Wow – I left this blog for a while.

But that is not a problem. Believe it or not, we are mostly attached to the online world nowadays – online news, ebooks, websites or at least using a Facebook or Twitter account.

Yes – I love blogging. I love writing online. And I love online world! But that never means that I can’t live without Internet. We can survive without Internet in our daily life and that’s why I tried to go offline for a while.

An Essential Rest

I’m currently running a number of blogs with some writers assisting me. I can update 5-10 blogs per day but reaching at certain point, I felt tired and dull of doing it.

Why?

I tried to find the answer – a writer’s block? or I feel stuck in blogging? losing new ideas? or it’s just because I’m pushing myself too hard? So I took a rest for a while and tried to feel a life without blogging. I played football, watching movies, reading books and sightseeing. Yeah, it works. I feel free and happy of doing something else. Then I realized that the feeling that I got before came from my own attitude – I’m not enjoying my life.

Enjoying Life is Essential

Since I started doing online writing back in 2008, I keep striving and put all my efforts to pursue my target in blogging. Yes – I got it. A number of blogs generating income and a lot of online friends who give a lot of inspirations. But the thing is – I chose not to enjoy it. Despite of enjoying writing ideas – I focused too much on generating income-soul contents and keep checking my traffic everyday. I feel stressed. I feel bored. And that’s why I chose to go offline for a while where I could find a “real” enjoyment.

Enjoying What You Are Doing

Now I got my lesson. It is not how much you get or how good you are in getting traffic and generating income but how much you enjoy what you are doing. I love blogging and I love writing, but my attitude in not enjoying what I’m doing led me to boredom and tiredness.

Sharing is An Essence of Enjoyment

I spent my leisure time with my buddies and we talked about a lot of things – from foods, cultures, investments, books and life and I enjoyed it so much. One more lesson – sharing gives you the feel of enjoyment! I guess it could change my mindset of sharing things online – what can you give and how you can inspire people.

It’s OK to Go Offline

Well – I think it’s not something wrong to go offline for a while. I took my offline time to enjoy some meaningful moments and in some sense it motivates me.

Time to be back online with a better mindset!

                          

Do you ever heard about Blog Interact – a cool social media network over the Internet?

When a fellow blogger invited me to this site, my first thought is this site is same with other bookmarking site. But I’m wrong because it is more than that!

So today I’ll share 3 main reasons why I love Blog Interact. Check it out.

1. Sharing is cool

One of the main factors why I love  blogging so much is because it gives me the opportunity to share various things – same with other bloggers. Blog Interact let me share various things from blogging to technology articles. As I have blogs with various niches, Blog Interact is a nice place for me to share the contents I produced. And yes, I found a lot of cool things too!

2. It’s easy

Blog Interact is an easy platform. Easy to join. And easy to use. I can register myself in 2 minutes – and start interacting! The interface and functions are user-friendly too so I don’t have to spend much time to get my hand on it. The functions are clear and once I see them -  I know what I can do with them. Simple. I love it.

3. Cool new friends

Yes, I can meet a lot of friends via Twitter and Facebook but with Blog Interact – I can meet a lot of bloggers and webmasters! I feel appreciated when the contents that I shared are being commented and voted by other members.. and some people start to follow and connect with me. This is awesome as building connection is something essential for a blogger to go to the next level.

Let’s Interact

I guess the best way to understand what I’m saying is by trying it yourself. It’s free and worth your time. Let’s interact now!

                          

The internet has its optimistic moments, and the idea of marketing on the social sites, particularly Facebook, was one of those moments. The global economic recovery, you’d have thought, was going to be based on social media marketing of washing machines. Well, no. Not quite. Not by a long shot, in fact, and it’s because people got the basics backwards.

Social media marketing- The fiction and the facts

The basic idea of social media marketing was “There’s a huge market, therefore it’ll buy anything.” This was a complete misreading of the social sites. People don’t necessarily go onto social sites to buy things any more than people go to pubs to buy cars.

The social sites simply aren’t set up to become marketing areas. A site like Facebook is so big, so complex, and so much based on real time situations that a big strategic reorganization to carry a lot of marketing material takes time. The current version of marketing is a pretty ad hoc, basic thing, more like classifieds and craigslist than anything else.

For the monster social sites, it was expecting the impossible. For Facebook, carrying unheard-of data loads, tacking on online stores, click throughs, affiliate marketing etc, is best done as links at the moment, and that’s basically what’s happening.

The most glaring deficiency in the idea of social media marketing was that it could operate like TV, and “broadcast” to the social sites. That was an inexcusable misreading of the situation. The social sites don’t operate like that, and the marketing industry should have known a lot better than that.

Social media marketing- The possibilities

There are possibilities for social media marketing, but not in the way envisaged. To get any attention at all on a social site requires very high interest levels, and that means quality marketing product, targeted within specific markets.

This environment isn’t the Shopping Channel or daytime TV or the impulse buying market stand at the supermarket checkout. There are specific interest groups on Facebook which would be natural markets for practically anything on sale anywhere on Earth. If you want to sell a good brand discount coffee machine, you could just look up the caffeine fanatic group.

It’s not that easy, though. This is where conventional marketing has a role to play. This is a niche audience, and they’re experts. That’s why they have their own group. They won’t buy just anything that’s poked at them. Get them interested, and you have a market. Send them spam, and you’ll never be forgiven.

The need now is for a new organizational mode for social media marketing. If Facebook wants to become a real marketplace, it needs to get in synch with the online specialists, like Amazon, Google, PayPal, Barnes and Noble, and the other truly efficient online marketers.

For example:

• Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. provide product credibility levels.
• You set up PayPal based sales.
• You use Google to provide targeted ads to the interest groups.
• You market good quality products that won’t get howls from half a billion people.
• You tweak this system until it works perfectly and gets accepted by the billion or so people on Facebook by the time it gets started.

Then you can have a real social media marketing system.

                          

Take a look at your archives and read back your old posts. Compare them with your latest posts. Can you see any difference between them? If yes, it means your blogging skills are evolving.

Believe it or not, the way we blog, write, communicate, commenting and etc. will change from time to time whether it happens slightly or drastically. There are a lot of reasons for this such as getting new ideas, new opportunities and a lot more. Sometimes you might realize that you are even evolving your blog niche!

Evolving your blogging skills is something good and to some extend – it’s an important thing as we have to be better from time to time. We have to be able to produce high quality contents with more targeted keywords and have higher conversion rates! It is a normal thing to have different level of quality between different contents and you can see this through the number of traffic for each content that you produced.

I sometimes laugh when reading my archives of my blogs especially my personal blog where I can see a gap between my past and present blogging style. And I learned that different contents result in different responds. Remember that the way you write and arrange the structure of the content to convey your message through the article need to be put under consideration.

So how to evolve your blogging skills?

• Take a look at your archives. Don’t have one? Get an archive page for your blog with this plugin.
• Read and understand the past contents that you’ve published.
• See the results and responds for each content (number of traffic, etc.)
• Apply what you learned and combine it with you new skills and styles to produce better contents!

Keep evolving your blogging skills and make sure you see positive results along the way!

                          

Google’s new Instant Search system has created some really strange rumors regarding SEO. The theory seems to be that somehow Instant Search will replace SEO. In fact, the opposite is the case. Instant Search is in fact a refinement of the basic principles of SEO using the most common searches, derived from SEO.

Instant Search basics

Instant Search is derived from a series of statistical analyses in which it is possible to project likely search subjects. The current system of Instant Search was developed from the original Google Suggest search system.

For example:
If you’re searching “AB”, Instant Search will provide the following options:
ABC, ABCD, ABCDEFG, and so on.

These are actually qualifiers to the basic elements of the search which has been entered. Additional elements to entries will therefore naturally change the qualifiers on Instant Search.

SEO and Instant Search

It follows from this that search popularity is a major element in Google Instant Search. That’s where SEO comes into the equation.

For example, a search of the name “Jessica” will produce:
Jessica Alba, Jessica Smith, Jessica Jones and so on.

As you can see, the most likely search in this scenario would be Jessica Alba. This name will be at the top of the list purely because this would be the most common search for this particular name. In other words, SEO is in practice as usual. The fact is that Google’s Instant Search actually enhances SEO and makes it more functional and also drastically improved search efficiency.

SEO Ramifications of Instant Search

What is not immediately obvious is that Instant Search is a fundamentally new paradigm based on the original search algorithms concept. The intention of the Google search algorithm from inception was to create a meaningful series of search results based on quality as well as demographic incidence of a particular search term.

Google tends to base its search functions on a series of well-proven criteria. That’s been shown in its progressive development of consistent search engine strategies over its entire history. It should also be noticed that it’s very much in Google’s interest to provide the best possible SEO results for its own functions like Google AdSense, Adwords, and a vast array of other statistically related functions.

So it’s actually pretty ridiculous to assume that somehow Google would negate all these years of hard work attempting to obtain useful search results. The net rumor mill, as usual, has got it wrong, as usual.

There are ramifications for search engine optimization, but they actually exist beyond the search process. The most important ramifications of Google Instant Search are in improved demography and statistical accuracy relating to search terms. This will actually be a major benefit for both marketers and consumers, because it improves options in terms of basic searches and therefore improve the accuracy of searches.

To check this out, try a few of your normal searches, and see how many useful searches Google Instant Search provides while entering the search. Just as a matter of interest – did Google Instant Search provide a few useful options as you typed as well? It probably did. That’s what this is about. SEO is not only isn’t dead, it just got a lot better.

                          

Yes, blogging is realistic. But are you realistic of what you are blogging about?

Is it real? Is it logic?

During my early blogging days I always thought that I could create a lot of traffic by blogging about something that is superb and extravaganza. Something like “out of the box”. I did a few experiments and the results told me that – most people don’t care about something unless it can give benefits for them!

Yes, we need to think out of the box but it still has the limit. Yelling about something out of normality might sound genius but not all people think the same way. There is some interesting websites with weird facts, but they are still facts and real. My point is – you can think different way but put it in logical range.

Internet grows rapidly nowadays and people do surfing to find Information over the Internet. Some of them are how to make money online, how to setup a blog, how to treat acne problems and many more. You can share about these facts because they are real and gives benefits to other people. It is not wrong to share the same thing with your readers but do remember to avoid plagiarism and share relevant content under your niche and scope.

Judge Your Content

Read your content before you publish it. Judge whether it is realistic or not – at least for yourself. Yes, it is your blog and you have the right to publish it but keep in mind your content is the main asset for your blog. Incredible and innovative ideas are bonus but illogical matters might turn out to be negative results for your blog.

Be genius and creative. Think out of the box but be realistic. That’s what your readers are searching for.

                          

I got inspired by a guest post written by David Risley at ProBlogger entitled “Poor Bloggers Focus Too Much On Blog Posts“. This article somehow makes me realized of what I had done so far in blogging and what I should aim for myself in blogging.

I then concluded that blogging is more than blog posts – where it could be more than that.

Some questions that should come in our mind are – what is our vision in blogging? or what we want to achieve for our blogs? why do we blog – to promote? to sell? to spread the word? or to express feeling, opinions and emotions?

Today the system changed a lot. We now can buy and sell just through a few clicks over the Internet – and blog is one the best platform to do that. In his article, David Risley asked “What is your product, really?” and this question should be the one to help us determine what is the outcome of our blogs or in the other word, what can we offer to our readers. Is it physical or digital? guide? article? ebook? shirt? or a set of inspiring videos that could help your readers to make money online? I started to questioning myself when I read the question and now I have to plan of creating the products for myself under unique brand of my blogs.

The guest post brought me to the author’s blog – David Risley dot com and you can read in his bio he stated that “Blogging is my business and how I support my family.” Here’s come one more thing to consider – what is blogging to you?

Yeah. After digesting the article through my own perspective, I guess I realized I have to do more if I want to get more. I always thought that more blog posts always means more income but now I realized that I believe the wrong thing.

I got my copy of Six Figure Blogger Blueprint and in my way to digest and implement the advices. There are also other ebooks written by David Risley that you can download for free after getting the copy of Six Figure Blogger Blueprint. Get it now at his blog.

                          

I read a guest post by R. Kumar at DailyBlogTips entitled “Why and How To Backup Your Blog” where the post shares the importance of a backup and how to do it. It’s pretty interesting and I consider it’s a reminder for myself as I am too lazy to backup my blog.

At first, I feel that backup the blog is not so important and we only have to do it when it’s emergency or during transferring blogs to other webhosting providers. But I think I got it wrong. Backup your blog is more important – maybe more that what you expect.

The writer shares his experience of facing trouble when his site had been hacked and had to start again as it is a new one, and that is how he realized the importance of backup the blog. I also have experience when one of my blogs had been hacked, but fortunately the posts are successfully restored however I didn’t realize about backup my blog until I read the guest post.

R. Kumar also shares 3 ways to backup your blog which are:

1. Backup from CPanel
2. WordPress Database Backup (plugin) >> Details
3. WordPress Online Automated Backup (plugin) >> Details

You can read more details about these ways here at the original article.

Yeah, now I realize the importance of backup my blog although it seems that I went through the articles talking on same matters a few times before this. Maybe it’s about the time to realize.

My word is – backup your blog frequently and start to act now before it’s too late.

                          

I received an interesting question from my fellow blogger a few days ago – do we have the right to modify comments on our blog? This question is somewhat weird however I think it is a unique matter because I never think or come across to it.

Yes, we receive numerous comments on our blog with different expressions, opinions and styles and sometimes spam. But do we have the right to modify them? For example, some people might leaving short comments such as “Nice!” or “I agree” or doing mistake in typing or use of words. These comments might not a big matter for some webmasters/bloggers, but some of us might consider much about it. Again, the question is – do we have the right to modify comments on our blog?

As I had been asked this question, I will try my best to answer it based on my opinion.

Yes, you have the right
As a direct answer to the question, my answer is yes. Yes, you have the right to modify the comments as it is your blog and you have right on your own blog. You are free to accept and decline any comment as you have the right to administer your blog. But keep in mind that every action will have its consequences so think before you act.

Spam is always spam
I believe the question somewhat regarding to the spam comments where most spammers will send weird or simple and non-relevant comments such as “Thanks for nice post!” or “Informative. I will subscribe to your blog” and etc for the sake of getting backlinks (this case often happen to dofollow blogs) and in order to make the comments become natural, one of the way is to modify them. My opinion is – spam is always spam and there is no any compromise for them. The most suitable treat for them is removing them from your comment section (and it’s better if you’re using Akismet).

You know your blog
I believe most of us know about our blog and we know what we write and publish. So we know what the type of comments that we are expecting from the readers except some comments beyond our expectation (comments beyond our expectation is good, if it’s related to our content). You know what you write and you know your level so let the readers comment because sometimes simple comments might have a great meaning and sometimes you might realize this in the future.

Conclusion
My conclusion is let the readers say what they want to say (except spam comments) and it will be more natural if you let the comments in its original text although there is any spelling mistake because every comment that we receive has its own meaning. So I think there is no need to modify the comments and I believe that the content that you published will determine the comments that you will received.