basic

Sunday Series for Newbie Bloggers and nOobs

Being a blog concentrating on social media, blogging, it would be good to have some resources for newbie bloggers or people who are interested in knowing more about blogging, social media and online money making(basics).

Two years ago, I never knew the difference between a domain and hosting. Twitter and FaceBook were far from my thinking. Blogging was far from imagination. Never knew there will be so many people reading blogs more regularly than News Paper, and Tweet more often than they send a text message(SMS – texting) or Call to anyone!

Looking back those days, feels like great memories of ignorance 🙂 Unfortunately, I have many many and many friends who don’t know about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, web-publishing etc. They still think having a live website requires a great deal of knowledge, money and influence. Actually, a friend of mine asked me – how to get permission from BSNL to launch a website. hmm..I got confused for a while, so as to what he was asking. But soon realized, BSNL being a well known Internet service provider in India, many people think that the whole internet and all the websites and everything is controlled by them. Not a bad logic though. And some still think internet is owned by Google.
When I try to tell about the advantages of Twitter and tell them to start using it to their good – the last question they would ask me is, Is Twitter your website? lol…. how good, if it was 😉

Some years back, most news papers, tv News and some online publications tought us how internet is being used to scam people and for betrayal. It has so stuck in the minds of people that, they never dare to do an online transaction. And some people think Google too as a scam, because of various Google Cash Cow like scams. So I think writing about what to trust and what not to, would surly help many people in making right decision.

Not that I know many things. I am still learning and would love to share whatever I learn with like minded nOob friends!

So without hurting the regular readers, I have thought of writing about very basics of internet tools, blogging, Content Management System, how and why etc on this blog on Sundays.

So you got it — most of you may skip reading Technotip.org on Sunday and Saturday.

This post will be used as a document for later reference. Because I am sure, many people will ask what the hell I am writing on the blog. So I can point to this and can tell them that they can skip reading on Saturday and Sunday.

But it would be great, if you can come and help everyone with your valuable comments. Hope you remember your student days, where we learn a lot of complex things and we will be asked some questions related to basics of the subjects and we sometimes giggle to answer it. No one knows everything. So everyone’s comment will add value, even though its a basic thing.

And feel free to(actually I will be privileged) send any of your nOob friends to our blog.

Basic Things to do: To Convert Readers to Subscribers

Many bloggers keep trying to develop a loyal reader base for their blog, and will surly be willing to convert their visitors to subscribers.

Following some simple tweaks or optimizations will help us in increasing our blog subscribers:

First of all label the RSS and/or email subscription link as FREE RSS and FREE EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION. This will make some people curious to checkout and someothers will not have fear to click on it(as its free)!

We ran an experiment session with some of the people who use internet to read emails, Google for stuffs they want to know about – Not so geeky about internet. We could see that many of them clicked on an text ad or any related topic links, after they read any article ( that they got while Googling ) or they checked for things which are labeled FREE Gifts or just FREE !

And we also saw that many people never bothered to see the small subscription links. And they just book marked the URL of sites which they liked.

But some of them subscribed to some blogs[which had some interesting contents] which were showing email subscription form at the end of each article and many others gave their attention to the big email subscription form present in 300 x 250 or 250 x 250 space at the right side sidebar.

So we can say that, we need to show some really big, appealing subscription forms and links, for our visitors and make them aware that we do provide FREE RSS and email subscription options on our site.

So some of the things to remember is:

1. Show email subscription form below each article or in a place where there is high visibility. This would surly increase your subscribers.

and/or

Showing Big subscription forms in 300 x 250 space, in upper part of your blog would encourage them to subscribe.

2. Labeling it as FREE will attract some more non-geeky people to check it out.

3. Call for action: Ask your readers to subscribe to your blog. This is also an effective strategy.

4. Educate your readers about the RSS and email FEED of your blog. This would also bring in some more subscribers.

Also run some experiment session with friends(friends who are non-geeky, geeky), and take care that you don’t do experiments on your blog, with your friends, as they may click on your ads(PPC) and make loss to your advertisers 🙂

If you want to know about your blog/website, just ask your friends or online guys to give you feedback about your site.
5. Run contests or giveaways and attract some more people to subscribe to your email updates.
6. Provide value to your readers and they are more likely to subscribe to your blog updates.

These are some of the basic things which we can implement to get more subscribers to our blog updates.

Now we ask you to support us, in the effort of making this place ( Technotip.org ) as a place which provides value to all our readers. Please subscribe to our blog using RSS or email subscription options: