Using a blog newsletter can be a great way to send out your most important post to your readers. Not only are they useful for people that don’t want to subscribe to regular updates, they also add to your Feedburner subscriber statistics 
. However, formatting them usually varies on different websites based on different people’s views and design perceptions. I’m here to tell you that using an image in your blog newsletter is a “Bad Idea and can result in a really bad time for email users”.
Problem #1 – Outlook Express
I use Outlook Express for all of my email on the internet, and when I get newsletter update with an image attached.. I get a notice saying:
That filter blocks all of the pictures until you click it, which will then download all of the pictures and make it normal. This is especially noticeable in Ebay’s newsletters.. They are all images! So when I get an Ebay flyer, all I get is the alt tags on the images until I click it..
Most people won’t bother clicking that notice, because if there is text there that tells them about the best posts on your blog/website.. why bother for a logo?
Problem #2 – Gmail
When I don’t have access to OE for my email, I’ll sign into Gmail. The same thing happens to Shoemoney’s newsletter when I try to look at it:
Again, having to click a link in order for a logo to appear usually isn’t worth the effort.
The Simple Solution
Don’t use images and stick with text. Text is compatible with every email browser and doesn’t require a link to show it. You can even bold it.. or use colours!
Do you use a blog newsletter? If so, do you use a large amount of images?
Thanks for visiting my blog! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you will be able to get these personal blog tips for free!
Although this post is 2 days late, it never hurts to set out a couple of goals for the New Year. Doing this can focus your efforts and can make you avoid the constant “What should I be doing” factor that many bloggers will experience throughout their career. (Sidenote: Yes, I just called blogging a “Career” because I feel that a blog can be heavily compared to a small/large business, they definitely have the potential to make as much money 
)
Brad’s New Year Goals for 2009:
- Obtain 1000+ RSS Subscribers – I’m currently at 242 (today) and think this is a practical goal for an entire year.. It can be done!
- Obtain 200+ Twitter Followers – Again, I’m currently at 20, so I should probably network the fact that I have a twitter feed, and encourage people to follow it.
- Modify my blog design – The blog design on BradBlogging.com is great right now, but there are some issues I have with some of the elements. I’d like to make a 3 columned footer, perhaps change the header background, and other misc. details.
- Obtain some sponsorships – The Nov/Dec 2008 months were pretty bare for advertisers.. I had none! It would be nice if I could find a couple of good sponsors to purchase some advertising.
- Help more people with their blog problems – Right now, about 3 people have emailed me with problems about their blog, and I’ve helped all 3 of them fix their issues.. If you have a problem, send me an email!
- Put some time into other internet projects – I find that diversifying your time can make you a more creative person when it comes to blogging. If you spend all your time talking about the niche your blog is about.. There’s not much that is going to change or develop over time. However, if you work on other projects such as another blog, forum, website, etc, you can oftentimes bring different ideas and views to your content.
Conclusion:
What are your goals for 2009? Have you written a post regarding it for your readers to read? (Feel free to leave a link).
Happy (Belated) New Years To Everyone On BradBlogging.com!
If you read blogs like me, you’ll subscribe to them via RSS, place them in your favourite reader (Mine happens to be RSSOwl – What an Amazing App) and then scan through them when you feel like catching up. Although, when your blog’s feed is plunked into my pile of RSS feeds giving me A LOT of content, it gets harder and harder for me to read your posts doesn’t it?
Here are some personal points that I thought of to help you craft more ‘clickable’ titles if you will, ultimately making your posts read more and enjoyed by the maximum number of people.
5 Ways To Make Your Post Title Stand Out In A RSS Reader:
- ALL CAPTITAL LETTERS – The RSS reader will replicate your post title in the feed reader as standard text.. So with some simple CSS Styling, you can make your post use all capital letters, but make them easier to read.. see an article about using the “small-caps” approach.
- Ask a question in a post title – A great example would be Blogstorm’s “Would you like sitelinks for the keyword “loans”?” in the feed reader. Although it was pure linkbait, it still got my click and made me wonder how it was possible.
- Longer titles to attract the persons attention as they will wonder why it is so long – If you have 5 small titles around one with a larger title, you’ll likely be drawn to the larger one as it has more words and letters.
- Linkbait your readers – Not recommended for newer blogs that have fewer readers.. you don’t want to piss off your small audience this early in the game. Although the bigger blogs usually employ this technique, I don’t think I’ll be using it.
- Research Your Competition – By this I mean two things.. The first is going to Digg.com or other social networking websites and seeing what titles make the “front page”. You can learn an awful lot by people that are successful. The second point is subscribing to blogs in your similar niche, seeing how they craft their titles, you never know when you might be able to use some of their ideas in the future.
“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not taking risks, and that means you’re not going anywhere. The key is to make mistakes faster than the competition, so you have more changes to learn and win.” – John W. Holt
One of the greatest deceptions regarding website administration is the belief that quality content is enough to generate large volumes of traffic to a website. SEO gurus and industry experts claim that as long as you write great blog posts on new, innovative and interesting topics you will get noticed, linked to etc. This article recommends a different, a bit more diverse approach – introducing the importance of backlink building and onsite optimization.
If you know what’s good for your blog, PageRank and Google rankings you’ll give what we are about to say some considerable thought.
Natural backlinking to your blog
Interesting articles, never-seen before images/videos and content that gets the visitor’s attention get links – backlinks to use industry terms. However, getting natural links back from other websites to your blog is rather ineffective and normally only generate a small number compared to how many links you can get back with some extra effort.
Building backlinks
The leading and most popular websites have a large number of natural backlinks. A lot of people and website administrators link to Wikipedia.org for example, a non-profit site that depends solely on its users. More commercial sites however, also spend a lot of time and resources on “building” backlinks rather than just sitting back and hoping that people will link to them.
Search engines like Google rates a website 80% based on its value in proper backlinks, so it is safe to say that working to get relevant and proper links to your blog is the safest way to increase traffic and pagerank. This is how you do:
Go to Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool – get relevant keywords that match your blog post’s topic. Implement them in the title, meta data, headers and subheaders. Diversify, so that your post may rank on as many search terms as possible.
Contact a site owner
Start by contacting other blogs that feel relevant to your own and ask the site owner if you can contribute with an interesting blog post. By scrolling through blog engines you will find relevant blogs to contact. Wordpress.com or Blogspot both host a large number of blogs. Make sure to contact many blogs, since you will only get replies from a small percent of them.
Link back
After you have communicated with the site owner, decided on a topic, the fact that you will include some links and actually written the very interesting blog post, insert one or two links back to your site. Depending on the size of the post you can add more but normally two links is good. Link back to your blog using any of your selected keywords, to increase your Google ranking and post PageRank on that search term.
On site optimization
The importance of a search engine optimized website cannot be excluded. By building backlinks you will increase your blog’s availability in the search engine. But to tweak your own pages and posts to perfection make sure you always fill in the meta data and include keywords in titles and headers.
Brad’s Note: Special thanks to Chris Reynolds of Web Hosting Search for this awesome article. On his site you will find various articles and ratings about Wordpress Hosting as well as Blog Content Management Systems. If you are interested in writing a guest post for this blog, feel free to send me a note!
I’ve been creating numerous advertisement drafts that I think would perform well on other websites, but can’t decide on which one to feature. As you all know, advertising is a great way to broaden your audience and expand your reach. It provides unparalleled attention to your graphic & website that can be used for one of two things:
- Branding your identity, or;
- Converting the interested visitor to a subscriber, person who leaves comments, etc.
So without further adieu, here is the point of this post – I would like to ask your opinion on which graphic you think would attract your click (Not Branding – At least not yet 
).
The Candidates Fighting For Your Poll:
I made four, but these three are the ones that I deemed worthy to represent my blog. #1 looks great on white, as you can see in this post, but #2 & #3 would standout from a white background and catch the eye.
Thanks for voting, I’ll post about the results soon!
I’m writing this post from “Windows Live Writer Beta” and think it is a great new application for writing blog posts. I simply launch the application, and the program does the rest of the work. There is no need to sign in, or go to the “Write” section of the Wordpress Administration area. Saves me time that I can spend writing blog posts or finding the next great thing to talk about.
Screenshot & Features:
(Sidenote: I figured out how to optimize .PNG’s – The “Optimized” .PNG was around 8KB smaller than the .GIF version – So much for my study. Oh well, Live and learn right?)
As you can see above, it has the ability to:
- Insert pictures directly from your desktop and automatically upload them when you publish the post.. Removes the hassle of uploading pictures beforehand.
- Easy to use WYSIWYG editor with standard formatting and large buttons… Thats one of the things that Wordpress could improve upon.. The current toolbar is really small and hard to see. Includes Blockquote, Ordered list, Unordered List, et.
- Simple Copy and Paste of a Youtube URL to embed it.
- Includes Spellcheck and bolds the term when it is spelt wrong, making your ‘proofreading’ stage a much easier task.
- One more thing that makes this Writer excel from the other options of publishing a blog post is the fact that it includes a “More” button which splits the blog post into a summary/full post. Useful for people that use that technique, although I don’t use it.
Cost:
Free to use! Just like Windows Hotmail, Spaces, and all of their other tools. The catch? There isn’t one.. yet. It would be a shame if they put a price tag on this product.
Where to find this program:
Download: Link (http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/)
If you don’t use Windows:
Hmmm.. Wouldn’t really know of any alternatives. A quick Google search pointed me to HongKiat’s post about alternatives – These three blogging platforms caught my eye. (They work on all 3 Operating Systems):
- Flock
- Bleezer
- WBloggar (works in firefox)
- ScribeFire (works in firefox)
Do you have a favourite blogging platform? If so, does it increase your productivity or time to write a post?
Hi there.
I’m going to be switching my webhosts, so you will (most likely) experience some 404’s during the next couple of days.
I will post again when the ordeal is through.
Thanks for your patience during this matter.
Brad
