This is my second “Wanna be a Great blogger” series (by following examples of an animal).

From the book of Proverbs:

Go to the ant, you sluggard; observe its ways and be wise! It has no commander, overseer, or ruler, yet it prepares its food in the summer; it gathers at the harvest what it will eat

Here the book is talking about laziness and how we should overcome it by following the “leadership” of the ants. How to blog like an ant? What does an ant have to do with blogging?

How to overcome laziness in Blogging by being an ant

1. Motivation – An ant “has no commander, overseer, or ruler”
   If you do a bit of research about the ants, the Queens don’t actually rule and told the ants what to do. The ants themselves know what their roles are (as a soldier, a worker, etc). It’s interesting, isn’t it? How they work without anybody telling them what to do. How about you as a blogger? Who are your “rulers, commanders, or overseers?”. Does anyone or anything actually force you to blog? What’s your motivation? Does it come from the inside or from the outside? Learn like an ant, that keeps on working without relying upon someone or something to “whip” you out!
2. Plan ahead – “It prepares its food in the summer; it gathers at the harvest what it will eat”
   Have you actually prepared for the future of your blog? Or you are the type of  “do whatever I can now, and see what will happen later”?. Unfortunately I’m the later type. I do what I can now and hoping something will happen in the future. It’s sort of works but not optimally. The ants work during the summer where food are abundant and enjoying their food during the winter. Have you actually “collected your food”? Have you done the best for your blog? Things such as: themes, content, traffic & link building, etc. You’ll never know when one day an “important” person visits your blog and give you a one-time opportunity for you. If your blog is not ready, that one chance will be gone forever!
   I’m lucky to be chosen as one of the Best Geek Blog finalists by Nuffnang. I never thought this would happen. The finalists were chosen by the committee based on design, content, and user friendliness. I’m “lucky” that this blog has enough of them to be selected. What about your blog? Have you been taken care of it well?
3. Focus
   An ant is focus in the task at hand. To be focused however, you need to have a goal. The ants’ goal here is to collect the food for the winter. Have you ever had a goal what you want to achieve by blogging? Just pure passion? Making money to replace your full time position? To be recognized in the blogosphere? If you never have a goal, set one NOW. If you already do, how focused are you in reaching that goal? An ant is only doing what it should: focus on reaching the goal. It works hard for the goal and will not stop until the winter comes.
   Find out the things that make you lose focus! Run away from it! Sometimes you think that you can fight it, but you know you can’t! Facebook? Playing games? Know your own weaknesses and “run away” from it if you want to focus!
4. Initiative
   The ants don’t just sit there idly waiting for the food to come. They go out from their nests and search for food. They go out from their “comfort zone”. Be initiative! Ask around if you are looking for private advertisers. Email those vendors if you are asking for a review unit (which I normally do to get that first “break through”). Wanne befriend other bloggers? Then take the initiative first!
5. Be Persistent
   Ever play around with an ant while it’s carrying a food? I had when I was a kid. I purposely put a few obstacles in front of it to see what it was gonna do (I know, I was a mean kid lol). It’s funny how an ant would still keep on fighting to go back to its nest, still carrying its food. All of us have experienced ups-and-downs on our blogging “career”. The big question is, are you giving up? If you are, then it’s time to read my other post “Wanna be a great blogger? Be a turtle!“
6. Teamwork
   Ever felt like being alone in blogging? That’s what friends are for! When a food is too big to be carried by an ant, the other ants come and help. It’s good to share the burden with someone. Someone who shares the same vision as you. That’s what we are all here for! We understand each other and we understand how hard it is to keep on blogging especially when things get tough! Connect with other bloggers! Share your personal thoughts and treat them as you treat your real life friends (well we are all real, it’s just that we are miles away from each other and have our own personal life!)

The book of Proverb closes this section with:

How long, you sluggard, will you lie there? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to relax, and your poverty will come like a robber, and your need like an armed man!

Learn from the ants! Don’t be lazy and start preparing for your blog’s future NOW!

You’ve probably known a lot of sites or plug-ins that auto submit blog posts to Twitter (auto tweet the recently published blog posts). How about Facebook? I was trying to find some good WordPress plug-ins to submit my blog posts from WordPress to Facebook automatically. I found and used one called Simplaris Blogcast and I thought that it was already good enough. Then I tried another WordPress to Facebook plug-in called Wordbook (I guess a combination between WordPress and Facebook?).

Wordbook is so much better than Simplaris Blogcast and I’ll tell you why.

How Wordbook works

• Wordbook will post an excerpt of the post along with a few images detected on the post automatically.
• Wordbook will post it on your Facebook Wall so your friends can see it easily on their news feed area.
• Since it’s a wall post, your friends will be able to comment on it straight on your Wall.
• Wordbook automatically submits the post to your Facebook wall every time a new blog post is published.
• Wordbook works even if you use post scheduling (woohoo!)

How to install and use Wordbook

• Go to your WordPress Administration Control Panel – Plugins – Add New
• Search for “Wordbook” and you will actually see 2 results of the same plug-in name:
  

  Add the one that says “This plugin allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts” by Robert Tsai on the description.

• Activate the plug-in.
• Now go to Settings-Wordbook to set-up your Facebook login and permissions for the Wordbook plug-in.
• Follow the instructions (generate the one-time code) by clicking on the Facebook lock icon:
  
• Continue with the instructions and allow the plug-in to post on your Facebook Wall.
• Now even when it says it’s done and everything, you’ll notice that the Wordbook plug-in only posts the blog post’s title in one line and not what the author promised. I made this mistake and my Facebook wall showed this instead:
  
  Now according to Wordbook official site, the plug-in supposed to post on the Facebook Wall, a brief excerpt of the post with images like this:
  
  So what you need to do, is actually to go back to the Settings-Wordbook options. You will still see that same Facebook padlock icon even though you’ve already done the step before. Click on it again (yes, again) to actually allow the Wordbook plug-in to fully post the excerpt with images on your Facebook wall!

  The option screen shouldn’t show the blue Facebook padlock icon anymore once you’ve fully completed the steps!

• Now go publish a WordPress blog post and you will see that the plug-in automatically submits the blog post to your own Facebook wall, with excerpt of the post and images! It will also display a nice WordPress icon next to the Wall title!

Here is what it looks like on my own Facebook wall if you do the steps correctly:

Looks very nice and professional

Wordbook plug-in for WordPress is so much better than Simplaris Blogcast that I used earlier. Some people dislike the fact that commenting on the wall doesn’t reflect/sync with the comment on the blog post itself. However, I find it good that the author keeps it separate.

So if you want do some promotion of your WordPress blog on Facebook, take a look at Wordbook

PS: Feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook but I mostly use Facebook to connect with my personal friends (non-English backgrounds) so adding me might not be a good idea after all unless you can understand Indonesian But if you want to keep up to date with my blog on Facebook instead of subscribing to my feed, feel free to add me in. Just add a comment like “I’m one of your blog readers” when you make a friend request so I know that it’s not a spammy request

PPS: And of course, please share this great plug-in to the other bloggers!

On my previous post some time ago, I mentioned how to get free images for your blog through the Creative Common Search site, including images from Flickr. Little did I know at that time that you needed to properly credit photo authors even when the “Search for works I can use for commercial purposes” bit was turned on. I hope I didn’t mislead you to think that you could easily grab images from Flickr “freely” without the need of properly attributing the author.

So the question is: How do you properly use Flickr images with an attribution to the author based on the Creative Commons License?

If you look on the creative common license information at Flickr, it says:

Now the problem is, not every photo or image at Flickr has that kind of information available easily.

For example, some photo pages clearly specify how to make the attribution properly like this one:

But some are not. For example, here is an image on Flickr that has no license information underneath the picture:

However, if you go to the uploader’s profile page, the author clearly specified on how to make that attribution properly:

See? Things can get ugly if you can’t find this information correctly. Here is another live example. Let’s say you love this pic named “Longing for Freedom” and want to use it on your blog:

You then have to click on the author link on the top right of the photo page: “Uploaded on May 17, 2009 by alicepopkorn – busy”. Then, click on her “Profile” to find out how to properly credit her work. On her profile page, you’ll find this following information:

So the proper way to display her picture would be like this:

Image by Alicepopkorn

I know it’s kind of a pain to search for this information. I wish that it’s easily accessible underneath every Flickr image. Normally putting the author’s name and also a link back to his/her Flickr’s profile page is enough for the attribution. There are some tools to help you to automate this such as PhotoDropper, Zemanta, and also Jazz Biscuit’s tool.  However, some authors want you to link back to their website or blog so the safest way is to manually do the attribution rather than using such automated tools. What do you think?

I wasn’t sure whether I’ve ever used Flickr images in the past on this blog without properly giving credits to the authors. Guess I need to dig through my old posts *ugh*.

Other good sources of information about this topic:

• Google Image Search adds Creative Commons license
• Flickr Attribution plug-in
• Correct way to give attribution to photo used on a website (@Flickr Forum)
• Wired still taking Flickr photos without attribution (@Flickr Forum)
  
• Consumerist.com using Flickr images without attribution? (@Flickr Forum)

What is in your hand?

Note: Darren Rowse is a great blogger from problogger.net and John Chow from johnchow.com.

In the book of Exodus, God asked Moses “What is in your hand?”. He then made miracles out of Moses’ simple wooden stick. To be a great blogger, you also need to ask this question “What is in my hand?” and make miracles out of it.

You are what you are. You cannot do what you cannot do. You cannot have what you cannot have. These are the basic principles in being a great blogger. Often we want to be someone else, to be the same as our blogger’s idol whoever they are (hopefully, me?). You can and should learn from others but you need to appreciate what you have and use it to the fullest. A wooden stick could create miracles and so do your own “wooden stick”.

What is in your hand?

1. Your Passion.
   Find out what topic you are passionate about the most. If you love staying healthy, then you should probably create a blog with a health niche. If you love teaching your dogs tricks and really good at it, open up a dog training blog. When you are passionate about what you are writing, it shows. Your posts cannot lie (or maybe it can, for a while) but when you do what you are most passionate about, your posts will shine by themselves.
2. Your Writing Style.
   Each blogger has his/her own writing style and there is no requirement in the blogosphere to follow a certain standard of writing. Some bloggers write professionally, some bloggers write personally, some bloggers write with swearing words, some bloggers write with humor, etc. Surprisingly, I did find a popular blog with lots of swearing words in the post (surprised me!). So find your own writing style and don’t be discouraged if it’s different than the other great bloggers out there. This is of course, different than a writing skill. Writing good articles takes time and lots of practice AND you have to be better at it.
3. Your Personality.
   If you love throwing a joke on a day to day conversation and people laugh at your joke, then there’s a good chance that your blog readers will, too. It is your strength and you shouldn’t hide it from your readers. Show it on your posts but of course, don’t overdo it. Just be natural and be yourself. Show the bright side of your personality.
4. Your Knowledge.
   You know what you know. Although knowledge can be obtained through seminars, tutorials, or articles, some knowledge can only be obtained through experience. For example, I never learnt (academically) on how to write good reviews. However, I’ve got lots of positive feedback from my readers and the vendors about my review posts. I guess I just know how to properly use a product and tell the good/bad things about them to others through life experiences. I never realized this potential before and I’m grateful that I have it.
5. Your Time.
   Not everyone has the spare time to write great blog posts every day. There are times to rest and there are times of inspiration. If you have a family or other commitments in life, you cannot do what other bloggers can do. Don’t force it. Even if you can, one day you’ll be exhausted and burnt out. Your great blog might die in just a matter of minutes (out of  depression). Write at your own time and don’t look at others. Squeeze as much as you can but know your priority in life.
6. Your Friends.
   Your friends are the biggest “assets” in blogging (I put a quote because I hate calling you an asset to my blog ). They are the ones who get the word out there. No matter how good your post is, there is no point if no one else knows about it. You can write a Digg-Frontpage-Worthy post but ended up with a Zero Dugg. Your friends are also there to encourage and help you in times of need. There were times when my blogger friends thanked me for the helpful articles they were reading and it helped me to stay on course. There were also times where my blog was in trouble and they were there to help and gave advice. You cannot buy other great bloggers’ friends, but you can appreciate who you have now. Okay, although technically you can buy Twitter’s Followers, they can never become your true friends that you got through genuine friendship.
7. Your Traffic.
   You’ve got your own traffic sources. Although it’s good to see other bloggers’ traffic to motivate you, often we get discouraged easily (or become jealous). I feel this every time I see a few bloggers sharing their search engines traffic on this blog (Yes, you know who you are). Analyze, appreciate, and improve your own traffic sources. Of course, if you are motivated by other bloggers’ traffic sources, that’s good for you and I encourage you to expand your traffic sources.

You cannot be a Darren Rowse. You cannot be a John Chow. Just be yourself and become a unique great blogger of your own! Good luck!

PS: Know a blogger who might be encouraged by this post? Please help sharing it

If you’ve already subscribed to my email feed (or other site’s email feed), you’d normally see the same annoying email subject on every new post delivered to your email inbox. Normally it would show my blog’s name on every email you received. Well, no more! Starting from today, you’ll see the post title on the email subjects, allowing you to save and quickly identify your favorite posts from my blog.

If you are a blogger, you might want to keep reading this post as I’ll guide you on how to insert post title in a Feedburner email subject.

How to insert post title in a Feedburner email subject

1. Go to your own Feed at Google’s Feedburner.
2. Go to the Publicize tab on the top.
   
3. Go to Email Subscriptions from the left menu.
   
4. You’ll see an “Email Branding” option on the expanded Email Subscriptions menu. Click on it.
5. Have a read on how to insert a custom email subject on the Feedburner email page. Follow the instructions or you can also copy mine from the screenshot below (I use a “Post title – My Blog’s title” but feel free to use whatever you prefer).Previously, you can only put a static text on the email subject, which was quite lame.
   

   Now, you can put the post title dynamically on the Feedburner email subject!

   
   There is also a new option to display a different subject if the email feed has more than 1 email available on the feed. Nifty!

6. Save and preview your new settings!
   

Kudos to Google Feedburner dev team to make this into a reality. It’s long overdue but it’s always never too late to change!

Want a test drive? Why don’t you try subscribing to my blog through your email inbox and see this example live? (and yeah, it’s an incentive for you to subscribe to my blog ).