Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • Today I’ve reached rock bottom

    Mistakes to avoid while blogging

    I’ve been blogging for several years now – first on the MS Windows platform, then on Google and even on WordPress. People say my content is good, my frequency is good but unfortunately my readership is not. 
    While I do write for pleasure, it is also nice to know that there are people out there in the world who are reading your blog.
    Today I found that the number of readers which has been surprisingly on the decline since January of this year has inexplicably hit rock bottom.
    What has gone wrong? 

    1. It seems I’ve been blogging on an outmoded platform
    2. I have too many blogs – three on Blogger and three on WordPress
    3. At various times I’ve deleted the blogs and added the blogs thus making my readers wonder whether or not I want to be found or not.
    4. This confusion persists in my profile – somedays it’s pubic and somedays it’s not.

    The solution is to come clean – while I love my pseudonym Bellybytes, the time has come for me to reveal my real name. I may still sign off as Bellybytes but I have to let the world see who I really am. This makes for authenticity.

    I then have to decide which platform I want to blog on WordPress or Blogger.

    I have to also decide how many blogs I want to keep active or how I can amalgamate them in one blog.

    So that will be my task for the month of April.

    I only hope I don’t become April’s Fool!

    Tips for new bloggers

    As for all those who want to avoid making these mistakes, remember :

    1) Focus on which platform you’d like to Blog on – Blogger or WordPress
    2) Decide which subject you are going to blog on – that way you have a target audience
    3) Blog under your own name or at least make it visible to those who want to put a face to your writing
    4) Tag your posts effectively – they are easier to identify by search engines
    5) Establish your presence on social media like FB, Twitter and publicize your entries on those platforms

    6) Don’t be afraid of making mistakes – they can always be corrected!

  • Re-wiring is truly tiring

    Traditionally New Year is celebrated on the 1st of January every year. I often wonder why this day was chosen? I also wonder why everyone celebrates New Year on different day. The Chinese have just finished celebrating their New Year end January, the Punjabis will celebrate theirs mid-April, the Gujeratis in November and I along with several others whose ancestors united under the banner of King Shalivahan will celebrate tomorrow as New Year’s Day.

    But on this New Year’s Eve, I am feeling strangely depressed. Possibly it has nothing to do with another year passing by but everything  to do with the boarding up of our building, the innumerable workers crawling out on the scaffolding, banging away from 9 in the morning and the three workers inside my house doing the re-wiring. Now this particular activity is a misery is of my own making because we were the only people in our 75 flat building with the original 40 year old aluminium wiring. For years we’ve been meaning to change it to the safer copper wiring which is the norm these days but always put it off because of the inconvenience it would cause. However, watching a building blaze up right before our eyes mid December last year. literally scared us to death and we decided that at the earliest convenient opportunity, we’d re-wire the flat.  So it is two weeks now when we’ve had our house covered in layers of dust by sundown , cleaned up at night time only to have another dust shower the next day………………

    Getting a house refurbished while you are living in it is tedious for both the residents and the workers. Keeping things away makes finding them more difficult. Moving out is equally difficult because you have to keep coming back to see how the job is getting done.And as for the workers it’s quite a pain dealing with incessant questions and repeated requests to hurry up………….Aaaaaaagh.

    It’s just not a happy new year for me tomorrow.

    p.s. However, to all my co-tribesmen : A Happy New Year to you all!

    I’ve taken the image of Mont Blanc blazing from the net…It is a TOI image

  • Technology and obsolescence

    Well, during a recent IndiBlogger meet that I attended last Sunday, I happened to meet an amazing young lady who told me what was wrong with my blog. 

    1. I was on an outdated and outmoded blogging platform

    2.My blogs entries were not tagged properly.

    3. I did not have adequate social media presence.

    These are just a few of the things that she told me about…..She is going to give me more advice by and by.

    One of the simple truths of life is that the moment you begin to understand things, they change. I find this particularly true with technology which has obsolescence factored into its DNA.  This is the only way to spur on  consumerism and encourage manufacture. Gone are the days when you can proudly wear your grandfather’s wristwatch ( unless of course it is a Rolex or an Omega or a Patek Philippe or any other luxury brand which you can then get by dubbing it “vintage”) without finding yourself wishing desperately you had a more modern timepiece with which to tell the time.

    As a matter of fact, even watches themselves have now become obsolete with everyone whipping out their mobile phones to find the time. As for mobile phones…..the minute you synchronize your contacts onto your new phone, it becomes dated and you just have to go out and buy the newest model off the shelf!

    With consumer goods becoming outmoded faster than they are produced, we the consumers have a difficult task keeping up with technology…..And what seems simple enough to the manufacturer becomes gobbledygook for the consumer, especially one who has to deal with reading fine print. This triggers off a simple mind game : where did I put my specs? . This is followed by a step-by-step following of instructions which for some strange reason read easier than they are to practice. Finally, you catch hold of an expert (your neighbour, your technician, your teenaged son) or just about anyone who has remotely more technological expertise than you have and allows you to operate your gadget to its maximum capacity.

     

    The bottom line is : it is the geeks who rule the world.

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