To come out on top, you need to be better than others. That means crossing existing standards and setting new ones.

Go the extra mile!

My English Language teacher used to say that “if you aim this (*raises his hand*) high, you’ll reach a little below“. That if I wanted to get 100%, I’d have to give my 110%. If I wanted to score a perfect 800 on my SATs, I’d have to study a little more than what was required.

Competition is everywhere (nature, classrooms, businesses, blogs…). You have to compete with your rivals. The best man (or woman) comes out on top. How do you come out on top? You have to go the extra mile (as I mentioned above). You have to do something extra, something others aren’t doing, to get noticed. Here are two examples:

1. Eyeing that promotion? Get the boss to notice you by doing something the others aren’t. Work longer hours than your colleagues. Work harder than your colleagues. Be more involved in company meetings, affairs, etc. Be a suck up if you have to (though I don’t recommend that for the sake of your own dignity). And don’t give up. The top brass has to notice you sooner or later!

2. Want more market share? Create products that people want. Create something that is useful. Go the extra mile. Do more research than your competitors. Hold more surveys and polls. Assemble a more kick ass team of workers, designers, engineers, economists, professionals. Do extra! All the extra work you put in will show in your products. People will notice the quality and usefulness. And your market share will increase, albeit slowly but surely.

Remember that your competition isn’t probably going to just sit there doing nothing. They’ll notice you doing all the extra work, and they will follow suit. They’ll go the extra mile too, for the sake of retaining their market share. They’ll set the standards higher. That means you’ll have to work harder. But in the end, all the hard work pays off.

Don’t Give Up!

So you see, all the extra effort that you put in pays dividends. It doesn’t necessarily happen overnight (it can take months or even years), but it does happen. The important thing is to keep going. Never give up. If you give up in the middle, all the hard work goes to waste. Just keep going, for that dark tunnel isn’t going to last forever.

(Awesome) photo by Photomish Dan

1. Brevity is an art.

Simple is nice, isn’t it? – Photo : Robb North

Writing about a thing you love within 100 words is not easy. Writing about a significant challenge you’ve faced within 250 words is harder. Word limits on college essays suck, I know, but they’re there for a very good reason.

Brevity is an art. It’s a VERY valuable skill to be brief and succinct. No one wants to read a 1000 word piece that goes on and on. If you can express something just as well in about 200 words rather than a thousand, you have a special skill. Use it!

Don’t make readers read paragraphs and paragraphs. They’ll only get lost and confused in the whole thing. They WILL appreciate you if you make it short and sweet. Cut away the fat and what you have left is beautiful simplicity. Effectiveness comes from simplicity. Simple is better. The shorter your piece is, the easier it is to read. And therefore, the easier it is to grasp. Which means it’s more effective.

But do remember though that you can’t be so succinct that what you’ve written loses its meaning. The art is to express what you want to say in as less words as possible. The best way to improve yourself is to practice. Always look for ways you can cut the odd word out, rephrase a sentence (or even cut out a whole paragraph), while maintaining the meaning of the piece.

Ernest Hemingway is perhaps the master of brevity. Do check out some of the tips from the great master himself :

Ernest Hemingway’s writing tips for bloggers
Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips For Writing Well
Hemingway on writing

Yes, yes..

I know it can be hard to be brief, because I’ve been there. I’ve had to find ways to limit my passion for writing to just 500, or 250 or even 100 words. Like any other college applicant, I cursed these essays, because they forced me to be as brief as possible. But I learned (and am still learning) a valuable skill.

Practice makes perfect. Scrutinize every piece of writing you churn out, and search for ways you can make it succinct. And trust me, it will pay off!

Here’s a simple 5-step checklist you can follow :

1. Write, write, write. Don’t think about how long your piece is. You have to empty your mind on paper before you can cut off the fat.

2. After you finish writing, just scan the whole thing to see if there’s the odd word you can cut out. Repeat this step at least two more times.

3. Then, carefully read through what’s left to see if you can rephrase a sentence using shorter words. Repeat this step atleast two more times as well.

4. By now, your piece must’ve been shortened by quite a lot (you’ll be surprised). Read through the whole thing again to make sure it makes sense. If it doesn’t add the occasional word here or there to sort things out.

5. You’re done!

Twitter is a great place to make friends, socialize, find new content, and promote your own content. But, how do you enjoy Twitter and benefit from it? Here are 5 tips that will help you do so. And by the way, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

1. Pass Good Content On

Many Twitter users tweet about great stuff (resource lists, articles, blog posts, etc). If you re-tweet (tweet it again) such content, you’re passing it on. That’s the beauty of it. By spreading great content, you’re helping people. People will acknowledge that. They will also see that you tweet about good content: content that will help them. They will most likely follow you.

Another benefit is that people will begin to re-tweet your stuff too. That shows that you have authority, and you will gain respect on Twitter.

2. Promote

It doesn’t hurt to promote your own stuff on Twitter. A tweet once in a while about a post that could be useful to people is a good way to promote. If you’ve been re-tweeting other people’s tweets, people will re-tweet your stuff too.

Here’s a personal example. Since about two weeks, I’ve been re-tweeting like heck. Any tweet that lands in my timeline that could be helpful to other people gets a re-tweet. Once in a while, I also drop in a tweet about a post on my other blog, Listfied. The result is that people re-tweet that tweet of mine, giving me more traffic, exposure, and increasing my authority on Twitter at the same time.

3. Help Out

Twitter is a community. And a community thrives when the people in it help each other out. You should do the same. Ideally, you should give more than you take. If anybody on Twitter asks for help, do you best to help them out. They’ll be grateful to you.

4. Acknowledge

If you find that someone on Twitter has tweeted about a really useful tutorial or article that solves a problem, or has done you a favour, don’t hesitate to thank them for it. Be grateful to them. Even flatter them This is a great way to build friendships with people on Twitter.

5. Follow!

Don’t be a recluse. Follow people on Twitter. You don’t have to follow each and every person, but follow those who have interests similar to yours, or tweet about good content. Try to follow as many people as possible each day. Along will adding value to your Twitter timeline, the people you follow will most likely follow you back. So it’s a win-win situation.

You?

So, do you have any Twitter tips you’d like to share? Please do

Not everyone who blogs on the Blogger platform has English has his/her native language. Blogger has an excellent transliteration tool that allows bloggers to blog in their own langauge. Read on!

Blogger supports an excellent transliteration feature that enables you to blog in regional languages of your choice. The number of available languages depends on your location on the globe. You do not need any special keyboard to type your native language. Google’s transliteration technology automatically converts the typed text into the selected language:

To enable this feature, go to ‘Settings -> Basic (subtab) -> Enable transliteration?’. Select ‘Enable’ from the drop down box and save the settings. To write the transliterated post, open the post editor in ‘Compose’ mode:

On the right side you will find the transliteration button with a drop down menu. Choose your desired regional language and press the button. This transliteration button works in toggle mode. Once this feature is enabled pressing it again will disable this feature and vice-versa. In this way you can use different regional languages in a single post.

If you want to correct any word or are not satisfied with the transliteration, you can simply left click on the word and a drop menu will appear giving you alternate suggestions; it’s almost the same as a spell checker. If you are still not satisfied with the alternate suggestions in the drop down menu, you can click the ‘Edit…’ option in the menu to open ‘On the fly suggestion box’ that will give you suggestions of different letter combinations:

And if you want the full on-screen keyboard click the ‘Keyboard’ image of the left of red question mark as shown in the image above. This will open an ajax powered, draggable keyboard for the current laguage, giving you complete control in letter selection:

Blogger transliteration feature is supported on Windows 2000/XP on IE 6+ and Firefox 1.5+. Currently this feature is not available for Mac systems. To use this feature you must edit your post in ‘Compose’ mode. Switching to ‘HTML’ mode will disable this feature, but thankfully already transliterated text will remain intact. Remember this feature requires live internet connection as the typed text is translated in real time on Google servers. So enable this feature and see which regional languages are available to you to express your feelings in your own language!

Rajeev Edmonds blogs at MintBlogger, a blog about social media and blogging tips. Stay tuned for more weekly articles on Blogger!

For most of my pretty short life (17 years), I’ve been advised by people (teachers, friends, people) not to think big, not to aim high. Why? Because if I aim high, I increase the chances of failure. And if I fail, I’m a good-for-nothing foolish person who’s just wasting his time. Pah!

Failure is Part of The Journey!

It’s like the snakes and ladders game. You keep advancing in the game, propelled sometimes by the ladders, but you can also fall down the snakes, can’t you? It’s difficult to reach the top without (at least once) being guzzled up by those vicious looking snakes…

Sure, the snakes and ladders game is simply a matter of luck, but has a valuable lesson. Failure is part of the journey!

Why You SHOULD Think Big

If you set your sights high, sure you raise the stakes, but you also increase the reward. So what if you fail? You can always try again. Great people are those who fall, and rise again. They fall again, but rise again. They never give up hope. It’s not about what if you fail. It’s about why you can and must and should aim and reach even higher.

What’s the point of success if you do not learn anything from it? It’s like having cake that’s not sweet! Think of success as the destination. Failure is what shows you the route to it

Take Failure Out Of the Equation

What if you just take failure out of the equation? Treat it like it is part of the deal. Once failure is out of the equation, and you just acknowledge as a bump you’ll have to jump over, there’s nothing stopping you from aiming for the sky.

The thing is, you shouldn’t let failure get the better of you. You’re better than that, right?

Go on, let people say what they want to. Take that giant leap that’s been eluding you for so long. Have a little faith in yourself

Two Examples

As they say, Thomas Edison, the man who invented the light bulb, failed ten thousand times before finally succeeding. He said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Failure helped him eliminate what was wrong, and zoom in on the solution.

Here’s another example for you. Babe Ruth, (one of the greatest baseball players in the history of baseball) held, for many years, the record of having scored the most home runs in a single season. However, he also held the record for the most strike outs! As he himself said, each strike out brought him closer to his next home run.

In Conclusion

Remember: if you don’t aim big, you’ll never reach big. If you have big aspirations, sure, they’ll take a hell lot of hard work to fulfil, but then, it’s part of the deal. The reward is commensurate with the work that goes in. That is only reasonable, isn’t it?

So, I’d say again: THINK BIG. THINK BIG. THINK BIG.

Have you ever had people telling you that you shouldn’t think big, because you’ll simply fail? Please do share your views here

Writers who just sit around reading tips on how to write, but never actually write themselves can never learn to become good writers.

You cannot learn to swim just by reading how to swim; if you don’t even touch the water, you can never learn to swim.

It’s the same with everything. You can read on how to do something, but unless you actually do it yourself, you cannot learn! A good chef doesn’t spend all day going over cookbooks; she puts her newly acquired knowledge to use: application.

It’s The Same With Blogging

Sure, you can sit and read hundreds of “blogging about blogging” blogs all day. Read thousands of recycled blogging tips and SEO advice and so on. But, if you don’t put it into practice, it won’t do you any good. Believe me. It’s the same as with swimming, writing and cooking. You have to put what you learn into practice!

That is the only way you can be successful. Believe me: to success, there is no black hat method or shortcut. It’s hard work. Ask your nearest millionaire

What You Should Do, Instead Of What You Do

Instead of reading multitudes of meta-blogging blogs everyday, why not try to stop doing so? Blogging about blogging blogs (like the one you’re reading right now) can only take you so far. In fact, every authority blog in every niche can only take you so far. The final step is to be taken by you. And that’s why you need to put into practice what you learn. As they say, practice makes perfect

So, my suggestion to you is this: stop reading so many SEO and blogging tips. You have your own blog: try out what you learnt. Experiment with different solutions, and find the perfect one.

Note: This doesn’t mean you should stop reading authority blogs in your niche altogether. These blogs are your guides. But they are merely a means to an end. These blog tell you the correct route to travel. You have to make the journey yourself

In this second part of this series [here's Part 1], we will look at some useful and easy tricks for Blogger blogs. By default, the Blogger platform provides countless widgets, gadgets and services that are great add-ons for our blog. Still, sometimes we want to show custom data and statistics on our blog. With some simple coding and tweaking some settings we can add these little gems to our blog to make it look more professional and a better experience for our readers.

Show Total Posts and Comments On Blogger Blog

If you want to show the total number of posts and comments on your blog, this simple JavaScript code can do the work.

The result looks like this:

To show these stats in the sidebar, simply create and new ‘JavaScript/HTML’ gadget from ‘Layout’ section and paste the above code. You can also beautify it using CSS to gel it well with your blog’s theme.

Disable Comments On Any Post

Although this option is easily accessible, but a large number of Blogger users are unaware of it. To disable comments on any post, go to post editor and click the ‘Post Options’ link at bottom right of the editor:

Choose the ‘Don’t Allow’ for ‘Readers Comments’ option and that’s it. You can again enable or disable the comments of any old Blogger post without any restrictions. You can use this option to disable comments on the About, Contact, Advertise and similar pages too.

Disable Ads On Archive Pages

If you want your AdSense ads to be displayed only on individual post pages, wrap your ad code around the following code:

The if condition checks whether the page is a post page or not. In case it’s not a post page, the conditions evaluates to false and the ad code is not executed.

In next part of this series we will see how to display different set of ads on home page and on individual post pages.

Your Thoughts?

How do you think the series is going on so far? Is it helpful? Please do share your opinion with us

Rajeev Edmonds blogs at MintBlogger, a blog about social media and blogging tips

It’s officially 2009, and 2008 has come to an end. Through out the course of last year, I learnt several valuable lessons and principles from blogging, some of which I want to share with you, in this post. It’s always a good idea to review how the last year has been for you, and to improve yourself. So, enjoy, and a Happy New Year!

Please do not be shy to express your own opinions and lessons that your blogging has taught you, this year. And oh, please do bear with me, if I sound boring or overly didactic

1. Tolerance

The internet is a huge place. There are people of different religions, nationalities, opinions here. Each has the right to express his or her own opinion (that’s why blogs exist, in the first place!). Over the course of this year, I have interacted with people from all around the world and people belonging to different religions. Blogging has taught me tolerance. I have learned to respect others’ opinions, and not to attack or belittle their beliefs. And tolerance is a very important lesson, at least in real life.

Moreover, I have learned to accept criticism,for it is criticism (both positive and negative) that helps me improve.

2. Knowledge

Good content is well researched. In my quest to write good, valuable content, and in the process of researching, I have learned many new things that I would probably have learnt way later (or maybe even never) if I had not been blogging.

Here’s an example: All my blogs are based on the WordPress platform (which I love). In order for this blog to be unique, it had to have a unique theme. So, I learnt how to design for WordPress, and I designed the current PuttingBlogsFirst theme. I learnt how to develop for WordPress, and that led to a series of tutorials on the WordPress platform.

The thing is, I learnt something new, and it benefited me. Similarly, I gained a boatload of other valuable information about different subjects. And, it was fun too.

3. The Importance of Social Networking

I didn’t realize the importance of social networking, during my first few months of blogging. I didn’t know how valuable a tool this is to market your blog and find new readers and friends.

I joined some reputable blogging forums, and became active on Twitter. And I made great friends too. I also got to attend a bloggers’ meetup, which was great fun. I became social.

So the thing is, you have to establish a good social profile. You have to be active on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed and so on, and participate in the community. Because, only if you give to the community can you even think about getting anything back

4. The Value of Time

Blogging requires one to regularly produce content, day in and day out. You have to have posts on the ready. This taught me the value of time.

I knew that I had to write a post for the next day. There is only so much time available, and I have to make full use of it. Time management is essential for any blogger. Blogging has taught me that: I have to get things done, and get them done ASAP.

As they say, time is money

5. Being Myself

Let’s admit it. There are hundreds of “blogging about blogging” blogs around (this one included). No doubt, some of these blogs give outstanding and excellent advice, but then, there are simply too many!

I started this blog way back (more than a year ago). As soon as I stepped into meta-blogging waters, my “uniqueness” disappeared. Poof! I mean, I was just one of the hundreds already there. I wasn’t “I“. I was “We“.

Over the course of the last few months, I’ve been trying to make myself “I“, instead of “We“. I’ve been searching for my unique place. I’ve been working on slowly shifting this blog’s focus: from something cliché [all the other blogs] to something new, unique [me]. Readers have had enough of how to blog this and not blog that; they want and deserve a fresh perspective: something different, for crying out loud!

I’ve tried to look through the murky waters to find the light, if you will. And the process is still not over. It will never be over, as I think of it. Things keep changing, don’t they?

To pin the nail on the donkey’s tail, I am trying to be unique. And it’s not easy. Being unique isn’t easy. Suppose you have a brilliant idea that you think no one else could even have fathomed. You do a quick Google search, and BAM! Right in your face. Believe me: been there, done that. There are simply too many blogs and too many people: being unique is like reaching the stars [literally speaking]. It.is.hard. But, not impossible

6. Persistence/Patience/Strength

Blogging is not easy work. At least if you want to succeed. There are millions of blogs on the internet. Hundreds or thousands of blogs in your niche: competitors. If you’re serious about your blog, you better pack for a long journey.

As I said above, I’ve been running this blog for over a year now. Why?. This first year hasn’t exactly been a money bloomer for me. Why am I still continuing? Because I know: success needs time and hard work.

Success also needs passion. And passion is the main reason I’m still blogging. I love what I blog about. And if you love what you blog about, everything else is secondary. Even the fact that there is loads of competition breathing down your neck

Also, blogging has given me encouragement and self-confidence. It has taught me to be patient. Success comes to those who wait for it.

What About You?

So, what has blogging taught you in the year 2008? Huw did it turn out for you? Did you glean anything valuable? Please do share it with us

This is the second post (first post) in our series on free WordPress themes. Enjoy this list of themes

1. StudioPress Green

StudioPress is a clean, AdSense-ready WordPress theme by DailyBlogTips. It supports widgets and it comes with alternate comments styling and a customizable “Welcome” section on the sidebar. There is also a blue version of this theme.

2. Miscellany

A 3 Column, widget-ready fixed width theme featuring an extended footer, author info page, Gravatars and highlighted author comments in the comments section. Compatible up to Wordpress 2.7. Download Miscellany

3. Plainscape

A VERY minimalist theme: simple and clean. I use this theme for Listfied. It is very lightweight, and easy on the eyes too. highly recommended! Download Plainscape.

4. Bytetips

Bytetips is a 3 column WordPress theme with 2.7 support. Looks clean and Web 2.0-ish. Download Bytetips

5. Aeros

Refreshing, Web 2.0 WordPress theme. Looks beautiful, and is very lightweight. Download Aeros

6. Wasteland

Wasteland is a 5 column (or “magazine style”), formal WordPress theme. Supports WordPress 2.7, and is Gravatar ready. Download Wasteland.

A Book

If you’re interested in WordPress theme design, I recommend you this book: WordPress Theme Design: A Complete Guide To Creating Professional WordPress Themes (aff) . This book, as the name says, has it all. It will take you through the very basics, up the ladder, and make you a WordPress theme guru. Highly Recommended.

There You Have It

So, there you have it. Six free WordPress themes you can use today. I know there are loads out there, and I’ll be looking out for them. If you have suggestions, drop em in the comments, or get in touch. Enjoy the themes, and stay tuned for next week’s list

The Blogger platform is used by thousands of bloggers around the globe. These bloggers have developed many tweaks and hacks to make their Blogger blog a better browsing experience for their visitors. In this first part of a new series on Blogger tips and tricks, I will present some basic tweaks that can be easily implemented even by a newbie, which can help them in rectifying some common shortcomings in their Blogger blog.

Hide Top Blogger NavBar

The top navigation bar on blogger blogs distracts the attention of the readers. If you are publishing on custom domain, the presence of this bar is very annoying. Here is a simple trick to get rid of this navigation bar.

From your blog’s dashboard, go to ‘Layout -> Edit HTML’. Keep the Expand Widget Templates option unchecked. Paste the following code just before ]]></b:skin> this line.

Tweaking Title Tags

By default, Blogger displays the same title in the title bar on every single page. Whether its an individual post, archive page, search result page or home page, Blogger will always display the same blog title in the title bar. From the SEO perspective, this is not what we want.

Every post page should have its post title as the title tag and this post headline should be displayed in the title bar, instead of the blog title. To correct this, find the following line in your blog template.

Replace it with the following code:

After implementing this code, your post pages will have post title as title tag, and your home page will have regular blog title.

Use Custom Favicon

By default, Blogger displays an orange favicon on every Blogger blog. If you want to use your own favicon, you can do it in two simple steps:

Upload your favicon on a file server

Create you own favicon and host it on any free file hosting service. There are many free favicon generating services on the Internet that make the favicon creating process easy.

Update the blog template

Once your favicon is uploaded on the file server, simply add the following code in your template just before </head> tag.

In next part of this series, I will present some template modification hacks that will enable you to change the appearance and layout of your blog template in easy steps. Do tell us your opinion too

Rajeev Edmonds blogs at MintBlogger, a blog about social media and blogging tips