Updated 24 May, 2012, 11:34 am IST

Make Your Mark in the Mobile Space

28 Oct, 2010, 9:22 am IST | by Kamakshi S

A 'how to' on making your blog a WAP identity and marketing it.

The virtual world is quickly going mobile, and smartphones are facilitating this by offering better browsing experiences and faster Internet access. If you are an avid blogger and are looking at the mobile platform to expand the monetary value of your blog, going WAP from a WWW base is the key. One free tool that lets you do this is available at www.mippin.com. Not only does the web portal help you mobilize your blog, but it also helps you monetize it.

The Buzz Deck App
Your website may get featured across various platforms like the iPhone, and Android phones through Mippin’s popular news and social media aggregator application - Buzz Deck. Originally developed for Android, this app won Google’s 2009 global app challenge. It boasts of instant access to a plethora of websites, including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. As the Buzz Deck app logo suggests, it follows a playing card-style user interface that facilitates better management. The app is currently supported by the HTC Hero, HTC Magic, Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Droid/Milestone, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Samsung Moment, LG Eve, Acer Liquid, and the Apple iPhone, and a few others.

Start off by adding your RSS enabled website link to your mippin.com account. Make sure that you
own the site and its not registered under someone else’s name.

Getting Started
The first step towards mobilizing your blog is to pick the appropriate resource. Converting your blog entries into RSS feeds makes it more appealing and more easily navigable, especially on a small screen. To begin, go to ‘www.mippin.com/web/ ’. Click the ‘Sign in to Mippin Mobilizer’ button. On the subsequent page, click the ‘Sign up’ link to create your Mippin account. Fill in you details, and an email confirmation will be sent to the specified account. Before you proceed, make sure that it supports RSS Feeds.

Mobilize Your Blog
You can mobilize blogs that are created using the WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Movable Type and Live Journal platforms, among others. But you’ll have to ensure that only own the blog that you wish to mobilize, and that the graphics, multimedia files and the text content is free from any copyright restrictions. Once you have logged in to your Mippin account, you can begin mobilizing your blog. Click the ‘Mippin Mobilizer’ tab appearing on the top-left side of your page. Under the ‘Mobilize’ section, type in the URL of your blog in the ‘Please enter your website or RSS feed URL to get started:’ text box.

Customize your WAP site as per your convenience. If the logo is bigger than the suggested size, the

image is scaled by the website accordingly.

This will not work if someone else has already registered your blog. If such an issue arises, send an email with your details to ‘info@mippin.com’. Next, select the display layout option appearing under the ‘Select Layout for your mobile site:’ section of the page. A completely functional preview of your WAP site on a smartphone screen is displayed on the right. You can even browse through the listed hyperlinks. Click ‘Next’ to proceed with customizing your blog.

Set a short name to access your WAP site through mippin.com. You can add tags to your site to make
it more SEO friendly.

Customizing WAP
Once you have made your blog phone-friendly, you can customize it to suit the mobile platform. To start off, give your blog an identity. For this, you’ll need a logo; ideally a 120x30 pixel image. If you don’t have an image this size, just upload it as is and the website will scale it for you. Make sure that once you set the logo, the header color selected is compatible with it. Next, give your site a name, which can be typed in the ‘Site name’ text box. You can set the site name text through the ‘Text color’ section. Make sure you set a ‘Section color’ that is in contrast with the site name on your WAP blog. You can also set a color for the hyperlinks on your WAP blog using the ‘Link color’ option. Click ‘Preview’ to see the value you have set. Click ‘Next’ to publish your blog.

Tags: WAP , Smartphones , Blog , How to