18 Invaluable Sites for Improving your Blog

by Mexicanwave

Does your blog content provide a valuable service?

If you're a serious blogger, you should be asking yourself this question on a regular basis.

Because if the answer is no, why on earth would anyone want to visit or follow your blog?

In her newsletter I Love Great Curators.  Are You One?, Jane Friedman says, "Curation is one of the most valuable services you can provide in a world flooded with information."

Curation?

What does curation have to do with blogging?

Well, Jane compares bloggers to content specialists, who research, index, and preserve previously inaccessible information and bring it into the public domain. 

Bloggers, according to this line of thinking, are cross-pollinators, go-betweens, connectors, who guide readers to smart, interesting, and reliable content.  And that makes them curators.  Often great ones. 

In the spirit of guiding readers to smart, interesting, and reliable content, here are 18 top-notch sites about blogging I've discovered over the past year and added to my trove of treasures.

Invaluable Sites For Improving Your Blog

1. Photo and video sharing service: TinyPic (Great place to resize photos for your blog)
2. Web Analytics:  Clicky and Statcounter
3. Discovery Engine:  StumbleUpon 
4. Online pin board to organize and share things you love:  Pininterest 
5. Social network teaching how to blog and how to make money online:  TheSitsGirls  
6. Curating buzz worthy news plus scoops for women bloggers:  ShePosts
7. Blogging Teacher
8. Protect your original creations:  My Free Copyright
9. Create a Custom Blog Header
10. Google Page Rank Checker
11. Free Stock Photos
12. Blog doctor
13. Pictures for your blog:  Flickr
14. Blog Content:  How to Write Great Content
15. Spicing up your blog
16. Daily blog tips
17. What is pinging?
18. Ping your blog

Add the ones you find useful to your own reference library.

And if you like what you see, let me know, and I'll keep working on my curating skills.

Setting up a Blog for the Technologically Challenged, Part III: Adding Images using Flickr and Creative Commons

Now for the fun part.  Adding visuals to your blog using Flickr and Creative Commons! 

 It's amazing how much more appealing your posts will be with pictures.  And Blogger makes it easy.

But first, a word for beginners.  If you don't have your own library of photographs saved to your computer (the right size and format for displaying on the Web), don't dispair.

There's a resource available that will make your blogging life easier and a lot more fun.

Flickr: Creative Commons provides thousands of images licensed for publication that you can copy to your blog.  When you reach this website, it will explain how the photos are licensed.  I prefer the group of pictures that are licensed as:  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitive (reasons listed below). 

From there I enter a keyword into the search box.  For the sake of this post, I chose the word, "Path."  Three choices follow: Relevant/Recent/Interesting.  I selected Relevant and found the picture to your right. 

Blooper tip:  Now's the time to note the author's name and the title of the image so you can give the author credit later on.  I've spent hours trying to relocate pictures for this information, sometimes never able to find the pictures again (See the end of my post for photo credits).

Now click on the picture of your choice, then click Actions, and then View all sizes.  Choose a size (I usually pick Small).  Then right click on the image and Save Picture As, which takes you to your Pictures Libary, where you click Save.

 For more information on creative commons, go to:

Creative Commons: Wikipedia or Creative Commons.

Remember, when you find a photo on the Internet you would like to use in your blog, always check the copyright information before you save it for future use  (I keep a separte folder with the names of my favorite artists and the titles of their images).

 Here are some of the license conditons that apply to CC works.

Attribution:  You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial:  You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works:  You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike:  You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

 As I noted above, I prefer the most accomodating license types, usually,

   .

 Now, back to adding images to your post.

If you're working with a post you've already saved as a draft, select Edit Posts from your Dashboard and proceed from there.  Or work from your current post.

1. With your cursor, select the place in your post where you want to add an image.  Then click the Add Image icon.  It looks like a photograph at the top of your entry field.  An upload window appears. 
2. Click the Browse button in Add An Image From Your computer.
3. Find the image you want to upload and select it.  Then click Open.
4. Now you can use a layout and size (Right, center, left, small, medium, large,etc).
5. Then click the Upload Image button.
6. After your image is uploaded, click Done.

You can also add images from other Web sites as long as they are in public domain.  Experiment, using some of the same techniques I've listed above or consult Blogging for Dummies (a great reference for beginners).

In the mean time, enjoy!

(Photo Credits: Dream a Dream by Express Monorail; Paths by Kudaker)