Mobile Blogging

I wasn't aware that you can do blogging on your mobile too until I came across blogger's help section. Yes you can do blogging in your mobile, how does it work here's the details.

You send a message - which can be a photo, some text, or both - to go@blogger.com. We take care of the rest. In other words, we auto-provision a new blog and publish the post. It's that simple.

Here's how to start a mobile blog:

1. 1. Send an MMS to go@blogger.com to create your mobile blog. The text and/or photo in your MMS will be uploaded to that blog right away. We'll message you back with the address, (so you can visit your new blog on the web) and a token (so you can claim your blog and access it from your account).
2. 2. OPTIONAL - If you feel like changing anything on your new mobile blog or if you already have a Blogger account and want the posts to go to your existing blog, you can log in to go.blogger.com and enter the token we sent to your phone. You'll then have the option to claim your new mobile blog and merge it with your existing blog. Note to users whose blog address does not contain blogspot.com: Once you make the aforementioned switch, new mobile posts will be published to your chosen blog but mobile posts published prior to the switch will not be moved over automatically.

What types of messages can I send to Blogger Mobile from my phone?

MMS or Email - note this doesn't include email sent from a mobile device that actually passes through a webmail gateway (such as mail sent from your stanford.edu account from your phone).

What size photos can I send?

Photos are currently limited to 250K each. If they exceed that size, you'll receive a bounce message letting you know so you can try again with a smaller picture. Note that your phone (or carrier) might have size limits of its own.

Is there a cost for using Blogger Mobile?

Mobile providers' standard rates for sending and receiving text and photo messages apply. Blogger won't charge you for any of its services.

Requirements

Text messaging-enabled mobile device with a text messaging plan. This service is free from Google but charges from your carrier for usage may apply.

Promoting your blog

If you are a blogger, you probably know what I am talking about. I am about to talk about how to promote your blog. This is what most bloggers do. So here we go:

This is in no way a science or guarantee; it's simply a few suggestions with which many bloggers have found success.

Set your blog to Send Pings. When this setting is activated, your blog will be included in various "recently updated" lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.

Activate Your Navbar. Do this and you might start to see the effects right away! One of the features on the Blogger Navbar is a button called NextBlog - click it to visit the next Navbar-enabled blog.

Install Email This Post. If you use Email This Post on your blog, people will be able to forward your posts to friends. This may not have an immediate impact on your site stats but it enables others to publicize your blog for you.

Turn on Post Pages. By publishing every post as its very own web page with Post Pages, you ensure that your entries are way more link-able and more attractive to search engines.

Turn on your site feed. When people subscribe to your site feed in their newsreaders, they're very likely going to read your post.

Add your blog to Blogger's listings. When you add your blog to our listings it shows up in Nextblog, Recently Updated, and other places. It's like opting-in to traffic.

Write quality content and do it well. If your "style" is bad writing, worse grammar, no punctuation, and an ugly design, that might be okay for a niche crowd. But the idea here is to achieve mass appeal, so fix yourself up a bit.

Publish regular updates. Simple: the more you blog, the more traffic you'll get.

Think of your audience. A good way to build an audience is to speak to one in particular. When you keep your audience in mind, your writing gains focus. Focus goes a long way toward repeat visitors.

Keep search engines in mind. There are a few things you can do to make your blog more search engine friendly. Use post titles and post page archiving. This will automatically give each of your post pages an intelligent name based on the title of your post. Also, try to be descriptive when you blog. A well crafted post about something very specific can end up very near the top results of a search.

Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on.

Put your blog URL in your email signature. Think of how many forwarded emails you've seen in your day, and just imagine the possibilities.

Sumbit your address to blog search sites and directories. People look for blog content at Technorati every day, are you on their list? You should be. Submit your blog's url to Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, Popdex, and any other site of that ilk you come across.

Link to other blogs. Links are the currency of the blogosphere and it takes money to make money so start linking.

Install a blogroll. It's a very simple yet effective social networking scheme and it has the same result as a simple link if not stronger: traffic! So if you don't have one yet, sign up for a blogroll and get that link-list going.

Be an active commenter. This is in the same vein as linking. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least. So if you feel inspired, leave a comment or two in your blog travels. It behooves you.

Enable Following on your blog. Following a is a great way to keep your friends updated on the latest activity on your blog. New blogs will have this blog feature enabled by default, but for older blogs you will have to enable it from the Layout | Page Elements tab.