In the MBA language they call it the “mission statement”. I’ve spent half my life in the company of MBAs. But I’m not an MBA myself. I’ve thus been able to conserve my ability to think out of the box (eh ehhmm…). You don’t need a mission statement to blog. But you certainly need a tagline to emphasize, project and underline your blogs mission and value.Why not a mission statement? After all my arguement and reasoning I’m still not convinced how investing time and brains into creating a catchy mission statement justifies the effort or the purpose. Keep it simple - a mantra - the tagline of your blog.

Where does the word “mantra” come from? Here’s a brief history to better define what a mantra means. The word comes from the Indus valley civilization – arguably the oldest in the world. It’s a word from the Devnagri language also known as Sanskrit. The mantras are considered to have spiritual powers when pronounced correctly. Their effect is not in the meaning of the mantra but in the sound that emanates from pronouncing them. The sages chanted mantras in solace worshiping God to achieve salvation. The root “man” stands for the mind and the suffix “tra” means “tool” thus the “instrument of thought”.

As a blogger your identity should not be limited to the niche that you focus on. It in fact should underline the value you bring to your niche and in which direction you wish to carry your blog. So define a mantra - a tag line, a purpose of your blog. As a mantra it should carry you through all the confusion and help you focus your attention on the purpose of your blog. There are times when you have too many topics to blog about and others when you run out of ideas. The mantra shall bring you back to focus and carry your blog to attain its purpose. Here are three qualities of an effective mantra

1. It should be easy to remember

   You should be able to memorize and remember it out of the hundred other things that echo in the mind.

2. It should justify the existence of the blog

   A mantra stands as the reason why your blog exists and stands for. It should thus be meaningful and project the value you bring to the community and the niche.

3. It should be unique

   If it’s not unique it’s better to form a community and start a social networking site which stands for a purpose. You have your own blog to voice your expressions. It needs to have a “unique” purpose. If not (or may be if you are running it for money) you should focus on making meaning and not money.

A mantra is all you need to start blogging. And finally one day when you have 10000 subscribers you may want to create a mission statement. Guess what - the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator is at your service. Give it a try.

Mademoiselle Paty

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It’s a constant endeavor for bloggers to focus and write on the latest and popular topics to sustain the interest of the readers. Also niche blogging can help you monetize your blog better by drawing targeted advertisements with value. Here’s a list of 15 sites which you can use to analyse the latest trends and keyword analysis and to assist you take a look on what’s the latest, hottest and the most popular.

1. Google Zeitgeist
2. Lycos 50
3. Yahoo Buzz
4. eBay Pulse
5. Google Trends
6. NicheBot
7. Shopping.com
8. AOL Hot Searches
9. Google Groups
10. craigslist
11. Popular Bookmarks on Delicious
12. Digg
13. Google Catalogs
14. Google Suggest
15. Technorati
16. ClickBank marketplace (a bonus as always)

Photo by jamelah

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Flashmint is running an interesting contest. They are inviting wordpress theme designs for their newly launched blog. The prize money is $500. So what is in it for bloggers? Well if you can send them some of your traffic you could win $300 for the first prize.

Flashmint  is basically into web design and has been in the business since 2004. They’ve recently launched their blog. The blog is pretty new thus has few subscribers as of now. Also the blog needs a design tailored to their requirements thus this contest.

I know as a blogger most of you would have come to terms with web design. But if not you could always provide them a link. You could win anything from $100 to $300. Even if you don’t they still will give you a free PR 4 backlink for your site.

Note that this is not a paid review. Nor is this my participation in the contest. I bring it to you so that those interested may participate and benefit. You can learn more about the contest in their blogpost here.

A tip from my side. They are a web design company. Such a company may appreciate clean “and” unique designs which also project them as an expert in the field (a moderately flashy design signifying their expertise but not overdone). Of course they have set out some expectations about the design they are looking for.

Photo bySpacePotato

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So far we’ve taken a look on how focusing on your niche helps to add value and uniqueness to your blog’s presence. While you are focusing on your niche you will certainly find similar blogs who have already touched upon the subject. It thus becomes important to cut out of the cliche. It’s time to focus on making meaning.

I have come to believe that these are the basic steps to make a difference whatever one can. And the same three tips work wonders in the blogging arena as well. Here they are.

1. Prevent the end of something good

   Those of you who frequent this blog regularly know that I work on Firefox extensions. Back then there used to be a Firefox extension called cutemenus – developed by a team of interested developers, the extension was stripped of all advanced functionality on the insistence of the lead developer. I then created a fork of the extension called CuteMenus2 and added back all the advanced features. Blogging is not unlike this. For eg. there are an increasing number of blogs coming up all the time. But the overall number of the blogs remains the same. A majority of the blogs close down in the first three months. I want you all to blog and pursue blogging. I want you to share the kinks to your blogs here. And I want you to encourage other deserving bloggers by subscribing to their blogs.

2. Increase the quality of life

   I created ColorfulTabs and “increased the quality of life” in my own little way. ColorfulTabs was of the top 50 extensions with the highest downloads on the day of Firefox 3 release. And in a similar way I bring to you my notion of blogging and tips to help you become more productive and successful.

3. Right a wrong

   There are a thousand other blogs that preach about making money. While making money is not a bad thing, the majority of blogs out there run solely for the purpose of making money. I’ve decided and chosen different. I wish to make a difference by enlightening my readers and subscribers about tips on blogging, writing and much more. The theory goes like “if you make meaning you’ll make money.” If you solely start out to make money- there are a hundred and one other blogs doing the same thing.

What else would you like to add to the list?

Photo by ~jjjohn~

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Where does your blog stand in the crowd? Is your blog progressing in the right direction? Here’s a small warm-up exercise. Navigate to any random blog hosted on blogspot. I’ll start with the official Google blog. Using the “Next Blog” button in the navigation bar at the top navigate to the next blog. See how many comments a random post gets. Do this for the next four or five. Remember the results; we’ll use them at the end.

A blog’s value in the market depends on a beautiful blend of two factors - its uniqueness and its usefulness to the visitors. So if I were to plot a cryptic graph, it will look like this.

I didn’t use it to scare you, (but I’m sorry if it did). Our task now is to position your blog at a point where it is one of the highly valued blog on the net. There are four basic corners of this plot.

1. The “another useful blog” - This is the bottom right corner. This blog is very useful to the audience. It could be a web design blog or a Photoshop tutorial blog or a make money blogging blog or a blog focusing on social media and social networking. Everyone needs it and uses it for one purpose or the other; people bookmark it and return back to it.

   The only problem is whatever this blog’s subject is, there are a hundred other blogs churning content on the same topic. A hundred other blogs on the same topic means that its luck or a lot of blog marketing that will work to promote your blog and make it visible to the audience. It is a promotion pressure job.

2. The “only unique” blog - This is the top-left corner. This is a blog so unique that there’s none which comes close to the subject. The sorry part is that the usefulness of this blog is missing. This is a blogger gone stupid. He is blogging about crazy stuff. Luckily he is the only blogger doing it.
3. The “stupid-gone-burst” blog - This is the bottom left corner. A blog not only of ne use to the audience but every other blog is on the same subject. Useless and copycat as this blog is, it is most probably being run by another bot posting duplicate content at random. I get a lot of pingbacks from these kinds of blogs.
4. The “useful and unique” blog - This is the position where everyone wants to be. The holy grail of marketing (as Guy Kawasaki terms it), this is the place where a blog focuses on a subject not only of great utility and usefulness but also a subject so unique that the blog is easily distinguishable from the rest and stands apart. This kind of blog grows popular with little effort. The popularity and growth is viral and ultimately this is a win-win for the blogger and the audience alike.

Back to the exercise we started with. There are millions of blogs out there on the net. We navigated to the four or five random blogs. You could navigate like this all day through and find few which have a dedicated audience with a growing popularity. They talk about all subjects (like the ones you went thru in the exercise). In all probability these blogs have no or few audience. If your blog has usefulness to the audience and if yours is the only one which focuses on the subject it will be the one-of-a-kind with rich and useful content. This is the reason why blogs like VandelayDesign and ZenHabits are so popular and get the audience they have. Target your blog for this position and you shall be there in no time. The point is to make meaning.

In the next part we’ll focus on how to make meaning. Watch this space, do leave your comments and subscribe to the feed.

Image by Will Foster. Inspired by Guy Kawasaki

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Mark the difference - this is about the premium themes and not the ones generally available in the free galleries online. To put things into perspective, premium themes are the ones which have been designed with a higher focus on the design aspects and purpose of the website or blog. These come in the form of several features. Not only do you expect a more polished design but more finesse at every level of design. It goes to the colors, typography, layout and beyond. Here are a few reasons to look for a premium theme to give your site an edge over others.

1. User experience

   If there is one reason you have a flog. It is the visitors. Care for them and project your site to them and for them. Users come to your site for many reasons. It could be content, entertainment, knowledge or just to see what you’ve been upto Make their life easier and better. Enrich and enhance their experience and they will come back.

2. Higher focus on blogging

   A premium theme is also about making your life easier as a blooper. There are many components of managing your belong. You are a webmaster and a bigger. Tracking visitors, managing advertisement zones, moderating comments, etc… come as an added responsibility to blogging. The more you can automate or organize these tasks the better you will be able to focus on blogging, researching and writing.

3. Branding

   People relate to sites by their colors, layouts and branding. If you are trying to flaunt a look that a thousand other sites do, it doesn’t work. Everyone want the best theme; everyone wants it for free and they have it. A premium theme is less common on general blots. Get one and brand it to your choice. It gives your site a face which people get familiar with.

4. SEO

   Most of the premium themes go an extra mile to place the right tags and focus on highlighting the keywords in your content to the search engines. Until you get this right there are few ways to get visitors to your site from search engines.

5. Monetising

   While the premium themes aid you in ad management, most of the premium themes have ad zones built in ready for ad placement. They even have features for ad management like an interface to add the ad code and forget about it. When monetization becomes easier, the blog grows faster.

Image by splorp

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The recently released version of the Wordpress theme - Thesis - is hot in the news especially in the blogger arena. It’s developed by Chris Pearson. The theme has been talked about at popular sites like ProBlogger and others and all the hype carried me to DIY Themes. Finally after taking a look (whatever I could do for free) at the theme, I have serious doubts whether a professional blogger would like to buy it. They say there’s nothing like bad PR (point 23). I believe that with all my heart and soul. So with all due respect to the developer here’s what I have to say about this theme.

1. Body font

   The first impression is lasting but not necessarily useful in the long run. It’s worse if you try to impress a web designer with this one. We are talking about the font-family here. The use of Georgia and serif font in the body text goes against the principles of typography. This makes the text harder to read while putting a lot of stress on your eyes. When you’ve chosen to purchase a premium them, you expect better. I seriously doubt any established web-designer would approve of such quirks to lure prospective customers claiming beautiful typography. Its lame.

2. The features

   Are there any at all? The claims point to the theme options or the configurations options panel feature. You can put the Google Analytics code and have your feeds redirected to feedburner. You can customize navigation from the options screen and put in a few images that cycle everything you reload the page. You even can add your custom CSS and images to a custom folder that comes with the theme. Guess what? I’ll give you some very easy alternatives for $999. And I’ll also give you an option not to pay at all

   • Get the feedburner feed redirection plugin from wordpress codex. That will take care of it for you.
   • Get the all-in-one SEO plugin to take care of Search Engine optimization.
   • Use the text widget from the widgets section and put in all your ads, tracking code there. You want to pay for that? You have my email.
   • And finally if you are so intent at customizing the CSS, navigate to the Theme Editor option under Deign in the default Wordpress theme. It will allow you to customize anything and everything without you needing a developer license. Put in a GPL license and you can even distribute on the newly gone public Wordpress Theme site. Customize it all you can.

3. The price

   $87 for a personal license and a $164 for a developer license. My take - I submit to you that if you are a developer, you start from scratch. Build some rocket-science features and then sell them for $10. That will only underline your authority as a developer and a creative one at that.If you are a blogger and more intent on using the theme, take a look at some of the best themes out there on the Wordpress Theme site. Also take a look at the free UBD Moneymaker Theme.

4. Accessibility

   You want to take another look at the Wordpress default theme? You can customize the header no end and it works on almost every known browser and mobile device. Pep it up a bit and it’s all yours to claim. There are better options than paying for this theme.

5. What it doesn’t have

   I’m also looking for some beauty and style here (other than threat created solely by the image rotator bore). I expect a lot of polish from a premium theme that I pay for. Gradients, colors, rounded corners, anyone?

6. The big problem

   Now you are left with (less or more) about a hundred some dollars. Well, you can forget about it or else send them to me.

Before I conclude, here’s another things I’d like to mention. They say “Great products polarize people”. So you are all free to buy and find the truth yourself. With that said, I’d like to hear what you have to say. And by the way if you are Chris Pearson don’t hit me please. Your comments go right here…

jakemohan

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How many of you have a blog? Today I invite you to share your most popular or favorite post. Go into your blog’s archive and take your pick. If there was a post that clicked, provide a link here. If there was a post you worked very hard upon but didn’t get the exposure, link it here.

I have been in the process of composing a 10 part series on power blogging - something that can in the true sense change the paradigm of blogging. And I want this to be a prelude, a preface to the series.

As you share your posts, I’d also like you to share your views about your pick. Here are a few points you may want to talk about.

• What is special about this post?
• Tell us how you got the idea to write this post. Was it an accidental vision that you had? Or had you been planning this for long?
• Why do you consider it your pick? Why did it click or didn’t?

Pour your heart out. we are all ears

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Design must serve the purpose

A clean and elegant design can have a direct impact on your readership. You must have noticed how some of the popular blogs out there have an elegant and beautiful layout. But they say that one size doesn’t fit all. What gives? You have a header, a sidebar, a footer and content (of course else what brings the readers in) -But how effectively is all this laid out? Is your layout aiding the visitors or standing as a barrier? Here are some power-points to let you decide.

The first thing you need is a SEO’d theme. SEO (as you must have guessed) stands for Search Engine Optimization. A theme that is search engine friendly makes it easier for the search engines to find information from your site. In this case these are the specific keywords that your content contains. People use search engines to find information. And they use keywords to search for the information they are looking for. A site which is optimized to search engines makes it easier for the visitors to find your content. Also keyword or content based advertising rests on the keywords in your content. So more relevant ads show up when the search engine has induced the keywords.

1. Accessibility

   The web is no more limited to the desktops or the laptops. It can be accessed by any and all devices which have an internet connection. This brings in an interesting angle. These new devices are not computers in the complete sense. They are largely evolving and bring with them a gamut of technologies and pot-holes. What does your site look like when viewed in a smartphone? The variety of screenings can play havoc with your theme. So open up your site in a mobile device and take a look. Or you can use one of the mobile emulators like the Opera-mini demo at http://www.operamini.com/demo/.

2. Customization

   Until and unless you are a designer, developer or a coder of some sort, you don’t wait to be messing up with the code every now and then to make minor changes. Use plugins or theme options to manage your theme, layout, design, widgets. You must have enough customizability at your disposal so that you spend less time managing and focus more on blogging.

3. Features

   The term can have as many meanings as its context. Here we are talking functionality. Plug-ins are nifty killer tools that can transform the way you blog or the way visitors use them. If your CMS supports them, take out some time to review some plug-ins you can use to ease up things and fire up your blog.

4. Layout

   There’s no one single layout that fits everyone’s purpose. A 2-column 3-column 4-column or a single column _they all work with varying degrees of success. Take the minimalist approach (there are good chances that you’ll still land up with some clutter). A header for the logo, a sidebar for the navigation, ads and widgets and a footer for other links, copyright information. Yes, we missed the obvious. The content has to be there by default (unless we are talking about 404 pages). With all this stuff here’s a sketch of what the final thing will look like. From a minimalist layout, your flog shall accumulate a lot over the time. Once in a while, just take off all the clutter and see if you really need it.

   

   A minimalist layout

   

   More regions

   

   Maximum regions

   You of course can try all permutations and combinations like a sidebar on each side or both on the right side etc.

5. Simplicity

   Your blog should be as simple to use as it can get. Now that you can manage it well and focus on content creation, time to empower the readers to make use of your biog. Keep a familiar design. Fancy designs no matter how attractive they are, only distract visitors from the content. I remember when I was on blogger in very early days and I created this fancy dark design and posted about Firefox. The first comment on that post was “nice design”. Make sure content always remains the primary focus. Bogs are meant for reading, so visualize a newspaper or a book and bring that ease and feel into the design. This is the definition of design.

There can be many more in the list. But it would be interesting to know what tops your list and what works for you. Have something to say?
Image Courtesy: dullhunk

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Niche blogging has its pros and cons. Effectively sustained, the pros of niche bragging outweigh the cons. The important decision to make here is what to blog about. Once you get down to it you may be bombarded with tens of things to blog about. At other times you may even run short of an idea.

The first step in the direction is to blog on a subject that you are most comfortable in-something that you have a passion about and you have knowledge about. Consider whether you want to aggregate and report on the latest happening or whether you want to create original content. Reporting the latest can be a good practice when starting out. When you are starting out, until and unless you are a renowned expert in an area, there are good chances that you need food for thought before you start churning original content. So in this case one must adapt the strategy of getting to terms with the latest information and spreading the awareness. It essentially means you are aggregating content and links with some of your own ideas and thoughts. This slowly evolves and you start developing your own ideas and thoughts about the subject.

Time to move to the next level - the level of established authority. Here you are like a forecaster-an expert who can make prediction on the way things may evolve going by the current trends. This invites others to your biog to find first hand content, share their ideas about your thoughts on the subject, as well as subtly even advertise you as an established authority on the subject.

Considering the above two levels, that of a starter and that of an expert, it is essential to narrow down to a subject which not only keeps your interest but is also rewarding in the long run-maybe financially or in the form of creative satisfaction. Here is a small process that works out for most.

1. Narrow down to a subject.
2. Share the latest happenings on the topic.
3. Refine your information channels, groom yourself as a blogger as an expert and authority on the subject.
4. Create a niche-a uniqueness.
5. See what others miss out on the subject -find a gap and fill it.
6. This is your niche. Your niche now shall empower you to tap other benefits like earning a handsome with direct advertisers.

What do you say?

Image Courtesy: D’Arcy Norman

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