101 Ways to Create Original Blog Posts - Part 3

Read the 101 Ways to Create original blog posts:

Tips 1-10
Tips 11-20
Tips 31-40
Thanks to all of you for your valuable contributions and you can still contribute to this project after reading the rules.

101 Ways to create original blog posts Part 3:

Tips 21-30:

21. Talk about my kids. By Kim

22. Offer recipes for home beauty treatments or yummy eats. By Kim

23. Post photos, and the details of them. By Angela

24. Post scrap pages and the details and products used on them. By Angela

25. Hobbies -- for me this means gardening, reading, travel, photography, pets or cooking.
By Debbie

26. My tool - I keep a MS Word document that lists the days of the week for a month. I try to sketch in my blog post topics for the week so I have... By Debbie

27. I share my puny perspective on Hollyweird. I know you guys love reading about the blow-up dummies they use in crowd scenes!! By ZeeLV

28. I talk about whatever I've done over the weekend. This forces me to either have a pretty fun weekend, or have a really shitty one--so that I can tell you all about it. For instance... By ZeeLV

29. I share kid-related stories. It gives the reader a better feel for who my kids are and how I interact with them on a daily basis. By Gina

30. I share cute craft ideas to hopefully inspire other Moms (and Dads!) to be more hands-on with their little ones. By Gina

Become a Hot Member at MyBlogLog

The following guest post was submitted by Kuanyin. Read her blog at Blog-Blond.

Do you use MyBlogLog? It is an absolute must to establish relations in blogosphere. It gives huge traffic too. If you have been a member, its possible that you have gone through the "hot members" profiles and missed many others.

Kuanyin, is currently a hot member and she shares with us ways to reach the top and become a hot member. Here it goes:

• Be Audacious

Click on other bloggers as your contacts even if you don't know them. Some people view social networking in a fearful light. They see someone collecting contacts like a squirrel & stashing 'nuts' for a long winter.

However, I have a pragmatic approach: the more fishing poles you have in the water, the more fish you're likely to catch, i.e. the more visitors which will likely visit your blog and hopefully will become regular subscribers and readers. This is the reason I am audacious. I want blog readers! My Blog Log is a great fishing hole.

• Take advantage of your daily maximum 15 communities and 15 contacts on MyBlog Log.

I wish I had done this from the get-go, but I didn't grok at that time what a VALUABLE resource MyBlogLog is. I finally paid attention to the visitors coming from MyBlogLog and now make time daily for MyBlogLog browsing and networking. MBL management always cuts me off just as my appetite is aroused. Drats! Management needs to raise the maximum for hungry hunters/fishers like myself.

• Keep hot on the trail of other hot members at MyBlogLog

These hot members may be connected with someone you need to know. They may have been around the watering hole/block more than you, so you can learn something from them. Don't let yourself get caught up in comments and replies when you're fishing. Do that later.

• A catchy avatar on MyBlogLog is an important tool

My avatar happens to be me, and it seems to be working. Avatars whet my curiosity. Who are the REAL people behind the fake Paris Hilton or the giant breasts (you KNOW who I'm talking about!) avatars? You may want to know as I do.

Make your avatar appealing, even if you aren't particularly photogenic. This is your blog business card in a matter of speaking, so take time choosing one that will attract attention and invite others to check you out.

• Carve a niche for yourself among the most popular MyBlogLog categories

'Blogging tips' is a popular category, and there are lots of excellent blogs who offer blogging tips. Blog-Blond is a humor blog with blogging tips--a rare bird. I attempt to use my quirky and *weird* humor with my*Blog-Blond* persona in replies to others on MBL to spark curiosity and sell my humor blog concept.

How I made a Hot MBL community in a week

MBL is MyBlogLog.

It is probably the biggest community with regular activity which has the potential to bring thousands of daily visits to your blog. Once you create a community for your site it is all about getting it popular. My hits went up from 125 odd a day to as high as 422 for 5 days.

The best place for a community in MBL is the "Hot Communities" section. It features six communities and drives enormous traffic to them. I was able to make it to the esteemed list a week after I started my community. The answer to how I made to hot communities in a week can be answered in a few steps:

• Know MBL in and out

It is just like life, before starting anything you should know it in and out. You will learn things as you go along but it is important not to miss any opportunities. There is a huge collection of how to's on MBL, just google for "MyBlogLog" or "MBL" and read everything you find. I did it for 5 days. The best thing I learnt about MBL while reading is:
People on MBL need blogging tips, adult blogs, money making tips and colorful pictures(in that order).
So if your blog is one amongst the above you should definitely tap MBL for traffic.

• Keep Clicking
  

This might be unethical for some but this is what it takes. Go to the new member's area in MBL and open profiles in new tabs. You dont even need to look at them (if you dont want to), since you leave a trail in the Recent Visitors. The person will think that you did visit his homepage. Most of the time people do comeback to check your profile. This drives traffic to your page and possibly to your community. Also, click the "Who's reading What?" and "New Neighbors...". The more profiles you click, the more visits you get.

• Catchy Avatar

  
  

This is what I believe is very important. Recently, MBL decided to ban animated gifs so that is out of picture. I chose an avatar of the girl from "My Sassy Girl" and everybody seems to love her (I knew it). Following are some of the options:

• Beautiful girls pics
• Targeted avatars- eg. If you visit anime communities use an anime character
• Adult Pics - Personally, I hate this one but it seems to work for many. Be careful it will offend many people too.
• Child Photos- Cute baby pics or something that will count as "cute" to the ladies.

There are infinite avatars available online, just google it.

• Make Friends
  

Everywhere, friends help you out. I made a couple of friends who helped me out. They had been on MBL for long time and they helped me out. They even provided link to my community on there communities which gave a boost.

• Publicize your community

Post a link to the community on your own blog and make a catchy icon (see my right sidebar). Make it visible and people might join.

• Join My Community, Get a Link

Yes, you might even try this. Get people to join your community and get them a free linkback in return. Its upto you how long you want to run it. It is to give you the initial 50 members, so that people dont see a barren community when they go to your community page.

• Use the 15 Community and Friend joins

In MBL you can join max 15 communities and make 15 friends a day. I tried to utilise this to the fullest. Whenever you add a contact or join a community leave some interesting message which will bring them to there page and they will join. Dont leave a "I joint yours, please join mine" kind of a message. People dont read it and they wont come to your page.

This is almost everything I can tyhink about right now. If you have any queries, feel free to contact me. In the next article I will show you how to convert this page traffic to your blog traffic.

How can you boost your blog's credibility?

Whenever you are trying to build an online business, it is of prime importance to earn the trust of your readers. Whether you are trying to sell a product online or trying to build a loyal readership for your blog, you must yearn for an image that your readers trust.

Stanford University has compiled a list of 10 guidelines for building website credibility. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included more than 4,500 people.

If you are serious about your blog you should read each point in detail and try to apply them to your blog. Make it a checklist which you go through every once in a while.

The detailed report: Stanford Guidelines for Website Credibility

The main points, if you want to skim through them (unrecommended) are as follows:

• Always cite references: The user should be easily able to crosscheck the information you have provided.
• Post a physical address, mail, photo: Whatever level of personalization you choose, your readers should be able to see a physical existence behind your blog.
• Cite Credentials: If you have won any blogging awards make sure to show them. Traffic graph, feed subscriptions, number of comments, blog position in technorati are some of the many ways you can instill faith.
• Contacting you should be easy: Emails, phone numbers, or physical addresses will help.
• Visual Design: The appearance of the site holds a lot of importance when people judge a blog. It should look professional, or better stated; The visual should match the concept of your blog.
• User Friendliness: Don't just cram up every hack or new technology you find. The blog should be easy to use and fit several criteria for being user friendly viz loading time, browser compatibility, color scheme, font size etc.
• Update regularly
• Separate Ads and your content: If possible, avoid ads completely. But, many people would like to put ads on there blogs. In that case, you should clearly differentiate between your content and the ads.
  
• Avoid errors: Typographical errors, misquoted statistics, incorrect English should be avoided at all costs.
  

This is just a short list. I have seen people going to extremes to assure users of there credibility. All these rules might not be applicable to your blog, but most of them are easy to apply. Have you used any such measures on your own blog?

101 Ways to create original Blog posts - Part 2

Read the 101 Ways to Create original blog posts:
Tips 1-10
Tips 21-30
Tips31-40
Thanks to all of you for your valuable contributions and you can still contribute to this project after reading the rules.
101 Ways to create original blog posts Part 1:
Tips 11-20:

11. Networking: Sometimes suggestions for topics to address or products to review come to me from friends, companies or readers who send me information on things they think might be interesting to me and to Scrapbook Update's audience. By Nancy

12. Development: I try to make sure that I follow a story as it changes from what I initially wrote, and report new updates. This happens especially with news stories such as the closure of PaperKuts Magazine, or the sale of the Primedia Enthusiast publications. Once the initial pieces were written the follow-ups were natural to write. By Nancy

13. I keep a notepad handy to jot blogging ideas down. I often get the best ideas when I'm not near my desk and writing them down helps me remember them. So the notebook travels with me. It makes a great reference for those days you just can't think of anything to write about or when you are planning your posts. By Susan

14. Plan out my weekly posts. Yes, I know it sounds a bit obsessive/compulsive but it works. Often I'm trying to fit blogging into an already tight schedule so knowing what I want to write about makes it much easier.......By Susan

15. Random stuff that happens throughout my day. Just things I experience, both weird and mundane. By Latharia

16. Issues that have been floating around in my head for a while. Mostly existential stuff, some of it prompted after reading a book or visiting a website.By Latharia

17. Discuss my daily life. You just can't get more original than that one - lol! One of the things I enjoy about reading other blogs is the small "peek" you get into what daily life is like for someone else... By Katie

18. Post Layouts. Um, I do call myself "Katie the Scrapbook Lady" so I think my readers probably like to see some scrapbooking in action! When I share my creations I am (hopefully) putting ideas out there for others to enjoy and use.....By Katie

19. When something really pisses me off ................I blog about it. By Simplystated

20. When I have a question and need general advice..............................I blog.By Simplystated

Article Submissions and SEO

Since, I have started blogging, I have been told the importance of writing articles time and time again. Recently, I had a conversation regarding the same on a SEO forum. Finally, I have decided to start writing articles which I hope you will read.
I will be checking the potential advantages which article writing has. If you have already tried it out you are welcome to share you experiences. Here are the "told" potential advantages of article writing, which I will try to confirm in next few days:

• Choice of anchor text in inbound links: The inbound links from the articles (through your resource box) are very important for SEO. The added advantage is that you can choose your own anchor text. PS: If you don't know these technical words, just read this: Article Marketing 101: The Perfect Author Resource Box
• Deep Links: After a certain amount of time some your older posts are lost without incoming links; nobody will read them. Articles help you to link to these deep pages and keep the site alive. This is again very important for you site to feature high in the search engines.
• Many incoming links: There are many people who use articles as building blocks for there blogs. If your article is good enough there is a pretty good chance that people will take it and write about it, giving links to you in the process.
• Give a boost to rank: It is very important that you give sufficient time to write each article and put in enough keywords in it, which are relevant to your blog. A well written article can get you on the front page of Google, with a boost in traffic and possible Page Rank.
• Huge Traffic: Perhaps this is the major attraction for me. At the moment, I am just not getting enough readers. Articles can bring people to your blog, if they find it useful they might subscribe to it.

Here are the top five article submission sites:

• Articlesfactory

• Ezinearticles

• Articlewheel

• Goarticles

• Featured-articles

I also found a list of more than 500 article submission sites, which I am going to use. You can download the text file here: 500 Article Submission sites for SEO

Do make it a point to try it out. Article writing might be the thing which can bring you the much wanted readers. IF you do give it a try feel free to ask any queries or share any experiences.

Keep Blogging!