Blogging tips

Blog email subscriptions

Ever feel like you spend all your time begging people to read your blog?  Want to let them know without the hassle?  Not everyone is RSS savvy - but most people know how to check a simple email right?

Thanks to the helpful lovelies at TypePad, is it now possible to turn your lastminuteliving.com blog into an email newsletter! These free services from FeedBlitz push email updates to your readers. You get:

• Subscription sign up form.
• Daily email summaries when you post.
• Subscriber verification, unsubscription, confirmation and export.
• Automatic bounce handling.
• Full FeedBurner integration.
• Support for podcasts and enclosures.
• OPML import and export.
• Content truncation to force readers back to your site.

To see what it looks like, check out the following radio show's blog:
The Big Smoke

Premium upgrades are also available, visit the TypePad widget page for more information.

While you're at it, why not subscribe to this blog's email updates - you'll never miss out on handy hints again.

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TypePad widgets

You can't say TypePad doesn't look after their bloggers.  They have added to their extensive list of widgets and lastminuteliving.com bloggers have direct access to them. It's as simple as registering, logging in with your TypePad log in and hey presto - your blog looks snazzy.

TypePad Widgets are a new way to add features to your blog. TypePad have partnered with dozens of companies to bring you great new features such as job searching, game playing, weather tracking, and photo sharing. Adding a widget to your TypePad blog is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Browse the gallery and choose a widget
2. Configure it at the widget provider's site
3. Post it to your blog!

There are many to choose from... you can increase traffic, add a weather meter, music, SkypeCasts, style alerts, commerce builders, searches and even blog tattoos.

Browse the new widget gallery and take your pick.

Don't have a lastminuteliving.com blog? Get one now.

The Blog Barrel

Another way to drive traffic to your blog is to use BlogBarrel.com

The Blog Barrel is a networking system that facilitates traffic sharing between blog users. It is designed to help boost the visibility of newer blogs, but still provides substantial exposure for the more popular blogs.

lastminuteliving.com bloggers can insert Blog Barrel as a widget - it's simple and will help to gain exposure to new readers.

Head to the TypePad widget page to insert BlogBarrel directly into your blog.  Or, you can head to the BlogBarrel homepage.

Set up QuickPost bookmarklet

How to use QuickPost using your lastminuteliving.com/Typepad blog

The QuickPost bookmarklet allows you to post to TypePad without going through the TypePad main interface. After installing the bookmarklet, you can post from anywhere on the web.

On your Weblogs tab, click the Set up QuickPost bookmarklet link in the blue box in the top right corner of the content area to enter the QuickPost setup:

1. Select the fields to display on your QuickPost
Choose the items you would like to display on your QuickPost entry form by checking the boxes for the appropriate fields.

The fields you can choose from are: TrackBack items, Category, Allow Comments, and Allow Pings. You can later re-create your bookmarklet if you would like to change the post fields.

QuickPost Default Fields

By default, a QuickPost window will always have: a pull-down menu for the weblog to post to, a pull-down menu to select the Post Status (Draft or Publish) of the new post, a text entry box for the Title of the post, and a text entry box for the post body.

Plus and Pro members can also add the fields for Text Formatting, Post Continuation (extended post), Excerpt and Keywords. See the Advanced Post Fields section for more information about these items.

2. Press “Create”
Press the button and the page will refresh with the link to create your TypePad QuickPost bookmarklet.

3 Drag the QuickPost link to your browser
To install the bookmarklet, drag the link to your browser’s menu or Favorites toolbar. The bookmarklet is now ready to use for posting to TypePad.

Windows Right-Click Menu
Alternatively, if you are running Internet Explorer on Windows, you can install a TypePad QuickPost option into the Windows right-click menu:

• Click on the “Add TypePad QuickPost to Windows right-click menu” link. When prompted, save the file quickpost.reg to your desktop.
• Once the file has been saved to your desktop, right-click on the file and select “Merge” from the menu. Then quit and restart your web browser to add the link to the right-click menu. Now you can access TypePad QuickPost with your IE right-click menu.

Courtesy of the TypePad Knowledge Base.  For more information on how to get the most out of your blog, visit the Knowledge Base. In the meantime, we'll bring you snippets of our favourite tips.

If you have a particular request for information, please leave a comment and we'll get to it as soon as we can.