One of the best way to loose your followers is to use twitter as a hard core marketing tool. Sending direct tweets about selling your products to your followers is the most annoying and irritating experience for them.

Sell Your Twitter Account

You worked hard and created a decent twitter profile with thousands of followers. Suddenly one day you announce to sell your twitter account. Now at this point, about 5-10% of followers will immediately stop following you. Rest will use the wait and watch policy. If the deal is matured, a large number of followers will leave your twitter stream.

Create One Way Traffic

Image Credit: Zahra

Entertaining the followers tweet is an essential part of creating a strong twitter profile. If you create a one way traffic by just shooting endless stream of tweets without responding to any of the tweet of your followers, they will eventually un-follow you.

Monetize Your Twitter Stream

How about getting an 'ad tweet' from your fellow twitter after every 5 tweets he posts? Not feeling good? Well, most of us have the same feeling. Services like Magpie, monetizes your twitter stream by atomically inserting ad tweets in between your regular tweets. What a wonderful way to kill your twitter account.

Take Long Breaks

Consistency is the key to a strong twitter profile. Taking long breaks and frequently changing your tweeting time at odd hours leads to decline in followers count. Create a tweet agenda and stick to it.

How To Get Backlinks To Your Blog

2008-11-15T04:04:00.001-08:00

Every blogger try his very best to acquire backlinks for his blog in different ways. Links coming from various sources that are relevant to the niche elevates the ranking of your content in SERP's. Although there are so many ways to gather backlinks, I would prefer not to discuss about various less popular and black hat techniques to acquire backlinks. Let's see how can we inflate our backlink count using some very effective techniques.

Comment On Do-Follow Blogs

There are hundreds of do-follow blogs that are a good source of acquiring backlinks for your blog. Create a list of do-follow blogs that are relevant to your niche and religiously comment on these blogs. Do not spam the blog and devote some time in giving useful and constructive comments. Blogs having do-follow links enabled have strict commenting policies, and any spammer is instantly kicked out.

Guest Blogging

I myself use this method to acquire backlinks as well as exposure for my blog. Build relationships with fellow bloggers and submit a guest post for their blogs. Often some bloggers commit a mistake of creating a filler post for the guest post. Remember, its all about your credibility and reputation. If the content is not for your own blog that doesn't mean you can afford to create a filler post. Giving your very best gives you the required traffic and of course a backlink.

Co-Author a Blog

Once you get popular and start to get known in your domain, there are many blog co-authoring opportunities. You can also search on Google about various opportunities of co-authoring a blog. Negotiate a fair deal that is a win-win situation for both the blog owner and you. It will give you exposure, linkbacks and money, all at one time.

Article Marketing

At weekends you can submit couple of articles to various popular article directories like Ezine Articles, GO Articles and Search Warp. Create a resource box and linkback to your blog. Apart from gaining a backlink, article submission also sends some good traffic back to the blog.

Create Linkbait

More and more bloggers try their hand on this technique to get massive number of backlinks in quick time. Having said that, one must keep in mind that its an art and comes by experience. You may or may not succeed in your various attempts of creating viral content. Still, you must try your hand at it and all will follow by experience.

Offer Free eBook or Theme

Image Credit: Zahra

Create a good ebook or a blog theme (template). Offer it for free to your readers. I myself have used this technique by designing a free blogger template called - MintFlare. It is now on several blogspot blogs and the credit link in the footer is adding to the backlinks to my blog. If your giveaway is really good and becomes a hit, you will get a good number of backlinks very easily.

Break Some News

Image Credit: debaird

Create Google Alerts and keep yourself updated with current happenings in your domain. If you manage to break some news on your blog, you can acquire massive backlinks in no time.

Participate In Do-Follow Forums

Like do-follow blogs, there are dozens of do-follow discussion forums that can be a good source of acquiring backlinks. Daily keep an hour aside for these forums, and build up your links by taking active part on a regular basis. Again the forum should be relevant to your blog's niche.

Cross Link Your Blog Network

If you have more than one blog or your blog is a part of a blog network, you can easily cross-link the blogs. Put more stress on contextual linking within posts across each blog in the network to get the maximum benefit. Internal cross-linking on the same blog also increases the backlink count. Make sure you do not do it excessively and pay special attention on the relevancy and anchor text while creating a contextual link, whether its an internal link or a cross-link in the blog network.

Blog Carnivals

Create some good articles containing contextual links to your blog and submit them to blog carnivals. Once a month, I submit couple of articles to blog carnivals that gives me valuable linkbacks and decent traffic.

Create Quality Content

And last but not the least is your blog content. The best way to organically build backlinks to your blog is to create consistent quality content. Piling up massive amount of pillar articles automatically generates backlinks when people quote, refer and discuss about your articles and posts.

Image Credit: Zahra

Here I must stress that this process takes time and patience, but the returns are equally rewarding. In the long run, these organic links referring your quality content plays a big role in bringing regular traffic to your blog.

Over To You

What other similar techniques do you use to acquire backlinks for your blog? Do you use black hat techniques for the same or play safe?

How To Post To WordPress And Blogger Via E-Mail (GMail)

2008-11-13T05:05:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, we are extremely busy or on the move and have less time to open our Blogger or Wordpress dashboard to update the blog. In this situation, you can use the option of e-mail posting. Normally, we all have e-mail access in our mobile devices. Fortunately, Wordpress and Blogger both support posting via e-mail. Let's see how to configure this option in both Wordpress and Blogger to post via e-mail.

Posting via e-mail works on a simple principle. You send the blog post to a pre-configured address and your blogging CMS periodically checks for any e-mail to process (post). Let's start with Wordpress configuration.

WordPress Configuration

Although, Wordpress has in-built 'Post via e-mail' option in 'Settings -> Writing', but I prefer alternative solution, as it gives more flexibility for formatting and structuring the post.

First of all, we need Postie plugin.

Configuring the plugin

#1 - Upload the plugin to '/wp-content/plugins' folder. Activate the plugin.

#2 - Create two directories in the root directory (installdir) of your blog. Name these directories as 'wp-filez' and 'wp-photos'. Set 777 permissions for both directories. These directories will be used for temporary storage of data during e-mail processing.

#3 - Click 'Settings' and go to 'Configure Postie' page. You will be overwhelmed after seeing array of options on the page. Most of the options are pre-configured and do not require any modification.

#4 - The first option that we need to configure is 'Authorized Addresses'. In the given text box, add the e-mail addresses which you want to be treated as valid mails ids. Postie will treat each e-mail coming from these addresses as valid e-mails from admin. Keep each email address on a single line.

#5 - Now scroll to 'Mailserver Settings'. It is strongly advised to create a fresh e-mail id for posting purposes. Keep id name cryptic, for exp: er45t@yourdomain.com. Postie supports POP3, POP3-SSL, IMAP, IMAP-SSL protocols. Choose the appropriate protocol for your mail server from 'Mail Protocol'. Give the server address in 'Mail Server' and appropriate port number in 'Port'. Specify 'Mail Userid' and 'Mail Password' in respective text boxes.

Note: If you are using POP3-SSL, choose port 995. For POP3, use port number 110. If you are unsure, refer to your mail server documentation.

#6 - Now the plugin is configured and ready for e-mail posting. But, there is something missing. We need to create some mechanism that triggers the e-mail checking procedure so that Postie can do its job. Well, there are two ways for doing that.

Method - 1: If you have access to cron, setup the cron job by the following code.

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/lynx --source http://yourdomain/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php >/dev/null 2>&1

Keep this entry on a single line. This entry will run the file get_mail.php after every 5 minutes. You can adjust the time interval as per your requirements.

Method - 2: In case you have no access to cron, you can use this method. Paste the following code in 'footer.php'

This code will automatically execute whenever a web page of your blog is opened. In case you want immediate posting after mailing, you can open your blog's homepage to get this code executed.

Post Formatting Options

Here comes the interesting part. Postie supports ample amount of options to structure and format the post, including the post metadata.

Categories and Post Title: While composing the e-mail for posting, you can specify the post title and categories for that post. Simple use this format in 'Subject' line.


Subject: Gen: Wordpress Hacks

This subject line will assign the post to the first category Postie will find, starting from 'Gen'. Needless to say, post title will be 'Wordpress Hacks'.


Subject: [14] [Tip] [Writ] Wordpress Hacks

This subject line will assign the post to 3 categories in one go. First one is the numeric id of the category, second one is the category starting with 'Tip' and so on...


Subject: -14- -Tip- -Writ- Wordpress Hacks

This is one more method to assign multiple categories and post title.

You can also specify, whether comments should be opened, closed or should be opened only for registered users. Use the following code to implement comment activation or deactivation.


comments:0 - (Comments are closed)
comments:1 - (Comments are open)
comments:2 - (Comments are open only for registered users)

If you do not specify any of the above option, comments will be open for all by default.

Postie also supports embedding images in the post via attachments. Refer to READ-ME file supplied with the plugin for all the formatting options.

To post via e-mail, simply compose the post in your e-mail client and send to one of the addresses configured in Postie. Processed e-mails are automatically deleted from the inbox by Postie

Blogger Configuration

Configuring posting via e-mail in blogger is very easy. First, go to 'Settings', then 'Email' sub-tab. Fill in the id in the 'Mail-to-Blogger Address' field.

You can choose either to publish immediately upon receiving the mail or to save it as drafts. To post, simply send the post via e-mail to the address you have configured in your blog's dashboard. Interestingly, blogger can publish your HTML e-mail in original form with ease.

Over To You

Have you ever tried publishing via e-mail? If yes, what other tools you use to do the same?

Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 3 (Advanced Segmentation)

2008-11-10T03:49:00.001-08:00

With the introduction of Advanced Segments in Google Analytics, bloggers can now fine-tune the data mining filters to churn out the exact information they want. Combined with the power of Custom Reporting, it delivers the required information with ease. Let's see how to unleash the power of this beast to take out the relevant information that matters.

Segment and Conquer

Advanced Segments feature was enabled in my Analytics account about 24 hours back, and since then I am glued to it, experimenting and defining countless number of segments giving me extremely important information which was beyond my imagination prior to introduction of this new feature. The sheer power of this new feature can be imagined as Analytics giving you the ability to find a pin in a haystack, and that too, instantly. Let's create some segments and get a taste of it.

Note: For testing purposes I have randomly taken data of 3 successive days

Case #1: Highly engaged visitors of US coming from Google SE

In first example, I want to know the number of visitors from United States coming via Google services (search engine or referral link via any of the Google services) and have visited at least 3 or more pages in a single visit. So our equation becomes:

Result ~ Visitors (US) "AND" Via Google "AND" Page Depth >= 3

To get this information you can create a new segment as shown below in the picture. It's a simple drag and drop methodology with selecting values from drop down lists. I have chosen 'Country/Territory' as 'United States'. The next condition is visits via Google. To retrieve those visits I have taken dimension 'Traffic Sources' as 'Source' with value 'google'. Notice the 'Condition' value 'Contains'. This ensures that the referring URL must contain the string google at any place.

This is a bit loose filtering condition, because google can come in both these two URL's.


images.google.com/......
or
somedomain.com/categories/google-hacks.....

To further refine the search, we must set 'Condition' as 'Matches Exactly' while giving the 'Value' as 'google'.

Now the last condition was to get information about those visitors who are highly engaged during their visit. How do we quantify this condition? Well, it depends on how much activity you consider as engaging. I personally consider page views of 3 and more in a session as highly engaged visit. To retrieve this information, I must set the dimension 'Page Depth' with 'Condition' as 'Grater than or equal to' and of course 'Value' field set as '3'. To get the required information, all these 3 conditions must be met simultaneously, therefore I have used the 'AND' clause while joining these 3 conditions.

And here is the result. Out of total 3,307 visits:

1. 1,680 visits from United States
2. 761 visits from referral URL's containing 'google' string
3. 394 visits with page views >= 3
4. 41 visits, which fulfill all the above conditions collectively <- Result

You can also apply this segment on traffic graph as shown above to further refine the search on the basis of days and time duration.

Case #2: Behavior of visitors from US on specific blog post

In second example, I want to know the number of visitors coming from US, who have visited 220+ Best Social Media Resources and have spent at least 3 minutes on the post page.

Again I have chosen 'Country/Territory' as 'United States'. To retrieve the visitor count who have landed on 220+ Best Social Media Resources, I have taken the dimension 'Page Title' with value '220+ Best Social Media Resources'. Note, in 'Condition', I have chosen 'Matching exactly'. Now the last condition is to filter out those visitors who have spent at least 3 minutes or more on the post. To filter out this data, I have taken the metric 'Time on Page' with 'Condition' -> 'Greater than or equal to' and lastly 'Value' as ''3'.

And here is the result. Out of total 3,307 visits:

1. 1,680 visits from United States
2. 1,070 visitors landed on 220+ Best Social Media Resources
3. 1,419 visitors spent >= 3 minutes on a post (Note: On any post)
4. 366 visits, which fulfill all the above conditions collectively <- Result

Where To Go From Here?

With these 2 examples, you've got a glimpse of this new feature in Google Analytics. This is just a tip of the iceberg. You can also filter out the data on the basis of specific time (hours in a day), landing pages, exit pages. For example, you can create a segment that shows you the number of visitors coming from US between 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM on a specific post and spending at least 3 minutes on it, and then viewing at least 3 pages, and then clicking an Adsense ad with slot ID xxxxx, and then exiting via so and so post, and then.....

Do I need to say anything more?

Series Posts

1. Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 1 (Hit Rate)
2. Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 2 (Sessions)

Blogging Basics: Anatomy of a Blog Post

2008-11-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

A post is one of the most important atomic units (heart) of the blog. A typical blog post has some common traits, though every blog has its own style and structure of post. Some use large fonts with no illustrations, while others may use small fonts with generous sprinkle of illustrations throughout the post. Let's dissect different parts of a blog post to understand it in a better way.

Do You Read Full Post?

Do you know that 90%-95% readers do not read full blog post? An average visitor has the tendency to scan the headline and then traversing through the post body reading sub-headlines, bullet lists, tables or any highlighted content. During this process, he makes his mind whether the post is meaty enough to be read or just an average piece of work or completely crap.

Image Credit: Zahra

Depending on his conclusion, he may start reading it thoroughly from the beginning, or may read chunks in between, or may leave the post immediately. The key elements of the post play a big role in attracting the readers. Let us see, how to optimize various elements of a blog post, to make the reading experience, a pleasure for the reader.

Title

It is first element of the post that a visitor read and makes up his mind whether to read it further or skip it. Crafting killer post title is one of the most critical exercises in the life cycle of a blog post. Interestingly, sometimes a blogger may fall into his trap of creating extremely catchy headline, but may not support it with equally meaty content. This leads to frustration for the visitor and creates distrust between blogger and the reader. Make sure you support your post title, and justify it with equally relevant content.

Post Title Types

1. Neutral
2. News
3. Declaration
4. Humorous
5. Controversial
6. Tutorial
7. Resource
8. Opinion
9. Product Review

Depending on the post type, the title may take different shape. An ideal length of title is 5 to 15 words. And last but not the least, inclusion of major keyword (or Key Phrase) is what make a perfect title.

Lead ~ Opening Paragraph

The 'Lead' or commonly known as opening paragraph of the post, concentrates the juice of the post. It creates an atmosphere and sense of anticipation among the readers. Keep it enticing leaving some questions behind, to make the visitor click 'Continue Reading' button.

Often the post blurbs (excerpts) on home page takes the shape of lead, driving visitors to the individual post page.

Sub-Headlines

They are the building blocks of the post, dividing it into several sections, each one concentrating on a specific topic. After post title, they are the second most important element that is read by the visitor. Sub-Headlines gives a general idea about the content of the post, and helps the reader in deciding whether to read the post or hop on to next web page.

Illustrations

A picture is equal to thousand words. Embedding relevant illustrations in post is the best way to make it attractive and sticky. Often it is debated that how many illustrations should be embedded in a post. Well, it all depends on the post type and length. If you are tabulating a list of Wordpress themes or blogger templates, pictures will cover the major part of the post. A typical 400-600 words blog post can easily accommodate one large and one small picture.

Quotes

We often use others work to better elaborate and clarify the topic. And for that, we often quote the respective writers. Using CSS decorated blockqoutes makes the content stand apart and grabs reader's attention.

Image Credit: CSS Tricks

If you are quoting some copyrighted content, make sure you take the permission from the owner before taking the excerpt for your post.

Bullet Lists

We all love lists tabulating the resources, features and points that gives us instant nirvana. Whenever there is a scope, do not hesitate to use bullet lists in the post. They grab the attention of the reader immediately. Sometimes, the list alone makes the post, a hit.

Attribution

We often use excerpts from different resources and licensed photographs in our blog posts. Giving proper attribution to licensed content (text, illustration) is an essential part of post composition. Some bloggers prefer it give attribution around the resource, while others prefer to give at the end of blog post. Whatever patterns you follow, make sure you DO give credit for someone's hard work.

Extra Stuff

Apart from the content itself, a post cannot be said complete without some very essential elements like bookmarking links, permalinks, trackback to post, related posts and last but not the least, comments section.

MintFlare - Free Blogger Template By MintBlogger

2008-11-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

Today, I am releasing the first blogger template - MintFlare for blogger users. It is a fixed width blogger template with post summaries and bookmarking links pre-configured in the template.

MintFlare Blogger Template - Demo

MintFlare - Blogger Template For Niche Blogging

MintFlare is a light weight blogger template with large post space to accommodate small as well as large images within the posts.

Pre-Configured Post Summaries

Post blurbs on home page are already implemented in the template. You just have to do the following settings in dashboard to activate it.

Pre-Configured Bookmarking Links

Bookmarking links below the post body and a dig button on top right of post body has already been configured in the template. You just have to upload it and use it.

MintFlare Blogger Template - Download Now (.RAR - 8 KB)

Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 2 (Sessions)

2008-11-03T08:20:00.001-08:00

In second part of this series, we will take a close look at 'Sessions'. Sometimes, 'Visit' and 'Session' are used interchangeably. What does this metric tells us about our traffic and how it can be used to further optimize our blog? Let's try to understand this extremely useful metric, which gives a good insight about our daily blog traffic.

Session: Slice Of The Pie

The time period when a visitor enters a blog (takes various actions viz., browsing pages) and finally leaves the blog either by clicking any external link, or by typing the URL of another site, or by closing the web browser's tab or the browser itself, is called a 'Session' or 'Visit'. It is calculated by subtracting the time stamp of last page request from the time stamp of first page request.

Session ~ Time stamp (Last Page Request) - Time stamp (First Page Request)

A single person can pay many visits (sessions) in a given time period and each session duration depends on the amount of time spent on your blog before leaving the blog or closing the browser altogether. If a visitor remains inactive for about 30 minutes, the session is terminated by most of the tracking scripts. Any further activity performed by the visitor after this time is included in the new session.

What Can We Gain Out Of It?

Long 'Sessions' is one of the key performance indicators of your blog. In Google Analytics, you can get fair idea about average session duration by the metric 'Avg. Time On Site'.

In the above example, visitors are spending an average time of 1 minute and 36 seconds on the blog, which is not excellent but not poor either. An average time of less than a minute is an alarming signal. A healthy Avg. session duration is from 3 to 4 minutes. This metric gives us a quick hint about the stickiness of the blog.

How To Optimize Your Blog For Longer Sessions

Make navigation simple and easy

Keep your blog navigation simple and clear. Sometimes, cluttered navigation is the cause of frustration for the visitor resulting in bounce. Keep all important pages and links easily accessible. Do not hesitate to experiment by adding icons and graphics beside links to make them more attractive and enticing for visitors.

Use the power of 'Contextual Linking' within post

Use 'Contextual Linking' in your blog posts. It is one of the best ways to reduce bounce rates and to increase session lengths. Interlink your blog posts with one another, wherever possible. Make sure you do not overdo it. Choosing the right anchor text for contextual link is very essential part of this strategy. Soon I'll be talking about 'Contextual Linking' in detail in my coming blog posts.

Series Posts

1. Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 1 (Hit Rate)

Blogging Basics: How To Turn Your Visitors Into Loyal Readers

2008-10-31T03:26:00.000-07:00

Your are getting tons of visitors, but still failing to convert them into loyal readers? Turning your visitors into loyal readers is a different ball game than pulling traffic to your blog. Thanks to social media sites like StumbleUpon, traffic pulling no longer a hard task. What we need is an effective strategy to retain the visitors and turn them into the core audience of our blog. Let's see how can we improve the conversion rate of our blog.

Effective Comment Moderation Policy

Every blogger develops his own comment moderation policies that greatly influence how visitors interact and converse with the blog owner. An extremely strict policy can drive away the readers, while a too moderate one can lead to spam and public bashing. An ideal policy strikes the balance between the two giving the visitors most pleasant experience while commenting on your blog.

Following things must be kept in mind while formulating a comment moderation policy.

1. Visitors hate this -> "Your comment will be visible after moderation"
2. Answer each and every comment
3. Resolve their queries
4. Take criticism in a positive way
5. Give a personal touch, while engaging in discussion
6. Show top commentators in blog's sidebar
7. Reward top commentators
8. Try 'do-follow' comments for some weeks
9. Comment on commentator's blog
10. E-Mail regular contributors and thank them personally
11. Use CommentLuv plugin for Wordpress

Giveaways And Freebies

Who doesn't love free gifts? Announce prizes (ebooks, plugin, free themes) for your valuable readers. You can also give away freebies in your feed for the subscribers, which will help in inflating your blog subscription count and fan following.

Image Credit: Zahra

There are many free ebook creation software for making free distributable ebooks. If you have less time, you can also download pre-made ebook templates to speed up the creation of ebook.

Make sure you do not make your blog a contest blog. Content should be given priority over contests and prizes.

Fulfill Your Promises

This is one of the best ways to win subscribers and to build core readership. Whatever you are promising to your readers, deliver it in timely manner. Do not post just for the sake of posting. Filler content will only drive away visitors. If you are announcing some competition or a post series, deliver it as per your declaration.

Socialize And Build Relationships

Create profiles on various social media sites and build relationships with like-minded people. Visit their blogs, leave comments and personally e-mail them suggesting some useful tips.

You cannot imagine how fast the word spread through this channel, helping you in building an army of admirers who talk highly about you to their contacts, giving you the required visitor landing on your blog with positive frame of mind.

Make Yourself Accessible

Make your blog navigation simple and keep your contact information handy. The 'About' and 'Contact' pages are one of the most important pages of your blog. Put a thumbnail image and min-bio of yourself on 'About' page. Visitors always want to know who is behind the blog. Anonymous and ghost writing is least welcomed by readers, as they want to feel connected with a human being whom they know. In your 'Contact' page, apart from contact form, give your e-mail address and links to your various social media profiles, so that your readers can get more options to get connected with you.

Answer Every Mail

Well, unless you are not Darren Rowse or Chris Garrett, you can afford to answer every mail personally and you must do it. One satisfied reader will bring in 10 more through recommendations and referrals. It's an excellent way to build credibility and to win trust of your readers.

Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 1 (Hit Rate)

2008-10-28T06:53:00.001-07:00

We get massive amount of raw data through various tracking scripts we integrate with our blog. Normally, a novice blogger may be only interested in the number of visitors he is getting each day. But there is much more than that, which can be used in making our blog a better experience for our visitors. Crunching this raw data and mining out that valuable information needed to optimize our blog is what should be our ultimate goal. Let us see how can we dig out useful stream of information from the data generated by these wonderful scripts.

Almost every blogger use Google Analytics as one of the tracking scripts, so I will be using it while discussing about various examples.

Hits

In first part, we will discuss about 'Hits' a blog receive in a given time frame.

Hits/Hour

The most misunderstood metric is 'Hits' on your blog. It is often confused with 'Visit'. Whenever you visit a web page, several files may be downloaded from the web server to properly render a web page. It may include css files, javascript files, image files, flash files and other miscellaneous resources. Every time a resource is requested from the web server, it is counted as a 'Hit'. So, a single web page request may result in 5, 10 or may be 100 hits, depending on how much resources (files) a web page is using.

Normally, hits are calculated on per hour basis using the following formula.

On high traffic blogs, it is calculated as hourly rate, while a low traffic blog may be more interested in getting the hit rate on per day basis.

Usability of This Metric

1. What purpose does this metric solves?
2. How it can be used to optimize the blog?

Well, lets take an example of a high traffic blog hosted on a dedicated server. We all know that there are some selective days in a week when we get the most traffic, and some peak hours in a given day when traffic is highest. The hit rate helps in accurately measuring the busyness of web server segregated on hourly basis. Have you ever encountered this error - 'Server Too Busy. Try again later', while visiting a web page? It means that the server has reached its threshold of catering the number of parallel requests at a given time.

Here I must stress that for accurately determining the trend you must take good amount of data. The hit rate can easily tell when the web server was most busy in catering the requests. Remember, CPU load threshold is a different thing and should not be confused with web server's request catering capability. Hit rate is concerned with the latter capability of the web server.

It tells you when most requests were made to the server. A good blogger may inspect the log files for that hour for any HTTP 500-13 errors (Serve Too Busy) errors. Once the peak request hour is found, a blogger may tweak the server settings (load balancing etc), so that no more such errors persist. Hit Rate is a very important metric for high traffic blogs and web sites.

In next part of this series, we will discuss about 'Sessions'.

7 Must Read Tips To Create Digg-Friendly Content

2008-10-24T03:59:00.000-07:00

If you want tons of traffic for your blog, all you need to do is to create Digg friendly (viral) content. Creating viral content is an art and comes by experience. Digg is by far one of the most popular social media sites that can bring tons of traffic and huge exposure for your web site. I have seen many web sites performing exceedingly well on Digg consistently. What's the secret recipe behind it? Let's try to decode the process of winning the hearts of Digg community.

Image Credit: donlbe

Write For Larger Audience

The digg community is very large with different tastes and preferences. Content created for the masses are always a hit on Digg. Narrowing your content's niche leaves little door for it to be appreciated by a larger user base on Digg. Nobody is going to show any interest in your post about 'Rice Shortage in Somalia'. Pick topics that are concerned with almost every one. Breaking news, death of celebrity, new product launch, resources, humor, balanced criticism, controversy on hot topic, tutorials, amazing videos and latest gadgets, all these have the potential to go viral on Digg. But it all depends on how you package it. Spice it up with bullet lists, related illustrations, relevant quotes and link to related resources and see the difference.

Create Original 'List-Based' Content

List-based resources are known to perform well on Digg. Do a comprehensive research on the topic, and compile an original list of resources spiced up with relevant illustrations. Do not hesitate to link out to resources. The more you will give, the more you will get back in return.

Break the News

Breaking some news can make you overnight star. Normally, big web sites and blogs receive this news from their contacts and channels, and manage to break it before anybody else do the same. Still, you can set Google alerts and can try to post some fresh news. If you manage to capture one such post, rest assured that the dividends would be beyond your imagination.

Craft Eye Popping Headlines/Titles

Headline is what makes the first impression about your posted content. If you browse through Digg archives and see top content headlines, you will notice that they have some common traits inherent in them i.e., they are spicy, eye popping, generates curiosity or are controversial.

While submitting content to Digg, we get the option of modifying the story headline and description. Take full advantage of this option and create a spicy, eye-popping headline. Here I must add that you must complement the headline with equally spicy content. A decorated bottle with no wine can backfire, and your story may be buried immediately.

Research/Follow Popular Stories

Spend some time on Digg searching the archives and try to find out which sites are consistently performing well on Digg. Take a look at their content and try to emulate the same. It is one of the best ways to learn the tactics from seasoned players.

Create Strong Network

Needless to say, every vehicle needs a kick-start before it picks up the speed. Unless a reasonably strong network does not support your submitted content, you cannot be assured of the desired results. Spend time on Digg and network with power users. It's as simple as this - 'Digg, Digg and Digg'.

Have Digg Button On Post - PLEEEASEEEE

Ah, made the meal but forgot to put the salt! Put a large visible Digg button beside your post. The best position is either on top (right or left aligned) or at the end of post body. Buttons showing the current Digg count should be preferred over a static image button. The Digg count in button entices the readers to vote. Sometimes, we like some content and decide to Digg it, only to find that no Digg button is present on the web page. This is really annoying and I myself have left many pages, just because of absence of Digg button on the post.

Massively popular content on Digg, not only gets high traffic, but also brings in new subscribers and new back links. Once you get the taste of success on Digg, there is no looking back. Good Luck...

Facebook Application Development: Expanding Your Horizons

2008-10-22T03:30:00.000-07:00

Facebook is undoubtedly the most popular social networking service on Internet with millions of members from across the globe. Apart from native services, users are very fond of 3rd party Facebook applications created by developers for the Facebook community. These applications add that extra pinch in your profile and give you added services to enhance and grow your presence on Facebook. Recently, Hasin Hayder and Mark Alexander Bain have released their book entitled 'Learning Facebook Application Development', available from Packt Publishing which provides in-depth coverage of Facebook application development, whether its a minimal basic app or a complex multimedia application. If you have working knowledge of HTML, php and SQL, you can easily develop your own data driven Facebook applications after reading this book. The book can be broadly divided into three parts. viz.,

Facebook application development basics

Creating, customizing and launching the application

Advanced concepts and multimedia Facebook applications

Facebook Application Development Basics

The first two chapters give you detailed coverage of Facebook application development fundamentals. In this section, you will be introduced to various Facebook API's (Application Programming Interface) and various other tools that are the building blocks of a Facebook application. This section guides you to create a basic Facebook application in a step-by-step method.

Creating, Customizing and Launching the Application

The next section covered in chapter 3 and 4 will take you to hard-core Facebook application development. In this section you will learn how to access and crunch the data associated with Facebook dashboard, user profiles and important database at the back end. This section makes you familiar with important database concepts related to Faceboook application development.

After going through this section, your application will be capable of creating Facebook users, querying data from facebook and updating the dashboard with the fetched data. Syncing of application data between front end and back end is also covered in this section. You will also learn to use Facebook security model (authentication, logging), which will help you in making secure and functional applications that users can trust.

Advanced Concepts and Multimedia Facebook Applications

The last section, which is relatively a large one and is covered in 5 chapters, explains an array of advanced concepts like creating interactive application, interface programming, feed integration in application, integration of invitation and notification service and integrating multimedia content with application (uploading, downloading and sharing of photos,audio and video files).

You will also learn to create discussion boards, integrating commenting feature and creating & sharing photo albums. Extensive coding examples, and use of helpful illustrations have made this title a must buy for every developer who wants to create stunning Facebook applications with ease.

The book also has a sample code of a simple Facebook application for the readers in downloadable zip format, so that they can start developing their own application quickly.

Who should read this book?

If you are planning to develop your own Facebook applications, then this book is for you. The book will guide you in creating, managing and customizing your own Facebook application by using the available tools for developers. Working knowledge of HTML, php and SQL is required to develop Facebook applications.

Book: Learning Facebook Application Development
Paperback: 218 pages [191mm x 235mm]
Publisher: Packt Publishing (May, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN: 1847193692
ISBN-13: 978-1-847193-69-8
Also available as an e-book from Packt Publishing

How To Create A Test Blog On Blogger Platform

2008-10-19T23:58:00.001-07:00

Millions of bloggers use the Google's blogger platform for blogging. If you have a typical personal blog, on which you occasionally post your musings, there is no need for any test blog. However, if you are more inclined towards professional blogging, a test blog should be made. But why a test blog? Is there any need for it? Let's try to understand why we need it and how to create it correctly on blogger platform.

Image Credit: William A. Franklin

Why Do I Need a Test Blog?

A novice blogger may ask, "Why do I need it?". Well, the answer is very simple. You cannot afford to change the template with several modifications directly on your main blog. If something went wrong, the incoming traffic will get a garbled home page, and you may loose your potential subscribers, as well as your hard earned reputation.

How To Create It?

Creating a fresh blog on blogger is very simple. Once you have made that, converting it into a test blog is very simple. You may ask, how the test blog will be different from the main blog, or what extra configuration I need to do? To understand that, you may ask few questions to yourself. First of all, you will never want that your test blog is listed in public listing of blogger. You may never want that your test blog is spidered by search engine. You may never want that anybody else can view it except you. You may also want that your test blog does not appear in your blogger profile page. To configure all these settings follow these simple steps.

Hiding Blog From Search Engine and Blogger Public Listing

1. Go to Settings tab.
2. Go to Basic sub-tab.
3. Set 'No' for Add your blog to our listings? option.
4. Set 'No' for Let search engines find your blog? option.

After configuring these settings, neither your test blog will be indexed by search engines, nor it will be displayed in public search listings of blogger blogs.

Restricting Readers From Viewing the Test Blog

1. Go to Settings tab.
2. Go to Permissions sub-tab.
3. In Blog Readers section, check the Only blog authors option.

After configuring this option, no one can view your blog except you.

Removing Test Blog From Blogger Profile Page

By default, all blogs created by you are visible in your blogger profile page. You may not want that people know about your test blogs from your profile page. For hiding your test blog in profile page, follow this procedure.

1. Click Dashboard to go to your blogger main area.
2. Click Edit Profile in left side menu.
3. Click Select blogs to display.
4. Uncheck your test blog from the listing.
5. Save your blogger profile. Done.

Over To You

Do you think a test blog is needed? If not, how do you manage the modifications done on your blog?

220+ Best Social Media Resources

2008-10-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

Social Media has emerged as a strategic business promoting tool for virtually every organization with online presence, to gain rapid exposure on Internet. Investing in social media has become a norm in large number of companies for getting better feedback, low cost passive advertising and valuable direct interaction with customers. Today, demand of social media experts is growing, as more and more companies are offering the position of Social Media Expert (SME) within their web promotion department. Here is a comprehensive list of resources that will give you that edge over others to leverage the full benefits of social media.

*List of blogs is not compiled on the basis of popularity. All blogs are picked and arranged randomly.

Blogging Tips and Social Media | Mint Blogger

Related Posts In Blogger With 3 Lines of Code

Related Posts Plugin

How To Loose Your Twitter Followers

Be A Tweet Noob

Mass Auto Tweet

Tweet About Everything

Get Involved in Twam (Twitter Spam)

Sell Your Twitter Account

Create One Way Traffic

Monetize Your Twitter Stream

Take Long Breaks

How To Get Backlinks To Your Blog

Comment On Do-Follow Blogs

Guest Blogging

Co-Author a Blog

Article Marketing

Create Linkbait

Offer Free eBook or Theme

Break Some News

Participate In Do-Follow Forums

Cross Link Your Blog Network

Blog Carnivals

Create Quality Content

Over To You

How To Post To WordPress And Blogger Via E-Mail (GMail)

WordPress Configuration

Blogger Configuration

Over To You

Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 3 (Advanced Segmentation)

Segment and Conquer

Case #1: Highly engaged visitors of US coming from Google SE

Case #2: Behavior of visitors from US on specific blog post

Where To Go From Here?

Series Posts

Blogging Basics: Anatomy of a Blog Post

Do You Read Full Post?

Title

Lead ~ Opening Paragraph

Sub-Headlines

Illustrations

Quotes

Bullet Lists

Attribution

Extra Stuff

MintFlare - Free Blogger Template By MintBlogger

MintFlare - Blogger Template For Niche Blogging

Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 2 (Sessions)

Session: Slice Of The Pie

What Can We Gain Out Of It?

How To Optimize Your Blog For Longer Sessions

Series Posts

Blogging Basics: How To Turn Your Visitors Into Loyal Readers

Effective Comment Moderation Policy

Giveaways And Freebies

Fulfill Your Promises

Socialize And Build Relationships

Make Yourself Accessible

Answer Every Mail

Further Reading

Blog Traffic Analysis Demystified: Part - 1 (Hit Rate)

Hits

Usability of This Metric

7 Must Read Tips To Create Digg-Friendly Content

Write For Larger Audience

Create Original 'List-Based' Content

Break the News

Craft Eye Popping Headlines/Titles

Research/Follow Popular Stories

Create Strong Network

Have Digg Button On Post - PLEEEASEEEE

Facebook Application Development: Expanding Your Horizons

Facebook Application Development Basics

Creating, Customizing and Launching the Application

Advanced Concepts and Multimedia Facebook Applications

Who should read this book?

How To Create A Test Blog On Blogger Platform

Why Do I Need a Test Blog?

How To Create It?

Over To You

**12+ Best* Social Media Blogs**