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Writing Quality Blogs

Writing?Blogs?Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing. Writing?Writing is the process where one puts down words of a language on a format that others can read. This process has not been around very long, to use one of my writing teacher's favorite sayings, "Writing has only existed for one day in the one year that humanity has existed." Speaking and thinking come much easier than writing. These processes just flow out naturally like a river of consciousness; sometimes we hardly have to think about doing them. Anyone and everyone can write words down on paper but that... Read More

Blog Problems

What in the world is up with the world of blogs? Blogs are meant to be this great new technology where people can share their ideas and interests with others around the globe. As far as I'm concerned the state of blogs is one of chaos, confusion, and anti-interactivity. The other day I decided to do some research on the Web and try to connect to some blog writers out there that interested me. Let me tell you it was not an enjoyable task as I had envisioned. I spent four painful hours surfing through around a thousand on-line journals,... Read More

Writing Good Blogs

There's a lot of blogs out there on the Web, most of which don't entice one to go back regularly to read updates. What is missing from these on-line journals that would essentially make them 'good' blogs? Well, the answers in life usually come down to simplicities. So let's look at the problem like we were children. Children don't complicate life with miscellaneous information, and when they speak they tell you straight to the point exactly how they feel and think about a subject. First of all, we should ask the questions," Why do blogs exist? And what are they... Read More

RSS is a Life Raft, Saving Us from a Sea of Useless Information

One of the main problems with the Internet these days is the fact that there is so much information out there; it can be quite hard to find the particular knowledge that you're looking for. It can often feel like you're surfing waves of thick chocolate fudge sauce and your honeycomb board has a crack that's getting wider by the second. Over stimulus is the issue here; you wanted to read opinions from music enthusiasts about music, and every second blog article had to do with new punk hairdo trends and which band has the coolest tattoos. How can we... Read More

Blog Reflection

I still consider myself to be a blog writing novice but as I've got a few entries under my belt I can tell you about an unexpected bonus of this journaling process. A lot of people think that blog writers are just people who are tooting their own horns blabbering on self-righteously about what they believe to be true in life. On the contrary, for me writing a blog has helped me to reflect on my experiences that I may have otherwise have forgotten if I hadn't written them down. It has become a process of self-actualization, whether others have... Read More

Feed The Need: 5 Ways To Use RSS To Boost Your Business Or Organizational Success

RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication, among other things) is a relatively new technology that allows anyone who creates frequently changing web content - news, blogs, current events, etc. - to deliver their messages to interested readers with no fuss, no muss and best of all - no spam! Currently, RSS is being used by content-rich sites (mainly blogs and news centers) to keep readers up-to-date on newly published posts or breaking stories. But RSS can do so much more. Many businesses and organizations are failing to truly exploit the amazing properties of this technology - and in... Read More

What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business?

It's been a long day at work and you're in no mood to cook dinner or go out. Time to count on the reliable pizza delivery guy. The order is called in and he promptly arrives with smokin' hot pizza within 30 minutes as promised. If it were only that easy with a picky family where no one can agree on the same restaurant for dinner. One wants Mexican, another wants Chinese, and another wants a burger and Mexican. Instead of running to three different places, you call a delivery service that goes to all of them and brings... Read More

Is a Blog Right For Your Business?

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die. In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place. How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why... Read More

RSS & How to Use It (part 1)

Have you ever read an article, intended to explain RSS in simple terms that, begins well, but soon descends into confusing jargon or information overload? If so, take heart, I was in the same place a few months ago. Often the best way to understand something, is to use it. RSS is no exception. So rather than try and create a definitive explanation of RSS, this article will tell you how to use it. I guarantee once you've done so, everything will that much clearer. If a website you visit utilizes RSS, there are a number of ways it will... Read More

RSS & How to Use It -- Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the article that aims to give you just enough information to help you understand RSS and start using it. Part 1 gave you simple instructions on how to read and subscribe to an RSS site feed, part 2 will give you simple instructions on how to publish your own. Firstly, which websites can benefit from a site feed? Well, pretty much all of them. If you provide a service, you could use a site feed to announce amendments and upgrades. If you sell stuff, you could use a site feed to announce new products and... Read More

What Are RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds.RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article.Benefit to the Webmaster: As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide... Read More

3 Reasons To Publish An E-Newsletter AND A Blog

With spam filters on high alert, delivering a newsletter by email is not as easy as it was even one year ago. Should it reach your subscriber's inbox (without getting siphoned into a junk folder), it still has to vie for attention amongst dozens ? or even hundreds ? of new messages. 1. A blog is not "email" A Weblog or blog, on the other hand, is a page on your site that can be updated several times a week with fresh content. If a reader has "subscribed" to your blog, he or she gets an alert (consisting of... Read More

Benefits to RSS

RSS streamlines communication between publishers and readers. Since RSS has had a popularity surge, webmasters have been experimenting and using RSS feeds to deliver content in new and innovative ways. Typically, RSS feeds contain news headlines and content summaries. The content summaries contain just enough information without overwhelming the reader with superfluous details. If the reader is interested and wants additional information they can click on the item in the feed, accessing the website which contains additional details. RSS readers aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy for individuals to quickly scan information contained within each feed. Feeds are generally themed,... Read More

Internet Communication

Email, Instant Messaging, Blogs, RSS, Forums and Listservs: What's Next?How do we keep Internet communication simple? Let's start by taking a look at the different methods used to communicate on the web. It is important to understand the nuances and benefits of the different forms.EmailThis is the most popular communication method. Users typically use desktop software to receive, read and respond to messages. Some users use web-based mail and manage messages in a web browser like Internet Explorer. The downfall to email communication is that anyone can send email messages to anyone else if they have (or guess) the correct... Read More

Should You Get A Blog?

A blog is a type of website. It allows the website owner to easily write messages that get posted to the site automatically, often in a journal or diary-like style. A particularly appealing thing about blogs is that your readers can comment back to your posts fairly easily, and a continuous stream of fresh conversations result. (This is a good thing.)Here are three reasons to consider getting a blog:1.To Replace Your EzineIf you currently publish an ezine, you may wish to consider replacing it with a regularly published blog. This means using your blog to publish journal entries, and then... Read More

Blogs Explained

It seems like Blogs are everywhere these days. You can't seem to surf the Internet without seeing the word Blog somewhere. The intent of this article is to explain the basics what a Blog is and how you can use them to help promote your business and gain valuable information quicker that surfing the Internet. The word Blog is short for web log. Basically a Blog is just an area set aside you to write articles that can easily be accessed with a special program called a RSS reader. In case you're wondering RSS stands for real simple syndication. ... Read More

Blogging for Dollars

Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but it's the latest craze to hit the Internet. Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off.Whether a blogger's focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:1. ) Google Adsense... Read More

What Is RSS?

Recently I did an interview with a well known email Internet Marketer. He wanted to share with his readers a viewpoint on what RSS is from someone who is using it in place of traditional email marketing. Of course this interview was geared towards other Internet marketers so they all somewhat "get" what RSS is, at least in theory.So, what IS RSS? Again, I find myself laughing, as I did in that interview because I'm fairly new to this RSS business myself. RSS is really an acronym for REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION ? well at least that's ONE definition and the... Read More

How to Write A Blog... And Survive

Copyright © 2004 Priya Shah The question of the day is "Should you start a Blog?" People all over the planet are blogging. Companies, CEOs, lawyers, journalists, stewardesses. Even dogs and babies. Why? Because they can. It's that simple. Blogging requires little or no learning curve. If you can type, speak into a phone, bark, chew, record a holiday movie, you can blog. Blogs have taken publishing out of the domain of those who know HTML and designing, to make this powerful tool available to the rest of us. That holiday in the Far East,... Read More

Its A Blog, Not A Sales Letter

The recent spurt of interest in blogging has begun to ignite the hope that people can make a full-time income from blogging. Although there are a few people actually doing this, there aren't too many business models yet that can support someone making a full-time income from their blogs. I believe that blogs should be an important part of any traffic-generation plan for a website, but don't depend on the blog itself to do much selling. Blogs are best viewed as an addition to site content, in reality, a very simple content management system that helps you update your... Read More