April is the month in which the playwright and poet William Shakespeare was born and baptized in 1564, as well as the month in which he died some 390 years ago. You can read more about Shakespeare here : Encylopedia Britannica’s Guide to Shakespeare

I bet you are thinking that this post has nothing to do with blogging at this moment. On the contrary, storytelling and blogging have very strong ties. If you are willing to increase your blog’s readership and traffic, storytelling is one skill you should improve as quickly as possible.

I am not an expert in English. Like every Turkish guy, I use English as a second language. But I do know that If I aim to build a popular blog, then I should certainly improve my English. To achieve this I usually watch CNN, BBC World, read some English grammar and writing books, and follow blogs like Copyblogger, Daily Writing Tips.

I think I must also tell you that I am a good writer in Turkish. I mean I have the creativity and imagination fully loaded since early childhood. I have a very rich library as you can see herebelow (this is only one part of my personal library at home!)

A few months ago I discovered that in order to write better blog articles in English, I should blend my storytelling and blogging skills. Because people don’t want more information. They are already overloaded. They want faith- in you, your story, and your blogging. This makes a blog much more interesting for them.

How Can You Write Story-like Blog Posts?

My quest started with one single question “How can I add stories into my daily blog posts?” While I was trying to find answers to that question, I travelled around the Web in 80 days, from one website to another, until I found some good answers and resources.

I thought my answers and the online storytelling resources I found could be valuable for your blogging too. Therefore I decided to start writing a weekly post series titled The Six Stories You Need To Know How To Tell.

What Will You Find In This Post Series?

• The six types of stories you need to learn to influence others
• Online storytelling resources
• How to write story-like blog posts
• How to write a story-like About me or About section for your blog
• Suggested websites & blogs

Your Homework Until Next Week:
Until I post the following part next week, let me give you a homework:

• You wish to influence your readers, however they already have two questions which need to be answered by you: “Who are you?” and “Why are you here?”. Think about the answers to these questions and write a post in your blog or leave a comment to this post.
• Check your previous posts, and look at the beginnings. Imagine as if you are telling a story to your readers. How should you begin the first sentence?

My fellow readers already knew that I have very ambitious 2008 Goals For Search For Blogging. When I was setting those targets, I was aware that they were way too high for me to achieve. On the other hand, I knew that If I don’t force myself too much, I will never become a problogger.

This morning I checked my blog’s Technorati rank and surprised to see that finally it is within Technorati Top 19,000 list. Even though my target is to be in Top 5000 by the end of the year, this is still a good improvement for my blog.

On December 27, 2007 my blog’s Technorati performance looked like below:

Technorati rank : 124,132 (Authority 60) – 185 blog reactions to Search For Blogging

By the end of January 2008, the new ranking looks like below:

Technorati rank : 32,335 (Authority 183) – 388 blog reactions to Search For Blogging

By the end of February 2008, the new ranking looks like below:

Technorati rank : 21,958 (Authority 243) – 515 blog reactions Search For Blogging

By the end of March 2008, the new ranking looks like below:

Technorati rank : 19,371 (Authority 267) – 611 blog reactions to Search For Blogging

Finally, by the end of April 2008, the new ranking is:

Technorati rank : 18,902 (Authority 319) – 699 blog reactions to Search For Blogging

I just wanted to share it with my fellow readers. Many thanks for your usual cooperation and contribution to Search For Blogging!

Digg is a website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the internet, by submitting, voting for(digging), and commenting on each others links and stories, in a social and democratic spirit.

Digg is one of my blog’s main traffic sources. I have more than 400 mutual friends in Digg. Imagine how big the impact of Digg is to my daily blogging! It took significant amount of my blogging time to reach that level.

However, you don’t need to spend so much time. If I tell you that I discovered the easiest way to find targeted Digg friends, would you believe me?

Believe it or not here is a quick and workable tip on Digg Explosion:

1. Go to Promote My Site
2. This is the front page of Digg Friend Finder SEO tool. This tool helps you locate Digg users with similar interests by typing a keyword and then searching.
3. For example, if you are blogging in the make money online niche, type make money online and click on Search button.
4. If the tool finds Digg friends related to the keyword you just typed, it will list possible Digg friends just below the form.
5. Right after you click on show friends, the tool lists the possible Digg friends with links to their profiles.
6. Now, it is time to check one by one whether they are suitable for your blogging niche or not. Click on the links and check their profiles. I found that some of the potential friends were irrelevant for my blog’s topic. Because when I checked their profile, I saw that they have nothing to do with blogging. But most of them were relevant, thus this tool helped me increase my Digg friends significantly.

I hope this tool will work for you as it worked for me. In case you need further assistance on the tool, please leave a comment to this post, or directly contact me.

• There are certain bloggers which I always check their blogs almost every day. My friend Alex Sysoef is one of them. He wrote a great post: Free Tool To Pull Your Visitors By Their Ears And Turn Them Into Readers
• Caroline Middlebrook has just launched her weekly newsletter which I found very informative. All you need is to visit her blog and sign up using the form on the upper top corner.
• Are you using Twitter ? If so, please don’t forget to follow me:  Merkal2005
• One great post on Alexa Ranking and its benefits by Louis Liem: The New Alexa Ranking – Still Useless or Not, Reap Its Benefits Before Your Competitors Do!
• Are you desperately seeking for more traffic? Then why don’t you read 50 Ways To Get Backlinks And Traffic To Your Blog
• Did you know that WordPress 2.5.1 Released?
• Why don’t you taste some Free Screen Recording Software?
• Don’t forget to leave your voice message to my blog! Mychingo – A Cool Audio Recording Widget For Your Blog
• Get stuck? Try this How To Get Blogging Ideas When You Are Stuck
• Where’s  the party? Bloggers Wanted: Hochstadt.com Party Contest!
• Finally, please don’t forget to join my new sidebar poll WordPress vs Blogger 2008

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” is an expression coined by the American artist Andy Warhol. If he were alive today, he would probably refer Bloghology (I am not kidding!)

For those of you who have never heard of Bloghology before, it is a collection of bloggers and their masterpieces blended as a monthly PDF book (Ezine). It is completely free, and open to all bloggers. All you have to do is to sign up at Bloghology. Registered bloggers will receive a weekly Bloghology newsletter to get last minute updates on Bloghology as well as least known blogging tips from me.

Bloghology is a joint project managed by me and the participating bloggers. Each participant delivers their short biographies, photos, and links to their best posts so that I can highlight their profile in the coming edition of Bloghology. In addition to this I make an interview with each participant through Peopleized.com.

It is an amazing experience for me to interview many unique bloggers all around the globe. The more I interview the better I understand what bloggers are actually looking for, and what their future prospects are. It is indeed a very good market research tool.

Since 2007 edition Bloghology has worked like a viral marketing tool for me and for the participants. As of today, more than 200 blogs are displaying the Bloghology buttons designed by Ilker Yoldas . Profiles of participating bloggers, their photos, links to their best posts, and their interviews are travelling around the blogosphere. I still evaluate every single opportunity to promote Bloghology.

I am going to deliver April 2008 Bloghology soon. We have Caroline Middlebrook, Gobala Krishan and 12 other cool bloggers in this edition. While I am working on it, why don’t you read the previous editions of Bloghology?

2007 Bloghology Is Launched!

March 2008 Bloghology is Launched!