Wayne Liew Dot Com

Wayne Liew Dot Com is all about simple blogging tips, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to get yourself free blogging tips updates.

Wayne Liew Dot Com was founded on 20th of August 2007 and it started out as a personal blog with a variety of articles, including life rants, thoughts, humor and current issues.

Photo by jinqi

In August itself, a couple of posts get some attention in the blogosphere.

• MOL Freedom - Alternative to Ambank NexG gets attention from local prepaid credit card users.
• Biggest Link Contest Scam In Blogosphere! allows Wayne Liew Dot Com to get some attention from international bloggers with its comments on Ashwin Khanna.

On September, signs of Wayne Liew Dot Com becoming a niche blog is becoming more significant.

• Don’t Click On Your Own Ads is the first blogging related post.
• How To Earn With CPM ads?, Paid Posts - My Main Income Source and PayPal Likes Underage Kids Too further pushes the possibility of making Wayne Liew Dot Com a blogging tips and guides blog.
• Wayne Liew Dot Com successfully performed a massive linkbait on local bloggers with Malaysians’ PayPal Dream Comes True.

October is a month to remember for Wayne Liew because it is the month whereby he made the decision to turn Wayne Liew Dot Com into a niche blog on blogging tips and guides. Some of the successful blogging tips posts written in this month include:

• Google Awarded Me A PR4 gave Wayne Liew Dot Com a milestone after its founding in August.
• My Traffic Is Gone! My Blog Is Dying! marks the attempt of Wayne Liew using a catchy title with his blogging tips articles.
• You Comment, I Link You
• 6 Fatal Errors Of Money Making Blogs
• 5 Ways To Make First Time Visitors Comfortable

November is quite a successful month for Wayne Liew Dot Com with the following popular posts.

• Characteristics of A Dying Blog
• 5 Tips for Show Top Commentator Plugin Usage
• 10 Variables of Article Readability
• 10 Reasons You Are Not Getting Comments became the most popular post in Wayne Liew Dot Com and made its way to the Recently Popular list on StumbleUpon home page.

However, Wayne Liew Dot Com closes the year with a miserable month because traffic decreases by 50% due to holidays and reduced effort by Wayne Liew himself. However, a few good posts successfully get some attention by readers and RSS Feed subscriber numbers marked the highest increase in this month.

• Ending Do-Follow for Google
• Minor Blog Tweakings to Get Returning Visitors
• How was Your December (Holiday) Traffic?

There you go, Year 2007 for Wayne Liew Dot Com. Personally, I think Wayne Liew Dot Com got through Year 2007 with a few highs and lows but turned out to be doing alright.

Wayne Liew Dot Com Readers Feedback

I would like my readers to tell me what do you think of Wayne Liew Dot Com and what do you expect from this site in the future. Also, what suggestion would you give to this little boy who will be turning 18 next year?

Subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com RSS Feed to get more blogging tips in Year 2008. Remember, I haven’t post my blogging resolutions for Year 2008 and the publish time of it will be on 31st of December 2007. Stay tuned.

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Many niches have their own blog posting frequency. Some has been set by their powerhouses like the tech niche by Techcrunch and Engadget to be fast-paced. Whenever you wanted to start a blog, the natural posting frequency of a niche is one thing that you want to do your homework at.

High pace blogging is what we are going to discuss about today. High pace niche such as the tech niche and the make money online niche are very saturated and yet, many don’t encounter a success because of the fast pace.

Reasons Why Fast Pace Blogging is Fatal

There are a whole lot of reasons with most of them causes viral effect, leading your high pace blog to a death of blog.

• You will be very busy
• You will be pressurized
• You can’t afford to slow down
• You will give up really fast
• You have lots of competition, with some blogs having more resources than you
• You must be a good multi-tasker

An all in one reason will be it is hard, will give you pressure and in the end, you will be giving up with all efforts thrown into the sea. Many jumped into these niches or make their blog expand on a high pace without having proper research and understanding of what will they face as consequences.

In the end, giving up is the last thing you want in blogging because everyone is moving forward, FAST!

Tips to Survive in High Pace Blogging

The tips I am going to provide are vital, if you can’t do at least 1% of them, don’t dive into a fast moving niche. You will be bombarded with work and your body might be pushed over the limits!

Let me get the ball rolling and after that, I hope you can share your thoughts with me.

Photo by exfordy

Don’t go in

After reading this article, if you realized that you are not having or don’t have the chance of having or practicing the tips, you should consider some other niches out there or slow your blog down.

It is not rational that you encounter a boom in your blog, everything seems to be great and in the end, it is you yourself that is causing the blog problems.

Be an expert

No one will blog on PHP programming with original contents any faster than a PHP programmer. If a niche is moving very fast, the last thing you want to happen to you is having a dead brain on that niche.

You must know the ins and outs of the topic you are blogging about. The small bits can be brought up on your blog and the great thing about being an expert is that people will come to you for assistant, which indirectly gives you a content to blog about.

Team of writers

Many out there wanted to guest blog for other blogs or get paid for writing like me! When you pay for something or accept people to write for your blog, all you need to do is to review the work done, provide advices and pay the money (if applicable) which is much more easier than writing for your blog yourself.

Huge blogs with high blog posting frequency hires people or have a line of writers to write for them. Darren gets Skellie to write on Problogger and Techcrunch has several writers to cover the wide tech niche for them.

Get into a sub-niche

Getting into a wide niche with a lot of things to cover can be very tiring and worse for some first-time bloggers, they must do everything on their own. Sub-niches don’t just give you more targeted readers and less competition, it also let you cover less things over a period.

The number of happenings on the Internet is significantly higher than the number of happenings on social media and the number of happenings are even lesser of when your blog is about StumbleUpon.

Subscribe to fellow niche blogs RSS feed

You don’t get original information from you yourself all the time unless you are a blogger cum journalist. Continuing the buzz from other blogs and rewriting an event by adding in your opinion can cut down a lot of work.

To get such news sent to you from all the related sites out there, subscribe to the RSS feeds. I would say the more the better. You will be waking up every morning, "breakfast" will be served and all you got to do is to choose a few interesting buzz, write it in your own words, add in your opinions and you will get the ball rolling!

Photo by Hamed Saber

Networking with blogs, bloggers and readers

This is very crucial in getting the latest and unpublished news for your blog. When you have developed a fantastic relationship with fellow bloggers and your readers via interaction, you will find them contributing you with tips for various reasons - a linkback, your opinion and even cash!

They might also provide their own opinions and all these will make your writing tasks much more easier since you are provided with the idea.

Know your limits

It is important to know your limits. Remember, when you started out blogging, you set the tone of your blog and the blogging frequency is set after two or three weeks. Know your capacity on posting. You, full of energy, might be posting a few times a day at the start but after a few months, you might be bored of blogging and you will decide to slow down. The cost here is that you will be messing around with your blog posting frequency and risk losing your readers!

Know your capabilities and provide estimates for unpredicted events before deciding which blog posting frequency suits you the best. Keep the frequency up all the time, make your reader know what to expect every time they return and your blog will improve in terms of stats.

Efficient writing and use of language

Bloggers can have average, below-par and great language, mainly English. It is no doubt that all people can blog with a language. However, your flow of thoughts on what to type when working on an article will greatly depends on your language command and vocabulary scope.

Photo by BohPhoto

You will not stop to think for the best adjective to describe an object or spare a lot of your time cleaning up long and crooked sentences. Keeping the time on writing a new article short is very important in fast pace blogging and thus, read a lot to get a better command of a language.

Set yourself free

Give yourself some time to rest over the period of blogging. Get yourself a guest blogger as written above. If you are not allowed a break, blogging will become very tiring and boring, especially if your blog is in a fast-moving state.

Giving yourself a free period will let you see things that can improve your blog. Small things such as suitable new plugins and minor blog tweaks can often be identified when you have a blogging idle time.

Rotation of work

If you have a few writer on board, you can always rotate the work done by these members. For a certain period, they might be writing but for another, they might be reviewing the posts written by others. This will free up the creative mind that will spark new ideas which doing the repeated tasks won’t.

If you are alone, don’t type all day long even if you are writing on a fast blog. Do something else once every three hours. Don’t forget that you need promotion for your blog, maintenance and readers interaction in order to make your blog a truly good blog.

Motivate yourself

It is always good to get some motivation to keep you going. Monetize your blog so that money can help motivating you. Interact with readers who commented to know how much people care about your contents. Also, try getting yourself ranked with other blogs like what I did for this blogging tips blog to get listed on Top Blogs About Blogging.

Motivation will not be the same in different niches but a good motivation is the element that can keep your blog up.

Thoughts on Fast Pace Blogging

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A high pace niche is cruel, especially when it is saturated and no one will care about your blog even if it fails to get any readers because it is like a fight, a bloody one.

If you don’t have the pre-requisites, don’t jump into the fray and get yourself killed.

What will be your thoughts on fast pace blogging? Imagine yourself typing 3-5 articles for your blog daily. Can you maintain the consistency? What will be the problems that you will face and what steps that you will take to turn around such blockages?

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It wouldn’t need much saying why I am writing this. It’s the 25th of December tomorrow and I would like to wish my blog readers:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Wayne Liew Dot Com Blogging Tips Blog is celebrating its first New Year and hopefully next year will be a better year in terms of statistics and earnings for Wayne Liew Dot Com.

Apart from celebrating this wonderful festive season, please do keep in mind the following things that can be done to welcome Year 2008.

Photo by krisdecurtis

This list contains things that I will be doing for Wayne Liew Dot Com to welcome the Year 2008 and hopefully, it can act as a checklist for my readers.

• Delete unused plugins from your wp-content/plugins folder
• Clean up and reorganize your categories
• Draft up and post your blogging resolution for Year 2008
• Revisit your archive, edit or delete out-dated posts
• Attitude review on matters like productivity and organization

These will be the few things that I will do before Year 2008 is knocking on the door.

Photo by krisdecurtis

What are your plans for Year 2008?

What other things that you all will carry out for your blog before the New Year? How will you celebrate it? What are the plans in your mind for Year 2008? I hope you can share it with a brief comment. Again, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I have seen magazine style themes and plugins like WP-Sticky Post becoming more and more popular among blogs. Such tweaks to your blog will help you to show off your best work instead of letting it flow down through the usual chronological order characteristic of a blog.

However, I do spot some bad spots with a featured post on your blog and I will give you some tips on the usage of a featured post.

5 Tips on Using a Featured Post

No featured article with welcome message

New blogs tend to have a welcome message as their featured post and this is totally wrong! A welcome post on the top of your blog will just tell people that your blog is new. A welcome post is normally the first post on a blog and if it is on the top, it will send out the message that the blog only has a welcome post, if not, only a few posts.

This will send away lazy readers whom you need first impression to capture them. If someone is new, it is more likely that he/she will take a glance at your blog rather than navigating around.

Recent posts list

It is important to have a list of recent post if you have a featured post on your blog. Also, such list must be placed as high as possible to show new readers that you have some other posts.

A recent post list will also show readers that you have updated your blog by having the new posts appearing on the list. With this in place, you will be kept away from the fear that you will be sending your readers away because they thought that you are not updating your blog.

Excerpts instead of full post

Posting a featured post in full will be too much to fit into the top fold of a blog’s home page. Do keep in mind that most readers won’t scroll unless they are persuaded to do so with your powerful post.

The best for you to do use excerpts for the featured posts rather than having a full post. This gives the opportunity for the top part of other posts to appear on the top part at first glance to offer more choices of reading for readers.

Attractive excerpts

Following the tips above, since your featured post will now have the "Read more" tags, your excerpts must be appealing enough so that your readers will click on the "Read more" link.

If your featured post is not attractive, the consequences that you will be getting is not just about the featured post. Readers might just leave your blog because the featured post (a post is featured because it is good) is not good enough for them.

Photo by homme de chevre

Blink the FEATURED

A featured post should not be mixed with other posts. They got featured because they are one of your best work. You must highlight it to your readers, especially new ones to build a firm first impression for your blog.

Surround the post with borders, add in a special avatar to get attention and also have a big font of the word "FEATURED" will be the ways to really feature something.

Featured Post Feedback

Photo by Bitterjug

I see showing off good posts in the form of popular posts in the sidebar as the better preference since it is much better to be managed. However, if you feature a post, the post will tend to be viral (might become a pillar article) once there is enough marketing for it and it is of sheer quality.

Did you use any methods to feature one or few of your best work in your blog? Will you use it in the future to show off your work? What do you think about other ways that blogs with featured post can do to improve the usage of a featured article?

December was a month where people celebrate holidays all around the world. We have Christmas and New Year coming up. Students are having school holidays and everyone is in a relaxed mood to welcome the coming new year.

Holidays are always the worst performing days for this blogging tips blog and with a few blogging holidays that I took myself, the traffic went even lower.

What will be the causes of low December traffic (holiday traffic)? Does it have anything to do with you or it is just the behavior of your readers?

Factors that Influence December (Holiday) Traffic

Blog Niche

Shopping sites will see a huge increase of traffic. If you are having a shopping guide blog, you are likely to see more readers, especially if your site ranked well for shopping-related keywords.

On the other hand, sites that promotes effort and productivity from readers such as blogging tips blogs, computer repairs blogs, business blogs and others will see a decrease in traffic because the readers will want to be "lazy" on such topics.

Holiday related contents

Changing your contents to suit the coming holiday such as relating it to Christmas, New Year or even relaxing stuffs will bring in traffic for you. Keeping your usual style will be good but a little tweak would make things better.

For example, if you have a food blog, you can start blogging about the recipe of the food that will be prepared for Christmas night.

A content which is related to the holiday season will take readers come back to your blog since it suited their offline relaxed lifestyle. The tension of productivity might not be there when you are blogging about something related to the holiday season.

Photo by kevindooley

Reader groups

What is the age group of your readers? Are they professionals or seniors at home? If your blog has teenagers as your readers, you are likely to receive more traffic because the school holidays will surely give them more time to get online.

On the flip side, you will see a slight fall in traffic if your blog is targeting professionals and seniors, you might be seeing a drop because a holiday means no work and extra leaning for them.

Photo by krisdecurtis

Holiday environment

Is your blog having a holiday environment? Effects such as snow falling down and also a Christmas theme will certainly bring in the warm effect of this holiday season.

Visitors will come back more because of it and sometimes new readers will stop by for some time. Visitors stay for a longer time as it is the psychology at work. They will like they are on a holiday and they are relaxing around your blog.

Your own effort

Are you having a holiday as well? If you work harder than usual during the holidays, putting in a huge amount of effort in seeking new readers, you shouldn’t see a drop.

Blogger like me is doomed to see a drop with a few blogging leaves and the slowing down of posting frequency. The lesson here is that if you work hard, you will get paid for it.

Photo by Sister72

Can This Be A Wonderful Holiday For Your Blog?

First of all, how was your traffic for December and other holiday season? What do you think has caused such impact to your blog? Also, do you think it is necessary to keep the traffic up during the holidays?

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There are many blogs about blogging or teaches you the art of blogging and it is definitely a saturated niche. They feed you with different kind of tutorials everyday unless you are only sticking to only one blogging guide blog.

I have seen bloggers that have been following blogging guides or tips blindly. Sometimes the blogging guides and tips provided are of great quality but when applied by another blogger, it turns his/her blog into a mess.

Examples of blogging tips and guides applied wrongly

• Podcasts with sub-standard quality

  This is the one example I cannot stand. A different way of presenting your contents, such as in the form of audio is great but what if your pronunciation of the language is not good? What if the audio produced with low quality softwares are noisy and unclear?

• Catchy title with lousy contents

  I have said in Don’t Murder Your Articles With Catchy Titles that catchy title only works with good and relevant contents. Despite this, I still got trapped by some attractive titles but I ended up with a sigh. Readers felt cheated when they visit what is really behind the rock and this is certainly not good for you!

• Comment without a strategy

  Comment marketing or commenting on other blogs are recommended in nearly all blogging guides to get traffic, especially after the success achieved by Caroline Middlebrook. The guides ask you to comment but did they really give you a strategy like Creating a Stunning and Memorable First Time Visit, 10 Tips on Participation in Conversations and 6 Arts of Commenting on Articles? This has resulted too many spam comments done by bloggers being spotted all over the blogosphere.

Steps to apply guides and tips correctly

Collaborate. When you have read up something over at a blog, try to do a Google search or a search on another blogging guide blog that you read for similar contents. If the guide provided is being used and recommended by most bloggers, it can give you a guarantee on the guide.

Evaluate. Is this the tool or the step you need to improve what you want to improve? Is it suitable for your blog or your niche? Link the method to your blog. The suitability and compatibility need to be considered before the method can be implemented.

If not, this method can be a waste of time. Moreover, the time that you will need to unclutter your blog will be a long one if you have find the method or add-ons to be inappropriate for your blog.

Photo by tinou bao

Innovate. Before you start to implement the method to your blog, try to think hard on how the method can perform much more better on your blog. You will need a little creativity and observation to get this step done perfectly. Only a tweak or two will help you optimizing the method to give the best result for your blog.

Performance tracking. Always track how your new method is performing. If it is a new way to get more traffic to your blog, go to your traffic counter and analyze whether the method has worked for you. For example, if you have tried out comment marketing to get traffic, the percentage of referral traffic should have been rising.

Photo by ryanrocketship

Leverage. Once you have been satisfied with the results, it is time for you to bring it to another level or to use it to make greater things happen for you. You can further optimize the method for better results, teach it on your blog or to sell it in the form of e-book, making yourself quick bucks.

My conclusion on following blogging guides

Despite I am blogging on blogging with this blogging tips and guides blog, I do read many other blogging blogs out there to learn new things, get traffic and to network. When I discover a new thing, I use the steps above to improve my blog quality instead of decreasing it.

What I am highlighting here is that there is no one-for-all guide in everything. Even a free theme that you like needs customization if you want to use it on your blog. Innovation is a must and blind usage of methods on your blog might kill it faster than ever.

Your opinion and feedback

What do you think about the guide that I have pointed out above? Have you seen an example of either you or others blindly implemented a blogging guide? Share with me. Also, what is your best innovation out of a blogging guide?

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You can read about guides that teaches you the best way to pull in readers is by writing unique contents by using your creativity. They show you the ways of how you can get creative in blog posting and they tell you that being different from others will not make your readers bored.

Today, you will learn something different about those talks. I will be posting 5 advantages of blogging about what others are blogging about. I am posting this because unique contents is something you must squeeze hard out of your head. The Internet is booming with contents because you are not in the stone age of the Internet and it is a hard thing to do for you to produce unique contents.

The 5 reasons that I have compiled are:

Photo by MontageMan

1. Free yourself from pressure

   Unique contents need time, effort and also your own flair in writing to make the whole articles up. Getting creative is hard and structuring a quality article is even harder.

   People out there who have tight schedule for things will not be advised to produce a unique article in each and every one of your blog posts. Straining your mind and body to produce a unique article a day is hard and pressurizing. When you are pressurize of doing something, you tend to look at it as your job and you will dislike it.

   If you are blogging on what others are blogging about, you will have reference and you will not need much thinking about a post. If you are a good writer, an article for your blog can be produced in just 10 minutes!

2. Pitching traffic from source articles

   When you are writing about something which you refer from other blogs, you link it to the source articles. When you do so to a Wordpress blog owner, he /she will receive a notification about the linkback. He might pay your site a visit as well.

   When you have a pingback displayed in the comment section of an article which receives a lot of traffic, you will get some traffic over to your blog if your excerpts sounds relevant to the visitors.

3. You have different base of readers

   Some readers might only read blogging tips from Wayne Liew Dot Com and others might only read blogging tips from Problogger. Readers don’t read many blogs nowadays. Bloggers can visit a lot of blogs to do comment marketing but they can’t cover blogs on the same at once as well!

   Think about it. The consequences will be bad if someone nudge you with this message:

   Why didn’t you tell me this on your blog? I nearly missed out the fact that Google is penalizing blogs with paid posts! Luckily I read it on XXX. I will go there and never come back here any more!

   What will you think?


Photo by jenschapter3

4. Your opinion is precious

   Some readers are your fans. They don’t listen to others and they only want your opinion on certain doubts. This is why even you blog about something hot, people will not leave. You have your own opinions on that particular matter and only even your writing style is the one wanted by your readers.

   The key to blog on what others are blogging is to add in your opinion as much as possible. A post just to notify your readers about an event is not interesting compared to a post full of juicy opinions from you. Also, you will have the chance of voicing your own opinion on the issue and link to it in your future posts.

5. Networking with fellow bloggers

   When you have your say on an issue or create a conflict with what people are heavily discussing, you will make either friends or enemies. Conversations will create the opportunity to know more about fellow bloggers and Cross Blog Conversation is what you need to read in order to get hold of this trick.

   When you have friends, or even enemies with related blogs, they are the ones who will quickly respond on your articles and provide feedbacks. Some blogs with great contents don’t get comments because the blogger don’t network and interact. Try to start interacting by blogging about contents of others.

I have gone the opposite way once with 5 Reasons To Tap Saturated Niche and now hopefully with this one, you are able to see things from the other way.

Conclusion on Blog About Contents of Others

It will be great if you can find some space within your posting frequency to fit some posts that are blogging about contents of others because of the advantages stated above.

However, be aware that blogging about other contents might chase first time visitors away. First time visitors come to your blog because they want unique contents. They want to find new source of contents and if they find something which is same as what they can find elsewhere, they might just click away.

Your Thoughts On Blogging About Contents of Others

Have you blog about contents of others whereby you have add in your own opinion? Are they easier to produce than unique contents? How unique contents (if you have ) have done to your blog? Is it worth the sweat?

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I am frustrated but at the same time laughed when I received this e-mail from George DK which I guess is one of my readers.

Wayne,

I hope you are not interrupted my this e-mail of mine.

I noticed that you are starting to slow down in terms of posting. I read in one of your articles, Characteristics of a Dying Blog and you said in it that a blog which the blogger is missing in action is a dying one.

I am sure George will not be expecting this post. My alternate day posting and my lagging behind in comment marketing is due to the following reasons and I don’t think I will give up this blog just yet!

Photo by mr_sellars

What is holding me back?

Since my holiday in June 2007, I hardly get a long holiday until for these few weeks after my college examination. This sudden opportunity of ample free time has made me slowed down in life.

The things that I get caught up with which had give me this hiccup in Wayne Liew Dot Com Blogging Tips Blog are as follows:

• Launch of an affiliate marketing site
• Writing projects
• Offline marketing and self-improvement books to read
• Taking a break
• Online game

This holiday season supposedly is to let me catch up on everything I do but instead, I have been going too far in putting things into my task list. I will kick  away online gaming next week and you should see this blogging tips and guides blog running at full capacity.

Readers Response Please

First of all, thanks for all my readers who keep returning to check out whether there are any new post and also to my subscribers who gave me a chance by not unsubscribing from my feeds. Also thanks to George for notifying me about the seriousness of my absence.

Have you ever been complacent about your blog achievement? I have been swayed away by other activities and from next week, hopefully, Wayne Liew Dot Com will be back to normal. What do you have to say about this?

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Every blog has categorization function which helps you sort your blog post for readers who only wanted to read some type of your posts instead of everything you have written.

With Year 2008 coming up, one of the main thing that you should do will be cleaning up your blog posts categorization. This process can be as simple as doing nothing if you have always been systematic. However, if you are the kind who sometimes rush a post and have put the posts under the wrong section, the cleaning up is proved vital.

Reasons for Categories Cleaning

• Breaking up big categories
• Resorting of your articles
• Balancing the number of posts in categories

I am sure many out there do clean up their categories with reasons more than the above. Do you clean up your categories and why do you clean it? Share it with me.

I am writing this today because I will be busy cleaning up all my blogs these few days to welcome the new year. I will be sharing a few tips that I used when I am cleaning my categories.

5 Tips of Categories Cleaning

Keep the numbers low

I have seen blogs have 20 or even 30 categories! Categories are supposed to help readers to choose what they want to read easier but too much of it will also send out the message to your readers that your blog isn’t that focused on a particular topic.

Having a lot of categories will also mean the posts contained inside one category will be lesser and when people look at a small number, they might think the blog is new or even not well-maintained.

Photo by blmurch

Periodical review

Categories are supposed to be reviewed by yourself once in a while to make sure that it is tidy. I do it now, welcoming Year 2008 but supposedly, it can be done once every six months or at any time set by yourself.

However, rearranging it always might slow down the process of search engines spiders on crawling your articles. Find an optimum timeline and the most important thing is that you can perform this task when you are free. Getting the task into a tight timetable won’t get it done nicely.

Related blog as reference

I am sure that the topic you are blogging right now have some other people out there blogging about it. The best thing to do when you are thinking of what categories to be created for blogs in your topic will be by referencing other people’s work.

It will be much more easier and clearer to you on what to add, modify and deleted from your list of categories.

Permalink structure

Remember what I have said about permalinking? When you have set your blog permalink settings, the best is not to change the structure any more. Changing the structure might get your search engine readers tonnes of 404 errors.

When you start a blog, don’t ever include "categories" into the permalink structure. This will make things easier when you are cleaning up your categories section. My opinion on the best permalink structure will be what I am using on Wayne Liew Dot Com Blogging Tips Blog.

Relevance

This doesn’t happen anywhere but I do see some of the blogs out there actually have a category with all the posts inside irrelevant. Always open up a "General" category like the "Blogging" category I have in this blog so that when you post something that is not specific, the post can go into the General category instead of simply placing it under a irrelevant category.

Relevance does not only help your readers get what they want faster, it also helps search engine to index your page properly according to the relevance of your articles.

What is your say on blog post categorization?

Will you be carrying out a blog cleanup such as clearing up your categories? What other tips you have to offer to others? I am sure you have seen some blogs with good and bad categorization. Share with us what you think is the good and bad of their methods used.

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On the first day you set foot on the Internet, I am sure that you realized that you are not alone. You register for ICQ and Windows Live Messenger to connect with others, you joined forums for discussions and you set up a blog to get your message across to others.

You cannot get away from conversations and discussions on the Internet. Even in the comment section of a blog or a social media content, you can find people discussing. These are some major places that you will need some conversation skills to blend yourself in.

• Forums
• Blogs
• Chat Groups
• Social Media
• Comments

The 10 Useful Conversation Tips

Ask relevant questions

This is more than important in a conversation. People are discussing about a car’s performance and you jumped in with this question, "Why Google demoted my Page Rank?". What you will get in return is a cold shoulder or even a more cruel answer like "**** off! What has Page Rank got to do with cars?"

I know irrelevant questions make you stand out but how many will pay you attention for a long time? Choose the right medium for your topic. For example, choose Sphinn, StumbleUpon and Digital Point as your conversation medium online if you are interested in blogging.

Provide detailed answers

Don’t be lazy to type a few more words. Typing a few more lines will not only prove that you know your stuffs but also, people will pay attention to your reply because of the WOW factor with such a long reply.

Reply like you are typing a blog post . Over at Digital Point, you get rep points from other members for providing quality replies or if they find your replies helpful.

Listen to what others are saying

There’s always something to say in a discussion but as a discussion goes on and on, many things might have already been mentioned. Repeating it won’t get you the answer again.

I know some forum threads have up to 100 replies for a topic and some blog posts have over 100 comments but taking your time to scan through them rather than posting replies that looks like nothing but rubbish to others.

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Add value to the conversation

Add a piece of information, add a useful and relevant question that keeps the topic alive or even a disagreement which is supported with a source. Too many comments and replies nowadays are not adding value and worse, they degrades the value of a post.

Replies like "Nice one" and "I second you" won’t get you anything. Even though in forums you will get post counts, people will not see the number as valuable since a search on your replies will know that you post rubbish!

Avoid one-liners

I am not saying that one line replies are bad or don’t have value but with the number of spam increasing everyday, people is starting to have this thought "Spammers don’t read and just want to spam because they want attention, thus, they are the one posting one-liners."

Sometimes, we have to follow the norm of this society. People see others who wear torn and dirty clothes, sitting by the roadside as beggars. If you are not one but if you are wearing a torn clothes and siting by the roadside, people will think that you are a beggar!

Be creative and unique

Find your style. It can be a word that is being repeatedly used in your replies. It can be a sense of humor. It can also be a style in using word formatting such as colors. Getting yourself a style and be unique can bring your replies attention since plain text and replies will not make you different from others!

Offer free information

Are you a blogging tutor? Stop promoting your guides or courses in discussions. Try giving your readers personalized tips on how to improve blogs of others free of charge. I am sure that you realized that most successful blogs out there are successful because they provide guides and information, free of charge!

Going extra mile in gathering the information via Google and include it into your replies will certainly make it more useful than the replies of others.

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Be open to comments and criticism

Everyone will have their own errors and not everyone is always correct. When you have said something wrong or got the idea of something wrong, it is normal to get scolded, laughed and given sarcastic comments on the Internet.

The best way is to ignore or to apologize. I am not saying that you must be a coward to survive but if you don’t have firm facts and good interpersonal skills, you won’t get people supporting you and worse, people might see you as a trouble-maker.

Get Your Facts Right

To avoid the consequences of getting scolded or other bad experiences in a discussion, the best to do when you are on the side of providing information is to gather enough pieces of data and collaborate it with other pieces before you spit in out in the discussion place.

Sites like Wikipedia, blogs and also opinions from experts in related issues proved to be important in confirming the accuracy of your information provided. Getting the facts right also will not spoil your reputation as a false information provider. Having a clean record on the Internet is really important.

Photo by Payton Chung

Give more than you take

At times, we see discussion places like forums and chat rooms as places to scrape traffic. We tend to self-promote, sell our products or even bait other users to click on affiliate links (which I always do ).

The advice I am giving here is that, "Don’t just provide a link and always think about what have you contributed before taking benefits from others." I know some people out there will click on links easily but to get the best result in your effort to optimize community marketing is to give more than you take!

Your Feedback On Online Conversations

Do you have any advices for any other readers in participation of conversations? What do you think is the most important thing in participation of a conversation? What I think is that it is just like our daily conversation but the difference is, the whole thing is on the Internet.

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