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1. Planning your online brand development

“The hardest thing is to know what you want, the rest is easy….”

The secret to building a successful online personal brand begins with knowing yourself, and that means knowing what you are about and what you want to achieve. When you have developed these principals into a clear vision, you will find that your brand will evolve around this identity and, because it has a clear focus, others will find it easy to latch on to, associate with and be encouraged to interact with it.

Some people, like musicians, film-makers and designers have a ready-made source of inspiration from which to develop their online identity. They probably already have MySpace and Facebook accounts, an audience and an image which they want to expand beyond the limitations of these environments which are outside of their direct control.

Others, with a focus on social commentary, creative writing or opinion-based journalism are looking to get themselves recognised, respected within their chosen fields and turn their hobby/interests into income-generating ventures.

Whichever angle you are approaching personal online branding from, we recommend that you take some time to consider the following questions and put together a written statement [first page of your Ideas Journal!] which encapsulates what you are trying to achieve:

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Sphere: Related Content

Website Traffic Series Part 7: Putting A Blog on Your Static Website

The Website Traffic Series will try to cover all the traffic generation strategies available, so some of them might not apply to blogs necessarily. This one, for instance, is geared towards people that have static websites, like a company or business site. Even if you are a blogger, however, you might need to create a static website in the future, or to do consulting for a company that has one, so I think you could still benefit from knowing the different angles of this technique. The Concept: Blogs revolutionized the Web for several reasons. First of all, the appearance of blogging specific software like WordPress or Movable Type, as well as the free hosted solutions like Blogger, enabled pretty much anyone (even people with zero knowledge of HTML) to create their own website and to share with the world their ideas and knowledge. Secondly, blogs introduced features like comments and trackbacks that allowed users to interact with each other more efficiently. What before used to be a monologue (from the few websites that published information) became a conversation where blogs, websites, authors and readers all interacted and shared their thoughts. Read more

Importing WordPress Files To Another Blog URL

WordPress has an “import” function that you can use to transfer all your blog posts, pages, comments, users and even tags to a new WordPress blog on a different domain. You can find this function under Manage > Import > Import WordPress You probably won’t need to do this ever, but in my case when I decided to rebrand NetworkRevolution.org to MLMRenegade.net I had to use this function because:

1. I’ve done it before and I know it’s easy
2. You can choose to automatically import images and other attachments from your old blog to your new one, and the actual path to these files will also be updated
3. It maintains every post and comments on the posts exactly as you’d want them to be

This time around however I got this error message: Read more

3 Simple Secrets to Reducing Your Blogging Stress

This is a guest post by Karl Staib. Thoughts, creativity, and writing should flow freely and without tension. As I was writing an article a few months ago I noticed the strain in my stomach, neck, and jaw. I was straining to get the thoughts out. As if tensing my muscles would actually help me focus or even create something helpful to my readers. My writing was strained because I was uptight through the process. The tension was creating pain and I knew that I needed to fix the way I wrote my blogs. I ignored it in the past because I thought it was normal, sprinting through my thoughts until I began to stumble, hoping that after the first push of energy was over I would have something concrete to work with. And even when I ended up with a minor headache it was okay because I accomplished the work I set out to do. This cycle couldn’t continue and I needed a system. 1. Outline, Outline, Outline Writing was usually a chase for me. I would chase after the perfect sentences. A lot of times I would only have a flicker of a thought and begin writing – no planning, just bulldozing ahead, hoping it would all come out into something readable. Now I write a small outline to make sure I know where I’m going with the topic. The outline has reduced my tension because I can see the larger picture. When I get stuck, I check my outline and find myself getting back on track with minimal stress. Read more

Blogging Icons Set

There are total 12 shiny and modern icons for your blogs. Bloggers can use it on their own personal and commercial projects.

The differences between a blog, CMS and Wiki.

What is the difference between a CMS (content management system) and a Wiki? In a nutshell: Both are web based applications/software designed to allow many people to contribute content (typically articles … but podcast and videos are becoming more common) to a website. I would say the basic difference is that a CMS (Ex: Drupal) is a closed system where only certain people can add or edit content to the website/cms. Read more

TweetApp

A couple of new Twitter-based sites: TooMuch and HelpWith.

Video Blog Review 3: The Boomer Chronicles

Welcome to the third video blog review on Daily Blog Tips. This is another one focused on the design and layout aspects. The Boomer Chronicles uses a very common blog template, so I am sure new bloggers will find this one useful. I think the quality of the image improved a bit on this one also. If you don’t have time to watch the video, here are the main points I covered:

• The header will quite good. It has a customized image that gives a mood to the whole blog, and it also has a clear tagline to explain to first time visitors what the blog is about quickly.
• The name of the blog and the domain are not matching, which might confuse some visitors. If the blog is has been using that name for a long time, though, it would not be a good idea to change it now, so its just a point to keep in mind.
• Full posts are being displayed on the homepage. Usually I prefer only post excerpts, but since the entries are short posts most of the times, full posts are OK on that case.
• Personally I would remove the social bookmarking icons from appearing in all the posts. Given that the content is formed mostly from the opinions and daily activities of the author, I am not sure how effective it is to promote them on social media. If once in a while there is a suitable post, the author can always insert those icons individually.
• The main category is still called “Uncategorized.” This gives the impression that it was neglected. It would be a good idea to name it something else, like General Stuff.
• There are no links to the single categories on the sidebar. This is necessary to give the users the option to navigation the categories individually.
• It would be essential to add an RSS icon on the homepage as well. Right now it is no where to be found.
• The Archives section are taking too much space on the sidebar, and perhaps a drop-down box would accomplish the same task using less space.
• The always common Meta section at the bottom of the sidebar is present here as well, and I always say it would be a good idea to remove it cause it has no value to the visitor whatsoever.

If you can’t see the video player, here is a link to YouTube: Daily Blog Tips - Blog Review 3 Read more

5 Remarkable Things You Should Learn From Music (And How You Can Apply Them To Your Blog)

This is a guest post by Hans. Everyone loves music. Some of you are fans of Pink Floyd, David Bowie or U2 while others may be fans of Mozart or Brahms. Moreover, some may love Blues music while others prefer Punk music. In fact, there are several aspects that may influence your relation with music. You may adhere to a music style or be an unconditional fan of a particular singer. No matter what your music preferences are, the fact is that you based it on precise and personal criteria. The same seems to be completely applicable to blogs. In this article, I suggest you to make an incursion into the music to find the criteria that would most influence your music preferences. These criteria will then be apply to blogs to better understand who your audience really is or what kind of audience you should target for your blog. Let’s start the list. Read more

Bling Your Blog With WidgetBox

WidgetBox has been around for some time. I still remember playing around with their application last year at some stage but then forgot all about it. For some reason I was subscribed to their entries and after seeing their latest additions I thought it would be a good tool for a post here on Easy WordPress. WidgetBox is a smart online application that lets you share, connect, create and express using widgets on a wide range of platforms. Their easy to use tools allow you to create your own widgets or alternatively use somebody else to express your interests on your blog. You can even turn your blog into a widget using WidgetBox. There are widgets for count down clocks, series announcements, music, news, pets, weather, games, movies, family and many more topics. It ads interactivity to your blog and makes people stay around longer. You can even create a widget for your social media platforms that show your readers at any stage what you were up to. See the image to the left for more. Read more

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