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I like to invite the general public to join me on social media through Twitter. To do this simply Follow @davidblawal here.

I am much of a learner myself and would be glad to learn from the online community believing that the World Wide Web has maade us all of one family and I can learn from you regardless of distance and tribe, region or nationality. Love you loads

Ten things not to say to a writer

WhatsApp introduces mute, mark as unread options

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Ever got tired of WhatsApp messages from friends especially while workload is much or late at night when the only sure thing is sleep, good news is that the instant messaging application now has provision to help handle that.

The Android application PacKage (APK) has had a very fruitful and active day going through no less than 5 updates in the span of 24 hours. The app’s developers introduced a series of new options and seem to be fixing bugs with successive iterative updates from v2.12.189 to the most recent v2.12.194.

According to an APK website, Android Police, the most significant change in this series of updates is the new custom notifications settings. When you open a contact’s or group’s details page, you’ll see a new Notifications box below the Media one.

In it is the option to mute the chat for 8 hours, 1 week, or 1 year, as well as extensive custom notifications. These let you pick a specific tone, vibration length, light, popup notification, as well as the call ringtone and vibration.

Another addition to the app is the ‘Mark As Unread’ feature. Tap and hold on any conversation and you’ll be able to mark it as unread, which switches its status to green but doesn’t affect the read messages status inside the chat or its chronological rank among your conversations.

The significance of such is that it could serve as a visual reminder when you want to get back to someone later.

And finally there are two new changes in the app’s settings. First is a Low data usage option for voice calls, useful when you’re on a limited or slow data plan. Second is a small hint to Google Drive backups.

Under Account, Network usage, you’ll see Google Drive backup usage tallied along with the app’s media, messages, and calls. There’s still no way to trigger a Google Drive backup — the option was added several months ago then removed — so this could be a sign that Drive backups may be coming again soon or that someone on the developer team forgot to clear out these options before publishing this apk.

One interesting thing about WhatsApp is that every couple of weeks, the team surprises its users with new features, and keeps on refining them and improving the app’s functionality.

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How to successfully run a blog

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When it comes to creating, owning or managing a blog, whether you write for money, popularity or as your passion might not be very significant, but one thing every blogger, writer or website publisher will agree to is that they write because they want someone to read.

While a few of us post stories and leave it at the mercy of Google to dump it on the computers of global readers across the world, some others endeavour to publicize using social media platforms. Option (B) works especially for those who have a robust social media presence.

Meanwhile, for those who depend solely on option (B) above, writing great articles and making them available through your social media platform may not just be enough if the platform, your blog, itself refuses to play it's role.

However, besides all of these, we are going to be talking about some salient things to do with your blog that would help improve your blog traffic and as much keep readers coming back.

1. BLOG TEMPLATE/ DESIGN

It is pertinent that you carefully choose your design from the various samples provided by Google's Blogger Team. So you have to work on the design. Choose a clean template that doesn’t confuse the visitors. In addition to that, be sure to feature your most popular posts in a separate section.

The About page is very important, as well as adding your Google+ account which enables you build followers early enough.

2. NEXT IS BEING SOCIAL!

Now being able to share your blog post on Social media comes next because mere dependence on only Search Engines (SE) may not generate enough traffic for you.

Majority are familiar with Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Of all, Facebook and LinkedIn do well in generating traffic to your blog or website. Other platforms only help in the publicity that the blog pr website needs. One of that is Twitter.

Many twitter users will only retweet (RT) or favourite your post as acknowledgment. Yet you need them to register the presence of your blog.

3. CAVE A NICHE

What this simply means is that you should endeavour to be different from the crowd. There are too many News Blogs out there. Don't dive into the sea of News blogs and start struggling to put your feet on ground. Even if you do, your head might be buried in the sea.

From research, when you pay attention to one field of study, it enables you study and also expand your scope of knowledge in that direction.

If you can be different and be consistent, you would soon be identified as an authority in that area. Typical example include Linda Ikeji and Tolu Ogunlesi.

It does not matter what you are writing on, just endeavour to be specific and consistent. For instance, if a person get's tips on how to start a gas burner from your blog, be sure same person(s) are likely to come back for how to out out the fire.

The same goes for when a person learns how to be genuinely born again from your blog because you post religious contents, same person(s) may also come back to learn to stay happy with God without the burden of religiousity.

In essence, sticking to a particular niche is one of the most important ways to make your blog popular.

4. ADD SHARING BUTTONS

Almost everyone who use the internet usually have their social media accounts open while they do other things. Thus, make sure you add a button for readers to share your posts. Just like twitter fans retweet, blog or website audience like to express their love for a particular post by sharing it. Then make it easy for them to share because as they do, they are publicizing your blog.

5. ALWAYS USE TAGS

Often times than usual, bloggers post stories but forget to use tags. What tags do is that they help position your story or article for search engines. You may not remember to use tags but Google will always remember to check for it while people attempt to crawl blogs or websites.

There are many more tips on improving your blog or website. you may suggest a few too.

Having issues with implementing any of these? Check my contact below this page. Thanks