Ever since Google purchased Blogger, Blogger has seen the addition of all kinds of interesting gadgets that create additional functionality and personality for your blog. Gadgets are essentially widgets, but by Google’s standard. You can show off your favorite quotes from movies, insert flash games, and show off the weather in your region or a number of other interesting things. Not all of these gadgets are ideal for a corporate blog, however, so which are? Here is a look at some of the best Google gadgets for blogging using the Blogger platform.

1 – Followers, which is found in Basics.

Followers is essentially what you get when you combine Twitter with RSS. You can follow people, people can follow you, and people can subscribe to your blog anonymously if they do not want to be followed. This is one of the easiest possible ways for you to attract more traffic to your blog. You can follow other people and they will more than likely begin to follow you in return, bringing new faces to your blog rather regularly.

2 – HTML / Javascript, which is also found in Basics.

This gives you the ability to add your own code to your blog page, which will significantly and exponentially enhance its functionality. You can add your own opt-in box for example, in order to begin your own mailing list. You can also easily add links and images to your other pages, making your blog work for you better than before.

3 – Feed, another gadget found in Basics.

This feature will allow you to add a feed from another blog, a Squidoo lens or even your author page on EzineArticles.com if you are an author there. Basically, it allows you to link your pages together, letting your readers find other content of yours such as your Twitter or Squidoo pages.

4 – Countdown, which is found in Featured.

This allows you to add a count down feature to your blog. You can count down to anything you like, such as a birthday, the launch of a new product, Christmas, or anything else that you like.

5 – AdSense, another gadget found in Basics.

This is a great way to make some extra money from your blog. You need to make an account with Ad Sense first, so put a few blog entries together before you apply for an account. Then you can create your Ad Sense account and add your special code to the gadget in order to begin earning money through advertising.

Adding gadgets to your blog through Blogger is simple. You just need to log in to your Dashboard, clicking on Layout and then Page Elements. Then click on the “Add a Gadget” link in the area where you would like to install the gadget and you are good to go.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2009-02-20 05:31:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

• Professional Blogging Roundup - Halloween Edition Happy Halloween from Buildify. We hope you spend it safely and have fun at the same time. Below is a little look at the professional blogging blogosphere with some wonderful articles for learning how to blog. Corporate Blogging becomes new tool says The Times Tribune. Here are some Tips To......
• Is Wordpress or Blogger Right For Corporate Blogs There is a lot of controversy over which blogging platform is ideal for corporate blogs. With so many schools of thought on the matter, it can be difficult to figure out which one you should be using. We have two main favorites, Blogger and Wordpress, and both are very well......
• Professional Blogging Roundup - Blogging Tips and Resources Good morning and welcome to another Sunday edition of Buildify's weekly roundup. From general blogging tips to articles on very specific topics there's a lot going on. We hope they help you with your blog. Corporate Daily Breeze writes Tech Talk: Business blogs are a good start. The Economist says......
• Improve Corporate Communication with Blogging In this day and age, the hottest media and the hottest method for communicating with customers, employees, business partners and competitors are through corporate blogging. If you create a corporate blog for your business, and you follow some basic strategies for improving communication through this popular online media, you will......
• Blogging Heroes - Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers by Michael A. Banks Among more than 102,000,000 blogs that are currently on the internet, there are only a small, select few that manage to stand out as ground breaking, successful or influential against the backdrop of so many others. This book focuses on thirty blogging heroes, touching on everything from parenting to the......

• Technorati Tracks Blog Traffic Exchange Effect Technorati is a online website community that is focused specifically on weblogs, and it can be extremely beneficial to register your blog with Technorati. Knowing how you can benefit from everything that Technorati has to offer is an important first step in getting the most out of your web presence.......
• Make Money Blogging It amazes me still, especially in today's economic times, that some individuals are in disbelief that you can make money online. Seriously, what's it going to take to get people to wake up and realize that the 'good ol days' of... Get a good education Find a good job, and......
• Google releases Google Buzz [/caption] by Michael Muchmore Google lobbed a salvo at Facebook on Tuesday, adding Google Buzz, a new social networking capability to its popular Gmail Web e-mail service. Though Google Buzz is somewhat integrated with Twitter, along with a few other services – Flickr and Picasa, most notably – there's no......
• WordPress PageRank Widget Plugin There are a number of PageRank plugins for WordPress, but it seems that all of them involve manually editing the template to incorporate them. With the lack of a better option, I took it upon myself to develop a WordPress plugin to display PageRank in a widget. And thus, the......
• Anyone can be a publisher an editor a writer Online blogging makes it all possible. There are ample of blogging software in the cyberspace and they all offer the same service, which is a portal for us to express our ideas. Well, in a tough market, one would have to find his way to surpass his competitions. This......

When you find a tool that makes life easier, there is nothing more exciting. The need for corporations to simplify and systematize their processes has to do with working smart and taking advantage of things that allow workers to reach their goals without having to work quite as hard. One really cool tool that comes in handy during corporate blogging is Windows Live Writer. Some of you may already know what this is, while others may be avoiding it simply because it is the product of Microsoft, and there are a lot of people out there who avoid Microsoft gadgets by nature. Not only are we in love with the Windows Live Writer gadget from Microsoft, but we are quite obviously infatuated with it because not only does it make blogging infinitely easier, but also website updating and article writing as well.

This is one, single solitary tool that makes it possible to create a blog post completely offline and then publish it directly onto the blog. This one tool works very well with most of the major blog services, meaning that you do not have to go through a bunch of worthless steps to get everything set up. It allows you to easily and effectively insert hyperlinks, maps, pictures, tags and videos into your blog entries, meaning that you can get the most out of your blog from the use of one single solitary tool. Not all blog formats may be supported, but if your blogging format is supported then this unique tool will be truly invaluable for you. If you use an embedded website blog or an ActiveRain blog, you may be out of luck, but hopefully not for long.

If you cannot auto update your blog because your blogging software is not supported, don’t fret. You can still write your blog entries in the Windows Live Writer software and then copy and paste it into your blog software accordingly. The Windows Live Writer offers four different views, including a web layout, a preview layout, a normal basic Word format layout and an HTML layout. You can write your post or article and then publish it to Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress or whatever blog software you use, and then convert it into the HTML view for your website, or for a random blog platform that isn’t supported, such as ActiveRain, Trulia, etc. You can also switch into the normal view and copy and paste the results to submit to article distribution sites. In other words, any format that you need, the Windows Live Writer can create it for you.

There is only one real downside to the Windows Live Writer right now, and that is the insert video plug-in. It is only currently capable of letting you insert web based videos, rather than videos that are stored on your computer hard drive. This means you can put videos in your blog that you found online, but not videos that you found on your own computer which is something of a pain. Still, the software is excellent for most blogging purposes.

Photo Credit: 1

Originally posted 2008-10-23 05:29:18. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

• Quick and Dirty Tips for Effective Corporate Blogging, pt 2 This is part two in a series about tips for good corporate blogging. We touched on three tips in the first part of this series - Now here are another handful of tips for your consideration. - 4 - Keep each piece of content short, simple and concise to get......
• Ideas for Blogging Content Pt 1 Business blogging is rife with benefits for those who utilize it properly, as it adds significant value to a company's web presence, increasing search engine visibility and encouraging excellent and meaningful interaction from readers, driving an increase of traffic to your website in the process. But blogging for business is......
• Developing Your Blog’s Style Why do some blog instantly become hits, while others languish without a reader to be found? Although the subject matter can play a big role in popularity, a lack of readership can be attributed to a lack of style in the blog. Since there is so much competition out there,......
• How to Get a Better Ranking For Your Blog Once you’ve gone to all of the trouble building your blog and writing your posts, it’s time to sit back and relax, right? No, the work is just beginning and if you want to start having people actually read what you’ve written, you’ve got to get out there and make......
• Trackbacks for Corporate Blogs Explained If you are just getting started in the world of corporate blogging, you are probably already aware of the fact that there is a lot to take in, and plenty for you to learn. One of the concepts that you need to understand when turning your corporate blog into a......

• On Being Your Own Financial Planner I have decided to put my limited skills as a fantasy interviewer into hibernation which will no doubt please many readers.  So I will move on to another subject that interests me and perhaps you:  Being Your Own Financial Planner My Own Financial Planner - In the Beginning With the......
• 10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media. This post is a collaboration between Mashable's Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell's "10 Ways" series. The post is being simultaneously published across more than 100 blogs. Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an......
• Making Money With Blogging - 4 Nuggets to Persuasive Blogging Blogging has recently become a popular household term within the past six years. Blogs are becoming so widely read that many individuals are quitting their day jobs and becoming self-employed bloggers making thousands of dollars. If you’re interested in making money with blogging , their are four nuggets to......
• 10 Tips For Article Writing Newbies This post on the 10 Tips For Article Writing Newbies, is not written from the 'backseat drivers' point of view!  Instead, it is by and from the perspective of someone who remembers the early days of my own uncertainty as a article writer. It is written especially with the article......
• Microsoft to pull Facebook, MySpace into Outlook [/caption] On Wednesday, Microsoft is releasing a "beta" test version of the Outlook Social Connector. The add-on software, which was first discussed last November, adds a new pane to the main e-mail reading screen on Outlook. When a user clicks to read an e-mail message, the new pane fills up......