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Today I was watching my Twitter account evolution after 12 days of dismissing it and forgetting to update my status. (But my status still always update with Twitter for feeds and I also use another FireFox plug-in to post links I'm browsing.)
I left my account with 170 followers, now I come to watch the changes. More than 370 are following me!

Most of "All!!" webmasters and bloggers write about "How to Promote your Blog with Twitter". Yet, it's good, but first you need to grow your Twitter account by getting a big number of followers.
The idea is simple : Follow people on Twitter, they'll follow you. Generally, you need to follow 10 people, to get 1 following you.

Sometimes I follow from 20 to 30, but I don't get a follower back. Sometimes I follow 20, I get 16 or 18 in the mean time I followed them.
The rule is simple : Follow people that are following a big number of people.

This is logic, if someone has 12,000 follower and follow only 20 and you follow him and you don't know each other --> Result, he won't follow you!

In most of case, people with 2,000+ follower won't follow you back, or even read your updates. You'll need some active guys with 200 or 300 follower and that follow a lot, which mean they are ready for exchange.

Another important thing, is to update. Not so much but don't forget it!
By updating your status and putting interesting messages, you have the chance to appear more and attract Twitterers on the Public TimeLine.

But you can do more with the 'Every one twit' or the Public Timeline. You can reply to users, if they love your reply, they reply you back, reply your other status and may be follow you!

What makes Twitter unique is "Fast Growing" and "Simple". Following people is simple and easy, reply is amusing, updating is addictive. Also Twitter had many other third-part services like Twitter Counter that I uses a lot either for my account or for other ones.

Also you can post your blog or other profiles updates with Twitter feed. Twitter feed will automatically posts updates to your Twitter account; just tune it for you needs.

Finally Twitter is necessary for everyone.Start by Following me!

Posted by Omar Abid at 6:33 AM | 13 comments Links to this post    
Labels: blogger, promote, traffic, Twitter, web 2.0

Today I come up with a Wikipedia article that gave me inspiration to this post: How to Block ads (like Adsense and Adbrite) on any website using any browser (Firefox or IE or any other browser under Windows).

The idea is simple : Redirecting the advertising website host name to another IP address, then you can't access it.

1. How to do it?
   
   It's general (not only for Ads), you can block any website from showing on your computer on any browser.
   To do it, open the execute command, and type
   

   notepad C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
   

   Then note pad will open a text file. You'll have to edit it.
   You can add as my host names you want. Normally, you should find the following
   

   127.0.0.1 localhost
   

   Leave this one in peace and add another line
   

   127.0.0.2 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
   

   After saving your file, you'll notice that Adsense ads don't show on any website.
   You can do the same for any other advertising website.
   
   
2. How to get the host name of the advertising website
   
   Then you should have noticed that didn't put google.com/adsense or google.com in the host name. It's simple, because the host where Adsense gets its ads from isn't google.com but page2ad.googlesyndication.com
   
   To know it, right click on the Adsense (or any other ad), copy the link location (you don't have even to open it) and paste it in a note pad.
   
   Now you should see the host name page2ad.googlesyndication.com/blablabla
   The blablabla don't matter, we can put page2ad.googlesyndication.com or googlesyndication.com directly and we are done.
   
   
3. What I really think!
   
   It's great to disable ads on a website, especially when they are noisy and heavy one. However my blog will really sucks if all my visitors blocks ads! I must then think of other ways of advertising.
   

Posted by Omar Abid at 9:08 AM | 12 comments Links to this post    
Labels: adsense, blogger, tech, traffic, web 2.0

Few days ago, Blogger introduced a new Blogger Widget, blog following. This feature was experimental before, but now it's open for all :)
The idea is simple, following other bloggers blog, from your blogger home page.
It's like using Google Reader, 'but restricted for Blogger blogs' and it also gives a sens of community.



Currently I have only one follower, which is me! But I invite you all to follow my blog. People following my blog, will have their profile images shown on the Followers widget, but it you can hide it by being an anonymous follower.

The idea of Blogger is great and here's why:

1. The more Blogs you follow, the more your promote your Blogger profile and then you increase your popularity.
2. The more follower you have, the more readers you get.
3. Follower must visit your blog, if they want to complete reading an article published on your blog.
4. You can read other non-Blogger blogs, by importing them from Google Reader.

I have put 'Restricted for Blogger' between two '', because I'm not really sure, if Wordpress or other blogging platform can add the Following widget or view their list of followers.

Posted by Omar Abid at 7:34 AM | 4 comments Links to this post