Gloson Blog – Social Media, Blogging, and Tech Tips from a Kid

This guest post is written by Peter Joseph, a 15-year-old blogger from Australia.

Often when we blog, at times there may be moments when we have absolutely no ideas on what to blog about.

The worst thing we can do is leave our blogs dormant. If we have nothing to blog about that people want to read then we will quickly lose readers, subscribers and worst, the grip on our blog.

If you have no idea what you want to blog about next, here are the best tips to avoid this and come up with blog posts ideas in seconds.

Photo by JJay

Don’t think of blogging as a must do

One heavy mistake everyone seems to make is they think that blogging is a must do.

They have a requirement that you must write a blog post at specific times on specific days or you will fall short of the cycle.

Only write a new post when you come up with a decent idea. It is better to leave your blog blank for a few more days then publish a blog post that isn’t of good quality and can put your readers off.

Here’s how to come up with post ideas in seconds and completely remove this step.

Photo by Jonno Witts

Start with the topic

The first thing you need to do to start coming up with ideas is to define your topic.

What actually do you plan to write on, is it blogging? Something about cooking?

Generally to get this far, it isn’t too hard, take a look on your blog, what topics does it cover; this is generally what you should write about and focus on in speed idea thinking.

Once you’ve done this, you need to start thinking up the catch phrase.

Photo by Ezu

Find out the catchphrase

Forget any form of creativity; all the catchphrase is, is a jumble of words which you are going to use to formulate your ideas.

Catch phrases can generally be very simple. Just make sure you remember to pull it back to your topic; just come up with anything at all.

Right now, for a catch phrase at this very instant, the thing I came up with as I write this is “blogging in a line”.

Now this might not sound like much at the moment but there are various different topics that could come around this catch phrase.

The next thing you need to do is formulate your catch phrase and come up with ideas around it.

Photo by ethangibbs808

Formulate everything around your catchphrase

Using my blogging in a line example, the next thing you need to do is formulate everything around your catch phrase.

What comes to mind when you think of “blogging in a line?”

To me, I think kof the importance of having multiple blog posts and moving them down into various parts, also making your posts flow concurrently so that everything works together.

What comes to mind with your catch phrase? Look at each of the different words in the sentence and then the whole sentence and ideas will quickly come to your head.

Photo by woodleywonderworks

Conclusion

After doing the tips above you will slowly realize how quickly coming up with blog post ideas is. No longer will you ever have to stress about meeting a post deadline with nothing to deliver.

Just remember now, all you have to do is think up a topic, find a catch phrase, formulate topics around it and you already have a perfect idea.

The idea behind this post took me around is seconds to think up, idea generate at that speed and you will save heaps of tine.

Only downside is. Now you have too many ideas and not enough time to write them all down.

This guest post is written by Onibalusi Bamidele, a 16-year-old entrepreneur.

More and more blogs are being created everyday. Since we have hundreds of millions of bloggers with more evolving everyday, there’s competition and only the best will survive.

To be successful, you need to know some things you can implement to make your blog a success. Below are 8 great and very important things every blogger must know.

1. Great Design Matters

With more blogs being added everyday, many blogs begin to look alike, and so you should stand out from the other blogs.

One of the most important things in an online presence is a great user experience, which design is part of.

If you have a unique and attractive design that gives a good user experience, it’ll be easy to promote your blog and gain loyal readers.

In blogging, many judge by design. No matter how great your content is, if they see a bad design, they conclude that your content is also bad without even reading.

Also, many skim blog posts. A very readable typography helps to encourage readers to read it instead of skimming it.

Photo: silkegb

2. Research and Write Valuable Content

With more blogs being added everyday, it is very important to make your blog stand out, not only by design but also by valuable content.

Many blog about “general blogging tips”. This might get you search engine traffic. But it also determines your blog’s growth and what kind of readers you gain.

When you write valuable content, your readers share your content with their friends, on their blogs, social media, etc.

Photo: Paul Watson

3. It Takes Being Creative

Many new bloggers say they’ve been blogging for some time, but are not seeing results. It’s very important to know that in blogging, you need to add your own spice of creavtivity to be successful. So, be creative.

You can be creative in so many ways:

• coming up with an topic nobody else had came up with
• the style of your writing
• the angle of your post
• how you promote your post

- It is all about doing something unusual, a little going out of the box.

Photo: Mrs Magic

4. Goals are Important

One very common thing I notice among bloggers is they lack goals. Many of them don’t set goals and wait for things to happen, and this continues to fuel their laziness.

One of the most important things you can do for yourself (not only in blogging, but in life in general) is to plan your future.

You should not just wait for things to happen but have a way you want it to happen.

It’s also important to set achievable goals using a time-frame. It’ll be unrealistic for a new blogger to say “I want 10,000 daily visitors in my first month!” An example of a good and realistic goal is, “I want to get 300 subscribers this month.”

And even though you might not achieve your goals, they would drive you toward working harder to take your blog to the next level.

Photo: Rigmarole

5. SEO Matters

Many bloggers obviously don’t know about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and funny enough, some are not even ready to.

SEO is very important, so invest your time into learning a good deal about it. You might also want to hire an SEO expert if you’re not ready to learn it.

One SEO tip is get a good and fast wordpress theme because a clean code is easy for the bots to easily and properly crawl your blog.

Then you’ll get better page rankings and overall traffic (Also, Google’s ranking is now partly based on site loading speed).

Here’s a blog post I wrote on wordpress seo to get you started.

Photo: Danard Vincente

6. Promotion is a Must

It surprises me that my 1-month traffic surpasses the traffic of 4 months of a blogger who blogged for months before I knew what blogging was.

No matter how valuable your content is, you will still need to do some PUSH in order to get the desired traction.

You don’t just sit down, do nothing, and expect people to flock to your blog. Even if you think your content will go viral, you’ll still need some readers to give it a push before it does.

The number of readers you have can determine how successful you are. Traffic is a must. For more tips, please get my free ebook on how to get lots of free traffic.

Photo: roland

7. It Begins With Your Headline

Having personally suffered from this, I’ve also seen many bloggers with great content but nobody to read it. I figured out one of their major problems is: their headline sucks.

Yeah! No matter how great your content is, you should have a great headline to back it up.

So if you have a truly great content, you should make sure it goes viral by giving it the right and magnetic headline.

Spending a few minutes tweaking your headline might be what makes the difference. I’ve seen a fairly new blog go popular on StumbleUpon because it has a powerful headline.

So, never underestimate the power of an headline.

Photo: UnstablePixel

8. Networking is the Key

Yeah! Networking is very important to the success of any blogger.

Two or more can achieve far more than one. Networking with bloggers in your niche is very important to your success.

You can network with other bloggers by commenting on their blogs, writing for them (like what I’m doing here), and meeting on social media sites, like Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn Stumbleupon, Digg, etc.

Photo: Matt Hamm

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This post is written by Kirsten Ramsburg of WebHostingSearch.com.

Websites come and go and if you want to add a website to the mix there are seven basic steps to follow.

1.Get a Domain Name

Internet addressing can be technically confusing. The domain name will serve as the identity of your website. So choosing a good one is important and it should be easy to remember.

If it’s a commercial site, it should be descriptive of your product or services.

One thing to watch out for is that the name you want might already be in use. Websites such as www.whois.com can tell you what names are taken and offer alternatives in case the one you have in mind is already taken.

The name needs to be registered through a domain name registrar or a host.

Image by crystaljingsr

2. Find a Host

An internet host is a company that owns computers called webservers.

After your website is uploaded to the host server, it handles all the work of receiving and answering requests for it.

Many companies will not only host your site but will also register your domain name. You may have to pay for both but the web hosting market is very competitive and it is possible to find cheap web hosting with a single company.

Photo by mayhem

3. Target Your Audience

Why do you want a website? If it’s a personal site for family and friends, then you already know your audience.

If it’s a website to promote a business venture, you need to narrow down the audience to the people who would benefit from visiting your site.

Whether it’s an established or new business venture, it’s still important to consider such variables as age, economic status and computer savvy of your intended audience.

Photo by wainwright.photography

4. Design Your Website

Designing your website rests heavily on the previous step of defining your audience. Deciding what you want to achieve comes before deciding how to achieve it, and both are best accomplished by a pen-to-paper outline.

Keep in mind, that often the simplest design is the best design. This is a good place to decide which keywords to incorporate into the design to facilitate your site being picked up by search engines.

Image by John-Morgan

5. Build Your Website

There are two choices. Hire someone to get it done or do it yourself. If you’re new to website building and have decided on a complex multi-page site you should consider hiring a professional. That can be pricey.

If you’re a beginner, there are a number of variously priced software programs that offer “professional” results with templates and drag-and-drop mouse moves.

Photo by woodleywonderworks

6. Publish Your Website

The steps are getting easier. This one involves uploading your website files to the host that you’ve chosen. Almost all of them offer easy to follow instructions on how to get your materials to their webservers.

Most of those software packages also include directions on how to do this, and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) applications can be used for speedier uploading.

7. Test and Maintain

Not all web browsers are created to equally view websites. If you’ve not tested your site on various browsers during the building phase, certainly check it once it’s online and make the necessary corrections.

Maintain your site on a regular basis. There are few things more irritating to a web user than going to a site that has outdated information.

Photo by .robbie
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Kirsten Ramsburg is a frustrated journalist and is currently putting all her passion for writing as a senior writer for WebHostingSearch.com guide.

Hi everyone! How’s everything going?

My Guest Post

Recently, I have made a guest post on my friend Gerald Weber’s blog. It’s called

11 Sure-fire Ways to Annoy Your Readers
(Please Don’t Do This)

It talks about 11 sure-fire ways to annoy your readers. Read it so that you would know what to avoid to not annoy your readers.

Here is one of the points of the post:

1. Writing in gigantic blocks of text

Big text blogs are easy to get lost in. They also strain eyes and make reading difficult.

Because it’s hard to scan. Let alone read.

In fact, a study shows that only 16% of your readers read word-by-word. The rest mostly scan. So at least make it scannable.

I suggest keeping paragraphs 1 to 7 lines long. Then your readers would read your post relaxingly and enjoyably. Ahhhh…

So are you unknowingly annoying your readers?

Go to the post to find out!

11 Sure-fire Ways to Annoy Your Readers (Please Don’t Do This)

I’ll really appreciate it if you could leave a comment or tweet it . Thanks!

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What I’ve been doing: The Creative 5 Program

Some of you might have been wondering why I haven’t been posting in a while. Well, it was because my mom and I are doing a project.

It’s a program called The Creative 5.

“Uhh.. well, what’s so creative about
The Creative 5?”

Well, it uses the same 5 story characters, Feathers, Swan, Tablets, Rainbow, and Butterfly, to create over 90 different 5-short-paragraph stories!

It might sound simple but actually it is very challenging to create with these 5 characters a 5=short-paragraph story that is unique, creative, and interesting.

So, if you think you can do it, congratulations! You can join The Creative 5 contest. You only have to pay $1 USD to join, and you’ll also get The Creative 5 Book 1, which usually costs $10.

So, start having fun tickling your creative brain cells and write your own The Creative 5 story now!
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By the way, I’ve been featured in Tamar Weinberg’s post How Young is Too Young? along with other very young bloggers like myself. Please check them out! =)

So, how are things going for you? I hope you’re doing awesome!

Cheers!
Gloson