Q&A, or Questions & Answers, are an interesting, fun and interactive feature that you can add to your blog. If you use a self-hosted installation of WordPress, you’ll have access to a variety of plugins that provide Q&A / interviewing functionality to your blog. You can also use certain external PHP scripts, such as the lovely PHPAskIt, which even includes instructions on WordPress integration.

Third party Q&A sites like Formspring.me can also be taken advantage of if you’d like to offer readers of your blog or Twitter account the opportunity to ask questions. The advantages to using these third party services is not having to worry about the initial setup or configuration; disadvantages include not always being able to ban anonymous questions or flamers, and having to rely on a third party to serve your needs.

I like having a Q&A form on my personal blog, jenn.nu. I am personally a big fan of PHPAskIt, as you can view and ban IP addresses for all questions. You can also choose whether or not unanswered questions are displayed, and you can easily customize the templates that display the questions.

If you do decide to use a Q&A form, keep in mind that there are always flamers. Be prepared for crude, rude or obnoxious questions — they seem to be a part of the territory!

As a blogger, participating in product reviews — where you receive a product to write an honest, unbiased, detailed review about on your blog — is beneficial not only because you receive something for free, but because you’re providing your blog with additional, unique content. I can’t tell you how many search engine hits I’ve gotten as a result from writing about certain products or services. More hits from search engines means recognition from the Google gods, which can result in a higher Google Page Rank and search engine listing. Plus, showcasing reviews on your blog shows potential advertisers and companies that you’re interested in receiving products for review, which means opening yourself up to the possibility of receiving additional products for review!

From an advertiser’s standpoint, it pays to hook up with bloggers and coordinate reviews because you’ll have the opportunity to reach a large audience through just one person! When it comes to the internet, one person can provide a very powerful voice. Through their blog, their Twitter and Facebook accounts, and whatever other social media networks and outlets they use online, you’ll be able to spread the word about your company and the products or services you offer.

Even if you’ve never done a product review yourself, I’m sure you’re at least semi-familiar with the process. A company sends a blogger a product, the blogger then turns around and uses the product and writes up a detailed post on it. The post may or may not be accompanied by a giveaway, and the blogger may or may not do future reviews with the company.

So, how do you get started with product reviews? Well, one thing I’d highly recommend is dedicating a blog category or perhaps an entire blog to product reviews. jenn.nu, for example, has a category for product reviews, while In My Bag is my dedicated product review blog.

You’ll want to post reviews on a semi-regular basis, so potential advertisers and companies can see that you’re serious about doing reviews! Put effort into writing well-written, high quality reviews that show that you’re sincere about reviewing products and highlighting their intended uses and what they have to offer.

Finally, let potential reps for companies know that you’re available! You can write a post on your blog, a separate page/article, or post a cute button or logo that advertisers your reviewing availability. Be sure to make your contact information readily available! You can use a pre-made “I review products!” button, or make a custom one. Here’s mine (PR stands for Public Relations):

Finally, be sure to join groups and forums that are all about product reviews (a great one is The Product Review Place!). You’ll not only connect with other bloggers who can show you the ropes, you’ll also be able to read pitches and offers directly from advertisers and companies themselves!

Providing content is essential to a successful blog. And by successful, I mean successful in regards to having visitors, subscribers, commenters, etc. Of course hits aren’t everything, but you’re only fooling yourself if you try and say that your blog is by you and for you. If it was only for you, it would be private, or in paper form. If it’s online, and public, then you obviously want to reach out and attract visitors.

So how do you go about doing so? Well, in addition to maintaining a blog that is full of your personal thoughts, give some thought to stocking your blog with some decent content. When deciding what kind of content to put on your blog, give some thought to what your blog is about, what your visitors might be interested in, and most importantly, what topics you’re knowledgeable about, or at least interested in. As the article Content creation tips: How to create good content points out, write about what you know. Don’t force yourself to write about completely alien topics or in a different writing style, or else you risk alienating visitors and setting yourself up for a tedious task.

Publish content that interests you. Make sure that your content is credible by discussing only those topics that you’re well versed in, and/or providing legitimate sources (via links) along with each piece of content that you publish.

And don’t forget to interact with the visitors that do take the time to visit your blog and give feedback on the content that you have published. Show your visitors by caring by responding to what they have to say. And don’t forget to visit them in return!

WordPress offers its own option for protected blog entries, but that requires entering in a password for each individual entry that you write. Passwords are fine, except that you’ll have to remember a lot of passwords, or use the same password for every protected entry you write. But if you want to prevent individuals from accessing those entries, you’ll need to edit those posts one by one and change their passwords.

The better solution by far is to set it up so that certain blog entries are protected by permissions. By setting permissions, you’ll be able to keep a group of blog entries protected and determine exactly who has access to them, and remove access from certain individuals if the need should arise. And I’m able to do exactly that, using three WordPress plugins: Advanced Category Excluder, Role Manager and ViewLevel 2.0.

Advanced Category Excluder, which I have already written about, allows you to exclude certain categories from certain aspects of your website.

Role Manager allows you to set up roles for specific users. I use the plugin to define and group “approved” users, which are users whose registrations I have manually bumped up to the “approved” status. I also use the plugin to give the “approved” group an user level of 3, which works in conjunction with ViewLevel 2.0.

ViewLevel 2.0 filters posts based on their user level. Basically, any post that is designated as requiring a user level of 0 or above will be hidden from the view unregistered users — your normal Joe Schmoe visitor.

Putting it Together
Here’s how to use these three plugins in order to create protected blog entries on your blog. If used correctly, these three plugins will allow you to create blog posts that are viewable only by a group of registered users that you have manually approved.

Advanced Category Excluder: use this plugin to prevent your designated category for protected blog entries (I named my category “Protected”) from showing up in archives, searches and feeds.

Role Manager: set up a role named “Approved”. Set the user level to 3.

ViewLevel 2.0: add vl=3 to any posts that you wish to protect.

Also: make sure to select your “Protected” category for protected blog entries!

Blogs should always come equipped with an RSS feed. WordPress and most other content management systems offer a feed by default, but some bloggers choose to turn them off. Why? I have no idea. It’s true that a feed is “bland” and can’t be spruced up with fancy layouts, designs and images, but that’s not the purpose of a feed. A feed delivers your posts, stripped of all formatting except for basic HTML (line breaks, paragraph formatting, and bold, underlined and italicized text, and images and links, of course) to a special feed reader, which is designed to present the information in an easy to read manner.

I rely heavily on my feed reader so that I can quickly go through all of the blogs I like to keep tabs on, so if you don’t have a feed, or you’re not sure if it’s working, be sure to make amends to that as soon as possible!

If you’re looking to start up a blog that a) you’ll have content for and b) will be of interest to others, then consider focusing on product reviews! Product reviews are sought out by consumers and companies alike, and just about any product (or service) can be reviewed. I run several blogs, and I can honestly say that it’s easiest to come up with new content for In My Bag, which is my product review blog. Everything from food to laundry detergent to electronics to games is, well, game!

One of the nice perks of running a product review blog is being contacted by companies who want to get their products featured. In most cases they’ll be more than happy to send you samples of their items in exchange for a review.

Cell phone blogging is something I don’t do very often, but I like having a way to do it, in the case the urge should strike me. I’m going to quickly outline the three methods I know of for blogging from a mobile device:

1. Via the browser-based admin area.
   If you’re lucky enough to have a cell phone with internet and browser capabilities, then you can simply point your browser to your dashboard, log in with your usual credentials, and it’s business as usual. Depending on the size of your phone’s display and the type of browser you’re using some options may be limited, but in my experience the basic title and entry area can be filled in, the category selected, and the post published.
2. Using WordPress’s Post Via E-mail setting.
   Navigate to wp-admin/options-writing.php and configure a secret email account. Send blog entries to that email account, and they will automatically be published to your blog.
3. Using special mobile applications.
   Many cell phone apps allow you to publish directly to your WordPress powered blog. If you have an Android powered phone, then you can use WPToGo or PostBot to blog.

With these easy methods outlined, you should hopefully be able to figure out a way to blog about those great baby gift baskets you see in a store, or simply about what you’re having for lunch! Have at it!

Blogging isn’t too expensive, but it’s important to save money wherever possible. Even if you have the money to spend it, wouldn’t you rather spend a little less and put that extra towards another purchase, a future purchase or even in a savings account? Many people mistakenly believe that coupons are either tangible (used for local stores or grocery stores) or for websites that accept special “coupon codes”. But in this day and age, you can find coupons for just about anything!

So, how can coupons enable you to blog for less? Well, think of the expenses associated with blogging. There’s the domain name to purchase, and the hosting service to set up. A domain name is around ten bucks, and a hosting account can run you anywhere from $5 to $20 per month. Now if you have some Dotster coupons on hand, you can reduce how much you spend on a domain name registration, a hosting account or both!

Do you use coupons or special coupon codes to reduce the cost of domain names and hosting accounts? If so, what ones would you recommend using?

Traffic isn’t always easy to get, especially if your blog is relatively new to the blogosphere. How can you get people to come to your blog? One of the easiest ways to get people interested in stopping by is to hold a contest or a giveaway. Many bloggers are hopping on board the contest wagon by holding giveaways for all sorts of products. The most common giveaways are for store and website gift cards, but you’ll often find gift baskets filled with personal products, small electronics (mp3 players, digital cameras), even toys and games for families with children.
Of course, niche blogs often succeed quite well with niche giveaways. If you have a blog that specializes in showcasing the best travel deals, you could consider giving away a travel kit, or even airline or bus tickets!

So, how do you host your very own giveaway?

Well, the first step is to find something to give to a winner! Gift cards to Target, Walmart, Best Buy and the Apple store are great choices, since these stores are nationwide, and purchases can even be made online. Restaurant gift cards, Visa pre-loaded gift cards or a simple PayPal payment can also make for highly coveted giveaway items.

Second, decide how you will choose a winner! Many bloggers simply use random.org, which can quickly and conveniently generate a randomly selected number out of a group of numbers. randomizer.org is my favorite, because you can input names as well as numbers, and even specify that a certain number of randomly selected numbers/names be chosen (this is great if you’re holding a giveaway that has multiple winners).

Third, draft a blog entry that lays out the basics on the giveaway. Having a blog title like “Win a gift card!” or “[Your blog name here]‘s prize giveaway!” is a smart idea, since visitors are naturally attracted to these types of titles. Include any rules you may have for the giveaway, and any requirements for entering (hint: drive traffic back to your blog by requiring bloggers to post about your giveaway on their blogs!), and when the winner will be selected and notified.

Finally, promote your giveaway! Use Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and be sure to encourage online friends and acquaintances to promote for you. And don’t forget about contest blogs, which are blogs that exist solely to promote giveaways and contests that are going on in the blogosphere. One great example of a contest blog is Blogaways.

Good luck, and enjoy the traffic!