Surprising Blogging Advice No One Ever Tells You

Guest Post - Our host is Kim Yuhl, Kim uses her experience as a blogger to share some fresh blogging advice.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

When I first started blogging, I thought to myself "if she can do it then so can I" with every blog that I read. And then one day I decided to do just that. Now keep in mind at the time, I didn't like writing much, I was a pretty private person and I hate asking for the sale or doing anything that seems overly self-promotional. Oh, how a few years will change you.

Now, writing is my saving grace, I am beyond an open book and I promote the heck out of me, my products and services and anything I believe in. I'm still an introvert at heart but I definitely have extroverted qualities that allow me to exist in the blogging world.

With all that said, I wish someone had lowered my expectations about what it meant to be a blogger because it is so much more than writing a few posts each week. Here is what I wish I had known from the start.
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11 Reasons Why Your Blog May Be Doomed To Fail

Guest Post - Our host is Marc Andre, Marc uses his personal experience to list 11 reasons why so many blogs fail.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Blogging has been a critical part of my business and income for the past 5+ years, and over that period of time I've known many other bloggers who have experienced huge success, and even more who have not been able to achieve their blogging dreams.

Whenever I try to analyze what has led to the success or failure of certain blogs or bloggers I come back to the same things over and over again. It's not usually the fact that the blogger has amazing writing ability or an incredible knowledge of the subject that makes a blog successful. And it's not the lack of the same things that leads a blog to fail.

In this article I want to take a look at what I have seen to be some of the most significant, and common reasons, that bloggers fail to reach their dreams and goals. The intent isn't to focus on the negative, but rather to show the pitfalls that trap many bloggers who start out with high hopes. Avoid these pitfalls and you'll be well on your way.
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Top 5 Online Broadcasting Services For Bloggers

Guest Post - Our host is Elliott Morrow, Elliott is taking an interesting look at online broadcasting for bloggers.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Broadcasting online through personal stations is becoming a mainstay for serious bloggers and business sites. Many bloggers are learning that broadcasting to their audience allows them to engage and develop their personal brand at a different level than purely using the text on a blog.

Once users actually hear a blogger’s voice, a connection is made on a more personal level and this allows more trust to form between a blogger and the audience. This leads to a more loyal fan base, creates more interaction, and bolsters bloggers reputation on their topics.

The selection of online broadcasting services is huge and they each offer some unique capabilities. These 5 broadcasting services are among the best that we could find and at least one of them is bound to fit your specific needs.
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7 Brand New Blog Platforms Looking To Make it Big In 2014

Back in March this year we listed the ten most powerful free blogging platforms.We did in that post of course cover the usual suspects such as Blogger and Wordpress.But 2013 has seen a number of start ups in the blogisphere and some of these new platforms are gaining interest from bloggers.In this post I want to inform you of the latest blog platforms including one launched by a co-founder of Blogger and Twitter.

The main aim of the new blog platforms seems to be bringing back the classic weblog.Wordpress for example is now a mainstream CMS and is used less and less as a blog platform.If one theme runs through all the new blog platforms it's a minimal interface with simplistic post editors.

Let's look at the list and see what you think !
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Should You Develop A Style Guide For Your Blog ?

So, you've taken the leap and decided to jump into blogging, whether for business or personal reasons. You've got plenty of content and information to offer, but do you have a style guide yet? If you're scratching your head and aren't sure what that is, you're not alone. Unless you have been involved in the writing or publishing community for a while, you may wonder what a style guide is and why it's used.

Simply put, a style guide is a set of rules and regulations you follow when writing your blog posts. For instance, a style guide makes sure you maintain conformity when dealing with numbers, punctuation, citation, quotes, and much more. Style guides are used for many things, including by publishers to maintain consistency in content published in magazines, newspapers, books, and more.

By developing a style guide for your blog, you can ensure your posts are uniform in their execution and delivery. Readers will appreciate that your content is understandable and doesn't vary wildly from post to post or from blog to blog (if you host more than one).

Here are some pointers - as well as a list of pros and cons - that will help you decide if you need a style guide and what to include in it.
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10 Of The Most Popular Mistakes All Bloggers Make

Bloggers make plenty of mistakes. If they did not, then all blogs would be popular and the world would probably have to do away with other forms of media in order to make space for all the successful bloggers. It is hard to come up with a list of the most common mistakes, as there are so many, but here are a few that you may see a lot of.
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Unexpected Blog Habits That Can Kill Your Traffic

Guest Post - Our host is Allan Watson, who points out some of the unseen mistakes you may be making that are affecting your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

As a blogger there is nothing more nerve-wracking than losing traffic except possibly not ever getting any in the first place, though it is possible that isn't actually worse. When you lose it, it means that you had it and then you did something wrong and usually we don't know what that is. It can kill your motivation, drain your muse, and make you wonder if maybe you should just give up.

The thing is, most of us have seen the articles and heard the common advice about gaining popularity and keeping your audience. If you haven't, or you need a recap, this post by Blogging Basics is a great one. You want to have personality, proofread, post consistently, use images, and make sure that what you are writing is something that your audience is going to want to read.

But what if you are covering all of the basics and you're still not getting traffic or you're losing it? Then something else is wrong and you might not know where to start looking. There are, however, some key elements to having a successful blog that you may be overlooking.
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5 Creative Ways To Gather Customer Testimonials

Guest Post - Our host for this post is Shanna Mallon, Shanna is looking at how bloggers can gather great testimonials online.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

You don’t have to be a salesperson to know the power of a good referral. Who hasn’t tried, bought, or done something because someone they trusted said it was a good idea? That’s why, when you’re a new blog or business, nothing is quite as powerful for bringing in new clients as gathering customer testimonials. But how do you get them?

Here are five creative ideas that go beyond surveys or traditional requests.
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The Best Online Back Up Options For Bloggers

We all know the importance of saving or backing up your stuff and many of you will have experienced the frustration of loosing your work in the past.Before auto save features on Emails and indeed blog posts those of us online at the time often pulled our hair out after accidentally deleting an email or blog post draft.While thankfully we don't have to worry about constantly saving such content as we go when it comes to other data backing up is as important as ever.

An example of this for Blogger users occurred when connecting their blogs to their new Google + accounts.When using your Google+ profile as your blogs main profile you also connected all images used on your blog to your Google+ profile.Many blogger users did not realise this and either to reduce clutter or accidentally they deleted the images on Google+ with the knock on affect that the images also disappeared on their blog.One example of this was a blog I worked on recently that lost images from over 200 posts and unfortunately she had no back ups.

So it makes sense to back up your files such as images, video, music, documents, scripts and other work but how does it work and what are the options ?

Online Cloud Back Up

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Choosing The Best Type Of Web Hosting For Your Blog

We have covered the Best Blogging platforms in previous posts and this list included CMS platforms like Wordpress.So we have also listed The Best CMS and if you choose to go with paid blog hosting you will need to choose the type of hosting you want or more importantly need.Unfortunately choosing the hosting that fits your needs perfectly is not as easy as you may think.

In this post that is what we will focus on, the four main types of hosting and which best suits you.
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7 Reasons For Starting A Travel Or Expat Blog

Guest Post - Our host is Olga Mecking, Olga shares her experiences as an expat blogger.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

There are many reasons why you should start a blog. Your hobbies or interests, such as cooking or crafting or technology, are perfect blog topics. Changes in life can inspire you to start blogging as well. One of these changes is when you leave your home country and move somewhere else. I hadn’t even considered starting a blog before I moved from Poland to the Netherlands because I considered my life boring. Then I met my husband, became an expat and had children. Suddenly, my life became exciting and chaotic. Having an expat blog turned out to be fun and exciting, but soon became more than that. Here are all the reasons why you should consider starting a travel or expat blog if you haven’t done it already.
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How Teachers Are Using Blogs to Enhance Their Lessons

The technology tools at the fingertips of a modern-day teacher are better than ever. Many teachers are leveraging blogs in the classroom in order to supplement their lessons. Whether it be by creating their own classroom blogs, incorporating teaching ideas from the blogs of other teachers, or incorporating data from topic-specific blogs into a lesson plan, there are multiple ways to leverage blogs in the classroom.

Here, we’ll review some of these in further detail.

Teachers no longer have to rely exclusively on offline tools for their lessons.

Help students to communicate with one another in the written form - By creating a blog for a class to utilize together, a teacher creates a platform by which students can communicate around things like written assignments, poetry, or personal feelings (akin to a journal entry).
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How To Insert Microsoft Word Tables In Blog Posts

Guest Post - Our host is Abhishek, who shows us how and why to use Microsoft Word tabels on your blog.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Inserting tables in blog posts organizes your data in a tabular form which looks more tidy and clear.Tables can be of many sizes including different rows or columns.Mostly today all bloggers use HTML tables,and there is one drawback of using these tables that it is quite cumbersome for a new blogger because it requires right coding for full customization and it wastes more time.

Tables are extremely needed if you are showing your blog post in a tabular form or are comparing the specifications of any service or product.In case if you just write a blog post then it would be unclear to understand,it would be like that you have just thrown colors on the canvas and haven’t created your masterpiece.In this post you will learn a trick to insert Microsoft office tables in your wordpress or blogger blog’s HTML.I am using Microsoft office 2007 to create tables.

How To Insert Microsoft Office Word Tables In Wordpress Or Blogger Posts

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5 Strong Techniques For Successful Blog Writing

Guest Post - Our host is Kevin Demlon, Kevin has some well explained tips for bloggers of all levels.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Although it was coined in 1999, the term “blog” did not enter the dictionary until 2004, when it was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. The dictionary defined it as “an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.” Since that time, blogging has become a legitimate and sometimes profitable profession for some scribblers. But like most professions, few bloggers ever achieve wealth or even fame. Most write for a small number of faithful readers who share their interests. There are of course exceptions to this rule.

When the Huffington Post, a news blogging website, was sold to America Online (AOL) for $315 in February of 2011, it sent shockwaves through the blogosphere. Suddenly, everybody and their mother thought they could strike it rich by simply starting their own blogs. As you might expect, most of them fell flat on their proverbial faces. How do we know?
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The Top 5 Reasons People Aren't Reading Your Blog!

Building a great blog is hard work. It takes hundreds of hours of your time and an unrivalled dedication to your subject. But what if, after all of that hard work, no one ever visits your blog? Or worse, you get streams of traffic but none ever stays or engages?

After all, you write for the outside world and you want them to hear you. Whatever your reason for starting and maintaining your blog, it can be disheartening to feel you have worked for nothing. But don’t worry. There are some very common reasons why people aren’t reading your blog and this article will help you address common blog issues and allow you to enjoy a growing readership.
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Blogging On MySpace An Alternative Option

MySpace is a blogging and social networking site, which was launched way back in 2003. This site enjoyed its fair share of popularity for a period of three years from 2005-2008. Facebook slowly started taking its place, but MySpace managed to evolve into a free marketing service.

MySpace network is an interactive, user-friendly site consisting of several features like personal profiles, friends, groups, blogs, videos, music and photos. MySpace is a perfect place to spend time and is wide open to adults and teenagers.

Blogs in MySpace can be easily accessed by an account holder as well as a non-account holder. MySpace has left its blog section open to all so that everyone can be benefited by the informative details. The most interesting part is that MySpace publishes about 500,000 blog posts each day, which cover various topics like technology, entertainment, politics and a whole list of other interesting topics. It is high time to realize that MySpace is a valuable resource, which can be effectively used for building a strong blog audience.

Take a look at the important steps involved in building blog audience on MySpace:

1) Build Then Promote : MySpace audiences consider the site as a one stop-shop pertaining to blogs. Customers are reluctant to leave MySpace and read from outbound links that appear on certain profiles. Sadly, most MySpace customers fail to realize the fact that there are several blogging communities apart from MySpace. It is highly essential for you to write original contents on a regular basis and form a loyal and strong reader database. Once this task is accomplished, you can slowly divert the traffic to your site.

2) Target Audience : MySpace is designed with the search feature that can be used to target customers based on gender, age, location, interests, keywords and several other demographic details. This search feature can be used to locate groups pertaining to a specific keyword. MySpace offers you large audience via this search option and also allows you to invite friends and blogs. If the group has a bulletin board, you can post items on them. This helps you get in touch with the large number of audience that MySpace has acquired.

3) Connect With MySpace Bloggers : The most important trick to be followed is to locate blogs that are connected with your niche. This can be easily located by examining the blog rankings of MySpace. Identify the winner and target his/her audience using Technorati or any other tool. This technique consumes adequate effort and time, but delivers an excellent success rate.

4) Subscribers : Blog readers in MySpace are not keen about using RSS feed. Most of the customers will like to sign up to your site using the email. It is important to keep this gateway open for them with clear instructions.

5) Invite MySpace Friends : You can directly invite customers to read your MySpace blog by clicking on the link ‘Invite to my blog,’ which can be found on the blog page of the customer. Direct invitation is a wonderful technique to grab the attention of a customer.

6) Stand Out From The Crowed : The traditional blogging practices help you go a long way in MySpace. One of the best practices is to comment on the blogs of other people, which is a common mantra for all social networking and blogging sites. MySpace draws more traffic via a good profile image, entertaining comments and a unique name.

10 Top Powerful Free Blogging Platforms In 2013

Guest Post - Our host is Robert Espinosa, starting with the ones you may be familiar with to some you may not have heard of Robert lists the best platforms for bloggers.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Blogging has turned out to be a powerful tool to share thoughts and ideas on the topics that you are passionate about. Moreover, keeping a blog is the best way to polish your writing skills, drive traffic to a website and maintain good relations with the customers. If you are not in the condition to buy your own hosting right away, you can opt for a free blogging platform.

If you have decided to setup a blog, but cannot make up your mind about which blogging site is right for you then check out these well-known and most stable free blogging platforms that offer their users with many advanced features. These blogging sites usually come with both free as well as premium plans.
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Blog Owners : Respect Your Guest Bloggers !

Guest Post - Our host is Jessica Velasco, in this post Jessica represents Guest authors giving a no holes barred message to us blog owners.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

I’ll give it to you straight, right from the beginning.If you are a blog owner, this post might rock your world.If I seem snarky, well…I am. I’m frustrated. I think I speak on behalf of a great many guest bloggers.

Blog owners, please listen carefully.
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5 Interesting Misconceptions Of Blogging

Many people now are starting to create their own blogs for different reasons such as to release stress, to live their passion for writing, to market their business, to connect to more people, and so on. Sometimes we get too paranoid on thinking that nobody reads our blog.

A little bird has told us that longer articles are better—these are favored by search engines and readers will perceive the post author to be an expert for writing such a lengthy explanation of a simple idea. To make the article long, bloggers would write flowery words and go in circles. This is one misconception in blogging. In this article, we will talk about further on this and the major misconceptions with blogging.
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Common Sense Tips To Avoid A Rubbish Blog

Would you like insight into some fundamental points you should adhere to when making a great blog? Good, because in this article, we’ll be discussing some of the basics you might have overlooked when making your own blog.

We’ll cover a few simple design techniques you should take into consideration when you first start your blog, such as what content management system to use and basic layout, then we’ll progress on to blog post structure and the importance of good grammar and punctuation.

So let’s begin!
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