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I made the B List but just take this as a bit of fun rather than something set in concrete.

Reading

• An excellent article by Dosh Dosh (aren’t they all!) How to Become an Authority in Your Niche: Eight Content Development Tactics
• I recently posted on how and why to use Alt tags. Blogging Mix has also published an article on the subject Blogging Tips – Importance Of Using ALT Tags In Your Images, which includes a YouTube video by Matt Cutts
• Elevator statements and your blog- this may give you a lift. Groan.
• We Media A report on how audiences are shaping the future of news and information.

Social Networking

• New goodies from BlogCatal Announcement of New Dashboard Andy Beard article: Blogcatalog Give Purpose To The Social Graph-
• MyBlogLog has a new style widget as you can see in my sidebar. Now hovering over an image brings out a pop out . You can find out who the face belongs to and bypass MBL and go directly to its blog. I would appreciate it if the widget was more customizable so that I could style it to suit my blog.
• Disqus . Create your own discussion forum. Bloggers can create a a widget to display their forum conversation on their blog, integrate Disqus with their blog comments system
• Are You Someone’s
  User-Generated Content? Copyblogger makes a case against contributing too much to social networking sites to the detriment of your blog. This is “like remodeling the kitchen in a house you rent”
• Hakia
  • Meet others who ask the same query
  • The Hakia Blog
  • My query on Entrecard where I started the topic myself

Blogger

• Use MySpace Layout with Blogger – I am not really sure why you would want to unless you do actually have a good MySpace design and wish to transport it to blogger to help maintain your identity.

WordPress

• Photo Dropper WordPress plugin – a new plugin that searches flickr for Creative Commons licensed photos to add to your WordPress blog.
• WordPress 2.3 Configurable Tag Cloud Widget A sidebar widget producing a tag cloud/list that allows customization of color, font size and more. Nicely replaces the default WordPress tag cloud feature that cannot, as yet, be styled.

Search Engine News

• Mom and Pop Websites? Is Your Brand Big Enough? Google does not like default WordPress themes, I wonder what it thinks of blogspot default themes?
• Hats off to Google (for a change ) for Google Grants which provides free advertising for non profit organizations
• Hakia Labs – aspects of hakia R&D

I have no aspirations of, or delusions about, becoming another Darren – a one stop source for all your blogging needs. I just hope that the perspective and observations I bring to the subject are of interest to more than a handful of people. I am not aiming at readers whose primary aim is to make blogging their life’s work, a major source of income or draw in clients for their main business. There are many blogs available that will help them do this. I do want to help those who blog to fulfill other more personal needs.

This is what Page Rank means to me. I am totally in agreement with Darren about the need, above all else, for quality content..

• Passion
• Authority
• Genuine
• Engrossing

• Reliable
• Accurate
• Notable
• Knowledgeable

• Passion – Remain enthusiastic about your subject and remember why you started blogging to begin with. Do not let yourself become bored, discouraged or sidetracked by worrying about your rankings, diggs, fames or stumbles. Decide if page rank even matters at all to you or are you better served by having only a few readers who help flame your passion and interest. If your aims do require multitudes of readers, your passion combined with other efforts will act as an aphrodisiac.

• Authority – Provide a comprehensive source of information so that your blog is the first port of call for those traveling the blogosphere looking for your subject area; be it about quantum physics, your observations on life or your cat. Today’s busy lifestyles does not allow enough time for leisurely cruising but calls for direct jet travel.
• Genuine – Be accurate, sincere, trustworthy and honorable in your writing. Comment to contribute and not just to leave your calling card. Let your personality come through and you will attract like minded people or those who enjoy discovering how others think and act. If you are quoting someone else’s ideas or content always say so.
• Engrossing – Provide content that is compelling, fascinating and stimulating to your readers; be it informative, intriguing, provocative, creative, artistic, funny, satirical or just plain whacky.
• Reliable – A lot of these areas seem to intertwine. Reliable could also mean accurate but here I am taking it to signify a regularity of posting (which is something I must work on myself ). If your readers come to expect a post from you every day or twice a week then try to stick to this routine so that they know when to visit. If you are going away for any length of time let your readers know so they do not think you have joined the great DIS of used-to-be bloggers. This happens to many blogs because their writers become disheartened, disinterested, discontented, disgruntled or their lives have become disorganized, disordered, distracting. or disagreeable. I am going to stop there otherwise you may become displeased and disappear.
• Accurate – Always be truthful and authentic providing a reliable source of information. Check out any facts or figures you quote and be fair in analysis.
• Notable – Achieve a reputation because of your content and contribution to the blogging world. Consider how many readers you have gained through word of mouth – a mention or link on the blogs of friends/contacts or a salient comment on someone else’s post. Being easily found in the search engines may bring you traffic but not necessarily returning readers
• Knowledgeable – Be aware of and learn what your readers want and need from you and what your own needs are.. Develop a community be it small or large that satisfies this..

I had fun doing this post; allowing my mind to delve into the richness of words and their meanings as well as taking time out to think about what needs blogging satisfy in me.

I do get sidetracked, perhaps too much, but for me that is one of the beauties of blogging, it is what flames my passion. I enjoy following the trails that you leave for me to follow up on in your topics and the links to your own readers and their topics. My mind is constantly stimulated and enhanced by your individual talents, achievements and creativity. I learn from your writings and am introduced to new ideas, cultures and backgrounds. Sure I could still read blogs without blogging myself but I would not be able to develop such a feeling of close affinity to their writers or a community of friends.

This post did me the world of good. I would recommend this thinking exercise to anyone who is feeling disheartened or discouraged in their blogging. Go back to basics, remember why you started blogging and what is important to you. Try not to get too concerned about increasing your rankings or social networking just for the sake of bringing traffic in. Concentrate on enjoying writing your content and network to develop a satisfying community of blogging friends.

I would be very interested in hearing about what blogging means to you. I am not going to tag people to do it but if you leave a comment here on the topic and let me know it is ok to publish it I will do a post that includes your comment – with links to your blogs of course as I enjoy leaving a trail for others to follow too.

Next week – what the I in blogging means

• Google Keyword Tool

• Technobloggie Keyword Tool

I am going to tell you no more about them as I did not find these tools myself. Instead I will refer you to Malkie’s post:

Some of you may be interested in Malkie’s latest post which includes a video of Wanda Nara. (I thought I would do a little name dropping as part of my experiment on keywords on my adsense ads).

**What a silly place to put that sentence – many male readers – and some female – have probably hightailed it out of here by now.

Traffic blogging tip – Adnan, Blogtrepreneur, tells me I must not include so many outbound links in my posts as they take people away from my own blog.

Traffic blogging tip 2 - please do as Adnan suggests, don’t do as I do.

Maybe I should not disclose where I find details of the blog tools I mention. I could quite easily have said here that I merely discovered two keyword tools and no one would be any wiser. I do not think it particularly fair that someone has taken the time and trouble to research without giving them credit for it. I spend many hours researching and I know I would not like others to take advantage of it.

What do you think? Am I right with my maybe strict blog ethics or silly for including so many outbound links and sending people away from my site (maybe never to return)?

I think if I can make my content interesting enough readers will return anyway and I will gain more – My reader levels are slowly rising and number of comments increasing – making me Sueblimely content.

**Some of you may be interested in Malkie’s latest post which includes a video of Wanda Nara. (I thought I would do a little name dropping as part of my experiment on keywords on my adsense ads and wonder if that is one of the reasons Malkie did the post too?).

Anyone still here? In case you are, Wanda is an Argentinian model who is recently found fame for revealing more than clothes. I am not going to use the three letter word that rhymes with hex – the adsense ads that appear may make me blush – much like the spam emails that I have recently been receiving.

I am no prude but unsolicited emails which contain graphic images really offend me, especially the thought of children receiving them. I have turned off images showing by default and set up yet more word filters but need to do more research on the issue to more reliably get rid of this latest email nastiness. Any ideas would be very gratefully accepted.

Adsense, Internet-Safety sueblimely alexa

I just committed the sin of clicking one one of my own Google Ads – because it caught my interest. I wrote a post on laughter therapy a couple of weeks ago and clever Google Adsense Bot (I am just assuming there must be one) “read” this post and delivered an ad for a laughter therapy session taking place in my home town of Melbourne. Very clever really.

I included the image because it made me smile and I thought it may do the same for you.

I think I may do an experiment and include some words I would not normally use, to see if they get picked up on by Adsense. It is not that I think I will make any money out of adsense but I am now curious as to how responsive it is to my content.

Google – you can have my $0.00000000000001 adsense payment back if you want it. In the future if I see anything of interest on there I will just copy the link and go to it from the browser rather than from this blog.

I don’t think it is my day – I just discovered that my sidebar has lost my treasured rocking girl blogger badge. If anyone sees it please send it back via Google – they know where to find me!! (sometimes I wonder what this “big brother” doesn’t know about me).

humor, google, sueblimely alexa