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Want a quick way of displaying YouTube videos in your blog? The plugin Smart YouTube will do the trick.

Go to your blog’s Dashboard, check out the Plugins section and look for the Smart YouTube video plugin. Activate it, and optionally you can change its settings in the Settings section.

It also works pretty well out of the box.

Now to insert a YouTube video in your blog post, simply copy the video URL (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmcHwEn0m7U) and put a “v” after “http” to look like this “httpv://www.youtube….. “.

Your YouTube video should be displayed like the example below, a YouTube video of

World of Warcraft Cataclysm Blizzcon 2009 Debut Trailer

To see more options, check out the Smart Youtube plugin settings page. Other video display options are as follows:

• httpv:// -- regular video
• httpvh:// -- high quality
• httpvhd:// -- HD quality
• httpvp:// -- playlist

Enjoy!

Creating a blog is a big step in establishing your online presence, whether for personal notes and ramblings, or advertising your business, clubs, organizations or activities.

The next big step is to drive visitors or readers to your site. Nothing beats the the sight of seeing people reading your posts, and leaving comments to each of the articles you wrote.

Here are some basic ways to drive traffic to your blog:

1. Tell your friends and relatives you just created a blog, via email or by visiting their blogs, friendster, facebook, myspace or multiply account (if they have one) and just leave a short note telling them to visit your site. Of course, don’t forget to write the link to your Bloggista.net blog.
2. Visit other blogs – either another Bloggista.net blog or some other blogs. Read their posts, leave some sincere comments. This is one of the most simple, yet effective way of getting people to discover you and your blog.
3. Update your blog regularly – at least once a week so that people have something new to read whenever they get to visit you again.
4. Reply to your visitor’s comments. Its a great way to initiate discussions and exchange of views regarding your articles.
5. Join some social network sites to discover new friends and share with them your articles and other peoples’ articles. Some of the popular blog social network sites that you can share your articles, and also discover great articles from other members:

• Digg.com
• Stumbleupon
• Reddit
• Blogjoints
• Facebook
• Twitter

These sites allow you to register as a member, then submit your articles or let your network friends to submit the articles for you. Once your article has been submitted, other members can see it and if they find the article title interesting, they will visit your blog.

Try it, and goodluck!

Tip: To faciliate easy submission of your blog posts to these social networking sites, either by yourself or by anybody else, activate the “Add To Any” plugin found in your Dashboard > Plugins >.

About Bloggista.net

Bloggista.net is a free wordpress powered blog site based in the Philippines and is also a social network site.