Magic In Blogging

Ok, another new word, scraping.  I was notified that I had comments awaiting moderation. These comments showed a small portion of my original post, including a link back to my blog.  Usually I check the website address for the comment to see if it’s legit and found that these types of comments were on a useless blog.  I couldn’t figure it out….until today.

I have made it a practice not to approve comments that don’t really add to the blog, that are blatantly bogus. I subscribe to a ton of blogs and I found this post, "One Sure Way To Stop Scrapers From Earning Off Your Blog", from Blog Content Provider.com to explain it well.

Let me know what you think by commenting below.

SpringWidget

Feedburner

Google’s Gadgets

Goggle’s Blog Directory - This is the link I’d check first.

List of Directories

Blog Catalog

Blog Digger

Bloglines

Blog Universe

Are you twittering yet? It’s one more social networking tool you can use to raise your online visibility.

Social networking is a great way to build your online sphere of influence. Traversing the blogosphere, posting comments on blogs your read and using tools like Twitter and MyBlogLog will give you added exposure to other small business owners. Here’s a link to a great resource for using Twitter.

If you are Twittering, how are you using Twitter in your online business? Please share by commenting!!

Small Business Webinar Series on Blogs and Blogging

 Monday, March 24th 3pm PT - 6pm ET

• Want to know where to submit your blog?
• Want to learn how to share your blog content?
• Would you like to be recognized as an expert in your industry?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, blogging is for you. Magic In Blogging will host a small business webinar on blogs and blog marketing. Whether you go the full route of having a blog site as your main site, like Magic In Blogging, or if you add a blog to your existing site, there’s no doubt that blogging will drive more traffic to your site.

Don’t miss this webinar! Participate from the comfort of your office with only an internet connection and speakers. What are you waiting for? Sign up now, learn about blogging and bring more traffic to your site.

Small Business Webinar Series on Blogs and Blogging

 Monday, March 10th 6pm PT - 9pm ET

• Do you want more traffic to your website?
• Do you want to improve your search engine rankings?
• Would you like to be recognized as an expert in your industry?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, blogging is for you. Magic In Blogging will host a small business webinar on blogs and blog marketing. Whether you go the full route of having a blog site as your main site, like Magic In Blogging, or if you add a blog to your existing site, there’s no doubt that blogging will drive more traffic to your site.

I know, you’re asking, “how’s blogging going to help me?” Those are the questions this webinar will answer for you.

• What is blogging?
• How will it help my business?
• What do I have to do?
• Do I need any special programming skills?

Don’t miss this webinar! Participate from the comfort of your office with only an internet connection and speakers. What are you waiting for? Sign up now, learn about blogging and bring more traffic to your site.

This is a great community to belong to if you are blogging. It’s also a great networking site for solopreneurs.

We need all the help we can get online. Belonging to these "social networking" communities helps your online business in so many ways. You can list the blogs you author, offer a profile widget, as well as a recent readers widget. Both widget allow you to share your online information with your readers.

Best of all, MyBlogLog offers tracking for your blog. I’ve just reviewed the stats for North San Diego Business@Large and am impressed with what I see. You can track where your readers came from, what they looked at, and what they clicked on. It’s another fabulous tool to use for your blog. Not only can we network online, building our communities, and tracking our activity.

If you have a blog, you need to join today. Let me know what you think by commenting below!

I had the distinct pleasure of being named one of the Women Bloggers to Watch in 2008. It’s always nice to be recognized by your peers. I’ve been touting blogging since February of 2005, when I started my first blog over at Blogger. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen eyes glaze over and roll to the back of heads. What is blogging?  Only kids blog, right? Finally, blogging arrives as a business tool.

Let me share with you why blogging is so beneficial to a business.  Let’s say I visited your site a month ago, I saw what I saw and I read what I read. If I visit your site today, will I see what I saw and read what I read? Will anything be different?  If not, why should I come back to your site?

The two most popular free blogging platforms are Blogger and WordPress. You can start there. Here’s a document that shares the differences between these two popular free platforms. Here at Magic In Blogging you’ll find how-to videos for common tasks .  As I work on adding videos, please let me know if there’s a specific task at Blogger or WordPress.com that you need a "how-to" for.

Now, if what you want is a totally robust blog like North San Diego Business, or Magic In Blogging,  you can have blog software installed and programmed for your site. I used WordPress because of it’s extendability, flexibility and the vast number of plugins available. It’s also very user friendly.

Blogging is here. It’s an essential asset to any business web presence. Think about embracing it!

Here is the actual post:

1. eJohnson and Company with Elizabeth Johnson
2. Susan Mernit
3. Personal Development Demands Success with Priscilla Palmer
4. Mom Gadget with Gayla McCord
5. Laura’s Learning about Business
6. Organize Your Life with Sarah Kimmell
7. The Technology Vixen with Gennipher
8. Natural Living Blog with Pennie Mills
9. What Sells Online with Samantha Tang
10. Organicsyes with Susan Loughrin
11. California Musing with Susan
12. Phoenix Consulting with Theresa Rhoden
13. Angie Pedersen - Scrapbook Marketing
14. Debra Simpson - Magic in Blogging
15. Ash Joie-Lee - the Paisley Goddess
16. One Minute Book Reviews with Janice Harayda
17. And a Mom with Jules
18. How I changed the world today with Julia
19. Social Net Rocks True with Jacinta Gascoigne
20. Biz Chicks Rule with Kristen King
21. Home Biz Notes With Mary Emma Allen
22. Suburbia Queen with Jamie
23. Eavesdrop Writer with Vienne
24. NuNomad Blog with Carmen Bolanos
25. ZenGuide by Yang-May Ooi

Like a lot of small business owners, I started with one of the free blogging platforms. The two free blogging platforms most chose between is Blogger and WordPress. Each platform has it’s advantages and disadvantages.

I have blogs at both Blogger and WordPress, but I now program WordPress blogs (wordpress.com is the free hosting platform, wordpress.org is the blogging software) that are hosted directly and not part of the free platforms.

Some of the solopreneurs in North County have asked me how they can enhance their Blogger blogs. This gave me the idea of creating a video on Blogger’s Page Elements, which is commonly referred to as the "new Blogger." This video is an overview of the page elements and how, or why, you might want to use them.

I’ll follow with specific videos on using each element in upcoming posts. Let me know if this helps by commenting, or if I can create a video tutorial for a particular task.

Here is a video tutorial on WordPress’ Blogroll, how to add a link and how to manage a link.

Blogrolls typically link to the blogs you, as the blogger, read. However, depending upon what your goal is for your blog, you may want to rename it from blogroll to something else. This tutorial will show you how to rename your bogroll too.

If this was helpful, please feel free to leave a comment below. If you need a specific WordPress task documented, please let me know.