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

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

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