Catching Readers By Using Personal Stories In Your Blog Posts

Guest Post - Today's host is Carlina Yepinski who covers adding the personal touch your blog posts.Want to get involved ? See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

There are a variety of ways that you can work to build a readership for your blog. One aspect of blogging is attracting new readers to your blog, but an equally important one is retaining those readers, so that they become regular readers of your posts. One of the best ways you can do this is to share the stories of your life in addition to the information or subject you are blogging about. For example if you are writing a food or cooking blog you can add in the details of the funny things that happened while you made the recipe or your children’s reaction to the food. These additional details are what capture your readers’ attention and keep them coming back for more. The difficult part is finding the perfect balance of detail and personal stories.

Look for Humorous Facts to Share

Some of the most popular blogs include the humorous outlook of the writer. As you go through your day look for items that stand out as unusual or funny and make a note of it. They can work into today’s post or a future post. Another idea is to look at a typical situation and try to find things that are funny about it. Sometimes when you are the most angry or frustrated, you can look back and find the most humor in the situation. For example a trip to the grocery store with little ones in tow can be a harrowing experience while you are going through it, but looking back at it, you may be able to pull out the funny moments to share with your readers.

Look for Analogies

Personal experiences also allow you to make analogies about the topic you are writing. You can take the story of your recent hike or 5k run and compare it to working hard on your art project or writing project. As you blog regularly you will begin to recognize the different ways that you can draw analogies from the things you observe in the world around you. You do not want to stretch too hard to make an analogy, but these are a great way to work some of your personal life into your blog topic and to hold your reader’s interest.

Watch the Bragging and Boasting

When you are working some personal aspects into your blog, you want to be careful about the tone of your blog posts. Although personal stories can attract and hold you readers’ interests, you may find that the bragging will drive those same readers away. This is why humor is so important to a successful blog, especially one that includes personal experiences. You can share how wonderful your life is, but be sure to acknowledge the crazy and bad moments as well.

Remember, You’re Telling a Story

Even if you are blogging about cooking or personal finances, you are also telling a story to your readers. Adding the personal touches and photos to the posts that fit will help to attract and hold your reader’s attention. Although you may not be able to fit this into every blog post, you should try to have at least one post a week that utilizes these techniques to hold your readers’ interest.

By Guest Author -Carlina Yepinski is the primary researcher and writer for networkmonitoring.org. Her most recent accomplishments includes graduating from Kentucky State with a degree in communications and computer science. Her current focus for the site involves system monitoring tools and network scanners.

A Complete Flag Translate Gadget For Blogger And Wordpress

Your blog is open to readers from all corners of the world so for many it is important to offer content in the Language of the reader.Making your blog easy to translate is a great way to accommodate a global audience.There are a number of options when it comes to translation widgets and in this post we have an extensive Flag gadget.This gadget was created by Chuck at the real Blogger status and includes flags for 54 different country's or languages.This Flag translate gadget will fit nicely in your blogs sidebar ready for readers to click their flag view your content in their language.

Take a look at the demo below :



We have an quick and easy Add To Blogger button for Blogger users and the code is provided for Wordpress and other blog users.

Add The Complete Flag Translate Widget To Your Blog

Google drive launched : Start Sharing Files

Guest Post By Jalil Rehman.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Google has been launching many new services. A few days ago, It launched Google Code and provided an amazing service to the users. But it was not just over, Now it has launched the brand new Google Drive and gave users a new experience. Google Drive actually is online file-storage service like Microsoft's SkyDrive. But as expected, it comes with many amazing features. The main goal is that, it let's users to upload files and share them with anyone on the Internet. It gives you 5GB free online storage with many new exciting features including smart tagging, image recognition etc. Let's discuss about other features.

Setting up Google Drive

You will need a Google Account to set up with Google Drive. If you have google account, then start using Google Drive with free 5GB online storage. You will be guided step by step after logging in to Google Drive. It's very easy.
What's amazing about it?

There are many unique and latest features in the new Google Drive. Watch the official video of Google Drive below to get familiar with Google Plus in detail.


Sharing and Storage

As already mentioned google drives gives 5GB free online storage. The maximum upload file size limit is 10GB. But the users which have 5GB of total storage, can upload a file of 5GB. It's really amazing. You can upload images, documents, videos etc. and can also share your files with people which also have Google Drive Account.

You will have to install a software for Google Drive in your PC, and then it will create a folder named "Google Drive" on your Desktop. You just have to drag and drop the file you want to upload and share, in that folder and your files will start uploading on your Google Drive account. The files which are uploaded will appear on your account and you can share that. People can download, view, comment and edit your files with your permission. You can also sync your files with iPhone, Android etc.

By default, you will be provided 5GB of free storage. Maybe that's not enough for you. You can extend it at reasonable prices as given below. You can buy up to 1TB of storage.

25 GB = 2.49$ / month
100 GB = 4.99$ / month
1TB = 24.99$ / month

Integration

You can integrate your uploaded files with many products of Google e.g Google Code, Google Docs, Gmail etc. You can choose file of any format and even you can also covert your format before uploading.

Smart Tagging and Search Filter

These are one of my favourite features of Google Drive. You can filter anything from your files e.g you can find images, videos, documents etc. from a bunch of files in seconds. You can tag the images with different labels and then find them easily with one click.

Text Recognition and Offline Viewing

If you've forgotten the name of any file and you want to find it, then Google Drive can find it by matching your given text with the text in the files. Viewing your documents offline is another goal of Google Drive. You just have to install an app in Google Chrome, and then you can view your documents offline in Google Drive.

Google has always tried to provide the users with latest and unique tools and features. Google Drive has many features which other related sites don't give. I hope Google will update this Google Drive and provide more flexibility to users.

By Guest Author - Jalil loves to write about Blogging Tips and SEO Techniques. He is interested in tweaking templates and creating Blogger Widgets.

Photography Blogs - SEO Mistakes To Avoid

Guest Post By Charles Mburugu.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Nowadays, more than ever before, the Internet is intensely competitive. With hundreds of photography websites and Blogs being launched on a daily basis, it has become increasingly difficult to rank well in search engines. This is why search engine optimization is vital for the success of any website. Research has shown that search engines like Google and Yahoo account for more than 70% of traffic.

When it comes to photography sites, the following are some of the SEO mistakes to avoid.

How To Add Your BuySellAds Marketplace Page To Your Blog

BuySellAds.Com (BSA) is by far the most popular direct advertising site for Bloggers.Recently BuySellAds updated the site to version 3 introducing not only a fresh new design but also some new options for Publishers.One of these options is to place your Marketplace page on your actual blog.The Marketplace page is the page people are directed to on BuySellAds when they click the Advertise Here banners on your site, the page displaying your available ad spots and stats.

BSA call this option the Ad Sales Widget "..Show your ad availability and pricing right on your website. Most publishers use this as their entire "Advertise" page for their website.."

You can see a demo of the Ad Sales Widget for Spice Up Your Blog Here.

If your not yet a user of BSA or have had trouble getting approved take a look at out post "BuySellAds.Com Review And Interview With Founder Todd Garland"

Add The BuySellAds Ad Widget To Your Blog

7 Fresh Ideas To Deal With Bloggers Block

Guest Post By Grace Pamer.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Blogging is a phenomenon of the Internet age that has few precedents from the past. Bloggers have to come up with new ideas for articles on a regular basis, write and edit their work, and post them, ready to move on to the next blog entry. On the whole we undertake no formal training for such demands and yet the pressures can sometimes be intense. We often work in a particular niche, sometimes alone, and on occasion may feel the constraints of such choices. In fact, in many ways, the only activity prior to the advent of web logs (blogs) was the work of professional column writers at newspapers and magazines for they had to come up with new ideas regularly to maintain their readerships expectations - and they were paid to do it!

As such we blog writers can become overwhelmed by the task of creating new content especially when we feel like we have ran into a wall of non-creativity. In addition real life problems also play their part in causing blogger's block and it can sometimes be difficult to get back on track after life has thrown us a curve-ball. But rest assured there are tried and tested ways to overcome this problem, and to feel productive again. When you need a consistent well of ideas for articles, here are some methods to consider.

Sticky Bar Widget - jQuery Scrolling Social Bookmarking Bar For Blogger

The most requested tutorial over the last few months has been for the scrolling share buttons that sit alongside posts and scroll down the page with the reader.This gadget is popular on all the top blogs and really does help increase the number of times your posts get shared on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.Using jQuery we attach a bar to the side of your blog posts with bookmarking buttons, as the page scrolls the bar neatly follows giving readers the option to share at any time.The gadget I have been using for the past few months and I share with you today has the following options : Twitter Share, Facebook Like, Stumble Upon, Google+, Pinterest Pin It and a Rss Feed Icon.Wordpress users can try out the Wordpress Share Bar listed in this post.

Video Tutorial - For extra help at the end of the post I have a video tutorial displaying the steps.

At the moment this gadget is in use here so you should be able to see it, you can also see another demo below.



As this is an advanced gadget there are 9 steps to add it to your blog so more than ever its important to back up your template first in case of mistakes, then take your time and you should have no problems.

Add The Sticky Scroll Bar To Blogger

For the Beginner College Blogger: Increasing Traffic

Guest Post By Samantha Gray.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Deciding to start up a blog while still in college is an excellent choice—not only can it help improve your writing and communication skills as well as improve your computer skills, but a blog can also help you find a job after graduation, especially if you create a blog that's in your "niche" or " industry." For example, if you want to become a music journalist, then creating a blog where you review bands and albums can help you get your foot in the door. But in order to show that your blog is influencing other people, you have to have an audience—i.e. continuous traffic visiting your blog. But word-of-mouth isn't enough. That said, below are few ways that can earn you some loyal readers.

Guidelines For Photoblogging On WordPress

Guest Post By Charles Mburugu.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

A photoblog is basically a blog which does not focus on written content, but rather on photos. This is one of the best ways in which photographers can build a portfolio of their work. WordPress is a great platform which you can use to create a self-hosted blog for sharing your work. There are many web hosts that allow WordPress hosting, with some having an option of installing WordPress automatically with just a few clicks.

Once you find a web host and get WordPress installed, the following are some guidelines for setting up your blog.

6 Common Do’s and Don’ts For Blogs

Guest Post By Liz Nelson.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Consider this a friendly reminder or a refresher course for your blog. There are a few common do’s and don’ts to reflect on before you blog your next entry.