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Blogs show passion while social networks boost their own revenue! Did it ever come to your mind that blogs are much more independent than your accounts / pages on Facebook and Twitter? Read on... When you post something on your blog, it is there till you take it down or hide it. If a good number of people comment on it and share it on their blogs / sites, that post is also likely to come high on search pages when people search that type of content on Google etc. On the other hand, social network sites play with the content and upgrade or downgrade it based on its commercial value. For example, on your Facebook newsfeed, you will find that all your friends' streams are not shown. On the other hand, you might find an advertisement as if you had followed that and wanted it to show up on the newsfeed. The new technology allows the big daddies of social media to push their advertisements based on what you searched or browsed recently.  And you can put on your blog ...

If you have come here to know the latest features of blogging platform 'Blogger ', please go to the latest post linked here.  We are not removing the present post as it reminds of the features that Blogger used to have in 2014.   Long ago, I ran a series on the less known but useful features of Blogger, one of the most popular blogging platforms. In the meantime, Blogger has changed a lot. I find that many blogger friends on this platform have not explored all the features of this excellent blogging platform or have not kept pace with its upgrades. So this post. Before focusing on some superb features, two things: One, do not blindly apply all types of features only because they look fancy. Use them after analysing their value to your blog and ensuring that these won't hurt your blog's design, navigation, readability and reputation. For example, fancy fonts do not go well with a serious blog. Two, before coming to special features (which I'd discuss in subseq...

Bloggers many times put text inside images with different things in mind. At times it works to their advantage while many times it makes the blog look childish. Take the example of small sayings superimposed tastefully on images. In such cases, the entire piece looks like a piece of art and gives the text an iconic identity. You can see some examples of this in these two posts: 1 , 2 . But this, like a special effect, should not be overdone in blog posts. Text works fine as an image or inside an image, when put as the title of the blog. It helps in recall of the blog’s identity. Poet bloggers often use a background image to enhance intensity of their poems. Some blogs excel in beautifully composing their small posts of quotations etc with appropriate images. This all is fine but only if the basics of readability, design etc are kept in mind. We have earlier dealt with this and other related aspects at this link on placing images on blogs . We have seen a good number of blog...

Most of us bloggers open our blogs 'on the spur of the moment' and keep posting on it whatever comes to our mind. In the Directory of Best Indian Blogs , you will find more than a hundred such blogs under 'personal' category. We are not saying that there is something intrinsically wrong with posting personal matter on the blog. In fact, blogs (originally called web logs or web diaries) were/are primarily meant to do that. In fact, the blogs selected by us in the 'personal' category of the Directory are indeed very good blogs. So, what's the issue? The issue is lazy blogging; maintaining the blog like a Facebook timeline (or worse, like a Twitter account) just because  we have not thought of making the blog something better. This also explains why a large number of bloggers have left blogging or reduced it in favour of Facebook or other networking sites: they have found new platforms better than the blog for their personal chatter or comment on what...

Most bloggers the world over just blog. Their love for writing and/or clicking photos and sharing them on the blog keeps them going. They write about any topic that stokes their imagination - from spiritual and emotional matters to mundane daily life. They post photos, audio clips and videos of whatever they feel is worth sharing. They engage with other like-minded bloggers. Blogging is their love.  Such bloggers make the bulk of the blogosphere. The common bloggers often open a blog to satisfy the itch to share something more serious and permanent than posts on their Facebook or other social networking accounts. They feel they can write better than many others. They feel they have some special viewpoint on life-matters. They want to have a place where they can put their poems written over years or to share their views with the world whenever they are agitated with their government's  actions or something bad happening in the society. They keep the blo...

Some people take wrong actions deliberately; they are crooks and criminals. But some do wrong things inadvertently; they are innocent but are not so in the eyes of the society and the law. This post is to caution such innocent bloggers who inadvertently  break a law, offend people, hurt the blog’s reputation.  Do not copy. Do not copy others’ content be it text or graphic or a/v content. In case you must copy, attribute the source but in many cases this will not be enough, e.g. copying a song or photograph or a research document available only to members. Do not use untested widgets and codes. Putting such matter on the blog could harm the blog in many ways: spurious activity such as stealing private information, key-logging, annoying visitors by forcing them to commercial sites, linking to bad sites, etc. In any case, put only such widgets that will add value to the blog. Do not give personal information about others. Unless it serves a special purpose ...

It is often seen that businesses are guided by their IT advisers to go for large portals and have their presence on social networking sites [right now, very fashionable]. Anything that is more sensible but not ‘in vogue’ soon loses importance in the eyes of such star-grazers. Blogs fall in this category. Yet research by international social-media sites as well as marketers themselves have shown that blogs give lots of value to the blog, which websites and social networking presence do not give.   Blog content is more permanent than that on social networking messages. Social networking sites, especially Facebook and Twitter, create content so fast that unless you are always creating content or are repeating your content again and again (and this could be irritating), your content will be swamped by content that is constantly posted by others.  Blogs have more authority and higher credibility than other platforms. Research shows that a significant num...