When I started to blog I found sourcing images a thorny subject as I was aware that while the easiest thing was just copying stuff from Google images, in doing so I might be infringing someone’s copyright. As someone who wanted to blog responsibly that was a worry to me as I didn’t want to leave myself open to complaints or even worse to the possibility of legal action.

As a consequence I have found a couple of good places to source good quality, free images which can be used without any copyright issues and I wanted to share these with you and show you how to use them in case you were facing the same problem. You can find the links to these sites at the end of the post.

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Please use these links to visit these sites (not affiliate links)

freedigitalphotos.net

Flickr Creative Commons

Please let me know what you think, is this something you have found difficulty with and have you found this information useful? Do you use other sites for sourcing images that we need to know about? I would love to get some feedback on the subject!

Many thanks for visiting the blog today, if you have enjoyed this post I hope you will share it with the world and if you would like to see more like this you can Subscribe, Follow, Like and Add to your Circles using the options in the sidebar.

* Image credit (Excerpt) – digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Welcome to a first for The Top 10 Blog with my first ever video presentation!

I thought it would be fun to share some quick tips from my experiences in using WordPress which can make your blogging life easier.

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I hope you have enjoyed this new concept for the blog, please do let me know what you think, your feedback on the idea and the execution will be very welcome!

If you have enjoyed this post I hope you will share it with the world and if you would like to see more like this you can Subscribe, Follow, Like and Add to your Circles using the options in the sidebar.

Are you in a Triberr tribe? Have you looked at Triberr before and kept away as you don’t like automating Tweets? Either way I am sure you will be interested in the recent change to Triberr which has resulted in the automated feature being removed.

My initial reaction to the change, which was made to comply with Twitter TOS, was that this would be the end of Triberr as automation was one of the main reasons why people joined tribes in the first place (Although for me it was initially a reason to stay away!).  On reflection though I have changed my mind and I think that I will in fact find it a better place to be and a stronger part of my social media strategy.

Here are my reasons why;

1. I instinctively don’t like automating anything. I made an exception with Triberr and only automated people I know well and trust but it still felt strange to me seeing my Tweets being RT’d in the stream when I hadn’t yet read the content being shared.

2. Having to go into Triberr to approve posts manually should mean that the content is actually read before sharing, I have always done that anyway. That will give us all the opportunity to connect and engage with our fellow tribe members which was absent with automation.

3. Visiting and reading posts will allow more opportunities to add comments, something that can benefit both the author and the reader.

4. I have always visited my Tribber stream regularly to see what is going through and to approve posts manually, that takes time and commitment, two things I think are important if I am going to enjoy and get the most out of my social media experience. I will be able to see if others are prepared to make the same level of commitment and that may change my relationship with them.

5. I like to share good content in other places too such as Google+ or StumbleUpon, I am more likely to do that if I am reading the content. Triberr have actually introduced the ability to share content on these platforms more easily which I think is a positive step.

6. The removal of automation and the additional commitment needed will I think ‘weed out’ people who are just there to promote themselves or who just see Triberr as a content distribution channel rather than a place to connect and engage.

I think that a number of people will stop using Triberr and of those who remain will find that if they are not sharing others posts then their own content will not be going far! It will become much more of a give and take community.

7. For all these reasons tribes will become more tightly knit and stronger and more meaningful relationships are likely to be built within them.

A friend recently said to me “I’ll never join Triberr, it’s all shopping and games” and while I did have some sympathy with this view I could see the benefits and was prepared to ignore my automating prejudices to join in but still retaining a degree of control opting to approve much of the content. I am really happy to be on manual however and hope the benefits will be even greater.

You may say that Triberr is now nothing more than a glorified list or circle however I think that, as long as you connect with the right people and are prepared to make some commitment, it could have a very useful role as part of my social media strategy. Note that I say part of, it’s still vital to find content from many sources and to share it in many different ways.

So if your initial reaction was ‘Triberr is no longer for me’, have a think about my reasons for staying committed, I am willing to give them another chance and you never know, it may just turn out to be a better place to connect, engage and build quality relationships.

I would love to hear what you think! Are you a Triberr person and do you share my thoughts or is it no longer for you? Will you look again at Triberr now that you can have a greater degree of control? What do you feel about automating in general, is it something you do and is so what methods do you use.

Many thanks for visiting The Top 10 Blog. If you have enjoyed this post I hope you will share it using the buttons below and to your left. If you would like to see more like this you can Subscribe, Follow, Like and Add to your Circles by way of the options in the sidebar.

*Image credit

Approved Key – renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I baked my first cake today! It had the right texture, looked ok and (so I’m told) didn’t taste too bad. Not much of an achievement I imagine all you avid cooks out there thinking are but for a man of my advanced years and limited culinary experience I think it’s something to be proud of and an experience I intend to repeat.

So what does all that have to do with a blog I hear you ask. Well it struck me that the process involved in creating my confectionery masterpiece was not not too dissimilar to the steps I take as a blogger when writing a new post.

So I am delighted to bring you this first part in my new series where I share my recipe for the perfect cake blog post together with some practical blogging tips from my own experiences that I hope you will find useful.

Part 1 – The right equipment

You need certain equipment to bake a decent cake and the same goes for producing your post.

The Oven

Think of your computer as your oven. You wouldn’t expect your old clapped out, dirty oven to produce a good cake so don’t ask the same of your computer. Use equipment that you are comfortable with and that works efficiently, I’m a Mac man myself but whether you are Mac or PC make sure it’s running as efficiently as possible with a spot of maintenance and cleaning.

The Mixing Bowl

You need some equipment to mix all your ingredients in. This will be your blogging platform and your theme. The type of equipment you choose will depend to a degree on your reason for blogging. A simple personal blog may work well on Blogger but if you are looking for something more substantial, flexible and with the ability to allow you to grow I would recommend using WordPress, my choice from the very early days after a brief fling with Blogger.

This recent guest article from Jessica Kuperman explains why – Top 10 Reasons Your Website Should Be In WordPress. 

You will also need a Theme to enable you to build and design your blog. There are some excellent free themes available and I used one of these at first while I found my feet. I did however find that lack of stability, flexibility and functionality soon prompted a move to a premium Woo Theme which has made the whole process much easier and improved the usability and look of the blog.

The Baking Tin

Would you use a rusty old baking tin with holes in it to bake your cake? I don’t think so. You need a solid base to bake your post too so put some basic structures in your blog platform to secure and protect yourself. I can only speak for WordPress here but I would recommend that you have a look at the type of plugins that are available to do this.

I would have a look at security options such as Secure Admin and Secure WordPress, avoid spam by having a filter such as Akismet, make sure you have some form of back up available and have a decent comment system. I have always used the Disqus comment system, I have looked at others and they all have their pros and cons but I am comfortable sticking with it for the time being, just make sure you have a look at the options available and use whatever works for you.

Spoons, sieves, scales and mixers

All the other bits and pieces you need to measure and mix your ingredients. All those Plugins and widgets to play with! I try not to complicate things by having too many tools lying around and if I find I am not using something I get rid of it.

For my part I try to keep it simple with, in addition to the ones already mentioned, plugins to help with SEO (All in One SEO Pack and XML Sitemaps), allow for translation (Google AJAX Translation), improve use on mobile devices (WPTouch), allow analysis of visitors (Google Analytics), make subscription easy (Subscription Options) and allow my content to be easily shared (DiggDigg and SexyBookmarks). I use widgets sparingly for site navigation, Google+ connection and to display adverts professionally.

Please do let me know what you think about my advice on the equipment needed to create that perfect post, are there any other essentials that I have forgotten?

Next Time in Part 2 – Flavours and Ingredients

• Don’t clutter your WordPress Dashboard up with too many widgets and Plugins, they can slow things down and lead to conflicts that may cause problems with the functionality of the blog. Believe me I have tried and discarded many and have learned the hard way the problems that you can encounter.

• Do a little research before you install a plugin. If you search for a new plugin in the WordPress dashboard you will be presented with a plethora of options, don’t just pick the first in the list, visit the plugin website and get a feel for what it can do for you, see how many others have used it and read the feedback. Watch out for articles on the subject and talk to other bloggers about what they find useful.

• Keep your WordPress version up to date as there can be security vulnerabilities if you don’t! If it’s a major version update allow plenty time for it to complete, it can take a while and I know from experience the problems that can be caused if you stop it too soon.

• Keep your plugins up to date to get the best out of them, you will be prompted in the Dashboard when they are available.

• If you are using the Google Analytics Plugin then have a look at the new Real Time (Beta) option. It gives you a snapshot of activity in real time on the blog with details of numbers, what is being viewed and where your visitor came from.

There is of course already a wealth of valuable information on the Standard Reporting pages however I find that keeping an eye on the real time stats gives me a really good feel for what’s popular and where traffic comes from. This is particularly interesting to see the reaction when a new post is published or to look at the comparitive success of a particular method of sharing a post.

The only problem lies in not being ‘hypnotised’ by it and watching the changing stats all day!

• One of the criticisms of Disqus that I have seen is that it requires registration to comment and that this can be a barrier to attracting comments. You are able to change your comment settings in the Disqus dashboard to overcome this and I would recommend that this is something you should consider.

I don’t know about you but I find it a bit frustrating when I see ‘your comment is awaiting moderation’ so to encourage regular comments you might also want to consider removing moderation.

As you see I moderate any comments with links and the spam filter seems to pick up most of the other stuff I wouldn’t want to publish.

I hope you have found these tips helpful, please feel free to add your own ‘blog equipment’ tips in the comments below.

Many thanks for taking the time to visit The Top 10 Blog. If you have enjoyed this post please Tweet, Share and +1 using the options below or to your left. If you would like to make sure that you don’t miss Part 2 in the series you can Subscribe, Follow, Like and Add to your Circles using the options in the sidebar.

* Image Credits

Cake - Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wooden Spoons – Carlos Porto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tips – Rachael Voorhees Flickr

I am a lucky man to be able to welcome back Kristen Lamb as a guest in my Expert Series with her top tips on how to be an ‘awesome’ blogger. Be sure to pop over to her first appearance on the blog with Top 10 Reasons To become a Writer while you are here.

If you would like to find out more about writer, blogger, speaker and award winning author Kristen you can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and at her excellent Kristen Lamb’s Blog.

Top Ten Tips for Blogging Awesomeness

So awesome to be invited back to the Top Ten Blog. Apparently they haven’t noticed the missing silverware yet. Ooh, inside words stay inside. Where was I? Oh, yes. As a social media expert with two #1 best-selling books, I am here to give you Ten Tips for Blogging Awesomeness.

These methods have been rigorously tested. No writers were harmed in the process. Okay, maybe a couple, but they were weird to start with.

Here are some simple changes that can make a HUGE difference when it comes to blogging success.

1. Make backgrounds easy on the eyes.  

If your background is dark, change it to a lighter background. Dark backgrounds with light lettering look cool, but they are really hard on the reader’s eyes and they will do terrible loading on a smart phone. If you look at my blog’s background, it’s boring.

Here’s the thing. People aren’t coming to your blog to look at your snazzy background; they are there to read your brilliant writing. When we have a light, simple background free of clutter, this encourages people to subscribe, to hang around and read earlier posts, and to even read posts on the go.

2. Break up large chunks of text.   

If you have blogs with large blocks of text, break them up.  Most readers, if they go to a blog and see huge chunks of text, they move on. I read at a computer all day long and that is hard on my eyes.

Guarantee you our readers will feel the same way. Try to put no more than three to six sentences in a paragraph. Readers will forgive a long blog if it’s a) interesting and b) easy to absorb/read.

3. Insert bolded bullet points to break up text.

This makes blogs easy to scan. Remember a lot of people read blogs on the go. They are often reading from an iPhone. Make life easy and they will love you for it.

4. Remove unnecessary clutter.

This is a problem with a lot of web pages. There is too much stuff so the reader moves on. Less is more.

5. If possible, pick blog titles in a way that will engage and spark debate.

One of my most popular blogs to date was titled: What Went Wrong with the Star Wars Prequels? I gave my two cents worth and then asked others what they thought. I have over 150 comments! But the title just posits a question that BEGS to be answered.

The best blogs are not information, they are conversation. Notice there really isn’t a right or wrong answer, but it sparks some fun discussion. Also, if this title was posted on Twitter, people would want to know the “answer.” Titles can be key when it comes to driving up stats and creating a loyal following.

Additionally, this type of approach takes our blog from talking “at” people and inserts us right into the heart of a healthy discussion. Now we are speaking “with” others. When we create enough discussions, we form friendships which create community. This activates people’s innate sense of loyalty.

6. Make sure your NAME is the blog title.

Few things are more frustrating than when I try to do a mash-up and I have to hunt down a name.

Since I am the social media expert for writers this tip is especially important for those who are blogging to build an author brand. There is simply no sense in blogging if it isn’t building our author brand, which is our NAME. This is working smarter, not harder.

If I am contributing 2000 words a week to the Rainbow Fluffy Kitten Dreams Blog, that means nothing unless I want to change my name to Rainbow Fluffy Kitten Dreams. Our blog is a powerful tool to build our author brand, which is: NAME + GOOD CONTENT + HAPPY EMOTIONS= AUTHOR BRAND.

7. Insert widgets for others to follow you on all your other platforms.

A blog is all about customer service. If you are also on Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, LinkedIn, Technorati, and Goodreads….I will first tell you that you are doing too much social media.

Get back to writing before I take away your G+. Ah, but after that , I would advise that you insert widgets so others can hang out with you on their platform of choice. Hey, we need to take advantage of the warm happy feelings our readers have after reading our nuggets of brilliance.

8. Make sure you embed widgets to help others SHARE your content on other platforms.

Even if you don’t tweet, make sure your readers can. Embed a widget to help readers share your content with their networks.  Information needs to be portable to go viral. This is one of the few times, the word “viral” is good. We want out genius wordsmithery to infect the planet and make them our zombie slaves fans.

9. Make sure you embed a widget to SUBSCRIBE to your blog and also to get the RSS Feed.

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and it delivers your blog to a web feed for your reader. This is all about serving the customer—the reader. It’s like pizza delivery. We dig yummy awesomeness magically appearing in our news feed. Also, make sure that readers don’t have to go hunting for the subscribe button. Make life easy. We dig easy.

10. Go through your posts and look for personal pronoun infestations.

If we use a lot of “I, I, I, I,” “me, me, me,” “you, you, you” it turns people off. We sound at best like we are lecturing and at worst like we are full of ourselves.

11. Yes, okay ELEVEN tips. I lied :P. Make sure you have questions at the end of each post designed to spark discussion and encourage sharing.

When we get good at enticing conversation, then our blog becomes the cool place to hang out and chat. Blogging is less about great writing and more about being a good host/hostess. I see some really wonderful writers who have crappy blogs.

Hey, I was once one of them. I am here to help you guys take the short-cut to success. I did all the dumb stuff so you don’t have to ;).

Many thanks to Kristen for her entertaining and informative article. Please let us know what you think of her advice! Do you have any tips you would like to share to help us all to reach that blogging Nirvana?

Kristen Lamb is the author of the #1 best selling books, “We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media” and “Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer.” She is currently represented by Russell Galen of SGG Literary NYC. In her free time, Kristen trains sea monkeys for the purposes of world domination….when she isn’t trying to saw through her ankle monitor.

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