PureBlogging

For those of you out there who use the Twitter social-networking blogging site, I have specified some more tools that I have come across recently to enhance your Twittering experience:

• Twellow – Want to find friends/followers near you, or that share the same interest as you? This service acts as a Twitter directory of users that are sorted by categories, and you can find users near you using this service’s TwellowHood feature.
• Twply – Want your @replies forwarded to your e-mail? This opt in service will allow you to receive direct messages that are sent to your account also to your e-mail. This is a good service if you are a Twitterer on the go.
• @spellingbot – Need something spelled, and don’t have any spell checking software around? Send an direct message to @spellingbot and your word in question will instantly be corrected.

Happy Blogging!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Ever since the large social networking site Facebook developed and added a Notes section to their interface, it has gotten a lot of attention from the service’s users–bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

The Notes composition section (pictured above) provides a look much like any other blogging platform’s compositional area, including both a Subject line and a multi-line text area for the content/message.

Notes has become a very popular area on Facebook, where users post quizzes, rants, memes, and so forth. With this premise, the usual FB users engaging in the Notes section would not consider themselves as bloggers, but those who are involved in the blogosphere with other blogs (not associated with FB) tied into their profile do admit to themselves as blogging.

What are your thoughts on Notes on Facebook and how it ties into blogging?

Popularity: 9% [?]

The blogger’s sidekick site: Twitter now has a feature where you can “retweet” a tweet.

For those of you somewhat lost on what Twitter is, it is a social networking site where you state (in 140 characters or less) what you are doing. Making this service a “mini-blog” from a social networking aspect.

Retweeting is when a Twitter user forwards one of their follower’s tweets and publishes it on their feed. An example of this is below:

RT: @KevnBriggs It's definitely cold outside

This method also gives credit to the Twitter user that originally made the Tweet that you are broadcasting.

I just learned about this method a little while ago, and thought I would share it with you.

Happy Blogging!

Popularity: 8% [?]

If you are either a new blogger just getting introduced to the blogosphere, or you’ve been blogging for a long time and want to gain more visibility and attention to your blog, I have provided a few tips to give your site a better audience.

• Learn SEO – SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is key for the placement and appearance of your site on search engines. There are specific rules and guidelines to placing your blog higher within search engine results pages. Want to know more about SEO? WebProWorld is a great resource and forum for everything SEO-wise, and a great place to ask SEO-related questions.
• Social Media/Networking – If you are involved in social media/networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, these are great places to help promote and advertise your blog. A trend that I have been seeing on Facebook is that users have been syncing their blog posts to the Facebook Notes section of their profile, and adding applications to their profile page like Blog It!
• RSS Feeds – RSS feeds are always beneficial to add to your blog. These allow people who read a lot of blog posts to view and organize them all in one place. This helps keep the user interested in the content of your blog.
• Article Directories – Submitting your articles to various article directories will help the publicity of your blog, and compete with other writers as your articles will be placed by category. If you would like to submit to a vast amount of directories in a small amount of time, you will need to subscribe to a submission service (e.g. SubmitterBot) that will automatically submit your article to different article directories for you.

Happy Blogging!

Popularity: 13% [?]

Twitter, the social networking site that allows users to describe what they are doing in less than 140 characters is becoming quite a companion for bloggers and the blogosphere.

You may even think that it even might be considered “a mini blog” since you are sharing the events in your life with fellow Twitter users that are following your account.

A trend that has been happening is that Twitter users have been using their account to spread the word about the happenings on their blog. You will often see users in the Recent Updates feed mentioning something like “New blog post!” followed by a link to their blog (mostly seen as a TinyURL redirect link). This method can also be an alternative to an RSS feed as people will “Tweet” the update of their blog right after it is posted.

If you have been blogging for quite a while, and have a vast amount of readers and blog partners, most likely that the majority of them will have an account there.

What are your thoughts on Twitter in relation to the blogosphere?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Good timing on a new study from Bulldog Reporter that looks at online access of news. 24-hour availability still tops in media relations practices it says.

Mike Sachoff reported on the study at WebProNews, saying:

About a quarter of journalists still do not cover blogs, but more than 29 percent regularly read five or more blogs to research topics, compared with about 25 percent a year ago. Nearly three-quarters follow at least one blog regularly, compared to 70 percent a year ago.

Nearly 19 percent of journalists receive five or more RSS feeds of news services, blogs, podcasts or videocasts every week, compared with only 16 percent a year ago, and about 44 percent receive at least one regular RSS feed.

Some interesting findings in times where citizen journalism and even social media are often criticized and dubbed illegitimate. You even have the relevancy of blogs coming into question (although, many tend to think this argument is bogus).

It is good to see that the number of journalists embracing blogs and social media appears to be on the rise.

Popularity: 7% [?]