The Brave Programmer

Father mourns the brutal murder of his 17 year old daughter – Suspect Facebook connection.

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:15:17 GMT

This week South Africa was rocked with the news of a 17 year old school girl who was found murdered in the privacy of her home. Her father arrived home to be greeted by the bloody site of her mutilated body.

The teenager stayed at home because she was unwell. Suffering from an ear infection, her father allowed her to stay home, believing in the safety of his home.

The 17 year old girl was raped and stabbed multiple times with her throat cut and slit open. The worst was her hands were missing. That's right, cut right off. It is believed that the killer or killers cut her hands off and took them with them because she might have scratched her attackers. Believing that their DNA would be under the nails they cut her hands off and took them with as they left the bloody scene.

The sad thing is that this could have been avoided. The teenager’s father believes that the murderer was someone she met on Facebook. The dogs were locked outside in the back and there was no sign of forced entry. Police believe she might have known her attacker, and let him/them in.

Stalkers on Social networks.

This true story brings home the striking reality that criminals are lurking on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, etc. Waiting for that all trusting person. Although it can not yet be confirmed that the murderer is indeed a Facebook lurker, it is none the less a frightening and real threat.

“She logs on to Facebook about 25 times a day and gets annoyed when her roommate doesn't comment on her new photo album. She says she doesn't worry if casual acquaintances know everything about her; her online profile shows her cellphone number, e-mail address, screen name, campus post-office box and 153 pictures of her with friends and a boyfriend. She would list her dorm's suite number, too, she says, but that's against sorority rules designed to protect her personal safety.”

In today's world social networking sites are popular means of communication for people of all ages . This is a good thing in many respects as it allows people to have free online contact with friends and family. But sometimes it can bite back, because sometimes even people we know and trust will use online social networking sites as a way to harass and stalk us, or God forbid do worse.

The dark side of social networking sites is that they allow others to know a person’s contact information, interests, habits, and whereabouts. Consequences of sharing this information can range from the relatively harmless but annoying harassment, such as an increase in spam, to the potentially deadly, such as stalking or even worse. As in the case of the 17 year old girl.

While the vast majority of people using social networking sites do not pose a threat, malicious people may be drawn to them because of the accessibility and amount of personal information available on them.

Criminals can use information provided about a person’s birthday, location, routine, hobbies, and interests to impersonate a trusted friend or convince the unsuspecting that they have the authority to access personal or financial data. They can even use such info to guess your account passwords.

Risks to Children and Teenagers

Children and young teens are especially susceptible to the threats that social networking sites present. Although many of these sites have age restrictions, there is no real way to enforce these requirements. IT is also possible for children to misrepresent their ages so that they can join.

Predators may target children, teens, and other unsuspecting people online. Sometimes posing to be someone they are not. Then slowly “groom” their target, forming relationships with them and then eventually convincing them to meet in person.

Parents should be have in depth knowledge of such threats so as to teach their children the risks involved. Know your child's every move. Know who their so called online friends are. Keep a vigil watch over them.

You might say, what about their privacy. Hey if invading their privacy saves their life, then its a no brainer.

How to limit the risk.

There are a bunch of logical precautions that one can take when interacting on social networks. Here are a few to remember.

Don’t believe that just because someone wants to be your friend that they actually are. There are many genuine people on social network sites. But all it takes in one psychopath to destroy a good thing.
Be careful about what information you give out and who you allow to see this online information you post about yourself on social networking sites . Think carefully about what you put on your profile and what pictures you post online.
Never, Never, Never publish your phone number, address or private email number when you sign on to social networking sites . Doing so will give a potential criminal more ways of contacting you with online and text and phone messages, or even visiting your home.
Limit who can see what you post. If you don’t want random users to see your contact information, you can limit the publication of that data. Just change your settings. You can also block users from having any contact with you should the need arise.
Remember once you publish something online then it is in the public domain. Anyone can get to it. So be careful with personal information.
Tell a close friend or family member about any problems you are having with online harassment on any of your social networking sites.

Conclusion

Be aware of potential dangers. Be vigilant. I leave you with this Biblical verse, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:”

Our prayers and thoughts go out to the family of this murdered girl. Say a prayer with me won’t you. Expecially that these criminal get caught.

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Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogging,Social Networks,Facebook,Twitter,Criminals,Fraud,murder,personal information,safety,protection,privacy

Why are blogs dying?

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:02:00 GMT

The internet is filled with millions and millions of blogs. But a huge part of that are dead, dying or abandoned blogs. All you have to do is a quick search of the blogosphere to get a glimpse of the amount of abandoned blogs that were once promising opportunities (some of them had 1,000’s of followers).

It is estimated that over 200 million blogs have been created then abandoned. This does not include those blogs that are not abandoned but are close to becoming just another web fossil in cyberspace.

It is estimated that close to 240 000 blogs are created on a daily basis. Also there are more that 250 million blogs of all sorts in cyber space today.

But it’s not just the dying or dead blogs, but those that are updated on a semi regular basis but are just mediocre and are not going anywhere.

Why are blogs dying?

For the most part its purely because the blogs are totally rubbish. Therefore no one is reading them, no one is commenting on them, no one is sticking around to find out more.

I mean, would you stay and watch a totally boring useless movie. Would you read a completely flat and bad novel. Probably not. Then why would we think that rubbish blogs are any different.

Blogs succeed when they inform and entertain and cause one to think or act differently. Some of the best blogs are rolling conversations with people who have fresh, provocative perspectives on the world. Well-constructed and informative niche blogs will do well, too - as long as they are maintained by people determined to make the blog keep rolling with fresh, lively, and informative content.

Blogs die, not because there is no potential, not because they didn’t have what it takes, but the reason blogs die or are abandon is because bloggers have stopped putting in the effort.

How to tell if your blog is dying?

You might have a blog, you might even write on a regular basis. But how can you tell if it is all worth it? How can you tell if your blog is active, or breathing it’s last breath.

Here are a few things to look out for. Warning signs if you will.

No one is reading your blog
Your traffic has not increased on a regular basis.
No one is commenting on your blog.
Your blog does not show up in Google.
Google has dropped your pages from it’s index.
Google isn’t crawling your blog regularly.
Your back links are not growing

How to avoid Blog death?

One thing I realised when I first started blogging, is that blogging is relatively easy. But it takes a lot of effort. Blogging isn’t hard work, it’s just a lot of work.

It takes a lot of effort to get those posts out on a daily basis. To do the research, to read and comment on other blogs. To promote and market those posts. All this takes time.

The main reason why many blogs die, is that bloggers have given up. Too much effort.

Here are a few things you need to do to keep your blog alive.

Write lots of quality content. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times. A good blog is all about quality content. Content is King. Write lots of regular well structured good quality content. If you are looking to grow your blog quickly, then the more quality information that you create, the more likely you will be to have a quickly growing list of traffic driving long tail key phrase – and more regular traffic.
Promote it as much as you can. If you do not tell the world about your fantastic blog, who will? If you do not have any passion for your own blog, how do you expect others to develop a passion for it. Having a lot of quality is all good and well, but it’s still not really any point if no one knows about it. You can promote your blog in many different ways, like through Twitter, Facebook, Blog aggregators, communities, forums, Articles and guest posting.
Network, Network, Network. No one is an island. If you know anything about mankind is that they do not do well isolated. We need each other. We need to help each other. Build up your network and community. Engage with other bloggers. Help them out when and as often as you can. Your network is your support group. Get involved with other bloggers. Start promoting them and their blogs.

Is your blog dying?

Take some time to look at and analyse your blog. Is it on the road to nowhere? Is it on death row? If so what are you going to do about it?

Maybe your blog is not dead yet. But it is rather boring and flat. Take time to consider the three points above on how to avoid blog death. Start getting that content out. Start promoting and start linking up with other bloggers.

Consider joining our blog directory. Hook up with me, my Twitter id is @robertbravery.

Are there any areas in your blog that you could improve on?

Thanks to BuilThatList.com for the inspiration to this post.

Remember you can win a weeks worth of free ad space just for commenting. The best comments during the week will get a weeks free advertising space. Check out: Win free advertising for your blog

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Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogging,Marketing,Twitter,Content,Promotion

How have you helped a fellow blogger this week?

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:38:57 GMT

Blogging is about engagement. About building up a community. You have to give first in order to get or receive. One of my pet missions is to try to help as many bloggers as I can. How about you?

Who have you helped this week, this year? How have you made another blogger’s day just that little bit better? How have you helped to improve someone else's blog, made their post that little bit more special.

Some ways to share some of that blog help.

Linking to their blog.

Most bloggers will only link to someone else's blog if they link back. This is hardly giving is it. Why not link to a few of your favourite and not so favourite blogs. Share some of that Link and PR juice.

Guest Post on someone else’s blog.

Blogging takes time and commitment. One of the best ways you can help a fellow blogger is by offering to take the load off and do a guest post for them.

Write a promotional article on your blog.

Another excellent way of helping a fellow blogger is to selflessly write an article promoting the other bloggers blog. They will appreciate it so much. Not only will you introduce new readers to them, but you would have gained a loyal fellow blogger for life.

Commenting on other blogs

Commenting on other blogs is also very effective and helpful for new bloggers. The more you comment on other blogs the more people will find you active and the more traffic will come to your own site.

Commenting on other blogs will also encourage the new bloggers to write more useful posts and they will be happy to contribute more from their blogs to the readers.

Re-Tweet their Tweets and posts.

Social media is a perfect medium to help promote someone else. You have connections, friends, relationships that they do not have. Re-Tweeting their tweets and blog posts will help spread the word about their blog.

Vote on Social Bookmarking sites

This is a very easy and effective way to help each other. When you find a nice topic on any social bookmarking site like Digg, Reddit, DesignBump etc you can vote for it to promote the topic.

The more you engage with other friends on social bookmarking sites the more votes you get for your own topics.

Share some of your skills

Find a blog that has a not so great design. Perhaps someone needs a few lessons on grammar, like me for instance. Maybe they are struggling with marketing and you are the expert. Perhaps they need a few lines of code written. Why not share some of your knowledge and skills freely with a fellow blogger.

Conclusion.

There is no greater reward than the reward of pure joy as you see the impact you have made in someone else's life just because you can. Not having to charge them or bill them.

Now I know that we cannot live on love and good will. But a little bit of free will never harmed anyone.

So, I am going to lead by example. I am compiling a Paragraph collaboration Project. You write a small paragraph about a topic. I put it together in a post, give you good credit and a link back and promote it to the heavens.

The topic for this week is, “How can I help a fellow blogger”. Write your paragraph and send it to me before Monday.

Remember you can win a weeks worth of free ad space just for commenting. The best comments during the week will get a weeks free advertising space. Check out: Win free advertising for your blog

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Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogging,Helping others,promotion,share,commenting,guest post

Web Developers Carnival - March 8, 2010 edition

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:53:00 GMT

Welcome to the March 8, 2010 edition of web developers.

Jennifer Saksa presents A Webmaster's Love Affair with Fling FTP Software posted at NCH Software Blog, saying, "short blog post on Fling, an easy, and free, ftp client for windows"

Diane Laine presents Top 25 Social Media & Networking Sites for Cops and Crimefighters posted at Justice City, USA, saying, "One way to make police and crimefighting work easier is to use social networking tools. Not only do crime fighters use sites such as FaceBook and Twitter to catch criminals, they use them for camaraderie and families of crimefighters use them for solace and support."

bskinner presents JQuery Contact Form with Facebox posted at Bill Skinner.com.

General

Divinelysmile presents 100 Amazing Scientists You Should Follow on Twitter posted at AccreditedOnlineColleges.org.

Anne Simone presents 100 Best Book Reviewers on Twitter posted at AccreditedOnlineColleges.org.

Ricky. presents Website Maintenance Services posted at Ricky Deez, saying, "Learn how you can use web maintenance services to help grow your website and business."

Ei Sabai presents Weekly round-up: 15 must read development, design and blogging articles posted at Web Development Blog.

William Phelps presents Fujifilm Finepix A220 Digital Camera Review posted at Digital Camera Reviews, saying, "Finding a digital SLR camera or compact camera review can be difficult. At OurCameraReviews.com we make it easy by providing trusted digital camera reviews that hit on all the major aspects of a digital camera."

Case Ernsting presents The Ultimate Ecommerce Reference Guide Part 2: Search Engine Friendliness posted at MetaSpring Blog, saying, "Ecommerce is an important part of the online landscape. Small businesses can reach new customers through this concept of web-malls and online stores. Before you launch your store, make sure the search engines can find it."

angelicbaby presents 100 Useful Social Sites for Every Kind of Job Seeker posted at Associate Degree - Facts and Information.

Brian Terry presents Fast Track Guide To 5 Free Website Builders posted at Big Selling Website Design.

PHP

Chris Roane presents Form Example with Form Validation using PHP posted at Montana Programmer.

bskinner presents Contact Form Using PHP and JQUERY posted at Bill Skinner.com.

bskinner presents Change Your WordPress Meta Widget posted at Bill Skinner.com.

Visual Studio

Honeypurple presents 100 Video Sites Every Educator Should Bookmark posted at AccreditedOnlineColleges.org.

Web 2.0

Christopher X. Gerber presents Spheres of the Web | Finding Your Tile posted at Spheres of the Web | Blog, saying, "I build this website from scratch, coding the css, js, php, and as3 by hand. The Spheres (flash - as3) were definitely the most code-and-math-difficult, but as a programmer, the most difficult thing is the promoting!"

Shakira Dawn presents The Clinical iPad? 25 Ways Tablet PCs Are Used in Healthcare posted at online MHA degree, saying, "One of the places where the iPad could really gain traction, though, is in the healthcare industry. The iPhone is already sometimes used by healthcare professionals to aid in their jobs, and tablet PCs are already making their way into hospitals and clinics."

Aaliyah Williams presents Google launches Buzz to take on Twitter and Facebook posted at Breaking News Online, saying, "Internet giant, Google has launched a set of social networking tool, including 'Buzz' to take on top social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook. While only a small number of Gmail account holders will get accessto Google Buzz now, the feature will be available to most within a few days."

healthylivinggal presents Top 50 Blogs on Healthcare Costs & Public Policy posted at online MHA degree, saying, "Whether or not you are involved in the debate over health care reform, it is still an interesting subject. Indeed, with healthcare costs rising, and public policy paying a larger role in how things are likely to operate moving forward, it is a very interesting subject."

Tabitha Mcivers presents 25 Essential Free iPhone Apps to “Kindle-ize” Your iPhone posted at Undergraduate Degree, saying, "Why buy a Kindle or even the iPad when you already own an iPhone or an iPod Touch? With the ability to download over a dozen free ebook readers into your iPhone or iPod Touch, you have the system beat."

Siobhan Shaw presents Facebook Trolling: Yes or No? posted at Siobhan Shaw's Blog, saying, "Sharing my experiences as I increase my knowledge of social media and networking."

Eadwine Walter presents 25 Essential Free iPhone Apps for College Students posted at Online University Rankings, saying, "Now that you’re in college, it’s time to leave the iPhone bubble wrap app and other gimmicky noisemakers behind. If you own an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you can get ahead of the game with some of the most productive apps around."

Elisha Knackwood presents 25 Essential Free iPhone Apps for Journalists and Bloggers posted at Journalism Degree, saying, "While some of the most useful iPhone apps already come installed — including the Safari Web browser, camera, maps and voice memos — journalists and bloggers often need more apps to be on the cutting edge of any news story."

Anthony Stewart presents Top 50 College Rankings Blogs posted at online university rankings 2010, saying, "If you are looking to learn more about what different colleges have to offer, you can check with these top 50 college rankings blogs that can give you an idea of what is available."

Bonnie Landau presents Are There Trends in Web Design? posted at Simple Web Toolbox, saying, "Web design has evolved with changing technology and change in Internet habits. What are the trends for 2010?"

Suzane Smith presents 70 Awesome Open Source Tools for Graphic Designers posted at Graphic Design Degrees, saying, "With so much demand, graphic designers can get caught up on the supply end. Don’t lose out on an opportunity or job because you aren’t equipped to handle it Use the listed 70 awesome open source tools for graphic designers to get a leg up, expand your resume, and much more."

Leslie Yoelson presents Top 50 Twitter Accounts Every College Student Should Follow posted at Online University Reviews, saying, "You can learn how to find a college, how to live the college life and even find internships and summer jobs through following the right Twitter accounts. This list contains the top 50 Twitters accounts that every college student should follow."

Ava Jones presents 10 Real-Life Robots You Won’t Believe Exist posted at Radiology Technician Schools, saying, "There is some truth to the adage, as many of the robots developed in the past decade have come to represent common themes found in the myriad genres of speculative literature. Those who do not follow advances in robotics may find themselves absolutely stunned at many of the mechanized marvels available today."

Delmy Martin presents 25 Fitness Gadgets that Can Improve Your Health posted at Phlebotomy Technician Programs, saying, "If you are looking for ways to improve your health, boosting your fitness level and improving your eating habits, it is possible to use technology in the process. There are a number of gadgets that can help you create a fitness plan, monitor your progress and even celebrate when you meet your goals."

Eadwine Walter presents Top 50 Education Technology Blogs posted at Best Online Masters Degrees, saying, "Education technology has many supporters in its movement to alter traditional teaching methods. This list of the top 50 education technology blogs includes writers, technicians and social media experts, but they all are teachers."

Hoven Keith presents Top 25 Celebrity Doctors on Twitter Worth Following posted at MSN Degree, saying, "In the our list of the top 25 celebrity doctors on Twitter who are worth following, you may learn that ‘celebrity status’ might be a combination of what that doctor knows as well as how he or she presents that information."

Alisha Harmann presents 7 Free Web Apps to Track Your Medical Health Over Time posted at ADN to BSN, saying, "Access to the internet has simplified and enriched our life. It also motivates us to stay healthy. The myriad tracking tools available online have made health and fitness an interesting and attractive proposition for many of us."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of web developers using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Technorati tags: web developers, blog carnival.

Link building to improve your Page Rank and win traffic

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:30:52 GMT

There are so many things to do and processes to follow in order to build an effective, quality, popular blog and/or website. Most certainly content, and design play an important Role. But there are others which have perhaps over time dwindled in their popularity, or perhaps been neglected because of bad press.

Back links and PageRank are one of these. Years ago PageRank and back links were all important until people found umpteen ways of cheating the system. Today, back links still play an important Role with PageRank, but more importantly you have the ability to entice traffic and build awareness with the added bonus of increasing your Pr or PageRank.

I am going to look at a few ways in which you can get Back Links that will not get you banned from Google, that will certainly increase your PageRank, and even bring in some traffic.

Article Submissions

Years ago Article Directories were the golden egg to traffic generation. Today that importance has dwindled somewhat. But none the less, submitting articles to Article Directories does have its benefits. Obviously submitting your article to the right directory is important.

Not only do you gain back links to your site from your published articles, you will get some traffic as a bonus. Although today there are more effective ways of garnerhing traffic, the back links can still be a bonus.

Directory Submission

Directory submission used to work lot better before, but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone's guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren't worth submitting to.

Except for our Directory. Yes I started a while back a directory and community for bloggers. To submit your blog just navigate to our Blog Directory and submit your blog.

Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality back link so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submitting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no assurance that your site will be approved!

DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can provide great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval from DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim.

Another good directory to submit to is the BOTW directory that costs $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing

Blog Commenting.

By far the best way to build up back links and solicit traffic is by commenting on other blogs. By being a regular contributor to other blogs.

This is a link building method where lots of spamming has already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. Because of the huge amount of spamming, many blog comments are “No Follow”. “No Follow” just means that Google will not pass any PR juice to the link. This was done in the hope to discourage spam links in blogs.

It is best to find quality blogs related to your category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blog post, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blog posts.

Social Media

This should really be obvious by now. While the link juice is pretty slim with many of the social media sites, they still provide a smattering of back link juice as well as great possibilities for traffic. Google no doubt does not put a lot of weight when it comes to certain Social Media sites. Like Twitter, Facebook. Never the less, get enough back links and it all adds up.

Aggregators and Web 2.0 Pages.

Aggregators and web 2.0 pages like PimpthisBlog, Blogengage, MyScoop, DotNetKicks, etc are great for a link building strategy. Once again there are hundreds of aggregators out there. The art is choosing the best and correct one for your blog and niche.

Find one of the hundreds of blog aggregators around then join and submit your blog and feed. As content on the web continues to grow exponentially, consumers have turned to content aggregators to filter their information.

Some aggregators are manual while others are fully automatic. While some of them might seem more effort than reward, they do trickle traffic to your blog. The important thing is to join ones that can promote your niche and ones that you will be actively involved in. Here are some of the ones I use.

Social Bookmarking sites.

Whether you are a fan of these or not, they do have huge traffic potential. Only signing up on the ones that interest you and you will use. Here is a list of some of the popular ones:

Digg
Mixx
StumbleUpon (Toolbar)
Reddit
Muti (South Africa)

Conclusion

Although not one of these will give you that magic PR number or a huge flood of traffic, they will add to the pool. You know every bit counts.

The other thing I would like to mention is that there is no easy way to build back links and build up your PageRank. It is going to take time and effort.

Remember you can win a weeks worth of free ad space just for commenting. The best comments during the week will get a weeks free advertising space. Check out: Win free advertising for your blog

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Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogging,Link Building,Back Links,PR,PageRank.

Web safe fonts.

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:05:39 GMT

More...

Even Google Does SEO – Read their report.

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:27:34 GMT

I came across this today as I was reading some blogs and doing some SEO research. Have you ever considered if Google webmasters actually do SEO on their own pages. I know that we all strive to better optimise our pages for the search engines like Google by performing the best SEO possible. But what do Google webmasters do?

Do they actually just cheat and have some hidden code to return their own pages at the top of the results pages (SERP) when searched for. Surprisingly, they do not. Like any normal mortal, they actually also analyse their pages and optimise for Google.

Proof of this can actually be found in a report at the Google Webmaster Blog, titled Google’s SEO Report Card. The report was created to help Google’s engineers, webmasters and employees better optimize their product pages for search engines. So I guess even Google practices SEO.

The report touches on many SEO topics including title tags, meta tags, heading tags, canonical URLs, image tags and link anchors. But the power of this report to us is that there is loads of examples included for each point that will be able to give you a better understanding on each point. More specifically you will be able to understand which is the right way and the wrong way to do things with regards to SEO.

Thanks to Daniel Scocco for pointing me to this through his blog. Find him at www.dailyblogtips.com

You can download the PDF, here is the direct download link for the PDF.

Remember you can win a weeks worth of free ad space just for commenting. The best comments during the week will get a weeks free advertising space. Check out: Win free advertising for your blog

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Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogging,SEO,Google,Optimisation,Search Engine.

Describe Yourself

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:11:56 GMT

Today we are going to have some fun. It is in the form of a challenge. I want you to sit down and describe yourself and your blog. But then see if you can put it into an acronym.

Here are mine.

My Computer standard acronym for my name Robert

Random Open Bidirectional Expansion Recording Terminal

Some other acronyms: The Brave Programmer

Thoughtful
Honourable
Energetic

Brutal
Rare
Altruistic
Vigorous
Exquisite

Principled
Revolutionary
Outrageous
Gorgeous
Radical
Arty
Magical
Modern
Elitist
Relaxing

Another one for Robert:

Rounded
Outrageous
Brilliant
Exciting
Respectable
Talented

What's yours? Can you come up with a few acronyms that would describe you and your blog. Have a go. Leave your acronyms in the comments below.

Related Reading:

Computer Industry Acronyms

Acronyms to use on Gatorpeeps and Twitter

Another Blog Acronym

Remember you can win a weeks worth of free ad space just for commenting. The best comments during the week will get a weeks free advertising space. Check out: Win free advertising for your blog

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Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogging,Desciption,Acronym

Two ingredients for better blogging

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:06:49 GMT

I love cooking. I can cook up a storm, but hate cleaning up. I leave that to my wife. She hates that obviously. Anyone can cook. But a top chef knows his ingredients well and knows how to use them in a dish to bring an ordinary meal up to a fantastic gourmet piece of art.

Here are two ingredients that will help step up your blog to the next level.

Passion.

Without passion you will have a hard arduous road ahead. Not to mention that at some point your blog will flop.

That’s because if you don’t love what you’re blogging about eventually you’ll come to a point where you completely lose interest. You’ll get tired of the same old thing and before long you have given up and quit.

When you have passion about something, you can think of infinite ways of writing about the same topic that will still be exciting and awesome to read.

Everyone has passion for something. Don’t choose a niche to write about because you think that niche has profitability. With passion anyone can turn any niche into a profit.

Personality.

No one wants to read a dead stale blog. We don’t want clones of other blogs. Who wants to read repeats? We get enough of repeats from TV. Lack on individuality and personality in a blog will surely suffocate it to death.

Your blog has to reflect YOU. Who You are, what you are all about. What do you love? What do you hate. Make it real. Appeal to real people. Tug at their heart strings.

You need to show emotion in your blog, no matter what niche you are writing in. The only way to get loyal readers is to make a connection. People can’t connect with an object, but they can connect with people. They want to see who the real person behind the blog is.

Conclusion.

So you have passion? Is your blog boring and does it lack personality? Time for a change don’t you think?

Put some fire into your blogging, add some compassion and realism. You wont be sorry.

What is your passion? Why do you blog? What drives you?

I’d be interested to find out. Please tell us about your passion in the comments below.

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Technorati Tags: Blog,Blogging,Passion,drive,personality,emotion,readers,loyal

There is nothing magical about your blog!

robert@integralwebsolutions.co.za (Robert Bravery) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:09:03 GMT

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