Following up from my last post about tasks to complete before and after publishing a blog post, Post Writing a Blog Post Post, as promised I am going to talk about my favorite tools that you can use to automate or speed up this process:

Spelling and Grammar

To automatically check your spelling and grammar “After the Deadline” is available as a stand alone plugin for WordPress or as an add-on to the Tiny MCE plugin, as an add on for Firefox and Chrome and as an OpenOffice.org extension.

Keywords and SEO

A WordPress SEO plugin is a must have to ensure you have the optimal information and keywords to help your post be listed and found. I use either WordPress SEO or All in One SEO.

Layout

I write and preview my posts in Firefox but to make sure that nothing is breaking the layout in the, not yet totally compliant, Internet Explorer I use the View in IE Firefox addin. This adds a “View in IE” item to the right click menu; click on this on any webpage and IE opens with the weppage loaded.

Sharing/Bookmarking a Blog Post

There are many tools available for sharing your post on bookmarking and social networking sites; some are browser toolbar buttons, some full toolbars. Use of a button or toolbar is a matter of personal preference although too many toolbars can slow your browser down and reduce your viewing area although Buttonizer for Firefox hides/displays your toolbars easily. I like the functionality of toolbars but only add a few and use different profiles with different toolbars for different internet uses (personal and business).

Don’t forget to make full use of tags where they are available to further enhance your keyword optimization.

• OnlyWire If you take the time to join up and add the supported bookmark and social networking sites this tool automatically sends your posts to all your services. A great time saver. The disadvantage is that if you are a free member you have to add the OnlyWire share button to the bottom of your posts. but you may have other share buttons that you prefer to use. OnlyWire works with most blog platforms by using a script and there is a plugin that adds it for you in WordPress.
• If you use WordPress and don’t want to use OnlyWire you can add a different share this type button that shows on each of your posts. You can make full use of this yourself and submit your own post. I am trying Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share as well as OnlyWire on this blog right now. Shareaholic and Add This for Firefox are other tools that allow you to submit your post to a wide range of sites at the click of a button. For links to these and to more resources for Firefox only please visit my Firefox Collection Sueblimely Social Networking Tools. This includes bookmarklets, toolbars and utilities for Stumbleupon, Digg, Facebook, Twitter and more. Please bear in mind that certain sites such as Stumbleupon do not approve of you submitting too much of your own content.
• I use the bit.ly url shortener service and their toolbar bookmarklet to share posts on Facebook and Twitter. Creating a free account allows you to add your FB and Twitter accounts. Clicking on the bookmarklet when on your post page will open bit.ly with your post title and the short link already entered in a box that you can add to or edit.. Click on publish and your message will be published to your choice of the FB and Twitter accounts you have set up.
• Delicious bookmarklets for all browsers and a toolbar. There are also various Firefox add-ins that have functions such as showing your bookmarks in the sidebar.
• Diigo tools – bookmarklets and toolbar available for FF, IE Chrome
• The Rockmelt browser had many social networking tools already built in to it. I use the browser although, because of the inbuilt updates from my friends, it can be a distraction if I am working.

Social Networking

Visit your blogging friends and contacts and leave a comment. This is one of the most pleasant sides of blogging. You get to know other bloggers, read content that interests you and, signing in to comment, automatically adds a backlink to your site. To speed up this process you can add a browser bookmarks folder or RSS reader folder that includes these blogs. Blogs that have a higher ranking are the most useful to comment on (such as this one with a rank of 3 – it was 4 until the latest Google update). I will do this for SEO purposes but most often comment on a blog because of its content and author. I enjoy giving encouragement by commenting on brand new blogs too.

Best Tools and Tips to Speed Up Blogging | Blogging Sueblimely

As I miss the social networking that blogging brings I have decided to keep on blogging but on matters that do not take me hours and hours to research.  It was always my aim to be original and to offer something to my readers that they could not find elsewhere. As “how to blog” blogs have become  so commonplace now, I do not want to merely talk about issues that have already been covered. I can use my twitter account for posting links to articles I think are useful. I will continue posting about tools and resources that I use, those I think will be useful to you too, but not spend time trying out everything new that comes out just so that I can report on them.

It took me a year or so after it came out to see through the spammy applications and their endless updates to accept Facebook for the communication tools it offers. I have connected with family I have not seen for 30 years (who live across the world) and joined in an active international online support community for Fragile X Syndrome, a condition my son suffers from.

Creating Facebook pages has given me the opportunity to work on raising awareness of Fragile X and linking to resources for parents, carers and therapists so they can find their way through the maze to find the most useful information. This is not only part of my role as a Fragile X Association of Australia committee member but a passion of mine. It took me nearly 4 years to get a diagnosis for my son as even the medical profession had not heard of the condition so I had to set out and find out myself. The situation has improved but many remain undiagnosed, leading to problems for them in regards to getting the correct therapy, medication and funding at school. Did you know Fragile X is the leading known proved cause of Autism? Did you know that 1 in 126 women are carriers and carriers have problems with conceiving, early menopause, anxiety and depression. Male carriers develop a condition called FXTAS and are most often incorrectly misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and not given the right treatment.

Facebook personal and community pages are also good for promoting blogs of course. I do not recommend merely posting links to your blog posts but to develop a substantial list of “friends”, including other bloggers, and interact with them. Send them messages, share some of their links and respond and press the like button on their messages.

Coming up:

• Tools for posting to Twitter and Facebook,making it less time consuming, and how to create a daily user subscribe email message of your posts.
• A rave about versatility of the default Facebook Theme “TwentyTen” and making child themes.

Facebook has taken over | Blogging Sueblimely

A subscribe option allows you to add the collections of others to your favorites and track when these are updated. These user created collections are ranked by the amount of subscribers they have attracted.

The Firefox Collections page allows you to view lists of Editor’s Picks (so far only Firefox Created Collections), Popular Collections, your own and your favorite Collections. The lists are searchable by most popular all time, most popular this week or month and newest. A keyword search box is also provided.

Social networking aspects are involved here.

• You are able to keep up to date with new extensions added by those whose knowledge you respect. I first heard of collections via the blog post Best Of Breed Firefox Collection For SEO, Bloggers & Internet Marketers, by Andy Beard, whose collection I subscribed to immediately.
• You can subscribe to the collections of current friends and develop more contacts.
• By publicizing and gaining subscribers for your own collections, the higher your own profile will reach in the collection rankings.
• For bloggers this could lead to more visitors and regular readers.

It has taken me a while to get back into the swing of blogging after being away on holiday but life is now back to it’s normal routine. As usual I have tried out the tools I review so here are my own Firefox Collections: These are based on those I use and those I have found useful but have had to delete from my default Firefox profile to keep the number of add-ins down. The more you have the slower the browser.

• Social Networking Firefox extensions and toolbars that help you interact with your social networks and communicate with your contacts. I keep my most used in my default profile but have a social networking profile for times when I wish to do nothing else but catch up with my network contacts.
• Blogging- blog writers, web design and image tools for blogging.
• Sueblimely Using Add-ons- the add-ins I use with my default Firefox profile.

For an explanation of why and how to use different profiles please checkout my post Speed Up Your Firefox Browsing

Firefox Collections and Social Networking | Blogging Sueblimely

Bookmarking services such as delicious came along very early before the surge of services of the social media revolution. They could now even be considered the start of it, although at the beginning bookmarking was probably considered more of an online service than a sharing activity. The popularity of social bookmarking rating sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon and Reddit left ordinary bookmarking in the shadow.

However interesting, popular and up to date the content on the rating sites may be, they are not as useful for reference or research purposes as the bookmarking sites. I see two three main reasons for this.

Because our digging and stumbling is "social" we add sites that our friends favor or those that we want to get noticed, for ourselves or for others. What reaches the top is often more about how many contacts the originator of the bookmark has rather than the quality of the content. I will digg and stumble all sorts of topics which, although they may interest me, I will never look for again. I regularly refer to my diigo bookmarks.

Secondly, despite the availability of tagging, tags are either not totally relevant to the content, or they are tagged inappropriately, on rating sites. Digg’s range of categories reflect its News and Video purpose but not the broad range of topics it is actually used for. Stumbleupon allows more flexibility, but it is unusual to see full advantage being taken of this, meaning a search for a topic of a given tag brings unsatisfactory results. Lately I have noticed an increase in mis-tagged articles either: through mistake or mischief. I have never done a search on these sites, whereas I regularly do so on diigo and delicious. The social features of the latter also allow me to add contacts who bookmark topics I am interested in and whose tags I can refer to.

Finally, although the delicious type bookmarking sites may not be not used to their best advantage, as far as tag applying is concerned, it is still far easier to find relevant information on a given topic and information does not get so easily lost over time. The rating sites are all about what is new. This is fine if you are looking for breaking news or for such things as the latest happenings in the entertainment industry or the latest scientific findings. They are not the place to go for research on factual and non changing information. On the plain old bookmarking sites people add articles that may be years old but still of value. The best of these are bookmarked the most bringing the most valuable information to the fore.

My personal favorite bookmarking site is diigo because it has more advanced features than others and it also automatically posts all my bookmarks to Delicious which, after using for years, I was loath to let go of completely. Today I discovered an excellent reason for using the diigo/delicious combination for duplication. Ma.gnolia, one of the main bookmarking sites, lost all their bookmarks! Their database is unretrievable.

The tagging, relevance and searchability of the bookmarking sites make them a valuable tool for research and for bloggers they can be a useful resource for your readers too. I add bookmarks to sites I believe you will find of use on diigo and therefore also on delicious.

Social Bookmarking v Social Bookmarking Rating | Blogging Sueblimely

How does CMF Ads work?

You can see the CMF Ad slots in my sidebar – there are various combinations to choose from, ranging from one Ad spot to a 4 in one block. The Ad widget runs in iframes so as not to slow your page load time.

You set your own price for the cost of advertising on your own site; so there is no being priced out of the market, as with Entrecard. You can change your price to suit your current situation. Ads, which last for a month, are rotating so you can accept multiple ads at a time. I currently have 5 ads running between the two ad spots, at a cost of 3 credits each. If you have more than one blog then you can manage these all from the one account.

Dropping in on other sites is not necessary as you get to know other members through the CMF forums. These have proved to be very friendly and helpful. although I am not surprised considering the bloggers who have spent a great deal of time to set the service up: coming up with the idea to begin with, coding the site, refining and testing it. I was fortunate to have been accepted as a beta tester, although, to my knowledge, everything was running smoothly even at that stage.

The forums, as well as providing help and support on CMF, allow you to join groups to promote your other social networking profiles (Stumbleupon and Twitter so far). A post of the week competition, decided on by a poll of members, allows you to submit your posts to gain some extra recognition. A blog critique forum will give you feedback on your site. The Marketplace section allows you to offer services in exchange for buying an ad on someone’s site or to offer/request guest posts, site design or paid blogging jobs.

CMF Ads Control Panel:

| CP Home | Find Ads | Manage Ads | Ad Stats | Balance | Buy Credits |

Statistics show you the number of page views and how many clicks have been made on the ads on your own site and how many have been produced by your ad on other sites. Individual profile pages show a rank and the number of unique visitors to a site over time. These tools help you to place your ads to the best effect and a categorization system allow you to target your ads to a selected audience.

Who created CMF Ads?

So who are the people behind CMF Ads? – Three bloggers who were heavily involved with Entrecard..

Firstly, Ben Barden, a banana loving, Dr Evil look alike with diabolical vision, who has been an honorary Aussie for the last year or so. We will be sorry to lose you back to England, Ben. He is the author of Ben Barden (not surprisingly), Top Ten Blog Tips, Zen Working and the developer of Injader. If you are not familiar with Injader, it is a CMS system, which provides blogging features like WordPress with the extra CMS features of a Joomla/Drupal type system (without the steep learning curve}.

Joining Ben is turnip and Stan. Turnip of Turnip of Power is a wonderful source of knowledge with tutorials and balanced reviews on blogging, advertising networks and the best social networking practices (he puts the latter into practice well himself too). I did not know Stan until I joined CMF, where is he very helpful in the forums- nothing to do with his blogging ability rather his blog topic Fantasy Baseball – I am not a baseball fan.

Joining Up

If you join up (by registering with the forums) please let me know here – I have some credits available for advertising and if I advertise on your site then you will gain credits yourself.

CMF Ads – Make Money Promote Your Site | Blogging Sueblimely

Google Friend Connect is my latest social networking trial – partly because other blog community sites have not been too successful in bringing readers here lately and because, as usual, I cannot resist checking out something new. Although released for trial in May last year, the beta version is now available to all.

When I first started writing this article I was the lone friend of my site. As you can see by the member icons in the Friend Connect member gadget, at the top of my sidebar, this has now changed. Initial enthusiasm for new social networking activities means members spend more time participating and adding contacts. This initial enthusiasm tends to fizzle out either because the network is not successful or it is successful and you get lost in the crowd.

Benefits

"You will bring viral social growth to your website. Visitors can evangelize for your site by inviting their friends and publishing their activities to their social networks. Social gadgets will keep these visitors more deeply engaged with your site, and with each other." That was taken from the Friend Connect site but, ignoring the hype, why should you join yet another social networking community when you are likely bogged down in them already? For me the answer lies in its differences rather than similarities:

Why is Friend Connect different to other methods of networking?

• Interaction with others is done via the actual sites that have Friend Connect Gadgets installed. You do not have to go off to another site, as with MyBlogLog, to join a site or add friends.
• In addition to the Members widget (gadget) you see in my sidebar, Social gadgets allow for such things as commenting, reviewing and sharing media..
• Unless you want to add your own site to Friend Connect and include gadgets on your page, you do not have to be a member of Friend Connect yourself. You can sign in with Google, Yahoo, AIM, Twitter or OpenID’s to interact with other members.
• Integration with other social networks is achieved using a member’s Google profile. Clicking on a member’s icon will show not only their blog URL’s but, if they have joined using their Google account rather than an OpenID, other sites they belong to. (Google Reader, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr ……) Twitter users can sign in with their ID and check to see if any of their followers are also using your site.
• Integration of OpenSocial means that independent developers can can create social gadgets and, although the choice is limited as yet, the possibilities are promising.

One disadvantage with adding multiple widgets is that they increase your page loading time at times quite considerably. Adding the widget to your footer rather than your sidebar is one way round this – at least your page content and your sidebar(s) load first, leaving the footer to load out of the fold area.

Friend Connect Page

Friend Connect is not very simple to learn and you may find it hard to install, navigate around the widgets and find other members.. The help is not comprehensive. I have therefore created a Friend Connect Page, which I will update as I find new resources. On the page you will find:

A tutorial and videos covering:

• Joining up with Friend Connect
• Setting up your preferences
• Adding Member and Social Gadgets to your site.
• Managing your settings and members.
• How to add Friend Connect to WordPress self hosted, (not possible with WordPress.com) and Blogger blogspot.
• How to find other members
• How to join other sites

Examples of some of the Social Widgets

I have added social widgets to the bottom of my Friend Connect Page show you what they look like and to give you an opportunity to use them, in case you are considering adding them to your own site.. I had a bit of fun finding Google and Social Networking type songs to add to the playlist gadget.

Hope to see you around Friend Connect

Guide to Google Friend Connect | Blogging Sueblimely

I am a member of a lot of Social Networking sites, although my degree of participation varies a great deal. It tends to be based on which sites I enjoy, especially the social aspects, although these are also communities where readers are more likely to result. I know that I could be much more systematic and organized in how I expend my efforts online, rather than fluttering from place to place without prior planning or without following the planning. There are just too many sites to be successful as an online social butterfly – the wings are just not large enough, being a social Albatross would be preferable.

I know the theory behind SEO and increasing visitors but tend to lack in the implementation of it. Being a bit of a net junkie the time and effort requirements do get fulfilled but matters such as keyword analysis take a back seat I find this tedious, although I do tend to use openings that are hopefully Google Getters. This has become more automatic rather than thought out, although on writing the first sentence here I did have this in mind and reworked it.

To the stats themselves – I compared 2008 annual figures from Awe Stats and Google Analytics. Although there was a lot of variations in the two sets of figures, when I grouped the numbers and looked at them both in percentage terms there was much less variation. I split the figures into groupings based on the type of networking involved.

Entrecard (+ related sites) 15% – I expected these to represent a fairly large proportion although I don’t think they necessarily translate to readers and bring few comments. After initial enthusiasm I no longer spend much time with Entrecard.

Lists and Blogrolls – The vast majority of this 4% is made up of lists I have qualified for rather than blog submission sites – Top 100 and top 50 women Australian Bloggers, a Do Follow list. Sitehopping has brought a small but steady stream of traffic too. The the blog directory sites were not doing anything at all and by mid year I had removed all of these buttons. I had joined these sites when I first started blogging and before Social Networking sites had taken off.

The amount of visitors arriving from Social Networking sites surprised me, especially how many referrals Stumbleupon had sent, as you can see below:

Stumbleupon sent me 23,500 visitors last year even though none of the submitted posts received huge amounts of thumbs up – no “Digg” effects are apparent. Although I do send my posts to contacts via the SU toolbar occasionally, many more were reviewed and given thumbs up without this. I do not enjoy Digg and have not had any enthusiasm for doing what is needed to get a post rated highly there.

As SU took up such a large proportion I have analyzed the other Social Networking Sites on their own without SU.

Although I expected Twitter to do well, I was surprised to see Blog Catalog in second place and Technorati in third. Considering I have not participated in Blog Soldiers and the Good Blogs for months, and no longer have the widgets installed, they performed quite highly. I do not use Mixx a great deal so that figure is not a true reflection on how well it could do for others. Nuffnang Australia has so far proved excellent considering the short period of time I have been a member, although that could be initial enthusiasm that comes along with something new. It will be interesting to see what results arise being featured blogger of the month on Nuffnang. I am pleased that diigo did so well as it is my favorite bookmarking site, with good social networking features thrown in.

Zimbio, which is not included above as I did not consider it a networking site as such, brought me 9674 referrals over a short period of time for just one contribution; my Best Sites For Good Free Stock Images post.

I also had a closer look at which posts were the most popular. (Publishing links to older popular posts is always a good strategy, not only for newer readers who may have missed them the first time round but to increase the number of links within your site.

• New Rules for Domain Names
• Add Borders to Images
• Excellent Free Online Image Editing Tools
• Add Widget Ready Sidebars to WordPress Footers
• Best Sites For Good Free Stock Images
• Adding a Favicon to your Blog

These vary from the Most Popular Posts listed in the sidebar because of different time periods used but both show how popular the image posts were. I believe I managed to get in quickly with the Domain Name post and it was a subject that attracted a lot of interest… The fact that the Favicon tutorial did so well is related to the nature of blogs. There are many posts and static website articles on this topic but this was much more recent than the others. It would be an interesting exercise to write another post on the same subject perhaps later this year, I suspect this too would do well..

So what does all this mean for the year ahead? I will concentrate my social networking efforts on the sites that have been the most useful in terms of visitors and most satisfying in terms of connecting with people. I will make an effort to participate more in Mixx. The Scoutle widget will reluctantly be removed from my footer. The concept is good but it has not proved effective visitor wise and the widget often causes very slow page loading times. I am going to continue giving Google Friend Connect a try – the poor lonely contact widget, which I recently installed, will have to be moved – again because of page loading issues. Nuffnang has yet to produce any ads and the widget’s intrusive size still bugs me.

I will also find time to do the full blog redesign that I have intended to do for a year, which I subequently planned to complete by today; to be installed in replacement of my Christmas theme. Instead I just quickly changed the colors and removed the Christmas images.

I hope these figures give you some indication of the worth of sites in relation to bringing in readers as, having read what others recommend, I do not think they are particularly out of the ordinary. If your experiences differ I would be interested in hearing about them.

Which Social Networks Bring the Most Readers? | Blogging Sueblimely

It was with anticipation and a certain amount of childlike excitement that I opened my Secret Santa. I was not disappointed. As you can see my parcel contained a treasure chest of bright and useful goodies, complete with its own container.

Many thanks to my Secret Santa for a delightfully presented and thoughtful gift. Thanks too to all the members of Aussie Bloggers Forum, who have not only provided me with help and ideas throughout the year but kindness and friendship too. These forums show that blogging means far more than writing posts and promoting them so that they are read. Whatever the reason you blog and and whether you are aiming for multitudes or a small close circle of readers, building up a network, social or business, is an important and integral part of the process.

Aussie Bloggers Secret Santa | Blogging Sueblimely

Ching Ya from It’s my Life – It’s Now or Never is really getting into the Christmas spirit with a December of Christmas topics – including Guest Posts, Fun Clips, Music, and Games to play. She is offering to share the fun by doing a post-exchange with her. She says as a rookie blogger she realizes how even the simplest thing you do could mean a lot to another. Her challenge post is aptly titled "Do you hear what I hear?

Jayne is intermingling some old Christmas tips into her Australian History snippets on Our Great Southern Land My favorite " Great Aunt Hepzibah’s Handy Hints – When in-laws arrive unexpectantly (or invite themselves along for a feed on Chrissy Day) prepare them pigs ears; scrape and clean in boiling water, then braise in a pan. Slice into thin strips, smother the lot in sauteed onions and serve with dash of balsamic vinegar."

Jen who is Semantically Driven has joined in the spirit with
Christmas cheer and a facelift and a new red/orange/green theme with a very creative header.

Kelley in her own Magnetoboldtoo inimitable style and Burgh Baby ,who has her own brand of crazy, are challenging us to take some pics of the Christmas insanity that surrounds us and post them on Dec 20th in You want crazy? I will show you mine if you show me yours

Kim of Laketrees has given away a free portrait for Christmas drawn by her own skillful hands – Portrait of Daphne finished…..

Shinade of The Painted Veil who spreads her cheer all year long is displaying a magnificent Christmas blog theme and if I had seen her wreath image on her menu I may have chosen that instead of the bells, although I did have some fun in making my bells ring when you hover.

Trish from My Little Drummer Boys is planning to take part although her blog is on hold until she sorts out a problem with someone stealing her content. Anyway, I am always cheered when visiting her blog when I view the photos of her adorable twin boys.

Suggestions for showing your appreciation

Ching Ya is showing her appreciation of blogging friends by:

• visiting/commenting on their blogs regularly
• link love/brief review on their wonderful posts/blogs
• showing gratitude through social medias. (technorati, digg etc)

More ideas are welcomed. If you want to join in the Challenge please read Blogging Christmas Challenge for details.

Christmas Challenge – Do you hear what I hear? | Blogging Sueblimely

The reality is that Christmas time can be stressful, lonely and sad for many people so I am laying down a yuletide challenge to you – help make it a wonderful time of year for fellow bloggers and blog readers.

Let’s show our appreciation for those who have provided us with good reads, those who have helped us on our blogging paths, those who take the time to comment and those who have become virtual friends. Even if we do not know a blogger we can make this a time to reach out to them, established bloggers and newcomers alike. We can also show our gratitude to the non-bloggers we know who visit us. Let us spread tidings of comfort and joy in whatever way we are able.

Until Christmas I am going to show my own appreciation for those who join in with this challenge by spreading some link love. I will be posting about your ideas and recognizing those who take part. You could say that I am "making a list, and checking it twice; gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.". I am creating a special blog section for my ‘nice list’ and Christmas topics.

We can help foster the spirit of Christmas in our blogs by adding seasonal design elements. I will also be sharing some tools and resources that you can use if you want to deck your blogs "with boughs of holly" or just want to get yourself or your blog into the spirit of Christmas

The first part of my challenge is:

• Go tell it on the mountain – Pass on details of this challenge to others in whatever way you prefer – a blog post, a tweet, send to friends on Stumbleupon, by email, by posting about it on different sites … Let me know that you are taking part by leaving a comment here and/or subscribing to my updates via RSS or email.
• Let us know your ideas for fostering the spirit of Christmas and spreading Christmas wishes to your blog readers.

Those who do this will be on the top of my Christmas list.

Don’t forget to have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Blogging Christmas Challenge | Blogging Sueblimely