Creating 'After the jump' summaries

Creating 'After the jump' summaries

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After the Jump is a feature which lets you create expandable post summaries in your blog posts, so longer posts appear as an intro with a link to Read More

Creating jump breaks in your blog posts can be easily done right from the post editor, without the need for any HTML changes. First, decide where in the post you want to create the jump break, and place your cursor in that position:

Once your mouse cursor is placed at the jump point, simply click the Insert Jump Break toolbar icon:

Clicking the icon will insert a grey bar at the cursor point, illustrating where in the post your break will appear. The bar can be dragged though, so you can always re-position it after insertion.

If you don't use the new post editor, you can still insert a jump break in Edit HTML mode by adding

8 tips to optimize your time for blog writing

I regularly hear statements like I just don’t have time to work on my blog, I am too busy to get out there and promote the blog, I have to do this, I have to do that, plus many other excuses. What these people really mean is I prioritize something else.

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” – Harvey MacKay

Even though time is a limited resource, we still have 24 hours in a day, which is plenty of time, but it is a matter of reevaluating our priorities.

Most bloggers might have a job that takes some 9 hours daily, then you sleep some 7 hours and it leaves you with some 8 hours daily to do some house work, hang out with your friends and family or work on your hobbies.

That is why you have to learn to control your time, optimize it the best possible way and manage it wisely. There are the 8 ways that you can find more time to work on your blogging dreams.

1. Stop reading, take action

   Reading and learning is important, but only to a point. It is important to stop and implement some of the things you have read about. If you don’t take your time to use what you have learned, nothing will change and you will stand still. Be a blog producer.

2. Stop checking the stats

   If you are regularly stressing yourself checking your blog visitor stats, your RSS subscriber stats, your earning stats, stop. Checking them will not help, but actively working on things that will improve those stats will. Try not to check the stats more than once daily.

3. Focus on the tasks that have the highest impact

   You must focus your energy on the tasks that have the highest impact on your goals. For bloggers, the goal usually is to increase the readership, and the task that will bring you closer to that goal is creating remarkable content and pulling your target audience to your blog.

4. Don’t get distracted

   In the age of the Internet it is very easy to get distracted and waste several hours reading RSS, checking Facebook, sending tweets or reading Steve Pavlina’s blog (it happens to me every once in a while as Steve’s blog is so good). Shut out the distractions!

5. Throw away your television

   Most of the people that say that they are too busy to be able to work on their blogs regularly, still seem to have enough time to watch hours of television every day. TV watching might be entertaining, but it is not going to bring you closer to your blogging goals.

6. Forget your strict schedule

   Did you set yourself on a very strict schedule of having to produce regular blog posts? Forget about it. Your blog will not become extinct if you miss a day or two. The tight schedule just might strain you so much that you give up the blog. Writing one great post per week will have a much bigger impact than writing one average post daily.

7. Maximize your health

   Eat healthy. Do some exercise. Get enough sleep. Leading a healthy lifestyle will definitely make you more energetic, fresh and will improve your productivity and will win you time.

8. Your passion motivates you

   We always hear about the blog passion and it really is true. If your blog topic is something you really love, it is going to be so much easier to motivate yourself to work on it. You will not be able to fall asleep because you would want to blog, you would wake up very early energetic to get out of the bed and do even more blogging.

From passive viewing to active working

Majority of the “busy” bloggers are spending more time surfing the internet and watching TV than working on their blogs and at the end of another day they have nothing to show for. You must be disciplined and shift your focus from passive viewing into active working on your blogging targets and dreams. No one else but you can do it.

Image by Damon Garrett.

I'm nominated in top 100 online marketers of 2009 - Click here to vote for me now! - Thanks, Marko Saric

How to be a prolific blogger by Marko Saric

When I posted my plan for a guest posting blitz: 20 posts in 30 days, Marko actually replied saying that it was an aggressive goal and offered me an invite to post here.

So, I thought what better to write about than how I can continually generate massive amounts of content. Since starting my blog I’ve consistently published between 5-7 posts a week. So, I figured it’s time to answer the question, “How do you come up with so much content?”

• Write every day

Notice that I didn’t put post every day. I said “write” every day. Writing is like any other skill. The more you do it, the better you are going to get at it. I do a little bit of writing every single day on some idea I have for a blog post. At any one time I might have 10 or so different ideas for posts, and be working on 3-4.

• Consciously look for ideas

As I go through my life, I will often look for experiences that I could turn into a blog post. Sometimes simply asking myself the question “How can I turn this into a blog post?” will enable me to come up with the idea I need for my next post.

• Brainstorm

At all times, you should have either a notebook, text document, or just a simple list of of ideas for blog posts. Even if you don’t know what the content of the post will be and the idea seems half baked, write it down. I have ideas for blog posts that I came up with a month ago and I still haven’t written them.

• Psycho Cybernetics problem solving

I know that’s a mouthful. One thing I learned from Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book is the idea of our subconscious problem solving mechanism. You can actually give your subconsciousness instructions to solve a problem before you go to sleep and in the morning you will wake up with the solution. It sounds nuts, but I’ve found it to be quite effective for coming up with blog post ideas.

So how do you do this? It’s pretty simple actually. Before you go to sleep, just tell yourself “I need an idea for a new blog post.” Do this right before you are about to fall asleep. Then when you wake up in the morning you’ll have an idea.

• Posts/Comments on other blogs

I come up with a lot of ideas for posts when I read people’s comments on other blogs. Sometimes a reader will make a comment or ask a question about the post I’m reading, so I just write a blog post about it. Again it comes down to asking yourself the question, “How can I make a blog post out of that?”

• Go off topic

Maybe you have a good story that has nothing do with the content of your blog? Turn it into a blog post. You’ll be surprised at how engaging people find your content.

If there’s anybody who actually does a great job of taking every day life experiences that seem completely ordinary and turnes them into awesome blog posts, it’s Kelly Diels. She managed to take a conversation about some t-shirt she bough her boyfriend, write a blog post about it, make a product out of it, and sell two t-shirts.

Developing momentum

All of this comes down to developing momentum. Once you hit your stride, you’ll see that coming up with posts is not all that difficult. Finding the time to write all of them is really about effective time management. If you want to know how I manage my time check out my post on how to put your Wordpress blog on autopilot and hang out at the beach and my 6 tips for efficient blogging.

A guest post by Srinivas Rao, a personal development blogger, at The Skool of Life.

Image by Ajawin

I'm nominated in top 100 online marketers of 2009 - Click here to vote for me now! - Thanks, Marko Saric

AVATAR james cameron

By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer David Germain, Ap Movie Writer – Thu Jan 7, 4:09 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – The science-fiction blockbuster "Avatar" has earned James Cameron his latest nomination for the top honor from the Directors Guild of America.

Cameron won the guild prize 12 years ago for "Titanic." Also nominated are Kathryn Bigelow for the Iraq War drama "The Hurt Locker," Lee Daniels for the Harlem teen tale "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," Jason Reitman for the recession-era story "Up in the Air" and Quentin Tarantino for the World War II hit "Inglourious Basterds."

Like the Golden Globes on Jan. 17, the awards put Cameron up against ex-wife Bigelow, a first-time Directors Guild nominee.

Daniels and Reitman also earned their first guild film nominations, while Tarantino previously was nominated for 1994's "Pulp Fiction."

Directors Guild picks usually are a good reflection of how the category will shake out at the Academy Awards. The winner at the guild awards usually goes on to win the directing Oscar, as Cameron did for "Titanic" and last year's guild winner, Danny Boyle, did for "Slumdog Millionaire."

The guild announces TV, documentary and commercial nominations Friday. Awards will be presented at a banquet Jan. 30 in Los Angeles, three days before Oscar nominations come out.

If the Oscar nominees match the guild picks, it would be one of the most diverse lineups ever in the directing category, which usually consists of five white men.

Daniels would follow John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood") as only the second black filmmaker nominated for best director. Bigelow would be only the fourth woman nominated for director, following Lina Wertmuller ("Seven Beauties"), Jane Campion ("The Piano") and Sofia Coppola ("Lost in Translation").

Director Norman Jewison, whose films include "In the Heat of the Night," "A Soldier's Story" and "Moonstruck," will receive the guild's lifetime-achievement award.

___

On the Net:

http://www.dga.org

Jay Leno canceled

NEW YORK – The future of "The Jay Leno Show" was in question Thursday, even as NBC defended its prime-time talk-show star amid Web site reports the program will soon be canceled or shifted into late night.

An industry Web site called FTV declared that Leno's show would be canceled as soon as the Winter Olympics begin next month, when much of the regular programming on NBC will be pre-empted for Olympics coverage.

Then the TMZ Web site, citing undisclosed sources, said Leno's show would go on hiatus Feb.1. Following the Olympics (which take place in Vancouver from Feb. 12-28), Leno will take back the 11:30 p.m. EST time slot he occupied for 17 years that ended last May.

This would make Leno's successor at "The Tonight Show," Conan O'Brien, "the odd man out," TMZ said.

Late Thursday, The New York Times reported that NBC executives held discussions with both Leno and O'Brien earlier in the day about the future of the network's late-night lineup. Those executives said that no final decision has been made, but did not deny that the network is considering options that could include returning Leno as host of the "Tonight Show."

Since September, Leno has hosted an hour-long talk and comedy show weeknights at 10 p.m. EST. But his lackluster ratings in prime time have upset NBC affiliate stations who complain they are getting weaker lead-in audiences for their local late newscasts than from past NBC fare.

In a statement released Thursday, NBC said, "Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay's show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network. It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates. Both Jay and the show are committed to working closely with them to find ways to improve the performance."

While this statement didn't clearly refute the Web reports that Leno's show would be dropped, a clarification from NBC executives denied "The Jay Leno Show" has been canceled.

During his monologue Thursday, Leno milked some laughs from the "rumor floating around that we were canceled. I heard it coming in this morning on the radio. So far, no one has said anything to me."

But if it's true, he joked, "it will give us time to do some traveling. I understand that (the) Fox (network) is beautiful this time of year."

"I don't think there is any truth to the rumors," he went on, referring to his frontrunner status in the ratings when NBC took him off "The Tonight Show."

"See, it's always been my experience that NBC only cancels you when you're in first place," Leno cracked. "So we are fine. We are OK."

O'Brien made no mention of the scuttlebutt in his monologue.

Thursday night, NBC issued yet another statement expressing the network's commitment "to keeping Conan O'Brien on NBC. He is a valued part of our late-night lineup, as he has been for more than 16 years and is one of the most respected entertainers on television."

On Thursday, the rumors surrounding Leno's fate left industry analyst Shari Anne Brill mystified.

"For me, the big question is what is going to happen at 10 p.m. going forward," Brill said, "because that's a critical time period to promote the late local news, and it was the affiliates' dissatisfaction with their lower audience numbers that was the catalyst for speculation on this purported move (for Leno) into late-night."

"The unsolved mystery is what happens at 10 p.m." said Brill of Carat USA.

What sparked Thursday's flurry of Web reports was unclear, but coincided with reports this week that NBC has as many as 18 pilots for prospective new series — presumably more than would be needed to replenish a prime-time schedule for a network that expected to continue filling five hours weekly with Leno's show.

The speculation may also be a run-up to the winter TV Critics Press Tour, which begins this weekend in Los Angeles. At this annual conclave, network programming initiatives are unveiled for media reporters. In turn, reporters have a forum to grill network brass on programming questions. NBC's session is scheduled for Sunday.