Saturday, 7 July 2012

Yes, Your Blog Should Be Using Pinterest

Pinterest Logo On Red BackGuest Post - Our host is Samantha Peters, Here she tells us why Bloggers should be using Pinterest.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Your blog may have an obscure theme, or you may be carefully targeting a very specific niche. You may be a seasoned blogger, or you may be new to writing and managing your own blog. Your blogging goals may be purely personal, or you may blog for a living. No matter what your approach or your goals, pictures make your blog more appealing. Pinterest makes it more visible.

While many bloggers are oblivious to such interests as search engine traffic and monetization strategies, the reality is that many have become aware of the potential to blog for money. Others have recognized that they can build a following for a business or cause through the use of a blog. If your goal in blogging is to have your blog read, then Pinterest is a tool that you should be using.

Popularity

One of the main reasons you need to use Pinterest in tandem with your blog is that it is popular. Most of the world is familiar with the rapid growth of Facebook. Pinterest is moving rapidly in that same vein, gaining traction as a unique source of social networking. Pinterest works in similar ways by allowing friends and acquaintances to follow each other. It also gives the images shared a lot of exposure through organizational methods.

Categories and information allow those searching for something particular on the site to find suitable images from a variety of sources. The attraction seems to be more influential among female users of the platform.

The Power of a Picture

 Making your blog compatible with Pinterest involves using photos on your site. The more interesting the images, the better. Try to select images that are interesting and unusual as they are more likely to be liked, pinned and repinned. A picture really is worth a thousand words in this case because that picture may be the device that attracts a new reader now or in the future.
Easy Sharing

Pinterest has facilitated one of the easiest sharing venues on the Internet. Your post being pinned by a reader leads to your image being on display for the Pinterest community. Your reader's friends and followers have access to your image and related comments that have been posted. They have the opportunity to like that image or to further share it. The process is quick.

Unique Descriptions 

When you write a blog post, you select tags or labels that describe your post to search engines and searchers. When your post is shared on Pinterest, it is defined by the interest of your reader. As your post’s image is repinned, it may be described from a new perspective. It may be organized according to a different purpose.

The keyword research you have done in order to optimize your post may be effective in attracting search engine visitors, but your readers sharing your post on Pinterest are mining all sorts of traffic in their unique interpretations of your image and its uses.

Return Visitors 

Bookmarking a site can be easy to do but difficult to manage. Using Pinterest boards, though, your readers can add your posts for later reading. The image pinned to a board provides a direct link back to your blog. As the image is repinned, it provides additional links. These aren’t of value in search results, but they may be of value in attracting traffic in the future through searches within Pinterest.

Pinterest results are beginning to frequent the first page returns of search engines for a variety of search terms. As you grow your blog, it’s important to make Pinterest a part of your blogging activity. Create a Pinterest button on your site that makes it easy for a reader to share your posts. Additionally, create your own Pinterest account so that you can share your posts. Your sharing will be more focused on images and brief descriptions, and your networking within the Pinterest community will facilitate further sharing.

guest blog postBy Guest Author -This Guest Post is written by Samantha Peters, an avid blogger who helps provide tips on how to be successful to fellow bloggers. Sam relies on the services of BrainHost.com for all her web hosting needs.

How To Choose The Registrar When Buying A Custom Domain From Blogger

Logo For Blogger GoDaddy And EnomHere on Spice Up Your Blog I have always advised (Strongly) users of Blogger to buy a domain name rather than use the free blogspot sub-domain.I have been such a strong adversary of using a custom domain a year ago I published the strong titled "Why Not Getting A Custom Domain For Your Blogger Blog Is Stupid ".I followed up that post with a Step By Step video tutorial on How to buy a custom domain and connect it to your Blogger blog.So I covered why to get a domain and how to get it.

In that video I tell you how although you are buying the domain directly from Blogger (Google) they are not a domain registrar.So Blogger use one of two registrars, namely GoDaddy and eNom.When you are going through the process of buying a custom domain from Blogger they automatically (and i presume randomly) choose either GoDaddy or eNom for you.

Up till now I have thought that's it you go with the one they choose and continue.However Chuck over at The real Blogger status has shown me different and in fact you can choose between GoDaddy and eNom.During the process you are presented with the option to choose which registrar you want.
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Thursday, 5 July 2012

How And Why To Ping Your Blog Posts

Blog Ping LogoAlthough search engines will eventually find and crawl your latest blog posts there are some steps you can take to speed up the process.Simply sharing your latest posts on social networks can help as search engines can follow links on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ ect..One of the best ways to let search engines know you have updated is by Pinging them.

What Is Pinging

When you ping your latest blog post you are telling search engines directly that you have new content on your site.Most ping services will update among others Google Blog Search, Weblogs, Feedburner, Blo.gs and Icerocket.

Popular Ping Services

- http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/
- http://pingomatic.com/
- http://www.pingfarm.com/
- http://www.mypagerank.net/service_pingservice_index

How To Ping

With most ping services you enter the page or post title and URL an ping.Some allow you to submit multiple URL's while some also let you add a description.It is important you only Ping your website or blog when you add new content as pinging when nothing new is there to crawl can be seen as spam.

So while Pinging alone wont necessarily help your sites search engine rank it will help your content get found by Google, Bing and others.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Using Blogging As A Teaching And Training Tool

Teaching Logo For BlogsGuest Post - Our host is Katheryn Rivas, here Katheryn has some tips on how to use Blogs as training tools.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Most of us who blog do it for various reasons, the most common of which are for the pure joy of writing or to perhaps make some money from your blog. There are tons of different uses for blogging, and I'm here going to explore one that is all-too often overlooked—using blogging as a teaching tool. Of course, for those of you who are teachers, like I once was, teaching through blogging is especially important. But if you are any sort of professional, blogging can be helpful to train new employees you may manage, to teach others in a collaborative environment any sort of job skill, or to merely teach yourself something new. Here are some things to consider:

Tips To Use Blogging As A Teaching Tool

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Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Always Display The Sidebar On Blogger Dynamic Views Templates

Blogger Dynamic Views LogoSince Blogger launched the Dynamic Views templates I have been asked a lot of questions about making changes to the design on them.The truth is there is only so much you can do to Dynamic Views (DV) templates, personally I'm not a fan but I can see the advantages for say personal bloggers who want a stylish easy to keep blog.One question I was asked recently was "Is there a way to have the Dynamic Views sidebar always showing ?".

I looked into this as on blogs I read using the DV templates as you scroll the browser scroll bar and the blog sidebar can get in each others way.Anyway I have a way for you to make the sidebar always be fixed in the out position.To do this we use the same Css as we used in previous posts to; for example having Bookmarking buttons in a fixed position on pages.

The tutorial is below but first you can see a demo of a DV template, notice the sidebar stays open :

View Demo Button

Set Sidebar On Dynamic Views Templates To Always Show

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The Four P’s To Blogging Success

Green Success Arrow SignGuest Post - Our host is Heather Smith, in this post Heather has four success tips for your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Whether you are blogging personally or for a paycheck there are 4 p’s that you should not pass over. These 4 p’s are have the potential to be positively picture-perfect for your blogging. These aren’t meant to puzzle you but help you partake in perfecting your blogging. So pencil down these notes and prepare:
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Monday, 2 July 2012

Let Readers Share Your Blog Posts To Mobile Phones Via Text Message

MoShare LogoWe all have buttons to share our blogs on the main social networks, readers can easily Tweet, Like and pin posts to their followers.However MoShare has taken a differant angle to sharing content, MoShare is a Mobile Sharing service which allows users to send online content to their friends Mobile Phones.When you add the MoShare button to your blog readers can click the button add their Cell phone / Mobile Phone number, the number of friends they want to send the content to and send.With MoShare you can share Images, Videos and of course Blog Posts via text and it works with all types of devices.

Below I will show you how to add the MoShare button to Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr blogs.First take a look at the videos below for more on How It Works and Information for publishers.

What Is MoShare

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