Enhance your blog posts with Zemanta
- Image via CrunchBase
The way your write and the way your post looks like adds attraction to your readers to stick to your blog. There are many ways that you can enhance your blog posts.
1. Pictures. Adding pictures relevant to or descriptive of your blog post is one of the proven ways to attract readers, make them stay and read your posts further.
There are several options you have to add images to your posts. You can either manually search for photos then post the image to your blog (what you call hot linking) or upload it directly to your website; add your hosted images from image-hosting websites like Photobucket, ImagesHack, and the like; and use an amazing plugin for WordPress users called Photodropper.
2. Relevant links. Adding relevant links will serve as reference or source of your posts. This adds credibility to you as a writer. Furthermore, you build camaraderie among your fellow bloggers for giving them link love.
3. Articles. Similar with giving relevant links, citing articles serve as a reference for your post.
4. Tags. A tag is a keyword used to describe the topic of a blog post. This serves importance in search engine optimization, categorization of posts, and on pinging Technorati, Google Search, Pingshot, and similar sites.
For you to integrate these “enhancers” to your posts, you have to be resourceful. Good thing that a new web 2.0 startup was created to make it easier for bloggers to add relevant links, articles, pictures and tags to their posts.
About Zemanta:
Zemanta is building a platform for assisted on-line content production for any web user. Our solution is best demonstrated by taking a text (a blog, an article or a web page) and feeding it into our system. The system recognizes the content and returns suggested images, smart links, keywords and relevant related stories from the Internet. It can be referenced from a user’s preferred content publishing platform through a simple plug-in.
You can try a demo from their page on how the service works. Basically you only have to download a browser plugin (currently available for Firefox browser only).
Zemanta works on WordPress.com, Blogger, Typepad and on self-hosted WordPress blogs. It seamlessly work on the new WordPress 2.5 version.
So get your blogs Zemified now!
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Best Free Magazine-Style WordPress Themes
The new trend on WordPress themes now are magazine-style. These themes are preferred by most WP users because of the maximal space for ads and content. Good thing, you don’t need to pay for several bucks just to get a great magazine layout. Here are the best-looking free magazine themes.
1. [Not] So Serious. This is a great theme for magazine sites with several features:
- Adsense ready
- 3 columns
- Fixed width
- Widget ready
- Gravatar ready
- Captions ready
- Valid XHTML and CSS
- Separate comments and trackbacks
- It’s very compatible with WordPress 2.5 or later.
2. Indomagz Premium WordPress Theme. The only premium theme that’s available for download, FREE! It has several features like:
- Cross Browser Support. Tested on Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE7, IE6.
- Automatic Thumbnail Resize
- Integrated Custom Field GUI
- Dropdown Menu. Tested on Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE7, IE6, old browser IE5.5
- Gallery Category
- Fully Widgetized
- Comment & Trackback Separated
- Built-in Gravatar
- Valid XHTML & CSS
3. Crush Magazine WordPress Theme
. A neat magazine theme for technology-related sites. It has a simple layout but elegant one. The highlight-a-post feature, two-columned excerpted posts from specific categories appearing on the main page, and the right sidebar make it a good magazine layout.
There are other available magazine style WordPress themes available on the net, you just have to search for it. 
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