Content is More Important than Look and Feel

This is a short post to remind ourselves that content is more important than look and feel. It is far less fun for some people but in terms of getting traffic, look and feel is much less important than content. The way I see it is this. The website, be it a blog or a conventional website must meet a minimum standard on look and feel. By look and feel I mean the overall appearance of the site. It should give the impression that it is professionally produced. But once that standard has been met, leave it alone.

But, and this is a big but, ultimately, people are searching for information and once they have noticed the look and feel (in passing) they are searching for the information that they want and they want it quickly.

Sometimes the look and feel and design of the site can get in the way of finding information. It should really be pretty plain and well organised. Sounds boring but a simple set up and design is best. You have only got to look at Google to see how the experts do it.

Playing and tinkering with look and feel can be fun but it is taking you away from the more difficult stuff – producing good content. Content is god.

I see some websites that are fabulous looking but no one is looking because no one is finding it. So, if you want some fun designing a great site, you are doing it for yourself because very few other people are going to see it.

And lets remember this. The internet is not static. The opposite, in fact. Every day there is more competition so you have to focus on the god of content and get through look and feel fairly quickly. Or treat yourself to a look and feel tweak after you have produced some content.

Content is More Important than Look and Feel. There are many sites with plain and poor looks but they are a thousand times more effective and visited than the fanciest of blogs.

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How to Get Traffic to Your Blog

How to get traffic to your blog. This is what most of us think about. There is no point, really, in writing a blog unless someone is reading it and the more the better if you are trying to make a bit of money at the same time. These are my points in getting traffic to your blog:

1. Content and patience are king. Keep writing genuinely useful content that people want to read and look at. Have patience to allow Google and the other search engines to list and find your blog. It will take months to get any real traffic. This is a kind of test for us. Google weeds out the people who do not have staying power. I am sure that part of the very complex Google Algorithm is a formula which asks if the blog has been around for “x” amount of time and whether new posts have been added over that time. Google is far bigger than the others so you’ll need to be found and listed by Google in a search. That is one reason why I use Google Blogger. Google understands it’s own products and I say it will tend to favour very slightly Blogger over, say, WordPress.
2. Keep post fairly snappy but content rich. The attention span of modern visitors is short!
3. Use Keywords (What are Keywords). These tell you what people are searching for and you can research supply and demand of keywords. Supply in this context means the number of websites that provide information on a particular subject and demand in this context means the number of people looking for information on a particular subject. You might try Wordtracker. I use SBI (Sitesell) Brainstorm It!
4. Although less important today, the title to the post should be a selected keyword that has high demand and low supply.
5. The keyword referred to at 4 above should be used in the post (but not over used) and as “alt” tags on photos.
6. The keyword should be used in the first line or two of the post.
7. The keyword should be in a link in the post.
8. You should get inbound links to your blog to improve Page Rank. This helps to get your blog listed higher by the search engines. This will come in time if the blog is good as people will want to link to it but initially it means pushing things along by (a) submitting to article sites (b) making comments on other blogs and leaving URLs to your blog (d) getting your blog listed in directories and (e) participating in link exchange agreements.
9. If you can get friends to link to your blog.
10. Join and participate in forums, where your blog is relevant. Include the URL of your blog when appropriate.
11. Search engines may index your blog using the site feed so make sure it is activated.
12. Submit your blog to the search engines, for indexing.
13. Make frequent posts, say one or two a day. As mentioned make the posts as good as possible. Take your time and think long term.

It is hardly ever possible to achieve success on the internet without patience, persistence and determination. Here is another post of the same subject: How to Publicise Your Blog.



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Write Blogs with Windows Live Writer

This is a post about Windows Live Writer. Microsoft are following Google (late in the day) in producing free downloadable products like Windows Live Writer to write posts and articles for your blog. I usually write the posts using the Blogger compose window. I guess 99% of us do as it is very efficient. It is deliberately slightly limited, though. For example, you can’t do tables in Blogger compose mode unless you write the code in Edit Html mode or drop the code in. Or as I mentioned in an earlier post, you can use Google Docs to write the post and build the table (see Creating Tables in Blogger Blogs). You can transfer the finished post extremely easily and directly to the blog. I talk about the process of building blog pages using Google Docs here: Google Docs to Create Blogger Posts.

As compose mode in Google Blogger is slightly limited in functionality it seems Microsoft have used this as an opportunity to create a post editing tool in Windows Live Writer which has greater functionality and, of course, you can use a full computer screen rather than a smallish compose window in Blogger.

Windows Live Writer can be downloaded for use on your computer or used online (cloud computing). I am creating this post on my computer using Windows Live Writer. It is the first time I have used it, having just this minute downloaded it. The download page is here: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

This is a sample table:

How about inserting a picture? Here is one I inserted:

OK that went well. It ran very nicely, in fact. The cat in the picture, incidentally, is an Oriental Shorthair kitten – really very cute indeed. It was taken at a cat show in Oklahoma and is in fact a still image of about 1 MG from a video taken with the new Flip HD video camera. The person who is holding the kitten is the cat breeder, Marty Young. She was kind enough to let me video her kitten while holding him. Thanks Marty.

Windows Live Writer handles pictures extremely well. This is a real bonus for people like me. Blogger is is not bad on photo handling as the photo can be positioned but Live Writer goes a lot further and I love that facility. It even adds an alt tag automatically based on the file name. That saves time but just make sure the file name is good. I am warming to this program a lot.

So far so good. More than that, very good indeed. As you can see I am exploring this program as I go along. You can also add plug ins, maps, photo albums, tags and videos. When you are done, just click, “Publish” and it uploads the page to your blog. The page can be edited in Windows Live Writer and re-uploaded.

Another very impressive feature is the way Windows Live Writer reads your Blogs formatting and matches it. Uploading the finished or amended page to your blog is fast and reliable. In the language of the young, this is a cool product. Nice work MS!

My initial conclusion is that this is a program that I would certainly highly recommend. It is light, clean and easy to use. It is a very modern program, perfect for blogs. I would write bogs with Windows Live Writer.

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Flickr Photostream for Your Blog

It is very easy indeed to create a Flickr photostream for your blog. It need not be a Google Blogger blog. You can drop the code into any blog or webpage. First, of course, you have to be a Flickr member if you want to show your own Flickr photos. That's easy and I'll leave you to work that out - just follow the instructions.

Once you are a member and have posted (uploaded) some photos to your home page and/or joined some groups you can make a slide show (photostream) from the pictures and place that slide show on your website or blog. The photostream can be of your photos or the photos of photographers who are members of a group. A "group" in Flickr terminology means a group of people who have joined together to show off their photos that are all part of a theme.

I am a member of a Flickr Group (Black Cat Brigade) and I formed a group called cat-photo-technique (this is on my site Pictures of Cats.org). And see the Flickr page here: Flickr cat-photo-technique). You can make a Flickr photosteam from your own group or any other group. Here are the steps:

Flickr Photostream for Your Blog - Your Photos

1. Go to your home page.
2. Click on the tab labelled "You".
3. Select Your Photostream.
4. Your photos come up.
5. Top right hand side you will see two options, "Slideshow" and "Share This". Select "Slideshow".
6. Your Slideshow comes up against a black screen.
7. Top right of the screen you will see some options, select, "Share".
8. A window opens and select, "Grab the embed HTML".
9. Drop this code into your blog. In Google Blogger just paste the code into"Edit Html" mode and return to compose. That's it.

Flickr Photostream for Your Blog - Group Photos

1. Go to your home page.
2. Select "Groups" from the horizontal menu at the top.
3. Select "Your Groups".
4. This takes you to groups that you have formed or just joined.
5. Select the one of your choice.
6. When you get to the group photos select, "Group Pool" which is just under the heading for the group.
7. This takes you to the group's photos.
8. Top right hand side you will see two options, "Slideshow" and "Share This". Select "Slideshow".
9. Your Slideshow comes up against a black screen.
10. Top right of the screen you will see some options, select, "Share".
11. A window opens and select, "Grab the embed HTML".
12. Drop this code into your blog. In Google Blogger just paste into in "Edit Html" mode and return to compose. That's it.

You can see the photostream to cat-photo-technique below:

If you simply want to add photos to your Blogger blog using a widget the steps are very easy:

1. Go to Layout page.
2. Select "Add a Gadget".
3. In the search box (top right of window) type "Flickr" and press enter.
4. A list of almost 300 photostreams comes up.
5. Select the one of choice. This will be widget sized photos though. The better way is as described above as it gives more control.
   

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Flip Camera Problem

This is a report on a Flip camera problem. The problem is that after some use the amount of recording time available left is reduced. It can be significantly reduced to the point where the device is unusable. The Flip camera is a fantastic video camera for the reason that it is very small indeed (something like 5" x 2" and about half an inch deep, so it is very portable) yet produces HD video of good quality. This post is not about the camera but the flip camera problem.

photo by photine

This is the problem in more detail:

You buy the camera. You make a video. You store the video on your computer and delete the videos on the Flip camcorder to allow more videos to be made and stored on camera. The maximum amount of recording time is 60 mins. You expect to see 60 minutes of record time available after all the files have been deleted from the Flip camcorder. But on some occasions this isn't the case. The problem seems to be dependent on how the video files are saved to the hard drive from the camera.

Update late March 2011: At the date of this post (see date above), there was and perhaps still is a problem. It may have been fixed. If that is the case, great. 

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Note: In discussing this "problem" (and I am not completely sure that it is a problem) does not mean that I don't like the camcorder. I would highly recommended this video camera. It is very easy to use, the quality it very good, it is very tolerant of poor or color cast lighting and is extremely portable. Portability is very important as it means you can capture those shots that would otherwise have passed you by. It is also inexpensive. Mine cost £147 at Heathrow.

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There are two ways to save the video files:

• In my case, when I first used the camera, I saved all the videos on the camcorder in one go using the icon within the Flip software (bottom left of screen) and I then deleted the videos on the camcorder. The files are saved in a new folder created by the Flip software. The manufacturer says that the files are saved deep within the hard drive for security. When the files are saved and deleted this way the camera doesn't seem to recognize the fact that all the files have been deleted and only allows less than the full 60 minute recording time. In my case this was about 30 mins. This seemed weird. For some reason there were files left in the camcorder.
• The next time I saved the files I did it this way. When the videos show up in the Flip software I click on the video (or a large number of them by clicking on the first one and then clicking on the last one while holding down the "shift" or capitals key). This puts a blue frame around the video. I then right click and a menu comes up. I select the "export" function in this menu. Click on this. I then save the selected videos to a folder that I have opened on the desktop. Once saved (you can see progress on a bar that is bottom left of the screen) I deleted the files using the same menu referred to above (there is a delete function on it).

OK, the second method (a more manual type method) avoids, it seems, the Flip camera problem. A full 60 mins of record time is available after the process. This method of saving files is also required if you are going to make a video with software other than Flip video making software (e.g. Windows Movie maker).

If the problem does come up however, for what ever reason, I have found that the simplest way to solve it is as follows (using MS Windows):

1. Make sure there are no videos in the camera..
2. Connect the camera to your computer.
3. Go to "Computer" and you will see the hard drives including the Flip storage drive (a flash card I believe). It might be labelled, "FLIPVIDEO (G:)".
   
4. Right click on the FLIPVIDEO and select "format" from the menu.
5. A small window comes up. At the bottom of the window click on the check box labelled, "Quick format" and then click on "Start".
6. It takes about 3 seconds to format.
7. Then disconnect the camera in the usual way.

You will have a full 60 mins record time for use. One last point. There may be an update to solve the Flip camera problem.



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Photo: published under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs creative commons License -- this site is for charitable purposes in funding cat rescue.