Gloson Blog

I have recently guest posted an article on 15 ways to get your blog comments noticed on http://sem-group.net. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

It’s my 3rd guest post so far. I’m looking to writing more guest posts soon!

To view it, click here => 15 ways to get your blog comments noticed. I hope you’ll enjoy my guest post!

The comments will be closed below. If you’ve got a comment, you can post it there.

Today (09/09/09), I am enlisted in the Malaysia Book of Records (MBR) as the youngest published poet in Malaysia. I feel very honored to be enlisted in MBR.

I want to thank MBR for organizing this event, and Dato’ Danny Ooi for founding MBR. They have personal achievement records and group event records. The personal achievement records help encourage the person while the group records help to build the spirit of teamwork. I am very proud to be a Malaysian.

I am also very grateful to my mother and father for supporting my hobby and lifting it into the professional level.

First, Azrene, the Head of Research in MBR, emailed me to ask me to join the Malaysia Book of Records on July 13 after my appearance with the Prime Minister on the press on 11 July.

Then, they had to confirm that I am the youngest poet by checking the bookstores for poetry books that were written by kids no older than 9. None were found.

On 5 September, I was invited to their office and they asked me to write a funny poem based on the topics they chose on the spot. So, here is the poem (I took one hour to finish it):

My Kitty’s Adventure

My cat was bored of me because
I hug him night and day.
He chose to take a small break
and go for a holiday.

He jumped into my toy plane.
He doesn’t want to stay.
He buckled up his seatbelt
and he zoomed out of the way.

With great determination,
he went out my open door.
He flew into the big blue skies.
He just wants to explore

But there was a big thunderstorm.
The plane was struck by lightning.
My cat was gonna crash! Oh no!
I’m sure that it was frightening.

Good thing he knows how to swim for
he crashed into a river.
Bad thing it was the Angel Falls!
He then began to shiver.

He fell about 3,000 feet from
that high waterfall.
He fell onto a monkey that
thought my cat was a ball.

And with his strength, he threw my kitty
up into the sky.
I wish that I was him because I
always want to fly.

At that time, I was gazing at some
pretty clouds of red.
Then I saw my kitty flying.
Then it landed on my head!

“It’s alright my darling!” I said.
I was really so delighted!
”Meow…….” he gladly sighed as
we are reunited.

After finishing, I also acted out the poem on the spot in front of the founder of MBR, Dato’ Danny Ooi. After that, my mother chose this date (09/09/09) to receive the record certificate.

My mother chose 09/09/09 because number 9 in Chinese culture means ‘forever’.. After receiving the certificate, then my mother realized this date was really God-given, because my Chinese name is Teh You Heng. “You” means protection from God. “Heng” means forever.

Here are some photos from the event. I want to thank Simon Liew (A kind friend I met online) for helping me take all these nice photos (Yes, all photos here are taken by him).

MBR Founder Dato’ Danny Ooi presenting me my record certificate

Me performing my poem, “The Fly”, using the music and sound effects I composed on keyboard.

Me acting out my poem, “My Dad’s Obsessed With Elephants”.

Me with Simon Liew, the kind guy who helped me take all these photos.

Family photo.

 
My brother, Rockson, was invited to dance to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”, too.

Holding a personal record in the Malaysia Book of Records has certainly encouraged me to become a better person each day.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Cheers!

Photo by Daveblog

A few months back, I’ve made a post on Gloson Blog, 7 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog (Most of which you haven’t done). Now, I’ve come up with 7 more things to do to make your blog better (Also most of which you haven’t done). So… here they are.

1. Frequently use pictures on your posts

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words.

Putting pictures on your blog posts, if you haven’t yet, is a big improvement you could have made. One single picture on your blog post could make a big difference.

It makes the blog posts colorful and will show up in social media sites (It might get a lot more favorites). It also stimulates the readers to read it. It might even make the readers like it more.

We, humans, like to see than read things. That’s the human instinct. So, why not put up the picture and get more views?

To find cool pictures for your posts, go to CompFight, a really cool flickr search tool.

2. Number your lists

like this. Making your list numbered helps people keep track of where they are reading and how far they are from the ending of the post. When I read unnumbered lists, somehow I feel that there is no end to this list. Does this happen to you too?

So, please make your lists numbered, especially long ones.

3. Modify your title structure

This is the default title structure of wordpress blogs: Blog Title >> Archive >> (Post Title).

Search engines has a limit for titles in their search results. So if your title is long, search engines will only show a part of the title.

To make the title: “(Post Title) | (Blog Title)”, or even just “(Post Title)” install the famous All in One SEO Pack plugin and it will automatically do everything for you. It will give you SEO and other benefits.

Oh, and blogger users, don’t worry, I have not forgotten about you. This post will teach you exactly how to modify our title structure like that.

4. Put your picture in your about page

If you haven’t put your personal picture in your blog yet, you should do it. Your readers are curious about what you look like. So put up your picture! It helps your readers get to know you and your personality better.

5. Stop using mailto links and install a contact form

Putting your email on your blog (It automatically becomes a mailto link) is one of the most common mistakes I’ve come across. It can be a target for spammers. You could put up your email address as a picture.

But still, a contact form is the best.
It conceals your email from people who will send you spam.

To install a contact form, I’d recommend Contact Form 7, a simple contact form plugin for wordpress.

For Blogger users, this post will help you.

Oh, and here are 10 Reasons to Avoid Mailto Links.

6. Install the Brian’s Threaded Comments Plugin

With threaded comments, you can directly reply to a comment and your reply will show right below the comment, making discussion easier.

Brian’s Threaded Comments wordpress plugin also automatically separates comments from trackbacks. It adds gravatars (The commentator’s picture. You can get one here.) too.

Blogger users, please don’t be sad, because I came across a post that teaches you how to enable threaded comments –> Threaded Comments in Blogger.

Your comments will be very organized.

7. Display Popular Posts

One way to show off your best content to your new visitors is to display popular posts in the sidebar. To do this install the “WordPress Popular Posts” plugin. Then, you can configure its settings. Next, go to the Widgets section and enable the Popular Posts widget.

If you don’t want to install it, you can put up some posts that you think is best .

You can also make it stand out to catch people’s attention (like what I’m doing. Check it out at the sidebar).

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There you go! 7 more things you can do to improve your blog! Be sure to check out 7 things you can do to improve your blog (Most of which you haven’t done) too.

If you haven’t done #1 and #2, do it in your next blog post.

But if you haven’t done #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7, I recommend you to do it now (or bookmark it), or not you’ll forget about it later.

It will only take at most 30 minutes (Unless if you’ve got a slow connection or if you are doing it slowly), and could be a very big improvement to your blog!