MORE Tricks for Making Great Posts and Getting LINKED to Others...

Add Links to Your Posts with...
CONTEXTUAL LINKING

Have you ever noticed how some bloggers use links in the context of their posts, to help you learn more about the subject that they are writing about? In the lessons on writing better posts, Darren Rowse said one of the important things you can do is to Link Like Crazy!. Well, I've noticed that some of you have been adding links, but not really getting the "in context" part of it.

Look at this paragraph I have just written above. It has 3 contextual links :

• context which links to a dictionary definition
• Darren Rowse - which links to information about the author of the following website (and gives him credit for what I am quoting form him, btw)
• Link Like Crazy! - which takes you to a highlighted copy of Mr. Rowse's article where he give 10 tips for writing great blog posts.

They are links that are created within the sentence to take you to information about the topic of the sentence. This week, try adding contextual links to your blog posts. Learn more about them here on this Blogger Help page. And visit ENGRADE where the Blogs and Blogging Wiki has a video about how to do this, too.

IMAGE CREDIT: Widgets for Bloggers. Link Promotion: Give me a link and get back upto three Tuesday, October 9, 2007

BECOMING FAMOUS!
CREATING A FEED and USING A READER (aka RSS) and Keep Your Friends Updated

Another tool for creating interaction on your blog and becoming famous, is to make sure your blog is set up so that people will receive your updates automatically.

This is called RSS or Real Simple Symdication, which means, basically, setting up your own sort of subscription or circulation for your blog. It's kind of like how "normal" newspapers used to hire the neighborhood kid to deliver your newspaper to your door in the morning. With RSS, your new blog posts, or feed, can be delievered to your followers reader every time you add something new.

So, make sure that everyone gets your news hot off the keyboard! Learn more about how this works in our ENGRADE Blogs and Blogging Skills Wiki.

IMAGE CREDIT: Widgets for Bloggers. Simple steps to become a famous blogger Thursday, October 11, 2007

ASSIGNMENT: In addition to this weeks posts and comments, make sure you add some contextual links, and then set up your blog FEED, and your blog READER. Subscribe to (Follow) each others' blogs (and MINE of course!) and keep up to date on their latest news via your Google Reader. Then, try adding a Blog List to your blog, so you and others can automatically see the blogs you follow, AND their most recent posts.