8/28/2009

Blogger hints

I have had some new bloggers ask a few questions about blogging, so I thought I'd share the few shortcuts and info that I know.

**I try to keep the amount of words on a posts short. About two screens of scrolling is what I shoot for because I'm sure most bloggers are like me and have limited reading time.

**Memes - I mark my email calendar to send me a reminder on the day the memes are posted. After my post is published, I click on the title of the post so that it comes up on it's own page. That is the url I use when we are asked to link to a post instead of the entire blog.

**Small print - Press the 'control' key and move the wheel on your mouse. Everything on the screen will get larger (unless, of course, you are turning it
the wheel the wrong way!)

**If you are continuing a thought about something you already posted, be sure to tell your readers that and provide a link to the original post. If they don't know what you are talking about, they won't stay and read.

**Don't put a lot of pictures in a post--divide them into 2 or 3 posts. It takes slower systems too long to load and, before broadband, I have been known to lose interest and move on to another page before it was fully loaded.

**Put your larger widgets (games and music and such) at the bottom of the page so your readers will not have to wait for them to load before any reading can be done.

**I usually read blogs with the sound off. It's nice that folks want to share songs with me, but, unless it's from the '60's, it's not usually something I really want to hear.

**You can schedule posts to be published at a future time. Just click the 'post options' button at the bottom of the composing page, click 'scheduled at' and fill in the date and time, then click 'publish post.'

**If you get lost in the many pages of a blog, just click the header and you will be taken 'home' to the latest post that was made.

These are just one person's opinions. I hope they are helpful. I will post more later.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

very nice!!

intelligent and thoughtful!!

i was planning to do a 'html for dummies' post next week.
and write stuff how to quickly create a button, shift from wordpress.com to wordpress.org and write simple html.

lets see..its tons of work

shraddha

Christina, Sweden said...

Thanks for sharing these tips!
I did not know the sceduling opportunity wich will be very useful for me :-)
Christina, Sweden

Marja said...

Great tips I am taking a community blogging course and learned some new things Thanks

Ann, Chen Jie Xue 陈洁雪 said...

Great ideas.

I like some memes like FridAY SHOOT OUT AND SUNDAY STILLS. wE BECOME GREAT FRIENDS.

Some times, when I want to write, I post a long post. Sometimes, a few lines is good.

Hillori said...

Great tips!! Really appreciated too! I have been wanting to link each week on BPOTW, but have been seriously struggling with being able to lately...I've had a baby in my arms a lot lately, but don't give up on me...I'm coming back eventually!! P.S. I love all the pictures you post!

Claudya Martinez said...

Great tips. I always have my sound off too when I'm reading blogs because I prefer not to hear music.

LadyFi said...

Lots of good tips!

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for these and for the tips you have given me -- solicited and unsolicited! Greatly appreciated....Some of my posts are long but they're crafted like short stories, and then I don't post anything else for days...
Perhaps every so often you could post some more tips?

Rachee said...

Nice tips! I fumbled my way through a few things and while I eventually got it, it's nice to have easy to understand tips.
-r

Ms.Daisy said...

Hi,
The posting tips are great...thanks! I like your thoughts on doing shorter posts and putting fewer pictures on as I tend to forget that people still have dial up!:) Thanks for stopping by my blog and your nice comments.


~Jean

Brenda said...

Those are all good hints, thanks

Sandra said...

Great tips! I like the one about the meme email reminders.

Anonymous said...

I agree 100% with all your tips... thanks for sharing them! I always lose interest when people post 15 huge pictures in a row. A much better idea is to make a collage... but I don't know how to do that either. It just looks cool on the blogs I've seen.

Rinkly Rimes said...

I wont follow all your hints (my muse sometimes gives me different instructions!) but it was a good read.