Blog Promotion with Zemanta

Image via CrunchBase

My experience with Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ had been awful when it comes to getting shares or even hits. I think it’s partly luck as my post gets pushed down by a wave of cute kitten memes, political rants, and timewasting, but very interesting videos. It’s also partly because I don’t feel comfortable spamming people with links to my blog.

I had better luck with a plugin called “Zemanta”. It inserts a sidebar that allows you to quickly find images for your blog as well as articles that are related. When you click on the articles, sometimes, you get clicked-back. Almost all of my comments came from these links.

I had stopped using Zemanta as it is a bit flakey with Windows Live Writer (WLW). WLW is something I use when I want to blog offline. I can’t get to blogger when I’m in the car and there’s no free wi-fi around. When I get home, I usually would connect to the internet, allow Zemanta to load, add all of the extras, then publish it to my blog.

At one point, WLW started to crash before I could type anything, so I finally just turned off the plugin. Sure enough, my legitimate hits went down.

A couple of days ago, I tried Zemanta again on live writer and found that it worked – somewhat. It seems that when WLW cannot connect to the internet, which happens frequently, it crashes.

That said, I manage to get a few more posts up using Zemanta (mostly on my newer blog) and sure enough, my legitimate clicks went up again.

Even if I have to edit my blog later in blogger online to include Zemanta content, I will continue using it.

Related articles

• Using Zemanta with any blogging platform (zemanta.com)
• Post-Release reviews (zemanta.com)
• Offline WordPress Editor for Mac - PixelPumper (hongkiat.com)
• My interview on Zemanta's blog (brandsandfilms.com)
• Zemanta’s Website (added by me)

Free! From... Microsoft?

Microsoft has changed.  When I was growing up, getting anything free from Microsoft was as fictitious as Santa bringing in free gifts. Well, almost. One of them is real (explain that to your kids).

Recently, I had downloaded free "Live Essentials" and I was impressed by the quality of the programs.  The old adage "you get what you paid for" is no longer true. I've already blogged about Windows Live Writer which I switch back and forth with Scribefire - depending on my mood. Live Writer is pretty decent as it supports many blog formats including Blogger and Wordpress, two of the most popular blogging sites. Unfortunately, (and this is the real reason why I switch), Live Writer does not support Tumbr or Posterous.

Recently, as I was hunting for a better free, web design software, I came across this gem from microsoft: Visual Web Developer It's a bit over the top for just making templates (as in templates for modx) but if you are interested in starting a whole new website from scratch, this would be an excellent product for you to try it. So far, I'm impressed. It has so many features that I haven't discovered yet. I don't think I will be using it much, yet, as it's a bit over the top for what I need.

As a matter of fact, I'll probably stick to Kompozer - which, by the way, was aquired by Mozilla.  How much do you want a bet that we will finally start seeing some improvements?  They've already improved their website.

Another little know WYSIWYG editor is Amaya. Amaya is made by w3.org which sets the standards for website design. If you are within their standards, then the majority of your audience can view your website the way you intend them to view it.

The problem with Amaya and Kompozer is that it's difficult to be "cutting edge" Both don't support HTML5 tags, but you can always put the tags in anyway. It just won't show up in the preview.
I have a page with some freebies for you to check out.  These are all programs that I have used and like.  It's here: http://mometek.blogspot.com/p/free-software.html.

Free Stuff: Windows Live Writer

I decided to try out Windows Live writer, since it does work with blogger.  Perhaps I won’t have to load my browser to use Scribefire – which, by the way, is excellent for blogging, except you do have to load your browser, which means that if you have a lot of plugins (as I always do), it may take a while to load.

Posting directly from blogger isn’t so bad either, but once again, you still have to wait for the browser to load.
Writer on the other hand is free for Windows user and you have to at least have XP service pack 2 according to their website.  This is good, you don’t have to pay for an upgrade to Win Vista or 7 to get it.  You can download the whole package here, or you can download just the writer here.

So far, it’s been pretty easy.  Setting up is a no-brainer.  When you first load live writer, it asks you for your blog username and password.  Then you just have to wait. 

Now you are set to go.  Not only is it easy to set up, but you can manage multiple blogs.  So far I have this blog and my WordPress Blog set up.  Yes, I finally set up a WordPress blog just to see how Writer handles it.  Haven’t gotten around to it yet.  As a matter of fact, I haven’t tested many features at all.  I just wanted to see how quickly I can get a blog post up.

So there you have it.  If nothing else at all, you can at least post from Writer very quickly and easily – and of course, it’s FREE.

I'm still testing Windows Live Writer so in the near future, I may come back to this topic.