Cyber Imprints

Last month, I have seen an error on my Adsense account that goes like this:

According to the error, Google Adsense is now requiring publishers to verify their Adsense account by inputting their Personal Identification Number (PIN). Getting the Adsense PIN is important because Google requires it before the publisher could cash out from his/her account.

I guess Google’s insistence on verifying the Adsense account is in connection with the measure of the US government to put tax on online incomes of US citizens.

To get your Adsense PIN, all you have to do is to request for your PIN and fill out your address information in your Adsense Account. Your Adsense PIN will come by mail within three weeks after you filed your request.

After receiving your Adsense PIN via mail, all you have to do is to input your PIN so to enable you to cash out from your account.

Bloggers love to see comments on their blogs. Comments serves as a proof that there is indeed someone who read the bloggers blog post. But that is not the only reason, comments also gives the bloggers indication that the commenting reader wants to have an active interaction with the blogger. Through comments, the reader sends their reactions – be it a question, a disagreement with contents of the blog post, or an appreciation to the information posted by the blogger. Comments also show how the audience receives the blog posts and could be used as a tool to change the blogger’s strategy in marketing their blogs. A blog with active readers is an indication that the blog captured a set of core readers that can serve as start of streams of traffic trickling to the blog.

Whatever the reason is, comments are valuable to the bloggers. And because of this, many bloggers tried many ways to make the passive readers leave a comment on their blogs. Some well-established have schemes like online contests to foster commenting and attract hordes of traffic. However, those kinds of scheme are beyond the reach of newbie bloggers and young blogs.

Blogging is a mode of communicating and connecting with other people. Commenting, as a tool of blogging, is a simple way of initiating conversation. It is also a good way of developing good relationships with other bloggers.

Tips on Making Comments a Powerful Blogging Tool

1) Initiate the Conversation First

This is the first thing that I did when I started blogging. Instead of just waiting for someone to comment on my blog, I started to visit other blogs and leave a comment on those blogs. And it is not just any blogs that I went to. I make sure that my blog have something in common with the blogs I am visiting, or that I have something in common with the blogger who owned the blog I am visiting. For my Before the Eastern Sunset blog, I started visiting blogs owned by bloggers who also live in my hometown. By doing this, I know that I have something to relate to with the blogger.

Initiating the conversation first is just like visiting the houses in your new neighborhood and saying hello to the homeowners.

2) Leave Meaningful Comments

Many bloggers do not like seeing comments that do not add value to the conversation. Short comments like “LOL,” “That’s great!,” or “Nice post,” are examples of such comments. Bloggers who receive such comments can only reply short comments that in no way continue the conversation. You can only use such comments if you already have an established relationship with the blogger you are commenting to and simple words like these are enough to convey your message. But if you are a new visitor, never leave such comments.

Reading the blog post is also important. Leaving comments that are off topic is a big no-no. Comments that only contain advertisements or promotion of commenter’s blogs are also a big no-no and comments like these are likely to be ignored or, worse, deleted by bloggers.

Leaving a meaningful comment shows you value to the blogger whom you are commenting to. It shows that you want to spark a meaningful conversation with the blogger. Leaving meaningful comments also have an added benefit because comments like these attracts the attention of other readers. If the blogger and the readers find you comments meaningful, then there is a great chance that they will also visit your blog to know more about your blog. 

3) Follow Up On Comments

Leaving on comment on a blog is not the end of conversation. If the blogger or other reader answered your comment, then it is good that you also answer their replies. Following up on comments only shows that you are interested in conversing with them.

However, monitoring replies to each of your comments is quite hard to do. Thankfully, there are ways to automatically know if your comment had been replied to.

Blogger, for instance, allows you to subscribe on the comments of the blog posts you commented on. For other blog platform, there are Disqus and Intense Debate which are installed by bloggers to foster interactivity in their blogs. Do not fail to take advantage of such facilities in the blogs you are commenting on.

4) Answer Comments on Your Blogs

If a visitor commented on your blog, then the best thing to do is to reply to their comment. This is the best way of rewarding readers who took their time to write a comment on your blog. Replying on your reader’s comment also shows that you are interested in conversing with your readers. It adds interactivity to your site and make develops a personal relationship with your readers.

If your visitor left a question, then answer the question to the best of your knowledge and as soon as possible. It is also best if you go out of your way to research the answer to the questions so that your readers will look at you as a person who personally knows the topic in question. This will raise your value to the blogosphere and will attract more readers through the word of mouth of commenters who got their questions answered.

Commenting is a powerful blogging tool and the best way of developing strong relationship with your readers. Use the tips I included herein and good things will be coming your way.

Leave a comment. If you have questions, reactions, or clarification about this article then please leave a comment. All comments will be replied to, personally, as soon as possible.
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There are quite a number of blog platforms out there but the most popular are Blogger and Wordpress. New bloggers usually narrow down their choices of blog platforms between Blogger and Wordpress. So, for your new blog, what blog platform should you choose? Is it Wordpress? Or is it Blogger?

Blogger is owned by the Internet giant Google. Large number of free hosted blogs uses Blogger as the blog platform. Blogger is easy to learn and use. It uses the “what you see is what you get” principle in designing. Publishing your blog post is easy and you could either compose your blog post by manually typing HTML tags or automate tagging their composer.

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What I like about blogger is that there are many free templates that could be found in the Internet. My templates for this blog and my travel and personal blog were just downloaded for free. Another good thing is that there many available widgets that you could download for free to make your blog look better.

The best bit is that you could place advertisements on your blog without even applying for paid hosting in the Blogger blog platform. All of my blogs using Blogger blog platform has Google Adsense and other ads from other advertising services.

I like Wordpress for its professional look and feel. This is the reason why I use it for my socio-political blog. Wordpress is the blog platform of choice for bloggers who want to have a .com site. For bloggers who just want to have free hosted blog, Wordpress is also recommendable as a blog platform. However, free hosted blogs is given some limitations by Wordpress. One limitation is that free hosted blogs is not allowed to have any ads. Any blogger who do not follow this rule have their free hosted blogs closed down by Wordpress.

Because of this restriction, I recommend Wordpress for those bloggers who just want to have a blog without the intention of monetizing it. For a free hosted blog to have ads, the only advice is to have pay for the hosting of your blog.

Sans the restriction, Wordpress is a good blog platform. One of the things that made it great is its dashboard that shows the statistics of your blog for free. The Wordpress dashboard can show the number of visitors of your blog, most popular blog post, most clicked links, and a graph showing the number of your blog visitors over time.

Another thing that I like about Wordpress is that you could create categories for blog post, aside from having tags for the blog post. Blogger do not have such functionality and its users are just limited to tags (or labels).

These some advantages and disadvantages of using Wordpress and Blogger. For better reference, here is the summary of advantages and disadvantages of the two blog platforms:

How about you? What can you say about Wordpress or Blogger? What is your blog platform of choice?

This night (July 6, Philippine time zone), I was dismayed to discover that some of the comments from blogger friends are not showing up on my blog. No matter how I try to refresh the page, no comments are being shown. An example of the blog post that is experiencing this kind of problem is my blog post entitled, "Tips on Taking UPCAT, ACET, DLSUCET and other College Entrance Exams."

My friend Nicxter posted a comment on that post and I approved it just this night. I received an e-mail that notified me that the comment was posted.

However, when I go to to my blog, the comment is missing. I tried posting comments on that post but my own comments are also missing. I opened my blog both on Firefox and Google Chrome but the problem persisted. I somehow proved that the problem is not on the browser but on Blogger.

When I go to Blogger's forum page, I discovered that I am not the only one who is experiencing this problem. There many bloggers who also have comments missing on their blogs and many thread were opened to find the solution to this problem. However, there is still no solution and I was just consigned to report to Blogger my problem through the Blogger forum and "Report Problem" page.

The "Missing Comment" problem is a systemwide problem of Blogger. The company said that their engineers are now working to fix the "Missing Comment" problem. I just do hope their solution will not make the comments of my readers to be deleted.

How about you? Did you experienced the same problem? Do you have a solution for the problem of missing comments? Please share it with us.

One Pinoy blogger lamented that his grandfather left his memories through the letters that he wrote and through the many pictures of his that he left behind for his children and grandchildren. Now, in our age, we will be remembered not only through our handwritten memories or the still pictures that we had but also through our activities in the Internet. They will remember us through our blogs post that we uploaded. They will watch our videos that we uploaded in Youtube. They can read our tweets from the archives of US Congress of Library. We could also continue existing through our Facebook accounts.

That is how powerful our Digital Footprint is. It is as tangible as our handwritten letters and printed pictures. It is more widespread thanks to capability of the Internet to share information.

Our digital footprint leaves a great mark on our legacy. Because of this, we must always consider how will our grandchildren perceive us if they see the pictures and videos that we uploaded, read the tweets and blog post that we share. It is will also be the basis of other people to know your personality. By just searching your name in Google, they will mine many information based on your digital footprints that the search engine showed.

When we are surfing the net, we have the tendency to forget how our online activities it will affect our life. Many ignorant rant about their life for the people to see. Some people can’t get jobs because companies unearthed their negative digital footprints.

The tip here is for you to be mindful of your online activities and make sure that your digital footprint is clean. When you are online, you should always consider the nature of the Internet when it comes to coverage and permanence.

Coverage of the Internet and Its Effect to Your Digital Footprint

The Internet is as vast as the ocean and because of its vastness; people tend to be lost in it. Aside from being vast, the exchange of communication in the Internet is fast. In just a matter of seconds, the information you posted may spread to other websites and will be known by hundreds of people. Because of this nature of the Internet, many people’s personal information scattered fast. An example of this is the sex scandal videos that easily spread throughout the Internet. When you are online, do consider this nature and be mindful so that information that you want to be seen by other people is safe.

Permanence of the Internet

Digital footprints may last longer than the person because of Internet’s nature of permanence. Once your information went out to the Internet, many websites will copy that information and many people will download that information. Thus, it is possible that what I posted on this blog today might be seen by my great grandchildren even I am already for years.

Many people were victimized by their own ignorance to the Internet. As a precaution, be always mindful with what you write, post, and share in the Internet so that your digital footprint will not be your shame in the coming years.