It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so why not add your smiling face to all your comments!  Not only will this make your comment stand out from the sea of comments who have ‘alien’ or ‘blank’ featureless photos, but you will be more relatable.  After all, nobody likes to do business or be friends with an alien… or do you??  

So, let’s turn that blank, featureless photo into a winning commentary.  You will be blown away by how simple and quick this is to do.  Here’s how to add that Personal Touch…

So, head over to http://www.gravatar.com and sign up for a free account.  Then, I would love for you to share your first gravatar comment post down below and let me know if you found this training useful in one of the many ways to start branding yourself.

Some final tips:

1. Make sure your smiling in your photo.  It is a statistical fact that your picture will be more attractive to others if you present yourself showing your pearly whites.

2. When you do add a comment on your friend’s or professional colleague’s blogs, make sure you are leaving a valuable comment and that you are contributing to the conversation.

Don’t forget to share this post with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other social communities out there by using the Twitter icon at the top of this post or the Facebook, Digg, and Bookmark & Share buttons below.  Your friends and followers will appreciate you for showing them!  Thanks to all of you for your continued support!

Dedicated To Your Success,

Why Should You Get An API Key?

A WordPress.com API Key is needed when you want to activate and install some plugins for your self-hosted WordPress blog.  One of these plugins that I highly recommend is Akismet.  Akismet eliminates most of the spam comments.  A “must have” for any blog.  This plugin is typically already installed on your WordPress blog, but needs an API Key to activate it.

How To Get A WordPress.com API Key

You can get a free WordPress.com API Key when you sign up for an account at WordPress.com.  The first thing you need to do is go to WordPress.com/Signup to register your free WordPress.com account.

If you are currently using a self-hosted blog, you only need to check the ‘Just a username, please’ circle.

After you have signed up, you will receive the API Key in the Welcome email from WordPress.com.

Didn’t get the email?  No problem, you can get the API Key in your WordPress.com account. Login at WordPress.com Global Dashboard and goto your Profile.  Your API Key is right at the top of the screen above ‘Personal Options’.

I hope this post was of value to you.  I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment down below with your thoughts or questions and don’t forget to Tweet this to your followers!

Yours in knowledge,

When you ‘ping’, you notify blog indexing services that you have made an update on your blog.

Why is Pinging Important?

In order for your blogging efforts to be extremely effective, you will want to make sure the content on your blog is syndicated properly.  There are many different ways to do this and pinging is one of them.

Ping-o-matic is used automatically by WordPress when you install it, but there are others you should take advantage of.  Use the following list to make sure your content is represented by these services.

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com
• http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
• http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
• http://ping.myblog.jp
• http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
• http://bblog.com/ping.php

How Do You Install These?

It’s really easy!!  In WordPress, click on ‘Settings’ in admin, then ‘Writing’, and paste them into ‘Update Services’ at the bottom of the page.  Click ‘Save Changes’ and you are in business.  Now WordPress will notify these services automatically.

Dedicated to your success,

If you are familiar with pinging services you already know that there are plenty more pinging services available than the ones listed above.  This list is researched and optimized for efficiency.  Credit for the research goes to Instant Info Online.  You can check out the research here.

P.S. If you enjoyed this article today and thought it was informative, then don’t forget to share this with your friends by using the ‘Bookmark & Share’ button below and share with your Twitter followers by using the ‘Retweet’ button above.  Also, please let me know your thoughts as well….I enjoy hearing your comments!