After a long wait, my dreams of including a photoblog section is becoming true! And I finally managed to rack up some bucks to possess a killer camera. Here is the first blood from my new Fujifilm S1500
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Blog Design Best Practices – Marketing Gyan
Hi all, after the overwhelming response to my first Marketing Gyan post 5 steps to blogging disaster, here is my second one in the series. Today we are going to talk about blog design. I am sure that this is something that really bothers a blogger’s mind as to how to get it right and present a good looking blog to the audience. Here are some simple but effective tips to stay on top :)
My Blog My Choice
Many bloggers think that their blog is their personal space and its best to add colours and designs of their choice. To an extent this is right but not completely, the ultimate aim of a blog is to convey your thoughts to the readers – you can measure the success by the amount of people it reaches to. So it’s very important that your blog gives a good user experience to people who make time to visit your blog - this is where blog design comes into play.
Choosing Templates
There are millions of blogger templates and wordpress templates available in the web world, many people go crazy over them, with the amount of choice web offers it’s natural. My advice for selecting a template - keep it simple! Templates with too much graphics and rich media elements won’t help your blog. The richer and fancier your template, it will take a lot of time to load and appear in search results. We are in a fast world – do you like waiting to open a web page which shows – loading – loading – loading?
Choosing Colours
The rule of thumb in publishing industry is light background and dark text. This is not a mere statement, it’s a fact based on research and the combination of black and white rocks! Take the example of any newspaper, magazine or some top websites – except for the advertisement part, the content is mostly/always presented in light background and dark text and in most cases its white background and black text. What’s the reason behind it? This combination makes it easy for the human eyes to read. If its dark background and light text, the eyes will have to strain a lot, give a try and you will agree with me :)
Widgets
There are millions of really cool widgets available for free, but make no mistake, adding as many widgets to your blog don’t make your blog cool at all! Widgets are actually a smart advertisement strategy of a third party site that produces and distributes the widget. They drastically pull down the performance of your blog, resulting in your blog to load slowly. I have seen many bloggers who are crazy about widgets like – live traffic feed, photo slideshare, virtual aquarium and the list goes on and on and on…My advice will be to choose only those widgets that add some real value to your blog content and if possible keep it minimum.
Social Media Icons
Making your blog shareable is very important, there are lots of social medial icons available for free, get them onboard and make it easy for people to share your content. And again be choosy, too many cooks spoil the dish – so keep those icons that people will love to click and share. Share this and Add this are few of the best places to find some cool share widgets/buttons.
That’s it for today, will be posting more on this topic in the future. Hope you liked the tips, if you have any questions, join my facebook fanpage and give a shout! I will be the happiest to help you:)
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| courtesy - capclassique.wordpress.com |
My Blog My Choice
Many bloggers think that their blog is their personal space and its best to add colours and designs of their choice. To an extent this is right but not completely, the ultimate aim of a blog is to convey your thoughts to the readers – you can measure the success by the amount of people it reaches to. So it’s very important that your blog gives a good user experience to people who make time to visit your blog - this is where blog design comes into play.
Choosing Templates
There are millions of blogger templates and wordpress templates available in the web world, many people go crazy over them, with the amount of choice web offers it’s natural. My advice for selecting a template - keep it simple! Templates with too much graphics and rich media elements won’t help your blog. The richer and fancier your template, it will take a lot of time to load and appear in search results. We are in a fast world – do you like waiting to open a web page which shows – loading – loading – loading?
Choosing Colours
The rule of thumb in publishing industry is light background and dark text. This is not a mere statement, it’s a fact based on research and the combination of black and white rocks! Take the example of any newspaper, magazine or some top websites – except for the advertisement part, the content is mostly/always presented in light background and dark text and in most cases its white background and black text. What’s the reason behind it? This combination makes it easy for the human eyes to read. If its dark background and light text, the eyes will have to strain a lot, give a try and you will agree with me :)
Widgets
There are millions of really cool widgets available for free, but make no mistake, adding as many widgets to your blog don’t make your blog cool at all! Widgets are actually a smart advertisement strategy of a third party site that produces and distributes the widget. They drastically pull down the performance of your blog, resulting in your blog to load slowly. I have seen many bloggers who are crazy about widgets like – live traffic feed, photo slideshare, virtual aquarium and the list goes on and on and on…My advice will be to choose only those widgets that add some real value to your blog content and if possible keep it minimum.
Social Media Icons
Making your blog shareable is very important, there are lots of social medial icons available for free, get them onboard and make it easy for people to share your content. And again be choosy, too many cooks spoil the dish – so keep those icons that people will love to click and share. Share this and Add this are few of the best places to find some cool share widgets/buttons.
That’s it for today, will be posting more on this topic in the future. Hope you liked the tips, if you have any questions, join my facebook fanpage and give a shout! I will be the happiest to help you:)
Sharing is caring!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
5 Steps to Blogging Disaster – Marketing Gyan
The topic that I have chosen today sounds a bit negative to people who already blog and who aspire to blog. I am sorry about that, but after reading the post I am sure that you will get a clear picture about blogging. So here is the list and let’s get started!
I don’t know what to blog!
Starting a blog is very easy; it won’t take you more than an hour to set up a fully functional blog. There are millions of blogs around the world that are still in the set up stage but didn’t make it to see the daylight! Blogging calls for clear understanding on what you want to say to the world. You may be, sorry you definitely should be an expert in a field of your interest or at least must have substantial amount of knowledge in a chosen field and that’s your niche’! Find your niche’, it can be writing on rocket science to simple narration of your daily adventures! Let your knowledge flow through your blog. Believe me if you are honest, helpful and consistent people will love your blog.
I am the boss and I dictate terms
Of course! Yes you are the boss of your blog, but blogging itself is a participatory system, people love to air their thoughts on what you write. They would love to comment on your blog – if the content is worth it so you must be prepared to take up, accept and respond to the comments, whether it’s positive or negative. Be humble enough to respond to each and every comment on your blog – people have considered your content worth spending time on among the millions and millions of pages in the web and have made an effort to share their thoughts – isn’t that amazing!
I don’t care about what others blog about
The Success of blogging is all about sharing knowledge and encouraging the people in the blogging community. It’s very important to read what others have to say, at least those in your niche’, visit their blogs and express your comments – they will be greatly humbled for your share of time and knowledge and believe me 90% of the time they will reciprocate it in your blog. That’s more comment and more traffic!
I’m very busy! I will blog whenever I get time
For success in blogging you need commitment, that’s common for any field isn’t it? Consistency is a very key factor to build an audience base for your blog. You must be willing to post at least 2-3 times a week and believe me if you are consistent with this, you will create a community around your blog. Basic rule of thumb is that, the more you blog, the more you attract readers and Goolge will fall in love with your blog. Some of the successful bloggers/businesses blog 2-3 times a day!
I want to be an instant millionaire
Blogging can be great source of income, but it’s with time and quality of content you attract readers. People won’t flock around your blog instantly – they should get to know you, they should trust you and they should feel that they are getting something useful from your blog. If you think that if you put some ads in your blog and people will be madly clicking them to make you a millionaire, then I’m sorry you have to change your thinking! Keep writing with passion make your blog a useful resource for people then automatically you will find traffic, more the traffic - more opportunities to monetize your blog!
In the coming days I will be writing about, best practices in blogging, blog design, do’s and don’ts, facebook, twitter, SEO and on and on and on…. So watch for this space!
If you have any doubts regarding anything related to blogging, social media, SEO etc., do feel free to ask me, I will be the happiest person to help you out. Just join my facebook fanpage and leave your questions out there. Thanks for your time :)
I don’t know what to blog!
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| img courtesy - howtoblog.org |
Starting a blog is very easy; it won’t take you more than an hour to set up a fully functional blog. There are millions of blogs around the world that are still in the set up stage but didn’t make it to see the daylight! Blogging calls for clear understanding on what you want to say to the world. You may be, sorry you definitely should be an expert in a field of your interest or at least must have substantial amount of knowledge in a chosen field and that’s your niche’! Find your niche’, it can be writing on rocket science to simple narration of your daily adventures! Let your knowledge flow through your blog. Believe me if you are honest, helpful and consistent people will love your blog.
I am the boss and I dictate terms
Of course! Yes you are the boss of your blog, but blogging itself is a participatory system, people love to air their thoughts on what you write. They would love to comment on your blog – if the content is worth it so you must be prepared to take up, accept and respond to the comments, whether it’s positive or negative. Be humble enough to respond to each and every comment on your blog – people have considered your content worth spending time on among the millions and millions of pages in the web and have made an effort to share their thoughts – isn’t that amazing!
I don’t care about what others blog about
The Success of blogging is all about sharing knowledge and encouraging the people in the blogging community. It’s very important to read what others have to say, at least those in your niche’, visit their blogs and express your comments – they will be greatly humbled for your share of time and knowledge and believe me 90% of the time they will reciprocate it in your blog. That’s more comment and more traffic!
I’m very busy! I will blog whenever I get time
For success in blogging you need commitment, that’s common for any field isn’t it? Consistency is a very key factor to build an audience base for your blog. You must be willing to post at least 2-3 times a week and believe me if you are consistent with this, you will create a community around your blog. Basic rule of thumb is that, the more you blog, the more you attract readers and Goolge will fall in love with your blog. Some of the successful bloggers/businesses blog 2-3 times a day!
I want to be an instant millionaire
Blogging can be great source of income, but it’s with time and quality of content you attract readers. People won’t flock around your blog instantly – they should get to know you, they should trust you and they should feel that they are getting something useful from your blog. If you think that if you put some ads in your blog and people will be madly clicking them to make you a millionaire, then I’m sorry you have to change your thinking! Keep writing with passion make your blog a useful resource for people then automatically you will find traffic, more the traffic - more opportunities to monetize your blog!
In the coming days I will be writing about, best practices in blogging, blog design, do’s and don’ts, facebook, twitter, SEO and on and on and on…. So watch for this space!
If you have any doubts regarding anything related to blogging, social media, SEO etc., do feel free to ask me, I will be the happiest person to help you out. Just join my facebook fanpage and leave your questions out there. Thanks for your time :)
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Aviation Ministry and Praful Tales
Today the airline holds only 17 percent of the market share! Praful’s gyaan has facilitated the national carrier to clinch this position with great difficulty. Stupid decisions like buying more aircrafts than necessary and keeping them grounded, encouraging private players to fill his pockets and loot passengers pockets, pulling off the services from profitable air routes for no reason whatsoever are some of the major achievements of the great minister.
Ok now if you ask me why I am concerned about this? Its my money and your money being wasted to fuel this mess by the great minister. A whopping 2000 crore was infused by the Government of India to fuel the purchase more aircrafts for the national airline for no reason! Why should they buy aircraft if they don’t operate wherever needed? The national carriers fights are airborne only 6-9 hours a day while the competitors manage 16 hours. The airline has pulled out from the most profitable routes like Doha, Bahrain and Kozhikode for no reason, so where are they going to use these additional flights? Currently the airline has more than 40000 crore as debt and do you think it will pay back our money? Think twice, Mallya and Goel have already saved Praful, God save India…..
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Sunday, March 6, 2011
Cricket in India
The Cricket world cup is on and this means craziness for people in India. I am a cricket fan, but I’m not so obsessed with the game. I really get annoyed when people here get so emotional about the game. During the match days it has the magic of turning cricket fans in India into cricket experts – they can spell out such winning strategies which even cricketing legends like Sunil Gavaskar or Ravi Shastri could have never thought of!
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| Image courtesy - jokecricket.com |
It was Saturday evening; I stepped out of my house for shopping. My first destination was the Nair tea shop; I am a great fan of the ginger tea at this place. So I thought to start my domestic shopping with a bang! The tea shop is our local Times Now channel, you can get any news here with as much exaggeration as possible. Arnab Goswami’s are grown here with a desi tinge. I ordered my tea, the tea shop was full of news makers and expert panel members discussing cricket. I had no choice but to listen to the conversation.
The topic of discussing was India’s tie – heart breaker match against England, one detective mind out there said that the match was fixed! – don't you think this guy is perfect for our CBI force which works mostly on intuition? One of the detective’s companion was very angry about India’s bowling attack and was bleeding with emotions, he said if Zaheer Khan would have been brought into attack in the 40th over, we would have won the match hands down – for that one moment my respect for prophecies of Nostradamus took a suicidal dive. Are the producers of “India got talent” listening? We got a real talent here!
I was lost among the expert opinions; I couldn’t do much when one among the enlightened group asked my opinion on India’s performance. My blunt smile gave the group the signal that I have nothing to say, the whole group gave me a nasty look as if I am a sore loser in life, even my Maths teacher wouldn’t have given me such a look during the days when I consistently boiled eggs in my class tests.
After the spicy tea, I hopped into the supermarket. I was busy selecting grocery items. Two fashion conscious aunties were standing adjacent to me and enjoying their favorite sport aka gossiping. Again here the topic was Cricket! One lady said “Zaheer Khan looks so hot, his new blond hair colour has changed his look and luck around” the other one said “I prefer Ishant Sharma, he has sexy long legs, poor baby he is not playing the world cup, I miss him so much”
Errr…. Cricket is everywhere,thank god these experts didn't lead the MRF pace foundation, if they managed then all our bowlers will be blond by now! After the super market shopping adventure, I reached my final shopping destination - “India Proteins” one of the buzzing chicken meat shop in our locality now – courtesy a TV and team India’s match highlights. The butcher’s crowd pulling strategy was amazing but, people preferred free cricket for 140/kg chicken.
I placed my order and the butcher sprung into action, he was exhibiting his cricketing skills on the dead chicken - upar cut, helicopter shot, palti hit all followed suit. The cricket madness is on and this will only increase as the world cup progresses. I seriously need to improve my cricket commentary skills if at all I want to survive this madness or else I’m sure to be lost in the crowd. Cricket has its own impact on all kinds of people in India, I wonder if I could ever grow up to be one like the people I met today, sigh!
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