eXtra For Every Publisher

Ask any writer and they’ll tell you the same thing — the beginning is always the hardest part of any written piece. You may have the most detailed picture of what you want to say in your head but putting down those first words on paper (or on MS Word) could be like pulling teeth. The problem is only compounded with the short, encapsulated nature of blog posts. What do you really write about on your first post in your blog?

Fortunately, there are some good suggestions and ideas that you can glean from the blogs of other people. The most common start would be to just a small greeting or introduction. This probably one of the most popular ways of starting a blog. A simple “hi, this is my blog!” post is one of the most common you’ll see on the internet. It’s a no-nonsense way of kicking off a blog. But some bloggers may not want to start off their blogs in this manner. Fortunately, there are also “fancier” ways of starting a blog.

You can start a blog by introducing yourself. Since most blogs are personal in nature, giving a backgrounder on yourself will give your readers a fair idea of why you have a particular perspective about certain topics that you’ll eventually discuss in your blog. You don’t need an exhaustive biography, just touch on the important facts that will help readers get to know you more.

You can also decide to give the raison d’etre of your blog. Write about why you started it, and what motivated you to do so. Personally, I think this is the best way of starting a blog. It gives the readers the lay of the land, so to speak. They’ll already know beforehand what to expect from your blog, which could pull in more like-minded readers. For example, if you say that your blog will be about your perspective as non-US citizen on the Obama Administration’s policies, it will surely attract people who are looking to read about what your thoughts will be on future issues.

An ingenious way of starting a blog is picking out one of those memes that are all over the net. Try to find a meme that is related to the topic of your blog, this will be a great way of giving a bird’s eye view of your views and also what to expect in future blog posts.

The guys over at BlogPerfume have a look at what other free blog platforms available are next to WordPress, to host your blog with. Their list is rather complete and makes it easier to discover most alternative platforms. Handy if you want to move away from WordPress or want to have a look at all the platforms before making your choice and chose for a specific blog platform.

A while ago I published a similar but shorter list on BloggingPro. Although I only mentioned the then poplar options, I went a little more in-depth and compared pros and cons of listed platforms.

Yaro Starak, known from the Blog Profit Blueprint, has released a video for beginning online bloggers and marketers. If you want to step in to this business, watch the video as it deals with a lot of different topics and can really help you increase your traffic massively.

We live in a very visual world. If you want to stand out from the crowd then what you need to do is to make an indelible mark visually. It’s the reason why businesses put a lot of effort in developing a great logo for their company.

A company logo is the face of the enterprise. It is one of the most important tools in making a company immediately recognizable. Any marketing professional will tell you that recognizability is a major part of a company’s success. The more unique and perfectly suited the design is to the company’s image, the better the results.

Unfortunately, getting that great, innovative design is also the biggest problem of any company looking to develop their corporate identity. The art of creating a logo or a corporate design is something not everyone can do. Laymen like us can plot the general direction but not the nitty-gritty of the implementation. One can go to design companies to outsource the project. The upside here is that you get professionals to do it for you, but this can be an expensive proposition and you are limited to just a few mockups to choose from.

But a new online enterprise called logomyway.com has developed an innovative way of addressing the needs of companies looking for unique logos and corporate identity designs.

The idea behind logomyway.com is quite simple. By signing up with the service you can hold contests for designing the logo or design that you need. Logomyway has a community of hundreds of designers all over the world who participate in these contests. You will put up the cash prize for the contest and logomyway will get ten percent of the amount for administrative and paypal fees. The logo contest prize starts at a minimum of $200 and up to a $1000.

This system has a number of significant advantages over hiring a design company. The biggest advantage is the sheer number of mockups that you will get. You’d be lucky to get more than five mockups from a design company. But with the Logomyway system, you are guaranteed to get a minimum of 20 mockups submitted within seven days or you get a refund. It is not uncommon to get 70 mockups and up to 400 mockups for a contest! The sheer number alone will surely give you a wealth of designs to choose from.

Another advantage is that you will usually get submissions within a few hours – and not the weeks that design companies usually require. This is the kind of immediate feedback that you will surely appreciate.

Te quality of the designs that are submitted are also of the highest quality and exceptional artistry. The logomyway designer community comprise of seasoned graphic designers from different countries. They offer their experience in the field as well as their unique cultural perspective to bring you truly innovative designs.

All of the submissions are requied to be in industry standard Vector Logo files that makes it immensely scalable for any type of application.

More than this though is that you get full ownership of the logo design. The copyright to the artwork is given to you.

Logomyway.com offers a truly unique way of addressing your logo and artwork needs by offering both high quality submissions from experienced designers at really affordable costs.

I previously discussed the important first step in naming your blog post titles – addressing your readers.

When the posts are now in the archives, you will now have to consider how other readers will discover your posts. And this is through the help of search engines. This is where the second step comes in, which is to address search engine users. The titles you compose should be sensitive to the requirements of search engine bots so that you get the coveted first SERP.

So how do you compose your blog post title to take advantage of search engines?

* Put important keywords in the title. From the first step you have already added a few relevant keywords that will appeal to readers who are on the lookout for words that will appeal to them. Now you have to beef it up some more by adding a few more keywords. Don’t overdo it though, your title should still be interesting and not losing its target.

* Mix up the word order. Changing the word order in your title could actually help you gain a few extra places in SERPS. The trick to rearranging the title is by making sure the beneficial keywords are closer to the start of the title.

* Fix the TITLE. One other thing that you should consider fixing up is the TITLE or the title tag. Usually the blog post title will be similar or will match the title tag. But when you’re already on the second step, you can tweak your title tag some more so that it is more optimized to be noticed by search engine bots. One easy way to do this if you’re using Wordpress is by installing and using the SEO Title Tag plugin.

* Leave slugs alone. Even though you are tweaking the title tag and the blog post title, you should not do anything with the actual page slug. Avoid doing things to it at all costs.