After my most recent nagging about how you should be blogging, a few folks have asked what platform I recommend.

For those of you wanting to start a blog quickly, cheaply and on completely on your own, hop over to WordPress.com or Blogger. Sign up, find an available name, choose a theme and get crankin’. I think WordPress.com is better, but there are many who would disagree. They would be wrong. You’ll then have something like www.blogname.wordpress.com or www.blogname.blogspot.com, which is what I use for my Picalicious blog.

If you have a domain name (FlackRabbit.com, etc.) and want it turned into a blog, I recommend self hosted WordPress. I’ve used self hosted WordPress since 2006. FlackRabbit has known three different looks during this time. The most recent was unveiled a few weeks ago when hubby installed a new theme for me. Read More…

I might name my first born Zemanta. Here’s why:

Every blogger likes to think she’s got something to say that a reader will find interesting and relevant.

Maybe he’ll comment on it, email it to a friend or twitter about it. Maybe others will follow suit. It’s the whole point, really. Nearly all of us are striving for relevance on the web. Same goes for life, actually, but that’s a for another blog post.

It’s this relevance realm is where Zemanta really shines. Zemanta is a free FireFox browser extension that sets up shop right in your blog editor thing. As you type your blog post, Zemanta pulls related links, photos and other web content that match up with your draft. It does all the research for you – making your posts well-rounded and saving you time.

See! That FireFox link came from Zemanta, I didn’t have to go to the site and pull the link. Same goes for that stock image of the Zemanta logo up there. And the Zemanta link in the first graph.

Don’t worry – you don’t have to use any of Zemanta’s findings if you don’t want to. It’s all just there for the taking if you need it. It event pulls in suggested tags for you.

But here is the best part: if you are using Zemanta it adds your content to the list of on-topic articles it offers up to other Zemanta users; see below.

I’m thrilled because I’m starting to see visitor traffic coming here to FlackRabbit from blogs that are linking to my content because Zemanta is telling them I’m relevant to what they’re saying. It’s like magic!

Do you Zemanta your blog posts? If not, I’d highly recommend you give this tremendously user-friendly blogging tool a try.

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• I’m loving Zemanta