Business Blog Boost

I’d never heard of widgets until a couple of weeks ago. To me a widget means I can add extras to my website or blogs without having to understand any html. You must stop and think why are you going to use widgets. No point it only doing it because it’s the latest craze. I see adding widgets as a way of differentiating my blog from other blogs by giving readers extra features that will be of benefit to the them, either for utility or entertainment.

The Sumansa Wordpress theme that I use for Business Blog Boost is described as widget friendly. I just go into the Presentation option in blog admin and then the widget option. Just be aware that as soon as you start to customise the right hand sidebar of your blog, that the default settings disappear and you’ll have to drag everything in again. It’s up to you how you want to order the sidebar contents. You have to think what’s most important to you and your readers. If you put a column of adverts first you could put readers off your blog before they have an opportunity to discover all the great posts in your blog.

Some widgets are already there ready to use but for any additional widgets you wish to insert, you just copy the widget code into a text box and save, then drag the widget into position in the sidebar. It really is that simple! You can create up to 9 text link boxes.

There are thousands of widgets available, you need to find those that are appropriate to and will add the most extra value to your blog. Here are some of the widgets I’ve used:

1 Subscribe by Feedburner.com - It’s important to make it obvious and easy to readers how they can subscribe to your blog, as you want to build up a core of regular readers.

Subscribe in a reader

2 Google Adsense - Adsense can be an additional source of revenue in your blog. As well as having ads below your blog posts, you can also add them to your sidebar. You login to Adsense and create your ads and then copy the code into the text box.

3 Swickis by Eurekstar - A swicki is an intelligent search engine, a cross between a search engine and a wiki. I thought having a “blogging for you business” swicki would be a useful resource for readers searching for more information about business blogging. Users can nominate sites for inclusion into the swicki and vote for their favourite results. There is a specific swiki widget that you need to use to insert it to the sidebar. It’s fairly easy to do and you need to copy your group and security key.

check out the Blogging for your business swicki at eurekster.com

4 Subscribe to another blog - This is useful if you have another blog. I added the RSS for my travel blog This widget was already there, I only had to copy in the feed, add a title and choose how many post titles should be displayed.

5 Wink.com Aggregator - This widget allows to assemble all your web offerings in one place eg website, blogs, photos, social bookmarks etc.

6 Flickr Badge - This widget show photos you’ve uploaded to your Flickr account.  It’s under the help/tools option.  You can choose to have static photos in a variety of sizes or a selection of 12 mini photos where one photos becomes larger in rotation. This is more relevant to my travel website where I uploaded the widget to my homepage. I would advise you only to use photos relevant to your blog e.g. if you sell clothes or furniture it could give prospective customers a taste of your current stock if you choose the display recent photos option.

Please let me know if you’ve discovered any great widgets and if you believe that widgets have enhanced your blog.

[tags]widgets, blog widgets[/tags]

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