Top blogs

Guest post by Manoj Pandey            [Mr. Pandey, a keen social media observer, is the author of The Manual of Blogging and The Manual of Social Media . His professional blog Sociallogging is private now but he is active on social media. This guest post carries excerpts from The Manual of Blogging .] Blogs were among the first social media entities that, in addition to connecting people, gave rise to mass distribution of content. In that sense they are no less than the traditional 'mass media'. However, puritans would not like to dilute the significance of traditional mass media such as newspapers and television – where a formal ‘press’ entity broadcasts news and information to a large audience/ readership. ... On the other hand, some media observers in the early blogging days got swayed by the tide of blogging. They even predicted that blogs would soon annihilate the mainstream print press. That never happened. ... While the boundaries have disappeared...

Many bloggers look for free web hosting for blogs. There are some companies that offer free web hosting and some also offer free domain names. Of course, web hosting comes free when you open the blog on a free blogging platform such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. But if you are a serious blogger, wanting to have your brand and/ or make money blogging, free web hosting has its pitfalls. Let us see what you get in terms of blog hosting when you open the blog on these free platforms: Blogger You can open up to 100 blogs per Google account. You can have any number of posts and pages. You can publish up to 50 posts in a day. The blog can have up to 100 people collaborating. Individual pages should not be more than 1MB in size. You can have any number of pictures in your photo folders, totaling 15GB. Photos smaller than 16MP size are not counted towards the storage limit. You can put AdSense or affiliate advertisements on the blog. As on any website, no more than 3 AdSense ads ca...

Bloggers are now routinely being called to press tours, especially by big tour operators, tourist destinations, hotels, governments, companies dealing with big manufacturing projects, at book and product launches, and so on. They are also called for press conferences. Because bloggers have special needs and they should ideally be given information differently from seasoned journalists, savvy companies sometimes organize media tours exclusively for bloggers. Whether as part of a standard press party in which journalists from print (newspapers, wire agencies, photo agencies, magazines) and electronic (television, radio) media take part or as part of a bloggers' press trip, bloggers must follow rules of the game to make the best of the trip and to become more worthy of being invited in future. The same goes for press conferences.  11 best practices for press tours and press conferences [These tips are useful for  not only   bloggers but all media persons.] 1. Do you...

After experimenting with a number of free video editing software and reading users' comments, I have come to the conclusion that VSDC free version is the best free video editing tool available today. I have tested this video editing software extensively on Windows. I am told it works as fine on Mac too, but since I have not used it on Mac, I don't know if any of its features are not available there. Before we discuss why VSDC is the best among free video editing tools, let's talk a bit about the use of videos and why should a common blogger, web publisher or casual user of videos should bother about editing the video. You will find this discussion especially useful if you are very new to the world of video editing or have not applied your mind to this question.     Why use videos on blogs, websites, social media For those used to putting only text and images on their blogs, websites, presentations, etc, putting videos looks like a big bother. If you have that feeling, get r...

How do you define top blogs , and then top Indian blogs ? We were asked this when we started compiling the directory of best Indian blogs, way back in 2010 end and we are asked this question again and again. Let me share that initially, we compiled the directory by assigning a value to many parameters of regularity, quality, design, engagement, etc to each blog that we scanned. We also had Alexa score and  Google PageRank to further rank blogs. Technorati and DMoz public website listing were other useful indicators of a blog's standing.  Except for Alexa, we do not have these scores, but we do not miss them, not for deciding which blogs to call top blogs. Assigning relative values to different parameters and assigning a benchmark to each parameter were cumbersome; you moved the slider a bit and a number of blogs good in one aspect were wiped out while some others came in.  After two years, we realized that the algorithm-based listing was not capturing real strengths and ...

On Top Blogs, I have published a number of articles on starting a blog, with inputs from successful bloggers.    I have shared experiences and best practices on starting and maintaining a beauty and fashion blog, food blog, travel blog, product and book review blog and technology blog. The post on how to start a lifestyle blog comes rather late, but here it is:  Contents What is lifestyle blogging Why start a lifestyle blog How to start a lifestyle blog Making money from a lifestyle blog When fashion blogging is better than lifestyle blogging When to move blogging from a narrow niche to lifestyle Lifestyle blog topics What is lifestyle blogging   Lifestyle blogging is a niche (= segment) of professional blogging in which we talk about topics that lead people to have a good lifestyle.  Good lifestyle would mean good health, organized family and occupational life, enough money and comforts, style and fashion, overall well-being and happiness. Lifestyle...