All bloggers want to promote their blogs to drive in traffic. Submitting blogs in blog directories and Toplists fitting particular category help people find you quicker, this said if they noticed your blog. How better could you do this than getting at the top position of Toplists like Top100Bloggers,UBSquare and others. Today I’ll show you how. This trick is simple yet powerful and you can even use it in your profiles page in any account like your Hi5,MySpace,Facebook account to promote your blog among your friends and visitors. Infact the possibilities are endless from promoting your blog in forum or on anything that allows you to display any picture file with your account.
All we’ll need is for you to create a banner picture and getting your feeds burnt at Feedburner. The principle behind is that good content acts as a traffic bait and showing it to those TopList visitors get them coming in, increasing your traffic and thus your rank position in the Toplist for more and more traffic. The trick resumes in the blog banner that the toplist allows you to display for your blog on the list. We’ll use it to display your best latest posts randomly and hence attract in visitors. After reading through, you’ll get a traffic bait like this in those lists and start collecting visitors :
creating your “smart” banner
Get to your favourite Toplist account and note the dimensions it allows for banner picture. Next launch your favourite graphics program and create a new picture of that dimension with a white background(to easily read your content). Put in your cool pictures on that banner(without blog name or description) making sure to leave a white space of about half the size of the overall banner in the lower part. Don’t forget to get the banner as rocking as possible to capture the attention of visitors on the toplist. It should be looking like this :
When it’s done save the image in the .gif format making sure it’s of reasonable size since lots of toplists impose a banner picture size limit.
giving content to the banner
Now we have got our nice banner picture ready to promote our blog so let’s continue with the most important part : getting your content on it. Login to your Feedburner’s account or create one for free and burn that feeds of yours. Onto your Feedburner’s account section, click the Publicize tab.
Move on to the left sidebar and click on Headline Animator. It’s here that we’ll built that great banner of yours. Scroll to the lower part of the page until you hit the Theme section. From this Theme’s dropdown menu, select Provide your own background. A popup dialog box will appear to tell you to overwrite your themes settings, click Ok to continue.
We’ll need to put that banner we created above in there so first we’ll need to upload it somewhere and provide the given address/url. Get to any picture hosting service like ImageShack or Flickr, upload your banner and get the address to it. Put that same address in the Image URL field under the Background Image section and click on the Load button next to it. It should then appear in the lowest part of that page in the grid area.
Now it’s your turn for the fun part. Tick the title and date checkbox filling them respectively with your information in the appropriate format for the date one. Play with the width you want to set for the date and the headlines(posts on your blog) to appear and all changes you make will appear in the grid area with your banner picture.
You can move the respective text lines in the banner picture to suit the different components’ section position and layout. Position the date and headline text within the white space you made on the banner so that your content can be read easily and clearly. I would also suggest you moving them to the left side for better placement while giving your Headlines a width of the maximum size to fit any long post titles. You can also play with the colour in the colour palette to fit with your banner picture and overall site design.
After setting all your options and colour preferences, click the Activate button in the lowest part of the page to complete the process and get everything working.
Wait! Don’t close that page yet! Move to the top side of it until you spot the Your Active Headline Animator section where you’ll also be provided with your great banner displaying your content. There you’ll see your banner code(with link tag). You can place that piece of code anywhere allowing you to display a banner/picture to promote your content and hence increase your traffic.
For Blog Toplist which require you to place an image link, just copy the image link from the code which you’ll find inside the image source tag. Here’s an example for clarification purpose.
Original code offered by Feedburner :
< a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/squarerss">< img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/squarerss.gif" style="border:0" alt="BlogoSquare" / >< /a >
here’s the banner link from the above code : http://feeds.feedburner.com/squarerss.gif
So grab this link, store it somewhere securely and place it anywhere that allows you to place a banner/image along with your profile. For blog toplists, just login to your account and provide that banner link to be used for your blog.
a universal traffic catcher
Here you’re with the most powerful traffic catcher in the form of a simple image link as simple as that. The most important part also relies in your banner look. The more attractive it is, the more people will remark it and follow on to your blog. How did you find this article? Did it help? Would you need any further clarification on any part of it? Please leave your comments or contact me. This guide is by no mean the ultimate one for getting all the traffic you deserve, so make sure to follow on with my future posts which will detail you that.
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Tags: 39 Comments
39 responses so far ↓
[IMG D] What can a burned (burnt?) feed do? Well, many things. among others, it can let your visitors subscribe to your posts (yes, even non-wordpress users!), create a nice gif button for your site (As hans-kun magnificently shows how to do [IMG )] Okies, interested?? Here we go [IMG D] Now go to Feedburner.com And follow this short silent video-tuto to get you started. you can then start experimenting your burnt feeds right away!
Hans use Flickr you!!! your images are broken now… too bad, nice post anyway
[…] to your posts (yes, even non-wordpress users!), create a nice gif button for your site (As hans-kun magnificently shows how to do Okies, interested?? Here we go Now go to Feedburner.com And follow […]
oh now its okie nevermind
Me turn mate 
Ah.. That would be great if I were creative like you. I can’t just design my own anime or logo like yours!
I was wondering how you did that on UBSquare! That is an excellent use of Feedburner and toplists.
It does seem that imageshack has turned against you though!
Hans, you read my mind ! I wanted to ask you this particular question !
@ kyu
thanks kyu….that’s what I’m going to do from now on
and nice post of yours…man.. I was sorta driven into a melody while reading your post…man seems you’re hitting the english literature paper fricking hard 
that’s pretty nifty. ima have to check that out and give it a try.
@ Thilak
why buddy
just getting your blog’s name through some nice fonts(lots are available at dafont.com) would let you have a great banner man…I’m sure you would do something unique and great….try it 
but still if you need help…just tell me and I’ll see whether I can design one for you 
@ Phil
yeah I thought imageshack was a rather easy way to host pictures quickly but it seems you can let lots of them at the same time else that’s what happens.
btw what’s your favourite image hosting service?
@ Nym
I got it answered before you asked me lol
hope you liked reading the article and that would be fun to share your great posts along any of those services.
@ Jenny
I suppose it’s the cute way to get you noticed and tell others about your latest greatest posts without bothering anybody lol
do tell me whether it works for you and if you need help in setting up something, just shoot me a comment. 
[…] sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic read through and get your blog at the top of any blog top site while boosting your traffic today itself. The […]
It does make the banner stand out from the rest, will try this, thanks for the info!
Hans, you have the best tips and tricks! Sorry I haven’t been by or pursued UBSquare further. I am still going to, but there’s a crazy party going on that’s keeping me busy.
It’s not just for moms, and there are still a couple of days left. Why don’t you join us? It is HUGE!!! Check it out here. It’a great way to find new blogs and also lets other find you. Everyone is welcome.
292334 Blog Verification…
292334…
@ oscarsito:
cool ain’t it : a great banner with your content? how to better promote your content without spamming others…..
hey great blog you’ve on the blogging info….I had a nice read among your posts….. thanks for your visit
@ Revka:
it’s so nice to see you around too..thanks for dropping by UBSquare and for the link. I’ll check it out and tell you how it was…. you’re the e-mom pro here lol
Hans now that i think of it, what happens if everyone comes here and does that? The trick would be useless since all banners would be animated and well, then it wont make it stand out at all!
@ Leo
yeah when everybody would know about it perhaps the banner won’t really stand out from the crowd but I really like sharing me own tips with everybody…even if that’s super secret…and I think Kyu-san is doing the same now unraveling loads of great and super cool tricks on his blog
Hans, I’m very glad that you like to share your tricks! I will probably use this one, too. If it weren’t for people like you, I wouldn’t be able to have all the added features I have on my blog because I don’t know anything about programming or coding of any sort. I’m learning because of what you have shared. Thanks angain!
[…] The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic. […]
@ Revka :
me pleasure again…. and thanks to you for appreciating me content….more great content on the way……. keep in touch
[…] Great Find: The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic […]
” by Liz Strauss. She had a great post about a smart banner that takes your rss feed and creates an animated gif that you can use on top blog sites and in other places where you need a banner. Liz links to Blogosquare where you can get the complete instructions to make one for yourself. Here is one I did up late last night quickly for my Video Rambler blog. [IMG Video Rambler] What a great idea for a banner! It presents the latest headlines from your blog, and is
Very good article. Thanks!
Let me give it a try on my blog.
[…] The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic […]
[…] Hans wrote: Thanks for this great plugin… would that also be great? how about displaying a rotating banner of the most famous posts of the blog for new users…. […]
[…] Posted by blogosquare See the great way to use your RSS feeds and get loads of traffic for free. __________________ CUSTOM PHP […]
[…] read through and get your blog at the top of any blog top site while boosting your traffic today itself. The trick is so simple yet so effective that you can conquer the whole blogosphere with it.don’t forget to join UBSquare at the same time. It’s a worldwide network of bloggers allowing you to place your blog among the top ranked bloggers throughout the blogosphere at the reach of everybody. Posted on: 3/4 11:38 […]
[…] The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic […]
[…] The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic […]
[…] The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic […]
I like the blog because it’s presentation is very good and design as well.
Cool idea that can be used in many ways!
The best way to boost your brand exposure,advertising and marketing, Thats perfect for trade shows / expo’s / lobbies / point-of-sales / exhibitions / conferences by the help of innovative banner stand display and large format printing service because links are not that visible as
compare to banner ads. You can get more information on this subject at http://www.vividads.com.au
I’m still trying to figure out what the title of this post has to do with the post. A good banner will produce better results when you do get to the top of a toplist but having a good banner won’t do anything to get you to the top of a toplist.
[…] The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic […]