If you have been paying attention at all to current trends in social networking, you would have realized by now that Twitter is one of the biggest Internet phenomena in recent memory, possibly rivaled only by Facebook. In fact, both networks have managed to surpass email in popularity. We’re not going to go into the many reasons why you should take up Twittering since there are many other web site on the Internet where you can get such information, nor are we going to cover how Twitter can help you increase traffic to your web site, since those issues are fairly common knowledge. Instead, this article will be devoted to how you can use Twitter to generate fresh new content for your blog, while keeping your readers engrossed at the same time.

The use of Twitter as a way to generate content is based on the principle that forging relationships with actual people is an effective way to generate new blog content. Like all bloggers, you may have run into those days when you simply couldn’t come up with anything interesting to write about no matter how hard you tried. In fact, struggling to come up with something to write is likely to backfire on you, and may just drive your muse further into hiding. In times such as these, Twitter may just be able to help.

How can you do that? One way is by asking your blog readers a simple question pertaining to your blog or virtually anything you can think of, provided it is somehow related to your blog’s topic. It may be as simple as how they are dealing with the present economic crisis, or their thoughts on a particular subject. You can then take all the responses that you generate, post them on your blog (make sure you announce your intention to do so first), and perhaps add a bit of commentary to each response. You can then send a thank you “tweet” to each reader that responded, which includes a link to the post. This simple tactic may be enough to get you an interesting new article and a healthy amount of traffic.

Taking this idea further, you can also approach a recognized authority in a certain field–preferably one related to your own blog’s niche–an ask for an interview, the results of which will be published on your blog. If you choose your interviewee and subject carefully, it will appeal to a large majority of your readers, each of whom you can make an announcement to on Twitter. You can even make an announcement regarding the upcoming interview early on as a way to drum up reader interest for the future date. This technique is almost sure to generate loads of traffic for your blog, which in itself may lead to a lot more interesting topics.

With these two methods, you can effectively generate loads of new content for your blog using Twitter. The means are available to you right now, and all you have to do is take advantage of it.

Why You Need To Fix Broken Links On Your Blog Today

Many older blog posts suffer from the common malady of containing links that are no longer valid. This can severely undermine the value of a post, which is a shame if the topic is one that continues to be relevant. It is therefore a good idea to go back to your previous posts regularly and make sure that your links are still valid…

If you currently have a blog or are simply thinking of starting up one, one of your main concerns is probably how to go about it effectively. While blog topics can vary by a tremendous degree from the seemingly mundane to more technical discourses–and the factors that lead to its effectiveness can therefore be hard to pinpoint–there are a few tried and proven methods that apply to virtually all types of blogs. A clue can be found in what actually drives bloggers to start up a blog.

The most basic purpose of a blog is to provide the blogger a means to share his or her thoughts and feelings with the collective online community. You should therefore approach your blog with a thorough assessment of what it is exactly that you are passionate enough about to want to share your thoughts on a regular basis. If there is a certain subject that you are passionate about, that would make a good starting point for your blog. Writing a blog about something that you aren’t really into is an almost surefire way to fail, and your readers will likely see right through your lack of interest.

Aside from writing about something that you are passionate about, you will also want to make sure that you at least have a basic grasp of what you are writing about. You don’t have to be an expert on the subject by any means, and many of the most successful blogs are in fact written by people who start it up for purposes of learning more about the particular subject, but you do have to at least have a cursory knowledge of the field.

Below are some of the other important methods to ensure the effectiveness of your blog.

Keep it short. The fact that your words are being read onscreen instead of on paper already puts you at a disadvantage, since it is more difficult to read. You can therefore improve readability somewhat by keeping your posts fairly short. 1,000 words is a pretty good length to shoot for, although even as little as 300 words may be all you need.

Break it up. You should also strive to keep your paragraphs short. You can lose a lot of readers’ attention with long paragraphs, so you will want to write it in such a way that new ideas are contained in their own paragraph. Generally speaking, you will want a single paragraph to fit in the browser window.

Highlight important points. Highlighting your most pertinent points will help draw in your readers’ attention and will allow them to hone in specific parts that they may be interested in.

Use bulleted lists. Again this will make it easier for readers to pore through all the information that you provide, and will avoid presenting your content in a solid wall of gray text that so may turn off many of your readers.

• Link to posts that are related.

One of the most effective ways to retain reader interest is by linking to posts in other pages of your blog. There are various ways of doing this ranging from the subtle to the obvious, and each approach may be just as effective. You may for example place links directly in the body content of a specific page, paying particular attention to placing them near the top of the page where they are more likely to be clicked on. You can use this method to lead readers to related posts, and in some cases even to topics that you just mentioned in passing.

You can also place links to the posts you want to lead your readers to after your body content. You can include a short sentence with these links such as “If you want to read more about this topic, here are a few more articles you may find useful” or words to that effect.

• Provide a listing of relevant topics in a sidebar.

You can also draw reader attention to some posts that they may find useful or interesting by providing a list of such topics somewhere on your page. Not only will this make it easy for your readers to find useful content, it will also give you a chance to highlight some of your best topics. In addition, you will also get a clearer picture of the quality of the content that you have to offer. If your list of “best topics” isn’t really all that impressive, a rethink of your writing and posting approach may be in order.

• Dedicate a page to new readers.

If you have been running your blog for a while now, it is inevitable that you would forget to keep new readers in mind. Particularly when the discussion can get pretty active, most bloggers tend to “live in the moment” and forget that some readers may be clueless as to what is going on. A page that addresses the concerns of new readers may spell the difference between keeping them on and turning them away.

• Setup off-site links so that they open in another window.

Most readers tend to stay on a page that they are taken to instead of hitting the back button on their browser to go back to the page where they came from. Unless you want to keep your readers going through this one-way door, it may be better to make sure that new links open in a new window.

There are actually many reasons why blogs lose the interest of their readers, and these reasons are different for every blog. While going into each and every reason for losing reader interest is beyond the scope of this article–and any single article for that matter–what we can do is offer you some tips on how to keep your readers interested in your blog longer…

• Provide interesting and relevant content.

This is almost painfully obvious, but it is surprising how many bloggers fail to follow this basic tenet. The fact of the matter is that if your content does not grab your readers’ attention and keep them wanting to come back for more, you are eventually going to lose them. No matter what your blog is about, and no matter what type of content your blog is known for, it will have to be interesting to keep your readers engrossed. Of course this is dependent on your reader base, and you do have to realize that what may be interesting to you may be quite boring to other people.

• Make it easy for your readers to read.

This issue pertains more to the visual appeal–or non-appeal–of your blog than anything else. Nothing turns away a reader faster than a badly designed blog, especially given the fact that we now leave in an increasingly visually-oriented world. Even with the many blog templates commonly available nowadays, it is amazing how many bloggers resort to unattractive templates. A careful assessment of your tastes may be in order, as you may find a certain color scheme attractive although most people would find it abhorrent.

You should also avoid using fonts that are too small as they are often very difficult to read. Large fonts may be easy to read but they generally don’t look too attractive either.

• Avoid hosting too many ads.

While it is understandable to want to have as many ads as possible in order to generate revenue for your blog, you may want to find a balance between your need to monetize your blog and how many ads your readers are actually wiling to put up with. Of course, the use of pop-up ads is almost a definite no-no nowadays, and you would do well to avoid them entirely.

• Simplify navigation.

Most readers also won’t want to jump through hoops in order to get around your site. Make it easy for them to find their way around and you will encourage them to stick around longer.

Looking for Blogs within Google

Blogs are almost ubiquitous features on the Internet nowadays, and there are literally thousands of such online journals available ranging in topics from the relatively mundane to the more serious…

With the many blogs out there in cyberspace, it can be quite a challenge to find specific blogs that you are looking. Of course with Google being the de facto search engine for tracking down virtually anything you are looking for on the Internet, it makes perfect sense to make it your first stop when searching for one of more blogs that fit into a particular niche.

While Google has a very simple and easy feature used only to search other bloggers on blogspot called “blog search”.  This is a particularly a search engine within a search engine that will quickly locate you tons of other bloggers that are hosted by Blogger which is owned by Google.

Beginning your search for a blog on the Blogger network can be done in either of two ways, both of which we outline below.

1. Go to the Blog Search web site’s home page.
2. Type in your search terms and click the link marked ‘Search Blogs’.
3. Click on the link that is marked ‘Google Blog Search’, after which you should type in your specific search term.
4. Click on the link marked ‘Search Blogs’.

As for harvesting backlinks, blogger instinct will share with you the inside scoop to get hundreds of quality backlinks quickly. The first step involves converting my articles into .EXE files. What this does is allows the articles to be  listed in software directories of which there are literally hundreds. Each of these directories will then generate a quality backlink and tons of new visitors in the process…

Converting articles into EXE files isn’t as hard as you may think either. All you have to do is download WebSiteZip Packer–don’t worry: it’s totally free–open your HTML formatted article in the program and the wizard will take care of the rest. Simple, isn’t it?

Now, you will then have to create a PAD file, which is a bit more involved. A PAD file is what you will actually submit to the software directories, and can be created with a program called 30-minute backlinks. This is readily available on the Internet, and is a great way to get a virtually limitless number of one-way backlinks.

Ready for the next step? You may want to check out what Download.com has to offer. This web site offers a wealth of sites that you can submit your articles to, with a lot of visitors you can potentially pull in. The web site offers a further advantage however, in that it is particularly favored by Google. In fact, don’t be surprised that upon signing up with Download.com that you will be in one of the top ranking positions in Google in as little as a few days! This is perhaps one of the best-kept secrets of getting a high Google page ranking, with sites such as Squidoo and Scribd getting the lion’s share of the attnetion.

Oh, and keep in mind that you can actually convert your article into any one of many different program types for submission to download sites–widgets and screensavers being only two of the most popular ones–so use your imagination!