Filed under anniversary, birthday, blogging, News, stats by Chris Spooner
Every year since the start of Blog.SpoonGraphics in April 2007 I have created a special anniversary post celebrating the growth and success of my little blog. Despite being a pretty big milestone this year I had forgotten all about my little tradition. Thankfully I remembered just in time to bring you my 5 years of [...]
Continue Reading "Blog.SpoonGraphics Turns 5 Years Old – Thank You!"Filed under Articles, Blog, blogger, blogging, links, maintenance, plugins, techniques, Tips, Web Design, Wordpress by Chris Spooner
Just like servicing a car, or giving your house a spring clean, WordPress really benefits from a good once-over every now and again to keep it running fast and efficiently. This post rounds up 10 useful plugins that will really help service and maintain your WordPress blog. Updating the WordPress core, updating plugins and changing [...]
Continue Reading "10 Plugins to Help Spring Clean Your WordPress Blog"Filed under blogging, Guest Articles, Social Media, Twitter by Jacob Cass
This is a guest article contributed by Brad Shorr.
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Smart marketers squeeze every possible benefit out of their digital content. But even top-notch companies overlook opportunities to repurpose Twitter content, which is unfortunate because Twitter is generally regarded as a somewhat frivolous medium. It doesn’t have to be, if you think outside the box. So for [...]
Continue Reading "How To Get More Mileage Out of Twitter by Repurposing Content"Filed under blogging, design blog, kill design by Kareen Liez
When you started blogging, you were eyeing for success. You always wanted to make your blog big and to have many audiences. You even feel glad when somebody leaves a comment in your blog. You are also happy when someone visits your site. You will surel…
Continue Reading "12 Things that Could Kill Your Design Blog"Filed under blogging by Vandelay Website Design
Bloggers typically dedicate a lot of thought and effort into topics that should be covered with their upcoming posts, and rightfully so, but older posts are often quickly forgotten both by the blogger and by readers. As a blog continues to publish new content the archives will grow larger and larger, and for many blogs the archives include a wealth of information and content that is not being maximized.
For most blogs, posts from the archives can continue to be useful for years to come (of course, this depends on the specific content of the post) if they are actually seen by visitors. The archives can be helpful for a number of different purposes, including attracting new subscribers, building a newsletter list, selling products, promoting your own services, promoting affiliate products, selling advertising, and more.
If your blog has been around for a while, chances are you have archives that could be doing more for you, and helping more readers at the same time. If you’re looking to get more out of your archives there are two things that you need to know first:
1. What posts from the archives are already attracting visitors? You probably have some specific posts that attract search engine traffic on a consistent basis, or maybe a popular website or blog linked to one of your posts and it results in a consistent flow of referral traffic.
2. What posts from your archives would you like to get more exposure? Maybe these are you best quality posts that would showcase your expertise, or maybe they would be good for promoting a related product or service.
So you’ve done some analytics research and you know that a few of your posts attract a decent number of pageviews each month without any effort from you. Most likely they get a steady flow of traffic from search engines, but it could be other sources as well. The typical situation is that you probably created a quality blog post, it attracted some links, you haven’t paid any attention to it since then, but it still gets a steady flow of traffic. The traffic is great, but it could be much more valuable to you if that traffic is converted into something specific. That “something specific” will depend on your blog, the subject and content of the particular post, and the approach you want to take with your blog.
Here are some tips for getting more out of these types of blog posts.
Continue Reading "Getting More Out of Your Blog Archives"Filed under Best of the web, blogging, Blogging Platform, Web Applications, web services, Wordpress by Akhter
No doubt in that, that WordPress is the most famous and popular platform for blogging that has been used by millions of bloggers all over the world. But sometime it just does not meet with some of your specific needs and you find yourself helpless as there is no other good option to go for. Therefore, we present 8 best alternatives to WordPress as a blogging platform. These are the 8 solutions that will help you get your own advanced blogging solution.
Filed under blog management, blogging, Blogs, editing, multi-author blogs, plugins, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins by Cameron
Managing a blog with a single author can be time-consuming enough, but adding in multiple authors can exponentially increase the amount of time and effort it takes to manage. There’s editorial workflow, scheduling, and author management to consider, among other things. Below are fifteen plugins that can make managing your multi-author blog a lot easier. [...]
Continue Reading "15 useful plugins for multi-author blogs"Filed under bloggers, blogging, contributors, css3, freelancing, html5, mobile design, News, responsive design, Wordpress, writing by Cameron
Webdesigner Depot is always looking to add some new regular content contributors! With more than 80,000 RSS subscribers and over 340,000 Twitter followers, WDD is great exposure for bloggers and designers alike. We’re looking to hire some regular paid bloggers with a strong design background. Contributors should be able to write at least one blog [...]
Continue Reading "Interested in contributing to Webdesigner Depot?"Filed under blogging, Web and Graphics, Webmaster tools, Wordpress by Jude Cavale
WordPress is undoubtedly the king of content management systems and almost every blog today uses WordPress. If you own more than a few WordPress blogs, managing them can become a hassle and that is when ManageWP comes into picture.
This unique tool al…
Continue Reading "ManageWP Controls All Blogs in One Place"Filed under blogging, direct mail marketing, Facebook Fan Pages, facebook marketing, linkedin, Marketing, networking tips, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Tips, Twitter by Speider Schneider
I’m amazed at companies, especially marketing firms, that stop their social media. It’s usually a blog that hasn’t been updated in a year or the proud display of fans numbering less than ten, eight of them being employees at that firm. What does that tell potential clients? It says that firm has no idea about [...]
Continue Reading "Social media for creatives"Filed under animations, Art, best of, blogging, Compilation, copywriting, css3, flash, Fonts, Hacks, Icons, illustration, javascript, local search, photoshop, plugins, reference, Resources, Twitter, Wordpress by Cameron
Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of [...]
Continue Reading "Our favorite tweets of the week Nov 21-Nov 27, 2011"Filed under blogger, blogging, feedburner, Google, optimization, rss feed, SEO, typepad, Wordpress by Cameron
Your RSS Feed is sometimes the only way your visitors experience what you have to offer on a regular basis. It serves to inform and entertain, but is also an essential tool for driving traffic back to your website and improving your overall search-engine ranking. If all your feed does is show a poorly formatted [...]
Continue Reading "How to optimize your blog’s RSS feed"Filed under blogging, posterous, tumblogging, tumblr, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins, Wordpress Themes by Cameron
Tumblogging, posting short, often multimedia, blog posts on sites like Tumblr, has been consistently growing in popularity for a couple of years now. Tumblr is the most well-known tumblog service out there, but there are also themes that can turn your WordPress blog into a tumblog-style site. Tumblogging is a great option for those people [...]
Continue Reading "Tumblogging: WordPress vs. Tumblr"Filed under blogging, Tips, website by Ebrian Acebedo
When you make a website of your own or you design other’s website, you will surely think of how it can gain income. You might be amazed how web owners earn and you will be even more amazed to know that they earn more than those who are employed in a company. The question on how they earn will surely come into your mind.
In making a profitable website, it always begins in the design to build a good first impression to the clients. Having a good first impression will surely drive them to return to your website every now and then. But what are the elements that one needs to consider to make the website profitable? Here are a few things that could give answers to your question.
Continue Reading "How to Have a Profitable Website"Filed under Blog, blogging, Design, Tips by Kareen Liez
Advertise here with BSAGuest posting is having a post on other people’s website pertaining to a topic that has something to do with their site. If it is a design website, you will be guest posting about design, too. This is considered to be one …
Continue Reading "10 Ways for a Successful Guest Posting"Filed under blogging by Vandelay Website Design
Anyone who has maintained a blog for even a few months or more knows that there are frustrating times in the life of a blogger where growth seems to come to a complete standstill. The nature of blogging involves adding new content to the site and continually picking up new readers through that content. However, there are times when common measurements like visitors, pageviews, subscribers, and even income are extremely difficult to improve upon.
These blogging plateaus typically lead to frustration. In this post we’ll look at some things that you can do when you’re on one of those plateaus to help make that push and get things moving forward again.
A lot of bloggers incorporate goals into their daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly routines. Goals can be highly effective because most bloggers are working on their own, and there’s no boss or anyone else to keep them motivated. In this type of situation, goals can help by encouraging the blogger despite that lack of accountability to others.
Typical goals for a blogger might include:
While these goals can serve as motivation they don’t show you what you need to do in order to achieve them. If you’ve hit a plateau one of the best things you can do is forget about statistics and results and focus instead on actions. Actions will be more relevant to you in this situation because if you set up good action goals they can show you exactly what you need to do in order to get better results, removing the mystery of where to focus your efforts.
For example, here is a set of action goals that you could use:
While it may be things like number of visitors and number of subscribers that you are having trouble improving, by focusing on these specific actions you’re likely to improve your blog, which will result in better numbers that help to get you off of that plateau.
Continue Reading "5 Tips for Overcoming Blogging Plateaus"Filed under blogging, blogging tools, prolific blogging, screenshots, Tips, Tools, Wordpress Plugins, writing by Paul Boag
Whether you are a web design freelancer trying to win new work, an entrepreneur promoting your web app, or a corporate drone looking to enhance your career, you will need a blog. In fact the personal blog has almost become a requirement for any web professional. The problem is, they are a pain to keep [...]
Continue Reading "How to become a prolific blogger"Filed under Blog, Blog Writing, blogging, Freelance Writing by FreelanceSwitch.com
Credit: PriamLimited on Photodune
Maybe you are about to launch a blog or possibly considering how to focus your content to draw a specific customer. Content consumers – your customers – are looking for something when they come to your…
Filed under archives, blog design, blogging, blogging tips, Blogs, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins by Paul Boag
You have a broken blog. In fact it is not just your blog. Its pretty much every blog out there. The problem is that blogs are fundamentally flawed. Blogs are great if you use them for their original purpose. However, we often use them for a lot more than a chronological series of posts that have [...]
Continue Reading "Why you have a broken blog and how to fix it"Filed under blogging, Design, How To's by Robert Bowen
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One of the topics that the design blogging community touches on from time to time, concerns the saturation levels of the blogosphere with regards to design blogs. There are so many design centric blogs filling the landscape that the chances of capturing enough of the available audience out there so that you can generally consider your blog a success amongst the rabble are decreasing with every new RSS feed introduced…
Continue Reading "Surviving Design Blog Saturation : Is The Future in the Niche?"