blogger--tips

Monday, May 6, 2013

How To Add Recent Comments Widget to Blogger

Step 1. Login to your Blogger Dashboard, select your blog - go to Layout and click the Add a Gadget link

Step 2. From the pop-up window, scroll down and choose the HTML/JavaScript option:

Step 3. Copy and paste the below code in the HTML/JavaScript box:

<script style=text/javascript src="http://helplogger.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/recent comments widget.js"></script><script style=text/javascript >var a_rc=5;var m_rc=false;var n_rc=true;var o_rc=100;</script><script src=http://your-blog-name.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=showrecentcomments ></script><span id=rcw-cr><a href=http://helplogger.blogspot.com/2012/03/recent-comments-widget-for-blogger.html>Recent Comments Widget</a></span><style type=text/css> .rcw-comments a {text-transform: capitalize;} .rcw-comments {border-bottom: 1px dotted; padding-top: 7px!important; padding-bottom: 7px!important;} #rcw-cr {font-family: Arial,Tahoma;font-size:9px;padding-top:7px;display:block;} </style>

Step 4. Obviously, you need to replace http://your-blog-name.blogspot.com/ with your blog address.

Other settings:
- To change the number of comments that are being displayed, replace the "5" value from a_rc=5
- If you want to add the date on which the comment has been made, then change the "false" statement from m_rc=false to "true"
- If you want to hide the post titles, then change the "true" statement from n_rc=true to "false"
- And finally, to show more or less comment characters, change the "100" value from o_rc=100

Step 5. Click Save and you're done.

Hope you'll enjoy it!

Add Facebook Like Button Below Post Titles

This Facebook Like button will allow visitors to Like your post and share it to their Facebook friends. In this post we will see how we can add a Like button for each individual Blogger post, and not a Facebook fan box for the entire blog (which is also a good idea to have in your sidebar). Having a Facebook Like button below your post titles makes easier for Facebook users to like specific posts on your blog, which in turn displays the liked content on their profile (and potentially on their friend's feeds).

If you want to add the Facebook Like Button below your blogger post title, then follow these steps:

Adding Facebook Like Button Below Post Titles

Step 1. Go To Blogger Dashboard > Template > Edit HTML

Screenshot

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and search - using CTRL + F keys - for this piece of code:

<data:post.body/>

Note: you might find it more than 3 times, stop to the second one (or third one in case it won't show up after applying the code from step 3)

Step 3. Just above it, paste this code:

<p><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='"http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=" + data:post.url + "&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&width=100& action=like&font=arial&colorscheme=light"' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:100px; height:20px;'/></p>

Screenshot

Step 4. Save your template and you are done with this simple implementation of the Facebook Like button on your Blogger blog.

7 Tips To Increase Google Plus Followers For Best Online Reputation

Even the most diehard social media enthusiast would agree that Google plus can never be half as much fun as Facebook or Twitter are. Or perhaps Pinterest and Instagram can be, in the near future.
While casual surfers can pick and choose the network they want to or enjoy the most, online entrepreneurs, bloggers and internet marketers cannot choose to ignore Google plus.
Since more G+ shares can improve your search engine rankings, generate traffic to your website and make your posts or articles more visible across Google search, it makes sense to work harder on increasing the number of Google plus followers.
“How to increase your Google plus followers” is a question which would, therefore, be of interest to any person who works online for a living.

How to Increase Google Plus Followers?

Here are a few quick tips which you must look into (if you have not done that so far) to improve your G+ presence:

1: Complete your G+ profile

While most of us do create a G+ profile, not many go ahead and complete it by furnishing all the details like education, address, employers, adding a profile picture, etc.
Select the “Edit profile” to add all relevant details to your profile. Also take care to furnish details of all websites and blogs to which you contribute regularly by adding to the “Contributor Section”. This is of utmost importance to claim your Google authorship.

2: Integrate G+ profile with other social networks

This will make your profile look more authentic and will thus help you attract more G+ followers in the long run.

3: Follow other people

You are likely to be followed back by people whom you follow.
Look for people who share the same or similar interests as you and follow them. Besides the possibility of getting more followers, it will help you get more exposure in your chosen field.

4: Help other people

Merely creating a G+ profile and not working on it will get you nowhere. Spend a few minutes on your profile everyday to help other people.

If you are, for instance, an affiliate marketer, look for people who have posted questions regarding Affiliate Marketing or are looking for information on that topic. Provide them meaningful information on that topic, so that they will want to follow you back.

5: Invite people to follow you

Add your Google plus profile link to your Author Bio, to your email signature and invite all friends and family to follow you on Google plus. It would be a good idea to place them in a different circle though, and not in the same circle as your business acquaintances or online contacts so that their profiles do not get spammed by your posts which do not interest them.

6: Add a Google Plus badge

Besides that, adding the Google plus badge to your blog or website really helps. You can add one by checking out on the widgets in your Dashboard. If you know how to place your “Facebook Like box” or “Follow me on Twitter” box, this should be easy for you.

7: Join Google plus communities

Share your posts, views, ideas and opinions with like minded people by joining Google plus communities with similar or same interests as yours. You can even create your own community and invite people to join it.

Conclusion

Follow these simple tips and tricks to attract more followers on Google plus to build up a following for yourself. These tips will surely help you get more G+ followers. If you have any more tips which helped you get more followers, please do share them here with our readers by writing to us via the Comments section. If you enjoyed reading this post, please don’t forget to add me in your G+ circle. Thanks!

Saturday, May 4, 2013

How To Drive Traffic To Your Website With Facebook Images?

There are millions of fan pages on facebook related to thousands of niches and all of them are not succeed to drive traffic to a blog or website. Bloggers (me too :P) used to put posts links there only to update the fan page.
But do you think, only updating the page will help you to succeed in your goal of getting traffic from facebook? If you think yes, then sorry to hurt your feelings. This is not the job done. You have to learn some facebook marketing skills that can bring more ways to increase website traffic.
While working on my facebook fan page, I come to know about a hidden trick that can increase visitors to our blog. Let’s learn what’s the special today.

Increase Visitors To Your Blog

Without taking your too much time, let’s directly come to the topic. In one of my earlier posts about getting traffic from Google Plus, I mentioned that how posting images is helpful to attract wider audience. This concept works everywhere either you are sharing images on Google plus, facebook or any other platform where you can share your stuffs.
You just need to post such images on your facebook fan page for which you can get decent shares. Let’s see how posting images will help you to get visitors to your website.

Step-by-Step Tutorial

Below are some easy to follow steps that we need to take in action. Follow them and see how easily you can learn how to get more website traffic.

Select an image that relates to your niche. Funny or humor related images works great.
Post them on your facebook fan page by writing up a cool description.
Remember: Not to put any link there. It’s not the correct time to promote links :P. Just Wait! We’ll do it later
Try to get maximum shares, likes and comments on that post as much as possible. Do everything that you can do to promote that image. Ask your friends to share it and leave a comment. This way you can get maximum shares. The maximum shares you get, the chances will higher to get more traffic to your blog.

Increase Traffic To Your Blog Using Unverified Subscribers

Once you get enough shares, it’s time to play for our own benefit. Simply click on the image and choose Edit from the right side options.

Now smartly add your blog post link in the description that highly relates to that image. (Matching post will give you more traffic) and press Done Editing button.

After saving the changes, your link will start appearing to each person’s timeline who had shared your image. That means, now your link will also appear to their friends and chances are higher to get more readers. (Free promotion)

Like this:

Points to be Take Care

You need maximum shares on your images to get maximum benefit of this trick.
Don’t put non-related links. Less number of people will click that link.
Please don’t do spamming. Make use of this trick for good purpose.
Most Important: Enjoy free promotion

Final Words!

There are a lot of ways that you can use to drive visitors to your website from social media sites. You just need to figure out those ways, make strategies, apply them and get results.

If you know how to get more traffic to website, then please do share your ways and methods in comment section. I’ll strongly appreciate it. Thanks for reading my post and if you like this concept then don’t forget to share it with your social media friends on Google plus and facebook.

Auto Read More with thumbnail for Blogger/Blogspot Posts

How to make posts in the blog homepage to be displayed with an automatic "read more" button and a thumbnail.

To be more specific, this will show the title of the post, then a short summary with a number of characters and a thumbnail, that will be the thumbnail of the first image uploaded inside the post. After the thumbnail and the post summary, there will be a "Read More" link, which when you click on it, will take you to the actual post.

This Automatic Read More script will summarize content and a post summary will be shown only on the main blog page (homepage), category pages, and archive pages.

Using the Automatic Read More feature in Blogger Posts

Step 1. From your Blogger dashboard, go to Template and click on the Edit HTML button:

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area, then press the CTRL + F keys and search for this code:

<data:post.body/>

Note: after hitting Enter, you'll find this code more than once but you need to stop at the second one.

Step 3. Replace the code above with this one:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "static_page"'>
<div expr:id='"summary" + data:post.id'><data:post.body/></div>
<script type='text/javascript'>createSummaryAndThumb("summary<data:post.id/>");</script>
<span class='readmore' style='float:right'><a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read More »</a></span></b:if></b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'><data:post.body/></b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'><data:post.body/></b:if>

Step 4. Now search for the following tag:

</head>

Step 5. Just above the </head> tag, add the following code:

<script type='text/javascript'>
posts_no_thumb_sum = 490;
posts_thumb_sum = 400;
img_thumb_height = 120;
img_thumb_width = 120;
</script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
function removeHtmlTag(strx,chop){
if(strx.indexOf("<")!=-1)
{
var s = strx.split("<");
for(var i=0;i<s.length;i++){
if(s[i].indexOf(">")!=-1){
s[i] = s[i].substring(s[i].indexOf(">")+1,s[i].length);
}
}
strx = s.join("");
}
chop = (chop < strx.length-1) ? chop : strx.length-2;
while(strx.charAt(chop-1)!=' ' && strx.indexOf(' ',chop)!=-1) chop++;
strx = strx.substring(0,chop-1);
return strx+'...';
}
function createSummaryAndThumb(pID){
var div = document.getElementById(pID);
var imgtag = "";
var img = div.getElementsByTagName("img");
var summ = posts_no_thumb_sum;
if(img.length>=1) {
imgtag = '<span class="posts-thumb" style="float:left; margin-right: 5px;"><img src="'+img[0].src+'" width="'+img_thumb_width+'px" height="'+img_thumb_height+'px"/></span>';
summ = posts_thumb_sum;
}
var summary = imgtag + '<div>' + removeHtmlTag(div.innerHTML,summ) + '</div>';
div.innerHTML = summary;
}
//]]>
</script>

Note:

- To change the number of characters shown when there is no thumbnail, modify the 490 value in blue. For the number of characters shown when a post has a thumbnail, modify the 400 value.
- If you want larger thumbnails, modify the values (120) in red.

Step 6. Click on the Save template button to save the changes.

That's it, enjoy!

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Add Social Bookmarking Buttons near Adsense Ads

The main advantages of this widget is that you can increase your AdSense impressions along with CTR - and of course, fill up the empty space besides Adsense units, making your blog look more attractive.
Adding the social bookmarking buttons at the top of your blogger post, will make things easier when your readers will want to share your posts via the networking sites. The widget includes buttons for Del.icio.us, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Technorati and Digg.

How to add this widget:

1. Firstly, login to your Blogger Dashboard and go to Template and then click on the Edit HTML button
(don't forget to make a backup of your template)

2. Search (CTRL + F) for the following tag:

]]></b:skin>

3. Paste the following CSS code just above it:

.ads{margin-bottom:10px; border-top:solid 1px #DEDEDE; padding-top:10px; font-size:13px;}
.ads-right-min{border-left:solid 1px #DEDEDE; height:250px; padding-left:10px;}
.ads-right-min a:link,
.ads-right-min a:visited,
.bottom-share-links a:link,
.bottom-share-links a:visited{
font-size:12px;
color:#222;
display:block;
height:22px;
line-height:22px;
margin-bottom:16px;
padding-left:32px;
}
.ads-right-min a:hover,
.bottom-share-links a:hover{color:#666;}
.mini-tech{background:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXejWN9VozTB57F1s5M7-bwpDmBgHb6xO68SXjCV9pneNVa3689orlzHQAYg9TRwGwlw3UWKwG4W7PGQKzpaT_uM05S5h-HUWKjJpZqlgE2hNamWb7jcCs2gG8G9128FFlQQTj8VjOtTA2/s1600/technorati.gif) no-repeat;}
.mini-facebook{background:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg62q_IJkJOTodiq5IeLtDplEbO7KDNTMPhB0f5O6rNa0W0bW6K7IwxcEny_nf6Gk0tg2nscY1-5mxo_vIAy4QmxVk4koL4rxTzMmhAPImKRVhFKp-D1H5wtCFzgJLilnBzmBSV6eAO_EoM/s1600/facebook.gif) no-repeat;}
.mini-tweet{background:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4X8ZjKhGHo0HzvehDySz1p4xY5xqAFjuK504orrhwN8AfHmabmNwsmaLSIM4Q9mzavrZoKTeJxrrof_1VVPUgZM5fPHMcljRPgL0Fz9_lZFfPy_jKUE6H2sQNNH4I42Z77fx_jU0fqakJ/s1600/tweet.gif) no-repeat;}
.mini-del{background:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb-qQAwSHFTiPfvq_LvAuZscIBHO22HmzpxP5jkHCCs0xvgKmLLPyaAshvURfWD-DIYIQIxTDOJ_gCryWcBGtqh3J9b9E-KanrS8iPUW2jaT02z8BXf9_FJJRUsXx89W8TufMBcXWSCpml/s1600/delicious.jpg) no-repeat;}
.mini-stumble{background:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcCOCSJvZLAkOKbAEdyvxjB_sU61iaZMfPFE3Rkwy05jyFfFnGcrPyPy77K2izkAwiPyo2er9-7up892A9zqbge_5ws1JGWXvaCsBL0fiSASX2VA5A-DW3F9Q0FtVN7mDxxuSLODGeqZJu/s1600/stumbleupon.png) no-repeat;}
.mini-digg{background:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOoBpYVDYQ-w3lEp8468nuqAa9t2iEmTvgfE1WjycNClk3pdDI2HwxMkIVVYS1Dhd9atRCLbmDMAl21TMKRyAJCyKdLDNmK9TluHt05ln-NtcHR3l39-Oa1yetdKC8o1VbdtEQWya4W_9i/s1600/Digg.png) no-repeat;}

4) Now search - using "CTRL+F" - for the following line:

<div class='post-body entry-content'>

If you can't find it, search for this one:

<div class='post-body entry-content' expr:id='"post-body-" + data:post.id'>

5) Add the following code directly below it:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<div class='ads'>
<table border='0' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='100%'>
<tr>
<td width='354'>
<script type='text/javascript'></script>
<script src='http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js' type='text/javascript'>
</script>
</td>
<td><div class='ads-right-min'>
<a class='mini-del' expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Add To Del.icio.us'>Add This To Del.icio.us</a>
<a class='mini-tweet' expr:href='"http://twitter.com/home?status=Reading " + data:post.title + " " + data:post.url' target='_blank' title='Post this article on Twitter'>Tweet/ReTweet This</a>
<a class='mini-facebook' expr:href='"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Share On Facebook'>Share on Facebook</a>
<a class='mini-stumble' expr:href='"http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Stumble This'>StumbleUpon This</a>
<a class='mini-tech' expr:href='"http://www.technorati.com/faves?add=" + data:post.url' target='_blank' title='Add To Technorati'>Add to Technorati</a>
<a class='mini-digg' expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank' title='Digg This'>Digg This</a>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</b:if>

Replace YOUR PUBLISHER ID with your AdSense account ID. You'll find it with the Home tab, on your "Account settings" page. It should look something like this:

pub-5623269265862168 (copy only the numbers and then paste them)

6) Save template... and just go to one of your post to see the changes.

AdSense optimization tips straight from Google

Do you use Google AdSense to monetize your site? Then check out these top 5 optimization tips straight from Google!

Top AdSense Optimization Tips

1. Maximize your AdSense coverage
In order to maximize your earnings, place three AdSense ad units and three link units on each of your pages. The more ads you display, the more opportunities you have for your users to engage with them.

Also, because some ads are paid on a cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, you will often be paid just for displaying the ads, regardless whether a user clicks on them.

2. Place your ads above the fold
Ads that appear higher on the page perform the best. Place your ads so users can see them without scrolling down the page. The more a user has to scroll before finding your ads, the less likely they are to see them and to click on them.

3. Use the best performing ad units
Our advertisers’ preferred ad units are the Leaderboard (728×90), the Medium Rectangle (300×250) and the Wide Skyscraper (160×600). By using these popular ad units, you’ll be tapping into a larger pool of competing ads. More ad inventory leads to more competition in the ad auction and ultimately results in higher RPMs for our publishers.

4. Show text and image ads
Check your ad units and make sure that you’ve opted-in to displaying text and image ads. By diversifying your ads, you’re able to increase the available inventory for your site. With most text ads paid on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis and most image ads paid on a cost-per-impression (CPM) ad, you can let AdSense determine which ads will maximize your earnings.

5. Complement your content with your ads
Your AdSense ads should fit seamlessly within your site to improve your users’ experience. Blend the color of your ads to match the rest of your site and remove the borders around your ad units to help your ads complement your content and enhance your site.

Bonus Tip: Opt-in to Placement Targeting
Set up Custom Channels in your AdSense account and opt-in to Placement Targeting. Placement targeting allows our advertisers to bid on a specific ad or group of ad placements on your site. Advertisers are usually willing to bid more for targeted units.

Have additional questions? Check out http://adsense.google.com/support

And that’s it. At the end of the day, it's all about testing your ads and monitoring how they perform for you on your site. Good luck!