Most writers’ solution is not to turn to their iPhone — in fact, traditionalists usually recommend a different tactic. But the creators of apps have recognized that among this generation of technophiles, writers want inspiration to be available at their fingertips. And what better place to offer solutions that address the problem of Writer's Block than on a smartphone?

The 5 best apps for writers in a jam

1. Inspiro

Inspiro has three modes: The Muse, Scenarios, and the DayDream Machine. The Muse is the simplest. It provides a few randomly ordered words and phrases to help boost inspiration when you have run out of verbiage. Scenarios describes just what it is: it serves up a few thought-provoking scenes, also randomly generated.

Perhaps the most interesting choice is the DayDream Machine. This mode begins with an initial thought on a dark screen, then randomly creates a few beautifully worded themes and deep revelations, perfect for when a character is in need of an epiphany, or a poem needs a little more flavor. The price for this app rings in at only $2.99, which seems like a heckuva deal for a little in-depth inspiration.

2. Fotopedia Heritage

Often, the best solution to Writer's Block is travel. This free app is for world travelers who are on a limited budget. It contains beautiful photographs from all over the word, with themed stories, random image generation, and a “save to favorites” function. Daydreamers badly in need of a getaway will love this app.

3. Idea Generator

This app is similar to the Muse mode in Inspiro: it’s perfect for people who are itching to write and merely need an intriguing topic. The app generates three words or short phrases … ad infinitum. You can customize the language settings to really shake up your writing, or to improve the dialogue of your foreign or bilingual characters.

4. Method Cards

This app supplies an electronic pack of cards intended to spark creativity in designers and creative types alike. Filled with random ideas, new perspectives, and beautiful images, the cards are meant to offer the user a new look at old ideas, as well as a new look at new ones. The deck of cards can be upgraded for $4.99 to a 51-card deck.

5. Writing Prompts

The most famous solutions are often the simplest: sometimes all that’s necessary to get the creative juices flowing again is a decent writing prompt. Writing.com supplies you with a series of prompts that will get your juices flowing; it offers a free app for your phone that makes it easier to take your thoughts anywhere you might need to go to get writing again.

There were 5 tools that can help you in beating the writer's block. Do you know of any other apps? Do let us know in comments.

Indeed, the Internet has come a long way. Gone are days when all you need to rank your site well in search is to properly optimize the on-page and off-page factors. Now, for your site to be able to rank even better, your content needs to be more social, and the more your content is shared, the better it is for your site’s ranking. Today, the line that seemed to separate SEO from social is slowly blurring.

To understand how creating a share-worthy content can rank you higher in search, we must first understand that there two sides to creating content. One is creating content from our intended audience’s point of view and the other is from an SEO standpoint.

Creating content from your audience’s point of view

Generally, there are two steps to content production; one is actually writing or coming up with the content, and the other has to do with promoting it. These days, the more social your content is, the better its chances for success. That’s why some of the most successful content is published as a blog post, repurposed for video sites, and shared on your social media profiles.

Keeping these three social channels, i.e., blogs, video sites and social media profiles, in mind is crucial for your success. That’s because by promoting your content on social media, you will make it easier for your content to be share.

But also keep in mind that your content shouldn’t be overly promotional. Be careful. People share content that they find interesting, helpful, informative and humorous. They’d take your content for granted at the first hint of it being too promotional.

When writing or creating content, be sure to research what your audience wants. Focus on what applies to your specific audience. What are their pains? What are their problems? How can you help them increase their pleasure?

And when you’re done writing your content, before publishing it, assess it thoroughly and ask yourself “Is it valuable enough to warrant social shares?”

Creating content from an SEO standpoint

On the SEO side of things, remember that since the explosion of social media, search engines now put more value into content shared via social media channels.

Social signals are now part of the search engines’ ranking algorithm. Social signals refer to the social interactions your content has gained. Some of the metrics included are the number of times your content has been liked and shared on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. It also includes the number of times your content has been shared on Twitter and the number of times your tweet has been re-tweeted.

Social signals may also include the level of activity your social channels have. The more active your social media profiles or channels are, and the more number of people following your social media channels, the more authoritative you are in the eyes of the search engines.

So when creating social media profiles or channels where you share your content, be sure to keep those channels active. It will increase your chances of ranking higher not only your content, but also your social profiles.

Conclusion

If your content isn’t getting enough exposure and shares on social media, your marketing efforts could be missing out on a lot of opportunities in terms of SEO. With social media, you can gain more links for your content, and it also helps elevate your status as a credible and authoritative author.

Remember Feedburner?

This is one service that all bloggers set up once and just forget after that.

Sadly, it is soon going to dead. Now don't panic, Google hasn't announced death of Feedurner. But they may soon. They have just killed Google Reader, the most used RSS reading app on the web. This clearly shows that Google is not committed to RSS as a standard. And not to forget, they have  been on a killing spree recently.

As a blogger, you should be worried about your feeds. What if Google kills Feedburner tomorrow? You will have to switch RSS providers quickly. Better do it today and get control of your feeds.

While there are many good alternatives to Feedburner, I recommend Feedblitz. They charge for mailing lists but you can have as many RSS readers as you want for $1.49 per month.

Regarding how to move, I will be publishing a tutorial soon.

What do you think about feeds? Are you going to trust Google with Feedburner?

modest: Unassuming or moderate in the estimation of one's abilities or achievements.

Guess what, a lot of us are taught to be modest. You know, not brag about ourselves and all that stuff.

While that may work well in life, it will not work here, on internet!

I recently learned this lesson on Facebook(the last place I'd expect to learn a lesson on, but I still did!)

A few weeks ago, I had a small debate with a friend of a friend on Facebook. Same old iPhone vs Android debate(Seriously, how long will it take Android users to realise that iOS has better User Experience! Let's leave it for later though).

The person on other side insisted that Android was somehow better because of being open source and having large number of phones in market!

He started with illogical statement like "iPhone users have to pay for each upgrade" and stuff(Fact: I never paid for iOS 6 upgrade, neither did any iPhone user!). And later, he came down to personal stuff. He demonstrated his abilities by talking about his own version of Linux and how he was using Vim and stuff.

I was being modest, not saying personal things and staying on topic of discussion!

And guess what was happening:

He was getting worse every moment.

Finally, I decided to brag a bit. And here is what I wrote(he had written "ohh god who am i telling to" in one comment addressed to me!):

Regarding "ohh god who am i telling to", you were TRYING TO tell to a 20 year old who started his first business at 16, started first profitable one at 17, earns [Rs.]30K per month while topping his class, has an iPhone 4S, has sense enough to not waste time on making own versions of Linux which will be used by merely 2 people in world.

Guess what happened after this?

The guy completely stopped, humbled down and started showing respect. The debate ended right there. Nothing else after that!

If I had not said this, what would have happened?

Yes, he would have continued personal debate and more of my time would have been wasted.

But a little bit of bragging ended it all.

Why "Be Modest"?

We are asked to "Be Modest". Our parents tell that, teachers tell that and books tell that. In stories, modest guys always win. Almost always.

But everyone is forgetting that this is internet. Here, everyone is anonymous and they are using this to attack others. They are just like high school bullies, but you do not have a teacher to complain to.

And bullies are not the only ones you need to worry about. There are your blog readers as well! You need to tell them what you have done and what you can do.

In this scenario, you can not be modest.

You have to show what you have done.

That is only proof you have.

So show your readers what you have done, what you are doing. Be transparent and get a following!

Go outside and Don't Be Modest.

I want to put a ding in the universe - Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

Take your iPhone out of pocket and take a look at it. (Don't worry if it's Android, a Xerox copy will serve well!)

The device that you are holding in your hand is not just a gadget.

It is a revolution. A revolution that changed whole mobile phone industry.

Thanks to Steve Jobs.

He wanted to put a ding in the universe and he did put a big one. He revolutionized music, movies, computers, phones and tablets.

All this required a lot of creativity, effort, focus and persistence. I think we bloggers can definitely learn a bit from him.

So, here are 4 unmissable blogging lessons learned from Steve Jobs.

Obsess With Quality

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.

6 weeks before the launch of iPhone, Steve Jobs noticed that his iPhone had scratches. This happened because he had put his keys and phone in same pocket.

What would a CEO had done in this scenario, just 6 weeks from a major product launch?

Yes, they would have left it for next model. After all, keys were not their responsibility.

But Steve decide to replace the plastic with scratch proof glass. And in six weeks, Apple didn't only find Corning Glass(known as Guerilla Glass) but also put it on phone.

That was (and is) their level of obsession with quality. And that is one of the reasons why it is hard to match Apple.

Blogging Lesson: Do not publish posts just for sake of publishing. If a post lacks something, work on it until you are satisfied. Be the yardstick of quality!

But who does this? This is madness! I don't want to spend so much time on a single post.

Isn't that what you are thinking?

I won't give any arguments here. I'll just show you one blog where 25 hours are spent on a single post. (Yes, that's twenty five, not two point five!). After that, you may decide whether you want to go after quality or quantity.

The blog is Smashing Magazine and here's the interview with Vitaly Friedman where he shares how much spent and attention goes in to a blog post.

You Do Not Need To Be The First

Most of us bloggers treat blogging like a race. We want to find the next best thing.

The next best plugin for conversion, the next greatest traffic attraction tactic and so on!

But is all of this so necessary?

No!

You do not need to be first with anything, you just need to execute it really well.

Remember iPod? It was not the first portable music player in the market, yet wildly popular.

Or iPhone, which is one of the most popular and fastest selling smartphones? Again, Apple was not first to the market with a phone.

How about iPad? Did Apple make first tablet? Again, no! Microsoft and others were trying to do that for years with little success.

Apple entered the market and just shook whole industry. Just see how things changed after Apple introduced iPhone:

Blogging Lesson: Do not run blindly after every new technique or formula that you discover. Whatever you do, put full effort into it.

Not comfortable with guest posts? Then do not guest post. Go with comments.

Do a few things, focus on them, and do them better than others.

Publish

Real Artists Ship

Apple was first company to bring the Graphic User Interface to consumer market. But they did not invent it.

It was Xerox's idea.

Xerox just sat on it and didn't do anything to popularise it.

Apple came, took the idea, executed it well with Apple II and became successful.

Now, funny thing is, Xerox behaved exactly like many of us behave. We have wonderful, magical post ideas but do not execute them. We let them go unused. And later, we pay the price.

Blogging Lesson: Do not keep sitting on ideas. If you have something in mind, try it, polish it and implement it. Have a great post idea? Don't wait for magic to happen, write it and post it!

After all, the best blog post in the world is of no use if it sitting in "Drafts" section of your blog.

Be a real blogger, publish posts. Don't be afraid of results.

Stop thinking and start publishing!

Remember: Real Bloggers Publish.

Think Different

Steve Jobs did many great things but.....

I can't help but remember this great quote from Game Of Thrones: My brother once told me that nothing someone says before the word 'but' really counts.

Now on with what counts: I can't do because Steve Jobs had resources to do all this.

Got ya!

You had this exact thought in mind, didn't you.

When Apple was a 2 man operation, Steve Jobs paid this much attention to detail. Take a look at Apple 1, first ever Apple product. The circuit board is much cleaner than other computers of that time.

Even after losing a billion dollars, he risked a lot to start NeXT.

In 1998, when Apple was about to sink, Steve still paid attention to quality and launched products like iMac and iBook.

He didn't need cash or anything else. It was all in the mind. He had mindset to think different. And this set him leagues apart from competition.

Blogging Lesson: You do not need the resources, you do not need a big pile of money. All you need is the mindset, the ability to think different from the competition.

You can easily be the best blogger in the universe. Just think different.

What are you waiting for?

Go and put a ding in the blogging universe.

And don't forget to subscribe!

Pay $4000 Or Get Sued!
Image © Corepics from Photodune

You wake up one morning with an amazing idea for a blog post.

You go to your laptop and start writing.

After 2 hours...

You have an awesome post. Now last thing to do is optimise it for humans. So you go and search for a good image.

And you find an awesome image on Google Images.

You go and do what you normally do, copy the best image and put it on your blog.

After 4 hours...

Sky is blue, grass is green and.......

You get a mail from Getty Images telling that you have to pay them $30,000 for using an unlicensed image.

How would that be?

What?

What is that I hear?

Are you saying, "Yeah, yeah, I will not get sued. I am just a small blogger and they will never know about my blog."?

Keep that argument on hold and read this first:

Horror Stories, How Bloggers And Small Businesses Got Threatened

Roni Loren got sued for a significant amount of money. She posted her story on her blog.

If you think it happens only in US, see this forum for a story of a Hong Kong based business.

And then this where Getty Images demanded $4000 for 4 images.

Though many people think that this all is just a extortion tactic by Getty Images, it still is a legal threat.

What Can Happen

If you end up in a case related to infringement, you can be fined anywhere from $400 to $30,000. As the US Copyright Law says, one can be fined:

a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just

Now that is a big sum, right?

Even if you prove that you were not aware, minimum fine is $200.

$200 for one image? That's still too much!

What's The Solution?

Just keep following things in mind:

1. Only use images after checking copyright information.
2. Quoting Roni Loren, Do not assume image is free until and unless it is proven.
3. Learn about different types of licences.

Different Types Of Licenses

Yes, there are different types of image licenses. Even for free, it is much more complicated than "Creative Commons".

1. Stock Sites: Most of the stock sites have their own licenses. So be sure to check out the terms before you buy.
2. Creative Commons: Creative Commons Licenses are of six types. Learn more about them here: Creative Commons Licenses. Remember that you should be using only Attribution, Attribution - ShareAlike, Attribtion-NoDerivs license types as these are only ones that allow commercial usage
3. Public Domain: These are images that you can use without any fear of copyright.
4. Copyleft: Many people are releasing content and images that do not have any copyright limitations. These are safe to use as well.
5. Others: Be sure to check the license of a website when looking for a image, it may be a different one.

Where To Get Images?

You can get images on stock sites and many free sites as well.

While stock images cost a bit, they are high quality and come without any headaches. Free images are good as well but you need to spend some time to find them.

Here are some sources I have used and recommend:

1. iStockPhoto [disclosure: affiliate link]: The site is still one of my favourite sources and is not very expensive.
2. PhotoDune [again, affiliate link]: This is my current favourite. I like the fact that instead of other websites where images are "almost 1 dollar", they are actually available for $1 here.
3. Creative Commons Search: This is not a site but a search tool for different image sources.

I'd love to give you a long list, but Wikimedia has a big long list already. Check out their Free Image Sources. freestock.ca was one of the best sources in this list. Give it a try!

How To Get Stock Images For Free

Now, there's a dirty little way to get stock images for free, at least 5 of them. If you join iStockPhoto and Photodune[both affiliate links], you can get 4 free stock images per month from iStockPhoto and 1 from Photodune.

I use these two sources for buying most of the images and getting 5 extra images per month for a few minutes does not hurt!

Takeaway

• Check license before you use an image.
• Always include a copyright link below image. Creative Commons needs this and many stock image sites require this as well.

Do you know of any other resources for free images? Have any questions? Do not forget to comment!

And one more thing, do subscribe to Blogging With Success:

A place where no one wants to listen to others.

And only way to get listened to in this place is first to listen to others.

Problem is that only a few people do that!

Recently, I read an awesome post by Marc Ensign: Me, Me, Me, I, I, I.

The post was on the spot and got me thinking. Do bloggers really care about audience or are we all just numbers for each other?

The Real Problem

The problem, are Marc highlighted was that we are used to treat others as numbers.

Just think, if you get 1000 unique visitors to your next blog post, you will think this:

Great, I got 1000 unique visits, time to increase the numbers now!

What you should be thinking is this:

Great, I got 1000 people to read my post! That's awesome.

1000 is not a number. They are 1000 real people!

In real life, if you had 1000 people listening to you, you'd have been flying!

How To Fix It?

There is a really simple solution:

Find who they are, what they do, care about them!

And how to do that?

Here are some tips:

1. Friend Them On Facebook: Get to know them, chat with them. If you are considered about your personal data, make a separate list for them.
2. Visit Their Blog: Visit their blog and get to know them. Read their about page. Comment on their posts.
3. Email Them: Once in a while, send a personal mail to your readers asking them about their problems and thanking them.
4. Ask Them To Introduce Themselves: Ask your readers to introduce themselves in comments. Have a discussion!

There are many other ways. But start with these and soon, you will have readers who pay attention to you! And while we are discussing about knowing readers.......

Introduce Yourself

I want to know about you. Go on, tell me about yourself in comments.

1. Who are you?
2. What do you blog about?
3. What do you do apart from bloggging?

About Me: You already know about me, don't you?

I am Ishan, a college student from India who loves blogging and WordPress. I blog here on Blogging With Success and on my personal blog, Ishan Sharma.

I spend my time reading books and other blogs, playing games and sleeping.

Your turn, who are you?

Great, that means the words work!

Though I am not sure whether you clicked because the words attracted you or the nonsense headline made you curious, so please tell about that in comments.

On with the words now.

The words I just used in the headline are the 7 most persuasive words according to legendary copywriter David Ogilvy.

In his book Confessions Of An Advertising Man, he listed 20 most persuasive words in English language. I used 7 in headline, the 13 others are:

• Remarkable
• Revolutionary
• Startling
• Miracle
• Magic
• Offer
• Quick
• Easy
• Wanted
• Challenge
• Compare
• Bargain
• Hurry

That's a nice list. And the words are persuasive for sure.

But how can you use them? You can't make every headline like the one I just used!

Here are a few ways to use them:

In Your Magical Headlines

Use these words in headlines to get them clicked. Example:

• Remarkable Truth About Blogging
• Amazing Way To Get ________
• Quick And Easy Solution To All Your WordPress Problems

In Anchor Text Of Links

If you need to attract attention to a specific link, use these words! This will increase number of clicks.

Describing Your Product/Service

Use them to describe your product or newsletter and see how people are impressed. Shirley held me back, else I would have surely moved this blog to SuddenlyBloggingNowWithAnnouncingSuccess.net!

Most of these words are related to products and advertising anyway, so its not very hard to use them.

And while we are at it, do subscribe to the Amazing, Sensational and Magical Blogging With Success Newsletter!

Near End Of The Post

Closing of the post is the third most important area of a blog post. This is also where you should have a strong and persuasive call to action. Perfect place for the magical 20!

You can ask people to leave quick comments, ask them to share your startling post on social networks or challenge them for something!

What other ways are you going to use them? Or have you already used them? Do share quickly in comments!

Image Credit: Amazing Exclamation Via Photodune.

Tip: Use High Quality Stock Images From iStockPhoto or Photodune.

What were you doing 5 minutes before?

Let me guess, nothing related to your blog.

Right?

That's a big problem with us. We all want to improve our blogs but don't give the necessary time for it!

Gear up, no time to waste soldier.

Let get up and running and improve your blog!

1. Check All Your Blog Statistics In Next 5 Minutes: And then do not check them for whole day!
2. Find A Blogging Buddy: Go and ask a friend to help you by reviewing your posts and do same for them. This will help you get valuable insight about your posts before you publish them. This will improve your blog posts a lot.
3. Put Your Blog Up For Review On A Forum: Forums are a great way to get feedback. Ask other members to review your blog. You will get lot of useful advice(and traffic) for sure!
4. Contact A Loyal Reader: Find one guy who comments and participates a lot in discussions and ask for things that you can improve about your blog or the kind of questions he'd like to ask.
5. Say Thanks: Say thanks to your readers. Either publish a nice post for them or mail them! And when we are at it, Thank You For You Time!
6. Comment On Another Blog In Your Niche: Commenting may not get you loads of traffic but it will surely make you a bit more visible in your niche.
7. Write Random Things: Free writing is one of the best ways to get ideas. So go ahead, take a blank paper(or Office document) and write away.
8. Install A Simple, Distraction Free Text Editor: There are a lot of distractions around. Go and get a good distraction free text writer like OmmWriter. This will improve your blog posts by big margin!
9. Start A Notebook To Write Your Ideas: An app or a software will do as well but a notebook is one of the best ways to record ideas anytime, anywhere. I tend to use iA Writer on my iPhone as my phone is always around.
10. Subscribe To Chris Brogan: Chris Brogan is just amazing when it comes to promotion and content marketing advice. Subscribe to his newsletter, you won't regret.
11. Subscribe To Ben Settle's Newsletter: Ben Settle's newsletter is mainly focused on email marketing and there are lot of tips in there.
12. Write About Your Hero: Who is your hero? I don't know the answer but I know one thing for sure, you know a lot about him. Think of things that can be learned from him about your niche and write!
13. Get Scribe SEO: I have used many SEO tactics in the past but Scribe is the best tool for it! It makes SEO natural. You write your post without any worries about optimisation and optimise in editing phase.
14. Check Your Blog's Loading Time: Go to Pingdom and check how much time your blog takes to load completely. If it is fast enough, smile! If it is not, move to next step!
15. Install W3 Total Cache: W3 Total Cache is one of the best plugins to make your blog load faster. Install it and see the difference.
16. Check For WordPress And Plugin Updates: New versions of plugins, themes and WordPress feature many performance improvements. If your blog is outdated, do install those. You will be amazed how much a simple update can improve your blog.
17. Install A Good Security Plugin: There are lot of hacking attacks going on. And many are targeted specifically WordPress. Better secure WP with good security plugin.
18. Install An Offline Blog Editor: Offline Blog Editors are great for writing posts without an internet connection. Get a free one and experience yourself.
19. Go Fullscreen: Want to write online? No problems, just press F11 and go full screen in your to limit distractions.
20. Update Your Most Popular Post: Open Google Analytics(or any other service that you use) and see which is your most popular post. Now update it. Add a big subscription form to get more subscribers, or offer your book!
21. Set A Goal For Your Blog: Where do you want to be in six months? Write it down on a piece of paper, make a plan and follow it.
22. Join A Membership Site: One of the biggest benefits of membership sites is helpful community. People are willing to help you and you learn a lot from them. I am a member of A List Blogging Bootcamps and am loving it.
23. Download XMind: XMind is a great mind mapping software. Try it to brainstorm ideas!
24. Find Inspiration: What drives you forward? Spend five minutes thinking about your inspiration for your blog.
25. Start Learning Touch Typing: Touch typing can help you increase your typing speed a lot. I have just finished learning it and it's quite a nice way to write more in less time. Start learning here.
26. Set Your Blog's Body Font To 16 px: 12 pixels was considered standard font size for content some time back but now 16 is new 12.
27. Consider Getting A Mobile Responsive Theme: While mobile theme plugins are nice, responsive theme are the new "thing". They adapt automatically to different screen sizes and devices. Just open Blogging With Success on your mobile device and see.
28. Remove "Subscribe" word from your blog: Asking readers to "Subscribe" to your blog posts? Then consider changing the words to something like "Get updates" or "Join Us". Copyblogger tells you why in How To Increase Your Blog Subscription Rate By 254%. And while you are at it, do not forget to get your Blogging Guides!
29. Study A Top Blog In Your Niche: Open the most popular blog in your industry and study what the owner is doing right. Write down lessons and apply to your own blog.
30. Join A Stock Image Site: Finding free images for your blog posts takes lot of time and you may not always find what you want. Consider joining a stock image site. I recommend iStockPhoto and Photodune. I have used them both. iStockPhoto has more variety, Photodune is less expensive! Even if you don't buy anything, the free files available will help you make a good library of images.
31. Learn HTML and CSS: HTML and CSS are very easy to learn and learning them can save a lot of time. You can make minor edits yourself and save on designer costs.
32. Buy A Book About Your Niche: While free books are good, they do not always deliver the high quality and organised content. Get a good book about your niche and read it!
33. Take A Break: It is very easy to work too much and get burned out these days. Avoid this by taking a 5 minute break.
34. Move Your Blog's Essential Files To Dropbox: You have many books, plugins and themes sitting on your hard disk. What if your hard disk crashed? Better to move them to cloud for easy backup, syncing and sharing in Dropbox.
35. Join Quote.fm: Quote.fm is a nice bookmarking and sharing site where you can save quotes. Good for finding inspiration.
36. Move From Feedburner to MailChimp: Feedburner is nice but it does not let you send newsletters. MailChimp gives you more control over your list, sends beautiful emails and can track them. And it's free if your list is less than 2000 members! Sign Up for MailChimp.
37. Make A One Sentence Elevator Pitch For Your Blog: What do you answer to "What is your blog about?" Find an answer to this question.
38. Revise Grammar Rules: While most of us can write and speak easily in English, we do not know grammar that well. Go and revise rules for 5 minutes.
39. Remove a Distracting Widget: Widgets can be quite distracting. Find the one that is least useful for you and readers and remove it.
40. Work On Your Next Post's Headline: Headline is the most important part of your post. Spend five minutes working on a better headline for your next post.
41. Delete Spam Comments: Clear the Spam comments that you have accumulated over ages. Seriously, they serve no purpose and it just takes 2 clicks to clear all of them.
42. Close Comments On Your Old Posts: You can set WordPress to close comments on old posts via Settings -> Discussion. If you are getting too much spam, this may be the best way to get rid of it.
43. Make Your Next Post Scannable: Let's accept it, most of us do not read posts fully. And your readers are doing the same. So better make your next post scannable with proper use of headlines and bullets.
44. Make A Writing Playlist: Music can help you concentrate on writing. It will also isolate the surrounding noises. Take 5 minutes and make a writing playlist to help you concentrate.
45. Decide Where And What You Will Write: If you are randomly scattering all your content in different sections of internet, you are wasting a lot of time. Read Where Should You Put Your Content.
46. Set Up A Blogroll: You can not stay alone forever. Similarly, you also can not keep your blog isolated. You need to socialize with other bloggers. And one of the best ways to do it is by setting up a blogroll. Take 5 minutes and set up a blogroll for your blog.
47. Find Out When You Get Most Traffic: There are some days when traffic is high. Check your analytics to find this time for you and remember it. Next time, publish your important posts at that time.
48. Bookmark Related Blogs: Make a list of blogs where you comment regularly and make a similar list for guest posts. Use Diigo or similar bookmarking sites.
49. Join A Niche Social Network: The big social networks are not always the best choice to promote your blog, go and join a network that specifically caters to your niche.
50. Learn An Attention Grabbing Technique: Find a quick way to get attention of your readers, use that in your next post.

Do not just sit idle, start working!

Pick one point and do it to improve your blog.

Do not forget to share your tips and experiences in comments, the best ones will be featured in the post with a link back.

Avoid Blogging Stunts

I went for a walk yesterday.

On the road, I saw a guy who was on bike, talking on phone, and had both his hands off the steering.

Why had he both his hands off the steering?

I have no idea!

But one thing that I instantly thought was that most of us are like that guy. We do not put our hands on the wheel of our blogs.

What we all do

We blog well. In fact, most of us are awesome bloggers.

But like that guy, we pull of useless stunts.

We leave out hands for no reason. And soon, we become used to it and leave our hands often.

Then a turn comes, we are still careless and bam..........

Let's see this all in blogging terms. When we seem to be a bit stable, we decide to do strange experiments. And the experiments go haywire and we suffer a lot.

A stunt may be anything. A newsletter, a new kind of post format, a new design. Anything.

What we should be doing

Now, do not take me wrong. Stunts are important. But not all the times. You should keep several things in mind before pulling your hands away.

1. Never Do A Stunt On a Curve: Simple, isn't it? If you try to pull a stunt on a curve, you will fall. Do not try anything when your blog is not stable. At such times, focus on one thing, stability and work towards it.
2. Audience: Would you still do a stunt if there's no one to watch you? No! When you do not have enough reach, do not try anything strange.
3. Importance: Is the stunt really important? Do you have to do it at any cost? If it can be avoided, avoid it!

Do you pull of crazy blogging stunts without any need? Are you still going to do that?

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