Blog News Watch

I just love lists on a Monday morning, don’t you? Here we go - the six key mistakes bloggers make and how you can steer clear of these sneaky little traps!

1. Ignoring your readership. Writing whatever pops into your head might be therapeutic - and if that’s what your blog’s purpose is (and you don’t care about traffic), then by all means, be my guest and ramble away. But if you’re like the rest of us in the bloggy world, you do care about those readers, and you want them to come back. Which means you have to keep their needs and their demographics in mind when working on your blog.
2. Posting the first draft. Akin to stream-of-consciousness posting, but a bit different. You can have the most thoughtful, original post in the world but if it’s full of typos, misspelled words, and pathetic formatting, you’re going to lose readers. Maybe not immediately - but enough such posts, and I guarantee a drop in readership. Take a moment to revise. Look at your blog critically and ask yourself, “What can I do to make this killer?” Don’t be afraid to “kill your darlings” - a little advice from the fiction-writing world, this means to be willing to start all over from scratch if that’s what’s best.
3. Eschewing the all-important ping. Why oh why are you not pinging? It’s so simple! It takes less than 15 seconds, and can do so much for your stats.
4. Remaining tag-less. Proper use of tags will also help you drive traffic - the right traffic - to your blog.
5. Copying other bloggers wholesale. Yes, I’ve written about it before. Yes, it’s my pet peeve - for good reason. You’re not only cheating another blogger out of his or her own credit and/or stats (even if you properly attribute the post - why would a reader waste energy by going to the author’s blog to read the same damn thing?). If that author’s blog carries ads, then not only are you cheating him or her out of stats and readers, you’re also taking money out of the author’s pockets (potentially). It’s wrong. It’s also wrong to deprive the world of your own god-given talents and juicy original thoughts! Cure: post a snippet, link to the original blog, then give us your own take!
6. Treating what bloggers-about-blogging have to say on the subject as holy writ. Nobody knows everything about blogging. Corollary: every blog is different - thus, every piece of blog advice will have a variant effect, depending on the blog to which it is applied. Ergo - think for yourself. Sure, take my advice if it strikes you as applicable or a good idea. Try it out. But then use your own common sense, your own (far superior) knowledge of your blog and your readership, and your own talents to refine those ideas - or trash them entirely and come up with a new rule!
7. Bonus! Not previewing each post before posting. You might be surprised to see the number of mistakes I make on a daily basis on each of my blogs. All I can say is, “the preview (or ’save and continue editing’) button is my FRIEND!” Take a look at the post before you publish it - keep an eye out for off-style formatting, grossly misspelled words, errant hard returns - anything that throws your post off visually, grammatically, or stylistically.

There you have it! Go forth and blog well.

six blog mistakes, blogging

First up - congratulations to last week’s winner Chris Lodge of Blog-Op! His prize is my editing services for one blog post of his choice. Chris, email me at sheryl dot sisk at 451press dot net for instructions on claiming your prize.

On to this week’s topic - but first, the rules: Couldn’t be simpler. Read the post. Give me your creative, original thoughts on said post in the comments. Winner, chosen by me, gets my editing services for one upcoming blog post of your choice on whatever blog you choose. I reserve the right to decline to edit obscene, defamatory, or otherwise inappropriate content, but - hey, that leaves a whole world full of potential posts from which to choose, so, it’s a win-win.

Today’s Topic: Is Blogging In a Decline, Or Just Getting Going?

Much has been written of late about (A) the moral decay of the blogosphere (in the wake of the events surrounding Kathy Sierra’s receipt of death threats); and (B) our current location on the wave of blogging. Some say we’re peaking. Others - we’re nowhere near the peak yet, but still riding the wave. Still others cry “doom” and say that we’re past peak, and nigh unto wipe-out on the rocky shore. (OK, maybe no one’s saying that exactly but I can’t resist a good metaphor.)

Here’s my take: Give me a break. Blogging is nowhere near its peak. It’s still in its infancy, relatively speaking. We’re in that “oh look how easy it is! Give me one of those! And another and another…” phase. Yes, there will be an initial decline as some bloggers come to recognize just how much work it is keeping a blog going. Others after a professional paid gig will rethink that choice. Still others will decide that their marketing efforts are better spent elsewhere, as their targeted clients aren’t reading blogs yet. That pruning is necessary - ask any gardener, and she’ll tell you the same. You must prune the plant to keep it healthy. Get rid of the dead leaves. Yank the weeds. Cut off the blossoms, once fabulously beautiful but now past their prime. Whack that puppy back to the bare stem an inch off the ground … sorry. Metaphors.

But this pruning isn’t a “real” decline. It’s merely another stage in the growth of blogging as a medium. I think the real decline - the point when blogging is given up in exchange for the next big thing - is years off yet. I think we, as bloggers, tend to be “early adopters” and thus look at the rest of the computer-using world through our own eyes. We thus miss the fact that not everyone is nearly so comfortable with blogging technology as we are. RSS feeds, while second-nature to most of us, are completely unknown to many users. Think about that, and then tell me that blogging is in a decline.

But then again, what do I know?

What do you think? Is blogging in a decline? If you want to blog professionally, are you just deluding yourself? Are professionals who blog in support of marketing their businesses wasting their time? Given the blog glut, and the vast array of tools with which to penetrate said glut, are we all kidding ourselves when we go in search of higher traffic? Is blogging a fad whose time has come - and gone?

If you’ve been blogging for several weeks or months, and are unhappy with the numbers you’re pulling in, according to your stats page, then you’ve got a traffic problem. The bad news: it’s a complex problem to solve. The good news: it can be solved.

Initial Thoughts

Start by taking a look at the overall impression your blog gives off - the vibe, if you will. Cluttered? Clean? Organized? Chaotic? What does the design say about what your targeted reader will find at your blog. Give thought to cleaning up a cluttered sidebar, tweaking the CSS, or going with a simpler layout or theme. Experiment (but tell your readers what you’re doing so as not to put them off).

Spend some quality time with your brain engaged, pen and paper in hand, and do a little heavy thinking. What’s your blog’s purpose? Who are your targeted readers? What do those readers want - what are they coming to your blog to get? Look at your keyword stats - what can you tell about your blog and your readers from those keywords? What can you, as a blogger, give those readers that no one else can? That last point - that’s your hook. Now, you don’t have to go all “mission statement” on us but do give some thought to putting these points in writing. The act of writing these things down cements the thoughts in our brain, and helps us implement them the next time we go to post.

Look critically at existing posts. Is there a good mix of angles? Is your topic or theme too narrowly defined? Is your writing style relaxed, engaged, personable - or, if more formal, is it at least not off-putting, too full of lingo, sarcastic? (NB: Unless you’re a “snark” site, steer clear of regular use of sarcasm.) Are blog post lengths fairly consistent? Are they too short - not enough meat? Or too long - requiring too much work of your readers?

(more…)

Welcome, happy campers and camperettes! Ricardo’s sister, Dinah, is in the kitchen today whipping up some pancakes. Someone’s in there with her, I … think. Onwards with the round-up! Yeehaw.

• Deb Ng answers a reader’s questions about Ad Sense at About WebLogs.
• The Blog Herald has a post up about flat rate payments for bloggers at networks … hmm…
• “I’ve got a blog. Now what?” Find out the answer at Blog-Op.
• Blogger & Podcaster tells us what we as bloggers can take from the Pulitzers.
• Blogging Basics gives beginners the run-down on the eternal question: Blogger or Typepad? (Dudes. Neither. One word for you: WORDPRESS.)
• David Peralty gives us the skinny - the 411 - the lowdown on RSS. Seriously? Bookmarking it.
• I really like what Chris G’s doing at his blog - taking one blog and giving it a really thorough public critique. Kudos to the bloggers brave enough to go under Chris’s gun.
• Copyblogger teaches us how to avoid five common headline mistakes.
• Tony at Deep Jive Interests raises some questions about MySpace-as-marketing-tool. Worth checking out for all you blogger/marketers.
• Successful Blog urges us to put ourselves into our writing.
• Lorelle on Wordpress offers us some pointers on comparing RSS aggregators and readers. Another bookmark!
• Practical Blogging asks is there’s any value in liveblogging an event,
• Darren at Problogger talks about using your blog as a launching pad - part 1 here.

OK, now I know there’s someone in there with Dinah - I hear a banjo. Time to go rosin up the fiddle, bloggers, and play us on out of here.

Ciao!

blognewswatch, wednesday roundup

You’ll hear a lot about “writing for your readers” if you do any digging around in blogging resources and how-to guides. What does this mean, exactly? I guess everyone might have their own ideas but here’s what it means to me:

• First and foremost: knowing who your audience is. If you can’t define the “target” reader for your blog right now, in one sentence, then you need to get to work figuring that out. Use metrics, use surveys, use informal tools like following comment links back to figure out who’s reading your blog.
• Next: knowing why that audience is reading your blog. What are they looking for? Do they want to hear your original thoughts on touchy subjects? Do they prefer how-to posts that lay out the steps to achieve a particular task? Are they revved up by roundups? Figure it out from your stats.
• Keep your posts relevant, timely, and responsive to the reader’s needs. You know now who they are and what they want. Give it to them! Make sure your posts communicate clearly (i.e., don’t ramble off into other topics), are succinct and well-written (i.e., make sure carefree approaches to grammar and spelling don’t get in the way of the message), and are based on the things your readers want to know.

A great tool for figuring out what your readers want to know: ask them! Open up a comment thread and solicit their thoughts. That ought to give you blog fodder for quite some time to come.

If your readers aren’t commenting (either your traffic isn’t that great yet, or you just can’t get them to speak up), that’s a different problem - and one I’ll address in Thursday’s post.

blogging, writing blog posts, blog tips

Mornin’, campers! I don’t know about y’all but I’m barely able to keep my eyes open this Monday morning. Makes me glad I’ve got a simple little one-person blog here, and not something complex like, oh, say, Lifehacker? However, we can all learn something from Gina Trapani, who keeps Lifehacker going with some killer apps, great editors, and boundless energy. Gina’s interviewed at Problogger - first installation here, second here.

The second part to this interview features Gina’s favorite blogging tools:

What are your top 5 Blogging Tools?

1. Google Reader for RSS feeds. (Here’s why I switched from Bloglines)
2. Gmail for handling the daily onslaught of reader email.
3. Google Analytics and Sitemeter for traffic stats. (Here’s how I use Analytics to constantly improve and tweak the site)
4. Firefox along with some key extensions - like AutoCopy
5. AutoHotKey (Windows) and TextExpander (Mack) for entering post markup. (Here’s how to make blog markup easy with AutoHotKey)

Being a developer I’ve also build a few bookmarklets and Greasemonkey scripts that help us generate post types, like roundups, and search the site archives to avoid posting duplicate items.

Much to be learned from Ms. Gina. Now - sally forth and conquer the world, bloggers!

killer blog tools, gina trapani, lifehacker, problogger, blogging tips

We have two more weeks in our “Talk Back Fridays” experiment - so far, the only potential candidate was another 451 Press blogger who’s graciously bowed out of the competition and Ashley from Blogger’s Choice Awards, who was responding to our questions about the Awards. So - Ashley - congrats! The blog post editing’s yours if you want it.

Rules for participation in TBF are simple: I post, you think, you post a comment, I pick one that’s exceptionally insightful and/or otherwise outstanding, and that person wins my services helping him or her edit and polish one blog post. I’ve previously committed to keep doing this through the end of April, at which time the prizes may go away and we’ll just call it “Fridays.”

Today’s Topic: SEO or Content - Can There Be Only One?

There’s been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere of late regarding SEO vs. content - which drives traffic more? Certainly all SEO isn’t black hat (the SEO you wouldn’t bring home to mama) but there are, apparently, deep shades of grey. Take a look at this awesome post from Tropical SEO called “The Lazy SEO Manifesto.” Now, if you agree it’s awesome, tell me why - awesome because it’s spot-on satire? Or awesome because it’s what you aspire to, one day?

I fall squarely in the “content is king but SEO is its Prime Minister” camp. That being said, I think good content drives SEO - your “flagship” content (and if you haven’t read the e-book of similar title at Chris Garrett’s site, then go add him to your feed and look for the link therein) creates the fulcrum about which the rest of the lever turns.

So, talk to me about content vs. SEO - can there be only one? Or is this a marriage of equals? Talk back in the comments.

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

April 16, 2007, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Virginia Tech community and the world beyond.

To remember and honor the victims of those tragic events, the university has established the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to aid in the healing process and generate financial support.

The fund will be used to cover expenses including but not limited to:

• Grief counseling
• Memorials
• Communication expenses
• Comfort expenses
• Incidental needs

If you plan to give, please click the link below:

Today’s post marks the first in a series of posts on “blogging basics” - the fundamentals of blogging.

Seems everybody’s doing it these days - from huge corporations to politicians running for office to the kid who mows your grass. You read blogs frequently. Maybe you even know your way around a RSS reader. But you don’t have one of your own. And while the thought’s intriguing, perhaps it’s also a bit scary. So, how can you tell when you’re ready for a blog?

Here are a few considerations to keep in mind when making this decision:

• While blogging might not be brain surgery or rocket science, it does pose something of a learning curve. How much of a learning curve depends on several factors: your prior experience with similar technologies, which platform you choose, the purpose of your blog, what elements you choose to include in your blog (such as podcasting, vlogging, images, pure text …) - and so many others. That said, most people find most WYSIWYG blog editors to be fairly intuitive and user-friendly. Bottom line: Do consider the learning curve, but don’t let it drive the decision.
• Any publication of personal facts will remain on the web forever. Ergo, you have to exercise close control over what you write, and how you write it. There really is no erasure of material once it’s hit the web. Thanks to the WayBack Machine, clone sites, and the general power of the ‘net, web-published material has a life span of forever, making personal disclosures and angry rants a dicey proposition at best. Bottom line: Something to be aware of but again, don’t let it drive your decision.
• Close corollary to the previous rule: Whatever you write WILL be seen by the one person you really don’t want to see it. You have to write as if everyone, in fact, will see the post (because it’s possible that your audience will be far broader than you anticipate, and because blogs, unless password-protected or behind some other security measure, will be accessible to anyone with a browser). Think about this carefully. If you’re considering a personal blog, there will be an ongoing dance you’ll have to learn the steps to - how much to disclose, whether to protect someone’s privacy and how far to go, etc. These are issues bloggers face every day. Are you ready to deal with those questions? Bottom line: A question only you can answer, but you should definitely give it good thought.
• What’s your purpose in blogging? That will drive your decision in large part. If you’re looking to market a business, say, there are very different considerations there than in a personal journal-type blog. Bottom line: Think about the purpose, which will also drive the next factor
• The time commitment: the biggest factor of all. It looks deceptively easy - dash off a few lines, click a few buttons, publish. But while the procedural steps to publishing a post might be easy, the process itself definitely isn’t - or shouldn’t be. If you don’t give a fig about things like capitalization, grammar, spelling, good writing - by all means, dive in. Your time commitment will be negligible. But if you have any desire to control your image on the web (something that should be kept in mind for all of us - see the rule above about things never going away), then you’ll want to give some increased effort to ensuring a quality product. That means time - time to research, to properly attribute, to revise the post for grammar and typos, not to mention cohesiveness and coherence. And since blogs are hallmarked by regular publication (although that can mean once a month for some, I’d aim for at least a few times a week), multiply that time by 2 or 3, to get your weekly commitment. Bottom line: Think long and hard about this one; if you can’t commit to the time it takes to publish a quality blog, reconsider. Maybe a different avenue of publication is for you - perhaps one-off articles posted to a static website?

So, to my would-be bloggers out there, I hope this helps frame the debate in your head. I’m sure readers have different suggestions of things to think about, so why not post them in the comments section so we can all benefit?

should I blog, blogging, quality blog posts, blogging basics

Take a moment at some point today to read Liz Strauss’s article on “The Writer’s Dilemma and the Blogger’s Secret” up at The Blog Herald. It’s good stuff.