How Your About Page Can Make or Break Your Blog

ProBlogger Blog Tips

This guest post is by Lea Woodward of www.DotNetConnector.com.

Did you know that the second place many new readers go after hitting the home page of your blog is your About page? Go and check your stats and you’ll probably see that if it’s not up there at #2, it’s probably still pretty high up on the list of “most viewed” links. Chris Brogan noticed this, so it must be true!

This isn’t really a surprise—most people are curious to find out more about who writes the blog they’ve just landed on. While they’re looking for this information, they’re probably thinking three things:

  • Who is this guy or girl telling me all about how to make money blogging?
  • Should I stick around and read more?
  • Is it worth me bookmarking or subscribing to this site and coming back again?

If you don’t lose readers at the home page (which you can avoid by compelling headlines and killer content to browse around), the second most common place to lose them is at your About page.

Here’s how to avoid that—and how to ensure your About page makes your blog, rather than breaks it.

Introduce yourself

Tell us what your name is, and include a photo. This sounds simple but I can’t tell you how many About pages I’ve read where the blogger frequently mentions “I” and “me”, or “we” and “us”, where the username is “admin” and there’s no mention of a name (or names) anywhere on the site—not even the About page.

The exception of course is if you’re blogging anonymously, but even so, it’s nice to give yourself (or your alter ego) a pen name. People like names and they like to put a face to a name, even if it’s cartoon one.

Remember the mantra: WIIFM?

Somewhere up near the top of your About page, it’s a good idea to tell readers what’s in it for them if they stick around on your site and even subscribe. They’ll be scanning your page thinking, “What’s in it for me? Should I stick around?” If you can answer that succinctly early on, you’ll save them time and attract the kind of audience you’re actually looking for.

About them

If your blog covers a wide range of topics and it’s not super-targeted, it can be useful to actually state who your blog is for. You can even be as obvious as to include a “Who this blog is for” section listing a few items describing your ideal readers. It’s a fast, simple way to help readers figure out whether they want to stick around or not.

Be personal, but not too personal

It depends upon the topic of your blog, but it’s usually a good idea to share your credentials or expertise in the topic you’re blogging about. If you don’t have any, and you’re writing more of a “share your journey” blog, then say this. It helps people figure out where you are on the path in relation to them, and whether they’ll get something from sticking around.

The depth and level of personal information you share will depend upon the type of blog you’re writing—whether it’s a topic-focused blog or more of a personality-based blog.

Determine the goal of your About page

As you’ve probably gathered by now, your About page isn’t just a place to tell people more about you: it can be so much more. You need to determine the goal(s) of your About page, and then make sure that your page achieves those goals. For example, your About page can:

  • be an ideal place to highlight your best content, allowing you to share links to deeper content within your site
  • encourage people to sign up to your newsletter—which works especially well for “behind the scenes” newsletters and those which are used to share more personal information from the blogger
  • give readers other ways to connect with you, by sharing links to your social media profiles and encouraging readers to connect with you there, too
  • provide readers with social proof and testimonials, helping to establish your credibility and authority from the start.

Always end with a call to action

Your About page is a great place to encourage those who’ve stuck with you until the end of the page, to keep going … but you do need to give them some direction. This goes hand in hand with the point above: once you’ve determined what you’d like your About page to do for your site and your readers, make sure you end strongly by giving readers pointers about the next steps to take, should they be interested.

The above advice can be summarized in the following three points. Your About page should, at the very least, achieve the following:

  • Introduce the person and personality behind the blog.
  • Help new readers easily identify whether your blog is for them.
  • Direct them to do something specific once they’ve read it (whatever it is you’d ideally like them to do next).

Take advantage of this golden opportunity to make another great impression on new readers and create an About page that helps your blog stand out from the others.

What does your About page say about you?

Lea Woodward helps bloggers and online entrepreneurs craft About pages that make stronger, deeper, longer-lasting connections with readers at www.DotNetConnector.com. You can connect with her on Twitter @leawoodward or on her personal blog, www.LeaWoodward.com.

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How Your About Page Can Make or Break Your Blog

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Geohot Call his Fans to Support him to Continue the War Against Sony

Geohot
Geohot is now opening a new blog specially to continue the war against Sony regarding PS3 Jailbreak, Geohot is asking fans to support him via donations.
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tl;dr
Sony is lame, and is suing me for hacking MY OWN PS3. Help me own them in court

Sony are bullies
Sony doesn't care if what you did was legal, if they don't like it, they sue. Sony tried to sue a guy for getting his AIBO to do non Sony approved tricks, making it apparent that they don't really care about piracy, they care about control. In (Sony v Bleem), Bleem was the winner on all counts, but the high cost of a legal defense shut them down. Fortunately, that suit helped set precedent on the legality of emulators. I would hate to lose this case due to resource starvation, and with the support of the masses, I won't. Lets turn the bully back on itself. This case has the ability to set a huge precedent for consoles and all closed systems to come. The other two should be begging Sony to back off.

Sony sued the wrong guy
I am an advocate against mass piracy, do not distribute anyone's copyrighted work but my own, do not take crap lying down, and am even pro DRM in a sense. For example, I believe Apple has every right to lock down their iPhone in the factory as much as they want, but once it's paid for and mine, I have the right to unlock it, smash it, jailbreak it, look at it, and hack on it. Fortunately, the courts agree with me on this point.
My PS3 goal has been to provide users a legitimate path to homebrew, which by the standards of all previous cases (or, in reverse), is 100% legal. Sony does not even try to allege piracy or copyright infringement in this case, they allege I did things like play "super mario world, an unauthorized game" on MY PS3. And access MY PS3 in an unauthorized way. Who are they to authorize what I do with my taxed and paid for property?
fail0verflow's goal was even nobler than mine. They wanted to give you back a feature Sony illegally stole, Linux on your PS3. It's shameful on Sony's part that they are being sued at all. If you have a problem with pirates, sue them, don't sue people who point out your shortcomings.

Why should I care about your personal legal troubles?
You shouldn't. For example, if I was taken to court for sex crimes in Sweden, I would never ask for donations. But this case isn't about me. Clearly I am not being sued because of something I have that Sony wants, I am being sued in order to send a message that Sony is not to be messed with. But if I(and all codefendants likewise) actually win this, we have the power to send a much stronger message back. That consumers have rights, and we aren't afraid to stand up for them.

Why should I trust you? I just saw you trying to rap battle Sony
My attempts at humor aside, I do take this whole matter very seriously. Again, it's not about me, I was on the verge of quitting this stuff last June, and I would hate to be the one who sets a reputation for hackers that all a company has to do is sue us and we back down. In fact, I want the opposite reputation set, that the more a company tries to abuse the legal system, the harder we rally back. I will be the first person in line on the launch date of the Xperia Play, and itching to get my hands on the Next GEOHOT Project.

Why did you wait until now to set this up?
I didn't want to be trigger happy, and thought the suit might go away quickly. Also, I had to consult with my lawyers about how to do this. It's been over a month, and it looks like this is going to be a drawn out case. I am in this for the long haul. I am very serious ethically when I take donations, for all iPhone work I only accepted after the fact, here after the fact is too late. Now I am pot committed so to say.

How much should I donate?
Put it this way, Sony has 5 lawyers, I have 2. I'd like to level the playing field, and really get some hard hitters in there. I have already racked up over 10k in legal bills; donate whatever you feel like. Leftover donations at the end of all this will be donated to the EFF.

What if I want to donate more than I feel comfortable sending through PayPal?
I'm excited! Email me, we'll figure it out.

Why doesn't the EFF fund this?
Ask them. They have offered to provide some legal help though, which is much appreciated.

Donate to help you, you're the reason I can't play Modern Warfare now…
No, I'm not. Kakaroto explains this really well here. I have never played PS3 online ever. Frankly I'm amazed by the apparent ease with which these cheats were created, security 101, why is the security in the client anyway? I had no idea this would happen, and am in full support of the cheaters being permabanned from PSN.

I'm a poor college student, what can I do to help?
I feel you, don't worry. Spread the word. Let people know how you feel about what Sony is doing. Let Sony know how you feel about what Sony is doing.

What if SCEA tries to settle?
Lets just say, I want the settlement terms to include OtherOS on all PS3s and an apology on the PlayStation blog for ever removing it. It'd be good PR for Sony too, lord knows they could use it. I'm also willing to accept a trade, a legit path to homebrew for knowledge of how to stop new firmwares from being decrypted.

Why isn't SCEA trying to settle?
RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE...THEY POINTED OUT OUR SECURITY FLAWS...IM SO MADDDDDDDD...WAHHHHHH

You can visit the new blog from here. Do you think this is the appropriate time to release iPhone 4 unlock.
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How to Write Blog Posts That Go Viral

The Smart Passive Income Blog

Viral Blog PostsThis is a guest post by Onibalusi, a 17 year old (yes, I said 17) blogger who you can find at YoungPrePro.com. What impresses me most about Oni is not his age, but really how smart and hard working this young man is. He’s one of the hardest working bloggers that I know (of all ages) and English isn’t even his primary language.

Enjoy, and be ready for the next session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast coming this Monday. Cheers!

It’s not natural for blog posts to go viral and there are a lot of factors that can determine how successful your blog posts will be. Even though the size of your blog and the type of your audience matter, there are other factors that are even more important that will determine how viral your blog posts will be.

How Do You Know If Your Blog Posts Will Go Viral?

First, I must tell you that there is no guarantee that your posts will go viral, but there are some things that you can do to increase your chances. After analyzing a lot of big blogs I was able to come up with a list of some of the most important factors:

1. Your Headline

Your headline is the number one element that can determine how viral your post will be, so it’s very important to spend more time crafting great headlines. Even though quality content is important, your quality content might not be read if you don’t have a great headline.

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.” – Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

In other words, spend more time coming up with great headlines, and you’ll increase the chances of people reading your posts.

There are many factors that determine a great headline and lots of tutorials on that subject (Copyblogger’s magnetic headlines) but below are 4 important factors you must consider when writing a headline:

You must make sure your headlines are…

- Useful: Why should a reader read your post in the first place? Always make sure your headline communicates usefulness to your readers, and make sure your headline makes it clear that your post is worth their time.
- Urgent: Online, procrastination is very common. Many people tend to delay things until they forget about it completely. Make sure your headline communicates extreme urgency to get them to read it now.
- Unique: There are a lot of other blogs out there and your readers are subscribed to a number of them, and there’s no point reading the same content over and over again. Your headline should show that your post is different from all of other posts they’ve ever read.
- Ultra-Specific: It’s also important to be very specific when writing your headlines. Don’t confuse your readers and let them know exactly what they’ll get from reading your post.

2. Do Not Under-Deliver

Many viral campaigns fail not because of the headline, but because of the content. Misusing great headlines can bring you more harm than good.

Why?

Because compelling headlines with a low quality post lead to disappointed readers.

Great headlines alone are not responsible for viral posts, but great headlines backed up with solid content are.

Always make sure your posts deliver on the promise of your headline as this will not only bring more people in but it will also encourage them to share your post and create a viral effect.

How to Write Viral Posts

1. List Posts

A list post is a great post to write because they have a higher tendency of going viral. If you take a look at the most popular blogs you’ll notice that most of their popular posts are list posts.

When trying to write a list post it’s very important not to just write a list without any explanation. Back up your points with a detailed explanation.

Here are examples of list posts that went viral on some of the top blogs:

The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers (Copyblogger) – 1200 retweets, 200 comments and 200 facebook shares

Top 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using LinkedIn (Problogger) – 1,100 retweets and 148 comments

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid (Dailyblogtips) – Over 400 comments and 24k views via StumbleUpon

2. How-to Posts

How-to posts also have a higher tendency of going viral compared to other types of posts.

Another great advantage of writing how-to posts is the search engine advantage. Many search engine visitors start their searches with “how to“, which means you’re more likely to get search engine traffic from your post in the long run.

Below is a great example of a how-to post that went viral on a top blog:

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business (Copyblogger) – With over 700 retweets, 140 facebook shares and 350 comments.

3. Case Studies

Another type of post that can easily go viral is the case study post.

Case studies tend to go viral not only because of how informative they are, but because they are very practical. Readers don’t just love to read theories, but they also want to see you in action and they want to see if you’re truly getting results.

Below is a great example of a case study post that went viral on a top blog:

THE Backlinking Strategy That Works (SmartPassiveIncome) – With over 425 comments, this post is a great example of a viral case study post.

People love validation, and with a case study you get the process, and the results.

4. Controversial Posts

Controversial posts also tend to go viral, especially if it disagrees with a popular trend.

When trying to write a controversial post, it’s important to make sure you don’t write a post that can bring about negative traffic, but rather use your controversial post to try to get quality traffic.

A great example of a viral controversial post is the example shown below:

Twitter Lists – I’m Not Down (Chris Brogan) – With over 150 comments and 326 retweets this post shows that controversial posts can be a good source of viral traffic.

5. Top Posts

Writing top posts that rank the influencers in your niche can be a great source of viral traffic. People love to read about top influential people, and you can use this to your advantage to get more traffic to your blog.

Below is a great example of a viral top post:

50 Most Influential People in Blogging 2010 (IncomeDiary) – With 297 facebook shares, 77 comments and over 240 retweets this post ranking the top 50 bloggers is a great example of a viral top post.

Conclusion

When trying to write blog posts that go viral, you should also know that luck does play a role. But, if you implement the right strategies you will give your blog posts a much better chance of going viral and finding success.

Onibalusi Bamidele is a 17-year-old entrepreneur living the internet lifestyle.  Learn more from him by subscribing to his blog and get his guide to guest blogging for more on guest blogging with success.


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Thank you so much!

How to Write Blog Posts That Go Viral

Related posts:

  1. 8 Hot Posts From Around the Web
  2. How to Determine the BEST Revenue Sharing Website to Write For
  3. The Next Best Revenue Sharing Site to Write For Is…
  4. A Quick Exercise That Will Help You Write Better – You Try!
  5. Different Posts for Different Folks – Beyond Just Being Consistent

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More File Formats in Google Docs Viewer

Google Operating System
Google Docs Viewer added support for a lot of new file formats. You can now use it to open Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from Office 2007 and Office 2010, Apple Pages files, PostScript documents, Microsoft XPS documents, TrueType fonts, graphics from Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk AutoCad and SVG files.

"Not only does this round out support for the major Microsoft Office file types (we now support DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS and XLSX), but it also adds quick viewing capabilities for many of the most popular and highly-requested document and image types," informs Google.

Google Docs Viewer is integrated with Gmail and Google Docs, so you can now open many Gmail attachments and Google Docs files without installing additional software.



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One of Steve Jobs' first TV appearances in vintage video

TUAW

It's always fun to take a look back in time and it is even more fun when the person we are looking back at is Steve Jobs. In this short video clip, a 23-year old Steve Jobs prepares for one of his first television appearances. It is entertaining to see him act surprised when he spies himself on the television set and admits frankly that he is about to throw up, presumably from nerves. It is delightfully geeky and a refreshingly candid glimpse of a man who now commands the stage. The full video is after the break. Enjoy!

[Via CrunchGear]

Continue reading One of Steve Jobs' first TV appearances in vintage video

One of Steve Jobs' first TV appearances in vintage video originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Western Union now in the Palestinian Territories

Inside AdSense
As part of our ongoing goal to provide more payment options around the world, we're very excited to announce the arrival of Western Union Quick Cash® payments for the Palestinian Territories (Gaza & the West Bank).

For those of you who aren't familiar with this form of payment, Western Union Quick Cash payments are free and will reach you faster than checks. Payments will continue to follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup in your local currency at your local Western Union agent the day after they're issued.

A couple of things to note: We can send Western Union payments only to publishers that have an individual account at this time. Also, the payee name on your account must exactly match the government-issued ID card that you'll use when picking up your payments. For more information on how to sign up for and pick up Western Union payments, please visit our Help Center.

We're continually looking into the feasibility of introducing new forms of payment and new delivery options in different countries. Stay tuned to the blog as we work to improve the payments experience for publishers around the word!

Posted by Deborah Chang - AdSense Payments team

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Beberapa pitur baru dari Yahoo Mail baru yang masih beta

Beberap pitur dari Yahoo Mail yang baru.

  • Lebih Cepat

Selesaikan tugas Anda dengan cepat dan mudah. 

  • Terlindungi dari Spam dengan lebih baik

Teknologi terbaru akan menyampaikan hanya email yang Anda inginkan dan memblokir spam yang tidak diinginkan.

  • Kapasitas Tanpa Batas

Simpan apa pun yang Anda inginkan. Semuanya gratis.

  • Terhubung

Link-kan feed Facebook Anda agar Anda dapat melihat, mem-posting, dan mengetahui kabar terkini.

  • Chat

Terhubung ke teman secara instan melalui IM atau SMS.

  • Selalu Mobile

Dapatkan Yahoo! Mail pada perangkat yang mendukung internet, termasuk iPhone, iPad, dan Android.