Blogging Milestone: Post Number 1400
May 17, 2013 by Lillie
This post is a blogging milestone for me. At less than a month before my 7th blog birthday, I have written 1400 posts.
When I started out, I didn’t know blogging would be so much fun. I hope my visitors enjoy visiting my blog half as much as I enjoy writing it!
Guest Post from Shaun Chatman: How to Keep Your Blog Updated With Your Smartphone
April 30, 2013 by Lillie
Blogging from your smart phone is a great way to use extra time spent waiting for buses, trains, and doctor appointments. Use these five tips to learn how to keep your blog updated with your smart phone.
Use Your Time Wisely
Why jot ideas into a notebook when you can add them directly to your blog? Here are some ways you can use pockets of downtime to update your blog from your phone:
- Maintain a happy blog community with quick replies to comments.
- Blog during peak times to attract social media sharers.
- Edit on the go, so your blog can shine.
- Research new ideas and take notes on your phone.
- Create blog drafts for new ideas, and let them marinate until later.
Blog by Email
Sixty eight percent of smart phone users access email on their phone daily. Some of these users also send blog posts by email with Blackberry curve phones, which offer an easy-to-use keyboard. To do the same, sign into your blog, access the settings screen, and activate email posting. You will receive a special email address to send your blog posts to.
Don’t forget to customize your settings if you would like email posts saved as drafts. If not, posts will go live as soon as you send your email.
Find the Right App
Apps are becoming the most common way to post a blog from a smart phone. Blogger, WordPress, Live Journal, and several other blog websites offer smart phone users a variety of blog posting apps. These apps are often a scaled-down version of the real site’s blog engines. And most allow users to easily draft, post, and edit blogs; reply to and manage comments; and post pictures.
Don’t Type It, Say It
Some blog providers, like WordPress, offer the ability to post blogs by voice. Users call into a special number, enter a code and record a message. Like email, bloggers must first activate this feature on their blog and receive the special code to enter when they call.
Users should become familiar with some quirks of talk-to-type programs before using them. Recordings may end if a speaker pauses for too long. For this reason, bloggers should know exactly what they want to say before blogging by phone.
Post Pictures on the Go
Smart phone cameras are far more advanced than their infant versions. There are also many photo editing apps, like Adobe Photoshop Express, available to turn the ordinary picture into extraordinary. An afternoon photo session in the park can turn into a great blog post before dinner arrives at your local bistro.
Don’t have the perfect picture for your blog saved on your phone? Easy access to the Internet allows you to quickly search for pictures on sites like Flickr. And posting video blogs that are shot using your smart phone’s camera is yet another way to keep fresh, easily generated content on your blog.
When you blog from your smart phone, you will see your blog the way many of your readers do. When you see what your readers see, you can create easy-to-read posts with great visuals. Use these five tips to blog smarter not harder, and free yourself from your laptop.
Sources:
About the Author
Shaun Chatman is a well-published author on many authority sites. He lives in Dunedin, FL, and spends his free time playing with his kids or advising friends on tech, gadgets, finance, and travel.
Thanks to Commenters 1st Qtr 2013
April 16, 2013 by Lillie
Thank you to the 94 commenters who left 163 comments in January, February, and March. Your comments extended the conversation and added value and interest, and I enjoyed replying to every one of them.
Every month when I post thanks to commenters, I get questions about how I compile this list. I have explained my system in detail in Compiling Thanks to Commenters.
The Next Commenter …
April 10, 2013 by Lillie
Update #2: A loyal reader pointed out that perhaps I shouldn’t be writing posts at 3 AM…or maybe I just can’t count. I was still 800 comments away from 25,000. However, since several hundred comments were lost when I moved my blog, I think it’s still a legitimate claim even though the official count is less. I’m thankful for all of my comments–and also thankful that I’m a writer and not a number cruncher or I’d probably be out of a job. 
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Update: The first comment on this post was #25,000. Jerry Wayne chose Jack Stories: Favorite Stories of Jack Jordan Ammann Jr as his prize.
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As I write this shortly after 3 AM Central time, I have 24,199 comments on my blog. The next person to leave a legitimate comment, #25,000, will be given discount codes to download any of my ebooks from Smashwords.
Thanks to Commenters Goes Quarterly
March 7, 2013 by Lillie
My regular readers know how much I appreciate comments—so much so that I post a thank-you to commenters once a month. Since I started that practice, a couple of things have changed. One is that I have reduced by posting from three times a week to twice a week because of time limitations. The other is that commenting on my blog (and most blogs I know about) has decreased. People are spending more time on social media and not as much reading blogs. And when they do read blogs, many do as I do and read in a feed reader, so commenting requires another step to go to the blog to comment. I know I don’t comment as much as I used to because I’m always in a hurry. Sometimes I feel inclined to comment, but pass on by because while I have something to say, the compulsion to speak my mind is overcome by the need to watch my time.
Therefore, I will be posting thanks to commenters once a quarter, rather than once a month. So the next comment thanks will be in April for the first quarter. Please leave many comments in the meantime.
Thanks to December 2012 Commenters
January 30, 2013 by Lillie
Thank you to the 69 commenters who left 86 comments in December. Your comments extended the conversation and added value and interest, and I enjoyed replying to every one of them.
Every month when I post thanks to commenters, I get questions about how I compile this list. I have explained my system in detail in Compiling Thanks to Commenters.
Backtracking on Backlinks
January 19, 2013 by Lillie
I appreciate comments, and, as you can see from my comment policy, I try to reward commenters. This is a DoFollow blog, I use plugins to provide backlinks to commenters, I reply to all comments, and once a month I compile a thank-you list of commenters.
As a result of a recent change in Google’s secret formulas, websites are being penalized for having too many links with perfect anchor text. Note that when someone leaves a comment, he or she determines the anchor text for their link. I have nothing to do with that choice, and in the thank-you list I use the title of the website or blog rather than anchor text. So I am not responsible for the perfect anchor text left with the comment. And, of course, a link or two from my little blog wouldn’t make any difference in a site’s Google ranking.
But now websites and blogs with many backlinks from sites that aren’t relevant to their subject matter are being penalized for spammy backlinks. So I have received a number of requests (or in some cases demands) to remove the backlinks from my site. I recognize that Google’s rules change. A company may have hired someone to leave comments on blogs in the past for the backlinks, but now what they did in good faith at the time is hurting them with Google. So I am willing to remove links upon request, but I think it’s reasonable to expect two things from anyone requesting that links be removed: a courteous request that doesn’t accuse me of spam or copyright infringement and specific locations of the links to be removed.
Here are a couple of examples of emails I have received on this topic in the last few weeks:
Wow, more bad news from Google…
Apparently our website has fallen victim of a “negative SEO” campaign. Basically from what I understand is people build backlinks in large quantities so that Google thinks that you are trying to cheat them and thus penalize your website.
That’s basically all I understood about it but was told by our consultant that we’ll need to remove all of the backlinks created in the past few years so that we can file a reconsideration with Google.
Well, here’s to us trying to do that. If you can help us remove all backlinks pointed to it would help us a ton. From the tools we used to check backlinks we noticed backlinks on the following URLs of your website: <specific URLs detailed where comments were left>.
By removing the backlinks you’ll help us remove a penalty that was instituted because someone was trying to kill our Google rankings. We know this sounds crazy and we still are trying to figure out how this happened.
I was happy to remove these links quickly and cheerfully. This webmaster is bewildered by Google’s penalty because he or she obviously was not intentionally engaging in “black hat” SEO practices. He or she politely asked me to remove the links and told me exactly where they were.
Contrast that with this demand sent to my web host and copied to me. Note that I have changed the URLs for privacy:
Hello,
We own the copyright: (http://www.buy-our-junk-today.com). A website that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least one copyright.
A comment was copied onto your servers without permission. The original comment(s), to which we own the URL copyright to, can be found at: http://www.buy-our-junk-today.com
The unauthorized and infringing copy can be found at:
http://lillieammann.com/. To find the exact instance, you can search the source code of that specific page using “buy-our-junk-today” to find the comment using our URL/Website Address.This letter is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.
This was followed by several paragraphs of legalese explaining to my web host that they had to make sure I removed the infringing material…blah, blah, blah.
Of course, I immediately removed the link as I certainly don’t want to link to anyone who doesn’t want the link. Yet being accused of copyright infringement for approving a comment with anchor text provided by the commenter kept me from doing it cheerfully and made the whole situation unpleasant. There was no reason to get legalistic, complain to my web host, and accuse me of copyright infringement. A polite request would have achieved the same result without ill feelings. You can bet that I will never buy-[his]-junk.
Have you fallen victim to Google’s recent policy change—either being accused of negative SEO or being asked to remove links that others left on your site with comments or guest posts? If so, how have you handled the situation?
Thanks to November 2012 Commenters
December 19, 2012 by Lillie
Thank you to the 41 commenters who left 64 comments in November. Your comments extended the conversation and added value and interest, and I enjoyed replying to every one of them.
Every month when I post thanks to commenters, I get questions about how I compile this list. I have explained my system in detail in Compiling Thanks to Commenters.
Thanks to October 2012 Commenters
November 27, 2012 by Lillie
Thank you to the 57 commenters who left 71 comments in October. Your comments extended the conversation and added value and interest, and I enjoyed replying to every one of them.
Every month when I post thanks to commenters, I get questions about how I compile this list. I have explained my system in detail in Compiling Thanks to Commenters.
Thanks to September 2012 Commenters
October 30, 2012 by Lillie
Thank you to the 69 commenters who left 114 comments in September. Your comments extended the conversation and added value and interest, and I enjoyed replying to every one of them. I especially appreciate comments because I haven’t posted much since my husband’s death.
Every month when I post thanks to commenters, I get questions about how I compile this list. I have explained my system in detail in Compiling Thanks to Commenters.
