Media & Business.

Guest article by Syed Abbas from Tnerd
With thousands of blogs being launched every day, one has to offer something different from the others to stand out of the crowd. The “differentiator” is what the readers will remember and that’s precisely what will bring them back to your blog. [Image credit: anniemole]

Give them a reason to remember what they saw, read and felt while they are on your blog. There are lot of other things besides “content” which are quite important in creating a brand for your blog.

Lets look at a few things which will help you make your blog more professional and create a brand.

1. Look and feel of the site is very important
Look of the site makes the first impression on the readers and visitors. Keep it nice, simple and clean. Make sure you install a theme with the right color combination and not something which hurts the eye. You can use services like  Adobe Kuler or Color Schemer to choose a good color scheme.

Don’t have ads all over the page; let your readers read the content without any distraction. Making money should always be a part of writing great content and not the other way round.

2. Google Apps (customized email addresses)
Google Apps offers several products such as e-mail, calendar, messenger (GTalk), Google docs, etc. under your own domain name. So you can have e-mail address at your domain name (e.g. nerds@tnerd.com) for absolutely free. These e-mails accounts are not any different from the regular gmail accounts.

Having a personalized e-mail address adds that touch of exclusivity to your domain. Go for it! Click here to register with Google Apps.

3. Customized email for registered users
When users register with the site, an automated email is sent to the user confirming the registration at the site. The New User email setup wordpress plugin lets you edit the “from” email address, Subject and the body of the e-mail. This ads a personal touch to it. Exclusive again!

4. About and Contact page
Have a proper “About” page - write about the site, yourself, the team, etc… Having a good About page lets you connect with your users and blogging is all about creating relationships. It also shows how serious you are about the site/blog you are running.

Instead of mentioning mailto links, have a contact page where users can fill a form and submit to send an e-mail. Doesn’t it sound nice and easy. Cforms wordpress plugin lets you create forms and add to you blog.

5. Feedburner URL
Feedburner is a great service and everyone running a blog should certainly make use of it. It offers a feature called “MyBrand” which lets you have the feed at your own domain name, so instead of http://feedproxy.google.com/TechnologyNerd you can have http://feeds.tnerd.com/TechnologyNerd. What do you think; doesn’t that make you look good?

6. Comment Relish
Thank the first time commenter’s on your site by sending them an instant personalized e-mail. This not only helps you keep the visitors coming back, but leaves a good impression on the reader. Remember it’s a thank you e-mail so don’t put the visitor off by writing much - just a thank you and subscribe to our feed should be enough. Get the Comment Relish wordpress plugin.

7. Custom Login Page
Having your own login page wouldn’t hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I love wordpress and give full credit to it on my blog, but I want to have my own login screen too.  BM Custom Login wordpress plugin will let you customize the login screen and have your own theme on running on it. It is the best in the town which lets you customize the screen.

Syed Abbas blogs on Technology Nerd (TNerd) and provides latest articles, news, tips and tricks on Media and Technology. He formerly worked at Google as Search Quality Strategist. Got some tips to share, you can also write a guest article on QOT.

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Copyright 2008. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

News is out that few people can access the new, toolbar-free version of StumbleUpon. But how can you access these new features still under beta testing? There are no invites, but there is a secret Stumbleupon group where you can try the magic.

Visit the Stumbleupon Beta Group and you will find that all the beta testing features automatically become enabled for you. Joining comes with a warning.

NOTICE: Joining this group will make you automatically start seeing features that are undergoing development and may be unstable. If you wish to leave beta testing, please resign this group.

I am not sure if they activated it for top stumblers, but I kept waiting for days to see the new toolbar-free version of StumbleUpon, but it is still not activated on my account. So I joined this group, and instantly the front page of the site changed and I could access all the new features.

Check out the new toolbar which sits unobtrusively on top of any open window and lets you Stumble new sites, star them and thumbs them up or down too. For all the features, you would still need the regular toolbar. You can leave the group anytime and it reverses back to the old Stumbleupon, but I am sure you will not switch back disappointed.

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Copyright 2008. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Pixelated is a free full-day online conference with some of the world’s leading speakers talking of how business is changing and it is live right now. No travel. No registration. No airport line-ups. No hotels. No fees. Simply brilliant insights to push your business forward.

Pixelated helps you grow your business by lining up top speakers but how is it free? It basically involves collecting the best videos on a particular niche topic and organizing and presenting the videos in the form of a online video conference.

Here is a lecture by Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik

It was inspired by OnClick, the Online Marketing Virtual Conference mashup organized a few days back which organized multiple videos on online marketing by time slots just like an actual conference.

Here is an inspiring lecture by marketing expert Seth Godin

I see this online conference idea catching on. Bloggers often make lists of tips, tricks and hacks, which is very popular with social media. If you can browse around video sharing sites, you can effectively gather some timeless advice-rich videos from top speakers -  get them together and you can run your own online conference.

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Copyright 2008. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.