What is RSS (Really sImple Syndication) and why do I care?

by Mary-Frances Main

According to Wikipedia:

RSS is is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works-such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video-in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.

As one of our clients put it, "you lost me at 'web feed formats' can you start over?".
If you have a blog, this is all fairly important and if you use our services here at Widget, you'll end up calling us to ask "where is my RSS feed" at some point, so pay attention!

Think newspapers. Syndication is quite simply broadcasting (an article or cartoon) for publication in many magazines or newspapers at the same time. Ironically, now this term is more often used regarding the content of websites than it is for newspapers.

Really simple syndication comes set up and ready to go on most blogs. On Blogger, for instance if you type in http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml the "feed" will usually automatically come up. That is, if you haven't changed settings, but we're assuming here you're a beginner and you don't go regularly mucking around in your publishing settings in the back end.

So, why is this important? Because this is how most of the web world "views" your feed. It puts your blog in a standardized format so about any service can read it and post it wherever they want.

Most social networking profiles (like Facebook, LinkedIn and Hootsuite) allow you to put your "feed" up on a page or in a profile area. So, then your friends and/or clients on that network can read your blog - right there and constantly get updated posts.
More importantly you, as a writer, don't have to republish your information over and over in different places.

This feed is also monitored by services like Google Reader or Bloglines. In these programs, you can plug in your favorite RSS feeds and they will let you know when something new comes up on these blogs. Embarrassingly, I monitor 329 blogs - but only roughly a third of them have new posts daily. Thus, the service saves me a lot of time going to a blog only to find there's nothing new there.

This is also how Yahoo and Google put "top headlines" on their pages - they crawl through RSS feeds and find the most popular of the newsfeeds to give you constantly updated "popular" stories. This is also why sometimes it's about a top actor in the movie Avatar even though we all feel Haiti deserves more popular attention.

The site - feedburner.com - is a great one because now that Google has bought it, it interacts with Google Analytics and Google AdWords to help you maximize your blog performance, but maybe that's a subject for another article?

So, hopefully you're not overwhelmed, but feel free to email me any questions and I'll try to clarify any of these points!

5 Insider Secrets For Writing With Confidence by Ali Hale

Found at pickthebrain.com some fabulous pointers for anyone who wants to blog (I especially enjoyed "The first draft of anything is crap." - read through the jump!

I’m a professional writer. I work for blogs and the occasional magazine, and in the past I’ve written for clients who wanted website copy. My fiction has also been published, including a couple of competition prizes. Small successes, perhaps; but even these wouldn’t have happened without a strong level of writing confidence.

Since I write for a number of blogs, I often get questions from would-be writers. Something which crops up frequently is a lack of confidence. Many (surprisingly good) writers never send pieces to an editor, or agonise over every post they write on their own blog.

It doesn’t need to be that way. Good writing isn’t the preserve of a few lucky individuals – after all, none of us were born able to write! And, in the 21st century, many stifling grammatical “rules” no longer apply. You’re free to write in your own voice and your own style … and you can enjoy it. Here’s how:

Treat Writing As a Skill
Now, I’ll admit that some people do seem to be natural-born writers, just as others have an innate talent for music or art. Writing is a skill, however – one that can be learnt. This could include

The technicalities of writing (like where to put a comma and how to ensure subject-verb agreement). If your grasp of grammar is shaky, there are lots of books that can help.
Writing style and fluidity. An evening class or a correspondence course, where you get feedback from a tutor, can help you to develop stylistically.

Voice and purpose. One of the most important things to learn in writing is how to tailor a piece to an audience. This means learning how to write in different tones, from chatty to professional to motivational.

Good writers spend time learning and honing their craft, which gives them true confidence – because they know their skills are up to scratch.

Practice Regularly
If you’ve ever learnt to play an instrument, or studied a foreign language, you’ll know how important it is to practice. Even if your first attempts are faltering, you quickly get better. It’s just the same with writing: the more you write, the better you’ll become.

Read the rest of the article....

Some "wow" information about Titles in blog posts

Written on May 21st, 2005 at 10:05 am
by Darren Rowse

The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization

A few days ago I was moaning to a mate about the fact that despite thousands of inbound links and a page rank of 6 - ProBlogger.net is still yet to rank highly for many of it’s relevant search terms in Google - as a result I rarely get any traffic from Google on this blog. Even for a term like ‘Blog Tips’ (something I write about a lot) I only ranked around 60th on Google.

My friend asked a simple question that made me realize how blind a blogger can be when they stare at their own blog all day and lose objectivity.

He asked:‘What is in the title tags of your blog?’

As soon as he asked the question I knew how stupid I’d been. This is a question I often ask other bloggers but had not asked myself!

The title tags of my front page had been ‘ProBlogger: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. A good descriptive term - but not including some of the key terms that I was wanting to get hits on - particularly ‘Blog Tips’.

NB: your ‘title tags‘ are what appears between in your blog’s templates. This title comes up at the top of your browser when viewing a page and comes up in search engine results as the title of your post.After banging myself on the head a few times for my stupidity I decided to do an experiment - I changed my title tags on my home page to ‘ProBlogger Blog Tips: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. Just a tweak really - the inclusion of two words. I set this up and waited to see what would happen.

Read the rest of this post here...

Personality is key to Social Media

This is an outstanding article.....

As director of an advertising agency that manages social media campaigns, I was recently brainstorming recipes for social media success. Every formula I came up with included personality.In Social Media, Personality is KeyYou can be controversial, funny, or intellectually stimulating. "Bland" loses. "Unique" wins. Ask Yourself...

Do you have a personality or personal brand?
How well developed is it?
How well are you conveying it with social media?

Although your avatar, pictures and banners make a difference, social media is primarily a written format. Maki is a great example of strong branding via images. But he's also a good writer. If he were a horrible writer, it wouldn't work. Eighty years of data from direct marketing and copywriting has taught us words are more powerful than images.
by Brian Carter, Fuel Interactive

Read the rest of the article here.

6 Points to a Successful Blog

This is an article from one of our past newsletters:

1. Choose a topic that you know, like, and are passionate about. This way you will never get bored and will keep your audience always interested and asking for more.
2. Open a Blogger account. It is free and easy to use. You can also use the free WordPress accounts or if you're more internet savvy install Wordpress and host it yourself. Blogger is owned by Google though and because of this, in my experience, you run higher onsearch engines.
3. Almost always post a picture with a blog entry! It adds interest and color. You can easily load photos free with Webshots or Flickr . They can be items, arty, family (crop and be artsy if you want) or whatever relates to your topic.
4. In your blog's sidebar, create links related to your topic. It looks bare without them and it creates more usable content for your readers.
5. Post, post, post! Two or three times a week is ideal. Once a week is the borderline minimum that I recommend to keep your audience engaged and maintain adequate visibility in the search engines. You can "pre-write" posts and post them as you go along. Most blog sites allow you to write drafts - post when you're ready!
6. Make comments on other people's blogs. They will most certainly come to your blog to say hi or see who you are. Community is what's most important in blogging and there are a LOT of blogs out there. Set yours apart from the rest!