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Choose Correct Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Size

QuickOnlineTips — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:52:13 +0000

The new Facebook Timeline cover photo size is 850×315 (850px wide and 315px height) and this new Facebook Cover image dimension size has initiated a new craze of 850x315px Facebook wallpapers across the web as many free wallpaper sites are encouraging Facebook users to choose their Facebook Cover art.

Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Size

You can activate Facebook Timeline right now and get the new Cover Photo which serves like a header image of your Facebook page and is a great opportunity to use a large 850px wide image to showcase a unique image about your life, or events.

What Cover Image size to use?
Its is a good idea to upload a high resolution image with exact size of 850px wide and 315px height which fill fit perfectly.

What is the minimum width of the Cover Photo?
Officially Facebook FAQ says your cover image must be at least 720 pixels wide. Smaller images will get upload errors. I tried to upload a smaller image and got a message to upload cover photo at least 399px wide. I was able to upload images 399px wide and above (which were zoomed out and could not be repositioned). Any image height is accepted it seems.

What if you use cover photo of any other size?
Firstly Facebook Cover photos below allowed size will not be accepted for Cover Photo upload. If you upload any other size, Facebook will be forced to resize / virtually crop the image, which will make it distored and pixelated. Upload the exact size.

Can you crop / edit the Cover Photo?
Facebook will only allow you to reposition the Cover image if you upload a larger image . For most large images, this will work more like moving the image ‘up and down’ till you get all the area of your interest in the fixed size of 850×315. Then you can save your Facebook Cover.

Can other people save Cover Photos?
This image is visible for public use and can be saved. What is important is that this is like a virtual crop, so if people decide to right click and save your Facebook cover, they will save the full uncropped image. e.g. if you upload a big full size photo of yourself, and then decide to make the head as you cover photo, people saving the image can see the full image. So its a good idea to upload the exact size.

Remember all cover images are public, so choose wisely as all will be able to see them.

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How to Activate Facebook Timeline Now

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:52:28 +0000

Facebook Timeline is now available worldwide and you can activate Facebook Timeline for your Facebook profile right now. Timeline is a long awaited feature of Facebook page design which aims to completely revamp the way Facebook navigation works right now.

Activate Facebook Timeline

To Get Facebook Timeline right now, follow the steps -

1. Go to Introducing Timeline page and click “Get Timeline” at bottom of the page. (If you prefer to wait, a profile alert will appear as the feature rolls out on your profile).

Note: If you click that link once, it might not reappear again. So click the link when you are ready to get Facebook Timeline. if you dont see the link on that page, there is another similar link on the Timeline Apps page.

2. Then you are taken to your preview Timeline page.

3. At the top right are options appear to Take a Tour or Publish your Timeline.

4. Clicking on Public will make your Timeline live right now. Its a good idea to take a Timeline Tour.

7 Day Timeline Preview

Here are a few facts before you decide to publish your timeline and make it public and live on the internet to your friends.

When you upgrade to timeline, you have only 7 days to review it
Only you can see your timeline during your 7-day preview.
You can publish your timeline anytime during those 7 days.
If you don’t publish timeline in 7 days, it will go live automatically after seven days.
Your new timeline will replace your profile, but all your stories and photos will still be there.

Related: Choose the correct Faacebook Timeline Cover Photo size to get started.

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5 Tips For Growing Your Business With Twitter

QuickOnlineTips — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:01:16 +0000

Guest post by Lee. Using Twitter can be a great way to grow your business but you have to use it the right way in order to get good results. What most people don’t “get” about twitter is that it is a social networking tool, not a sales tool, and needs to be utilized as such.

Blasting out a flurry of tweets listing your products for sale isn’t going to do much to grow your business but if you implement the 5 tips below, I think you will soon see an increase in followers, customers and sales.

1. Work At Building Relationships

Perhaps the smartest thing you can do with Twitter is using it to build relationships of people in your niche. You want to build relationships with people that are leaders in your industry as well as people that could be your potential customers. Paying attention to the tweets from the leaders in your industry will give you great insight as to the latest news and may also give you some good ideas of things to implement in your own business.

Taking the time to build relationships with your followers, can add a personal touch that your customers or potential customers will really appreciate. This is important in the online world because you often don’t have face-to-face contact with your customers especially if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar store that they can come to in person.

You’ve probably heard that people buy from those whom they like, know and trust and taking the time to build a relationship is the 1st step in getting people to like, know and trust you.

2. Spend Time Each Day Managing Your Twitter Activity

It’s important to set aside time every day for managing your Twitter activity. You want to be finding good things to tweet about as well as watching your twitter feed to see what the people you are following are tweeting about. You also want to spend this time building relationships by retweeting other interesting tweets and having “conversations” with other people on twitter by using the @reply feature.

The key is that you need to be present on twitter and active in the community in order for people to remain interested in following you. You also want to be thoughtful about how you do this, don’t just blast out a bunch of tweets just to say you did. Take the time to tweet and retweet quality content and join in on conversations that are relevant to your niche and knowledge.

3. Send The Right Kinds Of Tweets

What you tweet is crucial to keeping your followers interested and engaged. You want to be sure to tweet stuff that is relevant to your niche with maybe a few personal things thrown in. Don’t go overboard and tweet about what you are doing every hour but if something interesting happens during the day in your personal life it can be good to tweet this as it lets your followers get to know you. That being said, you don’t want to make personal tweets the focus of your twitter campaign.

Some things you might consider tweeting about include industry news, milestones that you’ve met in your business, links to your latest informative blog posts, other blog posts and articles that you’ve stumbled across that you think your followers might benefit from, quotes, funny and entertaining things you found during your travels through the web.

4. Have A “Twitter Mindset”

When you first start using Twitter, you might be hard-pressed to find things to tweet about but if you develop what I call a “Twitter mindset” you will soon have more than enough content for your tweets.

What is a twitter mindset?

It simply means, thinking about twitter as you go about your daily business. You probably read a lot of articles and visit a lot of websites during your workday and if you simply evaluating each of these to see if it is something worth tweeting, you will have more than enough interesting and informative links to tweet about. It takes a little bit of practice, but after a while you find that you are automatically thinking “Oh, I should tweet this” when you come across content that you find is interesting and useful.

5. Think Less About Selling and More About Socializing

A lot of people look at their web activities to figure out how they can leverage the activity to sell more stuff. But with Twitter, this is totally the wrong mindset to have. Twitter is a social networking platform and you must use it socially in order for it to be effective. When you are on Twitter, think more about how you can connect with more people and what you can do to help them instead of how it can benefit you financially and you will get a lot better results.

Twitter can be a great platform to grow your business and increase your bottom line, but you do need to use it in the proper way. You want to treat twitter the same as you might treat a networking or social meeting in real life and use it for the contacts and relationships that you can build. If you do this the right way, the money will follow.

Guest author Lee Dobbins is a full time internet marketer that specializes in website development and promotion. Visit her site Website Promotion Blueprint to find out more about the different website promotion methods that are effective today.

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35 Best Online Language Learning Resources

QuickOnlineTips — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:39:39 +0000

Guest post by Goranka. What are the best Online Language Learning resources? Learning a foreign language is an excellent way to add another string to your bow and advance your career. It is also a way to get to know other cultures, expand your views, meet other people and enrich your own world. Just as Federico Fellini said: “A different language is a different vision of life”.

Internet and online communities have made it possible to learn virtually any language online, choose the method of learning that suits you best, gain access to invaluable learning resources, practice with native speakers and other students from all four corners of the world.

Here is the list of 35 great websites, communities and YouTube channels for learning foreign languages. Most of these websites offer free courses and learning resources.

Language learning Websites and Communities

1. Internet Polyglot offers free language lessons online for learning more than 30 foreign languages. Most lessons are publicly accessible. They provide digital flashcards as a popular way to memorize words and their meanings.

2. elanguages School is a website for learning multiple languages online. Learn foreign languages like Arabic, Finnish, Hindi, Russian and 10 others easily using resources from a variety of sources.

3. LiveMocha is the world’s largest and best known community for learning languages. They offer free and paid online language courses in 35 languages.

4. Babbel offers interactive online courses. Babbel combines the latest technology with effective educational methods. Using Babbel methods learners can quickly increase their vocabulary, improve grammar and pronunciation.

5. BBC Languages provides audio and video courses for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese as well as lots of language resources and tips. If you are preparing for a business trip or vacation, you can learn and take their essential phrases in 40 languages with you on your mp3 player and as a printout.

6. Busuu is a language learning community that offers interactive language courses and lessons. Learners can directly communicate with native speakers to practice their language skills. The site offers language courses in nine languages, comprehensive grammar guides and downloadable mobile apps to learn on the go.

7. Palabea is a social network site for practicing, learning, teaching and communicating in foreign languages. It connects people around the world who share the same interest in learning languages and meeting new people from different cultures.

8. The Mixxer is a free educational website for language exchanges via Skype. It is designed to connect language learners across the world so everyone is both student and teacher.

9. Italki is a language learning community and marketplace where users can find people and resources helping them learn a foreign language. Members use more than 100 languages and come from 200+ countries.

Specific language learning websites

10. The French Tutorial is a free online step-by-step guide to learning French. Lessons cover basics, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and everyday French. The tutorial includes more than 200 audio files. Donors of the website can download a printable version.

11. Italian language at About.com provides various online resources for learning and practicing Italian, as well as various articles about Italian culture, tradition, food and much more.

12. Deutche Welle offers free online courses for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners of German language. The site provides lots of useful learning resources like videos, audio courses, podcasts, printable worksheets.

13. Deutch Lernen is a free online German course offering 10 lessons for absolute beginners and 24 grammar lessons for advanced learners. Lessons are accompanied by exercises and two online language tests.

14. StudySpanish.com offers free Spanish tutorials for beginner, intermediate and advanced Spanish learners. The site is especially useful for improving Spanish grammar.

15. Spanish at About.com is a collection of online articles and resources with lots of information about Spanish culture.

16. Chinese Tools provides 40 Mandarin Chinese online lessons with audio, including writing, speaking, reading, vocabulary, grammar, calligraphy and exercises. There is also lots of resources and tools like a Chinese English dictionary, opinion editor, forum and much more.

17. Learn Chinese – a bilingual online learning program in flash which consists of 30 lessons. The course includes the preview of new words and expressions in the lesson, explanation of difficult points, demonstration of dialogs, exercises, vocabulary, phonetics, cultural tips, etc.

18. Russian for free offers Russian courses with audio for English speakers: basic course, step-by-step reading guide and Russian cases with examples. The site provides lots of useful and fun resources like video lessons, tables of Russian nouns, audio alphabet and love phrases. Private lessons via Skype are available for a fee.

19. Learn Japanese is dedicated to teaching Japanese to English speaking learners. Using various resources from the site, users can easily nihongo o narau.

20. Learn the Kana is teaching the two fundamental Japanese writing scripts in order to help those who want to learn Japanese.

21. English Club online assists in both learning and teaching English. Resources for learners include but are not limited to lessons, quizzes, videos, games and fun pages. Teachers can find and use lesson plans, worksheets, forums and jobs.

22. Exam English provides free practice tests for the most important ESL/EFL exams: IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC, and the Cambridge ESOL exams such as FCE, CAE, and PET.

23. Ello is an online English listening lessons library. The focus is on listening skills and activities include multimedia, free MP3 files, language notes and vocabulary tasks.

24. Fun Easy English is mostly focused on basic knowledge and teaching tips. Free learning materials for students include numerous video lessons to improve pronunciation, idioms, slang, grammar and lots of fun activities.

25. VocabSushi, as the name implies, helps users to expand their vocabulary with real-world examples and prepare for exams like GRE or SAT. Free trial is available. Users who prefer learning on the go can download free app for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Language Learning YouTube Channels

26. The Travel Linguist contains video lessons organized in playlists for learning 17 different languages including Portugese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Greek, Thai, French, Spanish Hebrew.

27. GermanPod101.com is a German language and culture educational videocast/podcast. Video lessons are mostly geared toward beginner users of the German language. Lessons are less than three minutes long.

28. Deutsch Online Lernen offers a series of 20 basic German video lessons. Each lesson is eight minutes long.

29. French Pod101.com features five lesson series for learning French with exactly 101 uploaded videos.

30. Imagiers is an excellent channel with tons of video material for learners of French.

31. Spanish with Rosio contains videos for Spanish speakers who want to learn English and English Speakers who want to learn Spanish.

32. EF podEnglish channel is best suited for beginner learners of English, but is useful for intermediate and advanced students as well. Video lessons are very well organized and topics include families, directions, time, weather, grocery shopping, friends, relationships and technology.

33. Private English Portal is most suitable for users who want to improve their pronunciation, business English or prepare for exams like TOEFL or IELTS. The channel contains over 100 video lessons and has more than 20.000 registered users.

34. Learn English Idioms contains free lessons to advance the knowledge of the English language with new idioms usually in the form of comedy sketches.

35. LinguaSpectrum is a useful and fun channel for English language learners. Lesson topics are pretty unique: Blood, Creepy-Crawlies, Sherlock Holmes, Going to the Toilet, Heart Idioms, and so on. Learners can also find links to other language channels like Use Phrasal Verbs or Irregular English Verbs.

Guest author Goranka Radojcic is a web marketing specialist and consultant. In her free time she writes a blog Internetimarketing.com in Serbian language.

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How to Block Facebook, Twitter, Email for Few Hours Daily

QuickOnlineTips — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 18:46:14 +0000

So you want to block Facebook, Twitter, Email for a few hours so you can stop wasting time and do some productive work. Well it is a simple task if you want to block users on your computers, or want to save distraction time for yourself.

I was trying to access Facebook at a friend’s computer, and as I browsed to the website, I got this alert and Facebook was blocked.

I tried Twitter.com and same for Twitter! Same for email… my entire social interaction was blocked.

My friend chuckled and informed that he had manually blocked social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and all his email accounts so that he could concentrate on his work productivity and not waste time. The blocked urls were released after a few hours (as per his settings) when he was relaxed and free to interact on these sites.

I really like the idea. How many times do we get started to work, and get hooked to chat or Facebook on the way.

How to Block Facebook, Twitter, Email

I hope you are using the Google Chrome browser (its the best out there), and install the Website Blocker extension. Edit some settings and you can block any website for as many hours as you want.

Choose the settings wisely and the extension provides a simple interface to block websites, as many as you want and at custom times you want. You can also type an optional message.

For example, this code will block access to Facebook.com urls from 0900 to 1700 (9am-5 pm). I have been trying this for a few days and I assure you it is worth your time to use this – and get on Facebook, Twitter and email when you really want to.

How to Block Any Website for Employees / Users

This extension works well if you want to prevent access of social media sites by your employees. Simply block the sites during working hours and they will never know how to access them.

1. Hide the Website Blocker icon from the Chrome toolbar. Right click the icon and click “Hide button”

2. Disable the link from showing in the block message alert which can guide people to disable the options. Also disable the ability to edit settings from the popup alert options

Unless people really know how to browse around into Chrome settings, identify the website blocker, experiment with its settings and disable it – it should work to block websites for most people. Just keep Chrome as default and only browser on the computer.

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How to Enable Secure Facebook Browsing

QuickOnlineTips — Sun, 29 May 2011 07:41:16 +0000

Enable secure Facebook browsing over https for more Facebook security of your Facebook account. When you browse on public internet access areas like internet cafe, libraries etc, there is a huge risk your Facebook login details might be detected by illegal third party software, while your Facebook login passwords travel across a unsecured internet connections.

Facebook Secure Browsing

Facebook allows users to browse Facebook over asecure https connection, which will add added security to your Facebook account. The feature is not enabled by default, but you can change it in your Facebook settings easily.

Go to facebook.com/editaccount.php and visit the Account Security details. Look for the Secure browsing option – “Choose Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible”, tick the checkbox and Save.

Next time you visit Facebook, look for the secure icon on the browser location bar and the https url instead of the http url.

Why doesn’t Facebook enable Secure browsing by default for all users? Well firstly the page loading speed is much slower over a secure connection. Secondly, not all Facebook apps will support secure https connections, so they will not work.

So enable HTTPS in Facebook and get a more secure Facebook browsing experience today. Do it now. Remember if Your Facebook Got Hacked – its usually your fault!. Explain this to your Kids with this Facebook safety video.

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5 Best Dropbox WordPress Plugins

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 16 May 2011 06:18:58 +0000

What are best Dropbox WordPress plugins to integrate Dropbox storage with your WordPress blog. Dropbox provides unique functionality which can be integrated very well into WordPress.

Dropbox WordPress Plugins

1. Dropbox CDN – Use your Dropbox ‘Public’ folder as a free Content Delivery Network (or CDN). Allows you to upload your themes CSS, JavaScript, and Images into your Dropbox ‘Public’ folder and server these files from the Dropbox network, reducing the bandwidth of your server and allowing users to load your site faster.

2. WordPress Backup to Dropbox – Automatically creates a backup your blog and uploads it to Dropbox. Just choose when and how often to backup, and a zipped archive of your website files and database is uploaded to Dropbox! Other settings include the ability to set where you want your backups stored within Dropbox and on your server, whether you want to keep a copy of the backup on your server, and how many backups you wish to hold onto at any one time.

3. Dropbox Sync – Will allow you to sync all your images from your blog posts to Dropbox. All images will load from Dropbox decreasing bandwidth and increase loading times. It’s a great way to backup all your files too!

4. Pressbox – Integrates DropBox with your blog allowing you to post images and files directly from your DropBox. Requires PHP 5.2 and cURL. Adds a new tab to the Media Upload screen to insert images and files from Dropbox into your posts. The plugin also provides a shortcode to add links or display images anywhere on your blog.

5. Dropbox Upload Form – Will insert an upload form on your WordPress blog for visitors to upload files to a Dropbox account.

Note that many of these plugins seem to be under active development and the authors ask for feedback to make them better. Dropbox is one of the best productivity softwares out there which takes your files to the cloud and let you sync between multiple computers, laptops and smartphones. Now sync the power of WordPress with Dropbox.

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101 Top SEO Tips To Follow

QuickOnlineTips — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:42:10 +0000

Guest post by Sahil. In this article I have jotted down 101 Top SEO tips, that every blogger or site owners should know if they want to reach their niche customers or readers easily and quickly. The list may not be arranged in order. I have listed them as it came through my mind. I have tried my best to arrange them in order, so it makes sense.

SEO is the process of improving a website or page visibility in the search engines. The more frequently your site appears on search engines the more visitors it will receive. It involves editing your content or your HTML coding increase its relevance to a specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

For more info on SEO related, search this site. Now let’s get started with our main list.

101 Best SEO Tips

001. Learn SEO.

002. Practice SEO.

003. SEO is not hard to follow.

004. List down your competitors.

005. Get targeted keywords related to your niche.

006. Research which targeted keywords attracts more traffic.

007. Research which targeted keywords attracts less traffic.

008. Know your competitors keywords. [View its source page]

009. Compare your keywords with the competitor’s keywords.

010. Try to use your targeted keyword wherever required.

011. Use keywords in Meta tags.

012. Focus on phrases too.

013. Don’t stuff your Meta tags with keywords. This would penalize your site.

014. Use a maximum of 10 keywords in the Meta keyword section.

015. Try not to exceed more than 400 character spaces in the Meta keyword section.

016. Use them wisely.

017. Don’t just rely on keywords.

018. Don’t sell your keywords.

019. Use Meta tags.

020. Meta tags are important. Don’t ignore them. But don’t rely on them too heavily

021. Insert Meta tags just before the head tag, so it’s the first thing scanned by search engine spiders.

022. Optimize your Meta tags.

023. Treat your Meta title tag like gold.

024. Add an index, follow Meta tag. [Not necessary]

025. Keep it short, sweet and simple.

026. Limit it to 65 characters. They will be cut down if it exceeds. And you won’t like them.

027. If you offer specific service do mention it in the title tag.

028. Make sure every page has a title.

029. Spiders hate untitled page.

030. Try to show website hierarchy for categories and other deep pages in the title.

031. Make sure every page has a unique Meta description, especially for your main homepage.

032. Make sure you clearly define what your blog or website is about in the Meta description. Also in the post pages, specify what the article is about.

033. Try to include your targeted keywords in Meta description.

034. Meta description content should be within the first 150 characters. Try not to exceed more than 300 characters.

035. Submit your blog to google, google blog search, bing, yahoo and dmoz.

036. Add your website to Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)

037. Create an HTML sitemap

038. Create an XML sitemap and submit it to GWT

039. Avoid unnecessary or excessive use of coding on a page.

040. Avoid use of JavaScript’s or AJAX in the content area.

041. Avoid using flash objects on a website.

042. Avoid inline styling.

043. Separate styling from page using CSS

044. Use style sheets.

045. Avoid using dynamic URL. [Usually random numbers or letters]

046. If using dynamic URL, avoid using too many parameters

047. Use static URL

048. Try to use keywords in the URL structure.

049. Separate keywords with a DASH [http://www.abc.com/key1-key2-key3]

050. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

051. Be sure that your site has both unique and quality content.

052. Make your title “Catchy”. Organize the body of the post into three parts. Intro > Exploit > Conclusion.

053. Make sure you write more than 300 words [search engines like long posts]

054. Make sure you use your targeted keywords in the 1st Para or 1st sentence of the content.

055. Try using synonyms of your targeted keyword in the content.

056. Maintain an average keyword density of 5% to 7%.

057. Don’t hide text in JavaScript drop-downs.

058. Don’t hide text by making it the same color as the background.

059. Don’t hide text by making it too small for a user to see.

060. Don’t stuff keywords in your text.

061. Bold or italicize important keywords or Para.

062. Use heading tags to denote important text (H1-H6).Make sure you use the H1 tag in your content.

063. Use alt tags

064. Alt tags should be relevant to the image

065. Avoid numbers for naming image. Use keywords separated by dash. [key1-key2.png]

066. Separate the keywords in alt tags by DASH [-] or PLUS sign [+].

067. Don’t use heavy large size images.

068. Interlink pages wherever required.

069. The more a page is interlinked, the more important that page will be deemed.

070. Make sure you use keywords for your hyperlinks.

071. The more interlinks for a page, the more votes for that page.

072. Avoid creating hyperlinks that says “Click Here” or “Read More”.

073. Use title tag for images eg:

074. Use title tag for links. eg: Anchor Text<

075. Focus on acquiring one-way links from a websites that are similar to your niche (ex: blogging sites should try to get links from other blogging sites).

076. Focus on acquiring one-way links from websites that have high Google Page Rank.

077. Link exchange is good, but don’t follow or rely them heavily.

078. Exchange links with reputed websites

079. Avoid Link Farming.

080. Submit your blog articles and other info related to your niche to Digg, SU, or Reddit.

081. Submit your RSS feed to the blogosphere.

082. Use popular forums related to your niche to link back.

083. Link your website to forum signature.

084. Leave comments on popular & related blogs

085. Create profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others.

086. Use Google analytics to track result.

087. Solve queries on Yahoo answers and Google groups and link relevant articles to your blog.

088. Submit your blog to Technorati. Technorati pages rank well in Yahoo and MSN.

089. Do not submit your blog to 100 irrelevant directories. Submit your blog to directories related to your niche.

090. Submit a guest post to your related niche.

091. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site.

092. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

093. Make sure you leave call to action with your content.

094. Add new, useful content to your site on a regular basis. Fresh content can improve your rankings.

095. Create an RSS feed and optimize the same.

096. If you are offering service or selling products, get your site listed in Google Maps, Yahoo Locals…

097. Don’t kill SEO. SEO is never ending.

098. Be Patient. SEO is not a one shot process.

099. SEO is all about Text, Link, Popularity, and Reputation.

100. Give link love and Get link love.

101.And always try to create a 101 resource list.

Guest author Sahil is the Founder and Editor of iBlognet. He is a passionate blogger, programmer and an engineer. He blogs about Blogging, SEO and Tech. Connect with him via Facebook or Twitter.

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50 Easy Ways to Promote Your Blog

QuickOnlineTips — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:25:09 +0000

Guest post by SurajKV. What are the easy ways to promote your blog? When you start a blog, its just you and your blog. Later you ask your handful of friends to visit your blog for fun, then later on you ask Search engines to visit your blog, and then later on you ask other bloggers to visit and finally you’ve promoted your blog in a way you didn’t exactly planned for.

Promoting is as very important part of blogging just as the content writing. Some professional bloggers keep promoting rather focusing on content. You always scratch your head on how to get people’s attention, that the tricky part of blogging. As we all know “Great wall of China wasn’t built in a day, it took years!“. So will we, but not years though. Here are some solid tips where you can promote your blog in a professional respectable manner.

I’ll split this into 5 main categories and 10 subcategories so that you’ll find it easy to read.

Blog Promotion Basics

Make blogging easier and navigational.
Have good looking and attractive web design, so that people revisit your blog.
Patience is the key.
Self Motivation is required.
Have controversial articles and interesting discussions.
Have positive attitude and don’t frustrate yourself.
Be sure on your context, which belong to your niche.
Do some thing to your blog everyday, and traffic is seen. The more you do, the more you get.
Help out people with blogs similar to your level.
Be consistent and scheduled. Most importantly plan you every move.

Content is King

Write more and more unique posts.
Have more than 150+ resources and articles.
Guide people about something, teach them something new.
After you article is indexed by search engines, submit it to various article directories like ezinearticles.com
Write about Big shots and their controversy.
Interview big cool bloggers in your niche, and share about their views and ideas.
Look out for popular content that’s gaining traffic, and write about it in a humorous way.
Give a press release about unique news, if you have any.
Pay others to write good articles for you.
Be the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs, but let it be worth.

Viral and Social Networks

Create a Fan page on facebook. Also create a facebook app for your blog.
Customize the landing page of facebook.
Start an open group on Yahoo and invite people or have a widget on your blog.
Buy the accounts of popular YouTubers and then add your blog address to the descriptions of their videos.
Start Stumbleupon promotional ads campaign
Sign up at ping.fm and use twitterfeed.com to auto post your latest blog content to a bunch of social networks.
Have a facebook share and retweet button for every other post.
Have a squidoo page, as it will get indexed faster in search engines.
Include hash(#) tags in your tweets.
Twitter – Follow relevant, popular, and interesting people. And some will follow you back.

Bloggers and People

Tell you neighbourhood, family and friends about your blog.
Search for your niche and answer any questions people have.
Submit your content to dofollow social bookmarking sites.
Send out a Press release.
Signup for various communities and be active in relevant Ning.com communities.
Write some content as a linkbait.
If your post is relevant to other blogging sites, then try interlinking posts, so as to get deep inbound links.
Signup for every other social network you can.
Start a podcast and submit it to various podcast directories.
Talk to professional bloggers about your post and ask them to review it.

Viral Marketing

This one’s my favorite, (Funky) Forward a SMS saying “Forward this mssg to atleast 49 people, to get RC of 49 for full TT instantly” with a link of your blog address. And, its viral.
Install All In One SEO Pack for WordPress blogs.
Create a theme, that includes a link to your blog in the footer, and then release it for free.
If you are a developer, create a wordpress plugin and release it for free with a link to your blog within the admin area.
Sponsor some tweets and be an active stumbler to know what stumblers like.
Use blog search from Google to find fresh blog posts and then leave comments.
Write a guest post for a popular blog. You may not always get published, but when you do you observe a spike in Google analytics.
Use Thesis for better optimization and plugins.
Join relevant forums, add your blog address to your signature and start posting smartly.
Join a social blog network.

Guest author SurajKV blogs at Smart Fat Blogger. He writes about blogging tips, technology and gadgets. He is basically a music addict and a calm person by nature. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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6 Awesome But Lesser Known Things on Facebook

QuickOnlineTips — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:57:00 +0000

Guest post by Saket. Here are some awesome things to do on Facebook, which you might not know. According to latest statistical data, Facebook is now 600 million people strong. This means that if Facebook existed as a country, it would have been the 3rd Largest Country after China and India.

Although we all like sticking to Facebook for several hours talking and seeing what our friends are doing, the Facebook team is quietly adding new features to it which many people, for sure, don’t know about:

1. Friendship Page

Friendship Page is a feature where you can see friendship between yourself and a friend of yours. It neatly displays the time since you both are friends and things that you’ve done together such as Wall posts, comments and things in which you both are commonly tagged like photos, events and status updates.

Type this URL :- http://www.facebook.com/?and= in your browser to see it yourself.

Replace and = with their respective Facebook Profile IDs/Vanity names.

2. Download Your Facebook Information

This tool is quite handy, in case you want to have a copy of all your photos and videos that you have uploaded, facebook gives you an option for this. Moreover, you can have all your posts on your wall, messages, your friends list and some other content in a a simple, browseable archived zip file.

Visit your Account Settings Panel and click on “learn more” beside download your information text.

3. See Your Facebook Impact

In Simple words, your Impact is the number of people that you’ve brought (referred) to facebook. Visit Facebook Impact to see your impact.

4. Facebook Photo Badges

You might have seen facebook fan-page badges with a Like button on several blogs before. Facebook provides similar badges for your latest photos that you can embed anywhere you wish. You can also choose the no. of photos that it’ll display and Layout type. Visit Photo Badges to create your own badge.

5. Friends Phonebook

Facebook knows how important Friends are to you, so it provides you a phonebook with contact details of all your friends as well as contacts that you’ve imported from your phone in a single page. This is surely a good backup in case your phone’s contacts get erased by a mishap. Visit your Phonebook Page.

6. Facebook Chat Smileys

There are over 26 smileys that you can use on Facebook Chat. While you may have know about many of them, some still remain very less known. Here’s a quick list of them:

Notice the first smiley is a face, he is Chris Putnam, a Facebook Engineer and the developer/programmer of Facebook chat.

Guest author Saket Narayan likes to blog about Technology at TechSplurge, particularly about Web 2.0, Applications and Cloud Computing. You can find him on Facebook.

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