In such a tech climate, the enterprising blogger can be forgiven for trying to reach the largest possible audience with his blog. It’s easy to reach people these days, after all, and — when it comes to page rank and ad revenue – having more viewers is certainly beneficial. But many of the strongest blogs, especially many of the strongest upstart ones, are those that successfully target a much narrower and more defined demographic: a niche audience.

If you’re starting a new blog, or simply trying to better target the narrow readership of a blog you already have, here are some suggestions:

Know The Competition

If you’re writing a blog about tech products or baking, there are countless other blogs out there in the internet that do the exact same thing. There’s no point, consequently, in assessing what all these other blogs do and trying to differentiate yourself in response. But when it comes to niche subjects, the competition is far more quantifiable. It therefore may help to study any and all similar blogs, paying close attention to content, ads, readership comments, and angle. Then, let that knowledge inform your own work.

Market in the Real World

The internet, unlike the physical world, is vast and endless. Buying online ads or marketing your niche blog on social media sites may thus not have quite the desired impact, since your target audience can be quite difficult to track down. For this reason, real world marketing holds a particular benefit. Depending on the specific nature of your niche, there’s a good chance that the topic has newsletters, conferences, events, stores, or gatherings in the real world. If you want to best reach your desired readership, integrating yourself with this community is essential.

Be Comprehensive

When it comes to content on a blog, everyone has an angle and an opinion. It’s a blog, after all. But when niche topics are concerned, you don’t want to risk alienating any percentage of your already-small audience. So make sure not to cover every issue from only one angle or only discussing one particular element of your niche. Instead, try to be more comprehensive and fill that niche fully.

These are just a few tips for approaching your niche blog. No matter your specific topic of interest, and no matter what your exact methodology is, always remember the core element of marketing a successful niche product: know the community. By being involved in the community of people who share the same interest, you have the connections, resources, and knowledge to accomplish what you seek.

It’s a nice plugin allowing you to show featured post in a nice box with some effects. However most people can’t make it work in their blog. I have successfully used it in some of my own and clients blog (e.g.: www.gadget5.com) and experienced problem too and I found some solutions that work.First thing to do is download the latest version of the plugin and extract it in your plugin folder. Delete and deactivate older version. Now reactivate the plugin. If everything is fine, it should work but if it doesn’t, here are some troubleshooting tips:

Problem: No featured content gallery box at all.
Solution: 1. Check that you have placed the code <?php include (ABSPATH . ‘/wp-content/plugins/featured-content-gallery/gallery.php’); ?>In the template file like header.php, index.php, sidebar.php etc. One must not place this code in widget box from dashboard as it will not work. Get hold of a HTML editor and open up template file and place this code where the box fits and suits your blog look. You may want to alter some CSS settings but that’s a different story. Tweaking with CSS is only for fine touching the layout.
2.  In the wordpress admin dashboard, go to settings and click on “Featured Content Gallery” link. Now check that you have assigned category or post ID (any one of either) which you want to display as featured content. Also make sure that post ID or category you have assigned have some post with images in it.
3. In “Slide Transition Times” option if you are unsure of duration time, leave them blank. It works fine.
4. If you are doing all this on localhost (wamp / xampp) then try uploading your theme on some webhost and try it with latest version of wordpress. Sometimes it just not works with localhost.

Problem: Box appears but there is no image and only text or none.
Solution: 1. In the admin dashboard of wordpress, go to All post and edit the featured post. In the option below look for “Add New Custom Field:”. If you can’t find it please click on the “Screen Options” button and enable Custom Fields option. In the box below “Name” of custom fields option put “articleimg” and in value box put the path to image. You can copy and paste the image path from the post (check HTML view). The path will be something like this:  http://your-blog-domain/wp-content/uploads/year/month/image.jpg If the text is missing from featured box, again go to custom field’s option and in name put “featuredtext” and in value put the text you want to display in featured box.

Problem: It works now but box color, border color and text color is not right.
Solution: In admin dashboard of wordpress, go to settings and click on the Featured content gallery link. Now in the boxes below “Gallery Style” make sure that you have put proper hex code of color you want. Hex code is in this format: #FFFFFFF for white, #000000 for black and so on. Don’t forget to prefix hash symbol “#” before every code. To know exact hex code for your desired color you can use this useful small tool called ColorPix which can be downloaded free from: www.colorschemer.com/colorpix_info.php

iBlogger:

This one is, not surprisingly, that’s on the top of the list. It’s all about blogging made easy. Some blogging apps target specific platforms and are very centric to certain software programs, but iBlogger is an iPhone app that’s designed by illumineX that has a lot of really amazing features you won’t find through some other apps, like WordPress. With this app, you can connect different platforms that you’re currently using at a very low cost. It’s cheaper and more effective than many of the alternatives out there, and will only run you about ten dollars. With all of that said, it’s not perfect. The app doesn’t allow you to upload images, but the benefits outweigh the negatives. Keeping in the same vein as all the other iPhone apps, it’s incredibly user friendly for those of us out there who aren’t internet developers.

WordPress

This new app for iOS has taken WordPress to the next level. It has an entirely new platform that’s designed and optimized to employ the many advantages of the iPad and iPhone’s new user interface. It’s made blogging that much simpler. It’s currently available on Apple’s App store. Users are now able to create and edit posts, and also add photos. The new app has a spell check, and all of these features are available to users without the hassle or need to write a single line of code. It’s never been easier to update and stay in touch with your followers with the new iOS WordPress app.

WordMobi

This is a free app that has many of the same features as the other to examples above, but with a little less pizzazz. It will help you manage your blog with common operating features such as posting, approving comments, deleting posts, and many other things. It’s highly functional and works well for basic blogging functions. It’s not a high-powered app, but it’s a useful tool for those who don’t want to go with an app that costs.
It’s essential for any blogger to stay in touch with their public, and by using these apps, as well as other comparable options, you can do just that. Keep your blog active and mobile with your smartphone so you can keep your readers and clients updated on a continual basis.

You are writing something worth reading everyday and also spend a lot of time gathering traffic for your blog but you are not getting much appreciation for you work! This means that not all the visitors are reading those texts on your blogs which you spend hours to write. Simply bringing visitors but getting no real response is just like winning that race but not getting the prize and acknowledgement. If you are facing this problem then do one thing, open your blog right now and look at some old post which you might have forgot and then for time being forget that you are the owner of the blog. Now try to read your blog as a visitor just like you read other blogs. Notice how user friendly your blog is, note down everything like font site, are they comfortable enough to read or not, any kind of flashy advertisement that may be distracting (or annoying), background color too bight or too dull causing eye strain (headache?) etc.

After you have done your research and complied a report, start fixing those issues and take a look again. Repeat until you are satisfied. You can also look at top blogs and take some hint from there. Ask some of your online friends (tell them to be honest) to check for you if they are experiencing the difference. Enjoy the better blogging (and rewarding) experience!

There are people who consider blog as a blog and some think it as a website with categories, achieves listed on side. But just like you cannot use a bike engine to run a car (well it may be but it will be a bad idea), similarly a blog is a blog. What I mean to say that if you need a company website for official use, make it a proper website with the html, PHP or whatever language you want to use in it and not simply install wordpress and use a free template to save time. You will say, why not do that when it’s simpler, look nice and saves money. You never know how many people are going to get a bad image about your company. There are two kinds of people, one who know what a blog is and others who are completely unaware. So people who know blog will at once sat, “oh this guy is so lazy and cheap that he installed blog and showing it as a website” and other who don’t know must have seen many blogs and they must have an image that this is something easy (maybe they know its free) as everyone is having it. So overall, it’s better to have a true website when there is a need of website and not a blog. At this point you will say that you can find some template or customize it to look just like any other website! But if you are doing so much, what’s wrong is making a normal CSS design? You will have better control over its layout and it will be lighter on system too. it doesn’t take long to XHTML a template psd. Having a /blog with a proper website is a plus point and I always favor that. Its good SEO wise too.

Soon after the very late release of Windows Vista, there were rumors of new operating system from Microsoft called Windows 7. Vista being a biggest flop, it looks like even Microsoft is now not considering worth spending time on it for improving it. People are usually scared of installing service packs and they have an image in mind since early days of XP that service packs makes operating system even slower. With the team working hard on Windows 7 now, it was not possible to remain quiet and Microsoft launched a Blog on Windows 7. The Windows 7 blog is maintained by Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, the two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product.

I feel very happy to announce that we have successfully completed one year in blogging. It started with a not so serious intention and main focus was given on developing a web agency site but then I got into blogging and started this blog. I made other blogs too like my personal blog hashim.110mb.com which is freely hosted at 110mb free hosting. Other blogs include Gadget5.com which is purely for my gadgets love. Seeing the success in blogging, I made two new blogs recently. One is on jokes and I got a nice domain for it called jokesboy.com and other on entertainment called cieze.com. Cieze.com looks short and sweet name but it doesn’t have any meaning actually. I selected it mainly because its short, memorable and its an expired domain. Expired means it has got some age and even decent alexa ranking!