Ideas will come more quickly when you wear the green striped socks. You can thank us later.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Remember
Ideas will come more quickly when you wear the green striped socks. You can thank us later.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
What about audience?
So, you have heard about blogging. You have starting following a few blogs. You have heard your friends, even your non-techie friends, talk about how much they enjoy blogging and now you are ready to give it a try. But what about your audience? Who is going to listen to what you have to say? Let’s attempt to break it down a bit to eliminate this hang-up and make it easier to get rolling with worrying so much about this question.
For a newbie blogger finding your voice will happen once you start committing your thoughts and ideas to be published. Focus on expressing yourself in a way that feels comfortable. Work at developing a personal style. Try not to jump around and copy everyone else’s technique, but instead work on language that feels like you. Once you start articulating messages on the topics that interest you, that fit your blog, and fit your style you are ready to take the next step towards fame…or at least towards lunchtime conversation.
Now that you are beginning to feel comfortable with blogging and your own style, it is time to start getting the word out. A great intermediate step is to recruit friends, family, and colleagues to start reading your blog. Explain that it is new. Explain that you would appreciate and value their thoughts and suggestions. Pay careful attention to the comments of people you trust. Now is the time to proactively request criticism. Let them know that you consider them part of your team. Part of your challenge is to embrace criticism and not become defensive. Trust your instincts when evaluating input to incorporate that which is valuable and discard what does not seem to fit where you are heading. Don’t worry if you put out a few clunker posts. The next great post is just about to happen!
So you have started to find your style and you have received some good input. What’s next? You are ready for prime time! In coming post we will talk about an number of ways increase readership. Meanwhile, remember that Audience of a Few? Now is a real good time encourage those friends, family, and colleagues to start spreading the word about your blog. Ask them and remind them occasionally to let others know about your blog. It’s called viral marketing and it’s effective. You are on your way. Enjoy the ride.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Keep it fresh baby
How often is too often? How often is not enough?
Ultimately it's up to you how frequently you update your weblog. Some update once a day. Others update once a week. I, personally, like to update on average twice a day. My goal is to keep the site fresh for my target reader. He/She is tech-savvy, works hard for a living, checks in during his/her coffee break at work, and then checks in again after dinner before spending time with his/her family or perhaps even before bed while checking the day's email at home.
Your target reader might be different. Again, no pressure. Here's the thing though. If I am checking your site daily, I don't want to read the same post for four out of the five work days. I also don't want to have so much information put forth that I feel like I am left out of the loop if I miss a day or two. So pull the reigns back if you are posting nine times a day.
Rule #1 for posting says that frequency is left to your better judgement.
Don't leave us hanging for too long and don't bury us with too much content and you will be just fine.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Nine Steps to Better Blog Ideas
This post comes from Daily Blog Tips.
9 Steps to Better Blog Post Ideas
Content is king. We’ve all heard that a million times and most of us have seen first hand that the content truly will make or break a blog. One of the single most powerful influences on the quality of blog content is the originality of ideas. A talented author can develop a well-written article, but if it covers a topic that’s been beaten to death it won’t make much of an impact. Likewise, an average writer can create a wildly successful blog post with the right idea.
Too many bloggers rush into writing the post and the importance of idea generation gets overlooked. Improving your idea generation skills is one of the most effective things you can do to improve your results.
Here are 9 Steps to Generating Better Ideas:
1. Make Time for It
Make idea generation one of your priorities, and recognize its influence on your success. Just like you need to set aside time for writing blog posts, you also need to designate time for developing ideas for posts. There are plenty of activities with your blog that can consume your time, but don’t do so at the expense of working on new ideas. Without leaving time for it, you’ll find yourself sitting at the computer searching for a topic to write about, and the results will suffer.
2. Have a Brainstorming Session
Rather than trying to come up with one post idea at a time as you need them, sit down and crank out as many ideas as you can. Write down all of your ideas. Many of them will not turn into anything usable, but that’s ok. Get your creative energy flowing and you’ll find yourself having more than enough great ideas to develop. Several months ago I wrote an article on brainstorming techniques for bloggers.
3. Use Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a method of brainstorming that helps you to visualize your ideas and to build on them with other related ideas. This method can really help you to develop ideas for posts on particular subjects and topics as you can visualize all of the different aspects and you see the possibilities for useful blog posts. Darren wrote an excellent guide to mind mapping a few months ago at ProBlogger.
4. Outline Posts Before Writing Them
If you are typing your posts with little or no direction you will have disjointed articles that are less productive than they could be. I find it to be very helpful to outline every post before I actually write the content. This may require some research, depending on the topic, but it will make the writing process easier. It also helps you to identify ideas that really don’t develop into quality posts. From the outline you should have a pretty good idea of how well you can develop the post, and you’ll know pretty quickly when an idea isn’t worth the time of trying to write the full post. This way you will be spending your writing time on ideas with better potential.
5. Keep a Journal
Although it is extremely helpful to have specific time for brainstorming, you’ll still have some ideas that hit you at random times. In these situations if you do not have a journal or notebook for jotting down ideas you’ll probably forget more of them than you will remember. My notebook is one of my most valuable possessions. It has more ideas and outlines than I’ll ever have time to write. Sure, some of them are pretty bad, but whenever I need a post or whenever I have time to sit down and type, there’s always something of quality there waiting for me.
6. Take Your Ideas and Plan a Posting Schedule
I find it to be very helpful to plan out my posts a week in advance. Every weekend I’ll look through the ideas that I have been working on, and I’ll select the ones that I am going to finalize and publish during the upcoming week. This helps me to avoid last minute posts that don’t have much of a point except to get something published.
7. Don’t Publish Something Unless You Are Happy With It
If you finish a post and you feel that it doesn’t live up to your standards of quality, either keep working to improve it or just get rid of it. It’s never fun to give up on an idea that you’ve spent some time on, but that is better than publishing something that could lower your readers’ opinions of your blog.
8. Improve Your Title Writing Skills
Some bloggers start the process of writing a post by first coming up with an attention-grabbing title and then working from there to develop the content. While this may not always work, it is a different method that can help to give your writing process a spark.
The titles of your blog posts will have a huge impact on how many people actually read what you’ve written. If you’re going to spend your time researching, writing a post, and proofreading it, why just publish it with the first title that comes to mind? Coming up with the best title usually takes a few attempts, but it will be well worth your time. See Daniel’s post 3 Rules for Writing Effective Titles for a little bit of help.
9. Analyze Your Results
Part of creating posts that attract attention is knowing what types of content have worked well for you in the past. Most bloggers check their stats regularly, but often times this is not done with much detail. Have you ever gone back over several months’ worth of stats and really analyzed what types of posts consistently drew the most traffic and comments, and which other types of posts and subjects drew very little interest? When I took a more detailed look at the stats from my own blog I saw some interesting trends that I hadn’t noticed before, and that knowledge has helped me to produce ideas for posts that perform well.
9 Steps to Better Blog Post Ideas
Content is king. We’ve all heard that a million times and most of us have seen first hand that the content truly will make or break a blog. One of the single most powerful influences on the quality of blog content is the originality of ideas. A talented author can develop a well-written article, but if it covers a topic that’s been beaten to death it won’t make much of an impact. Likewise, an average writer can create a wildly successful blog post with the right idea.
Too many bloggers rush into writing the post and the importance of idea generation gets overlooked. Improving your idea generation skills is one of the most effective things you can do to improve your results.
Here are 9 Steps to Generating Better Ideas:
1. Make Time for It
Make idea generation one of your priorities, and recognize its influence on your success. Just like you need to set aside time for writing blog posts, you also need to designate time for developing ideas for posts. There are plenty of activities with your blog that can consume your time, but don’t do so at the expense of working on new ideas. Without leaving time for it, you’ll find yourself sitting at the computer searching for a topic to write about, and the results will suffer.
2. Have a Brainstorming Session
Rather than trying to come up with one post idea at a time as you need them, sit down and crank out as many ideas as you can. Write down all of your ideas. Many of them will not turn into anything usable, but that’s ok. Get your creative energy flowing and you’ll find yourself having more than enough great ideas to develop. Several months ago I wrote an article on brainstorming techniques for bloggers.
3. Use Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a method of brainstorming that helps you to visualize your ideas and to build on them with other related ideas. This method can really help you to develop ideas for posts on particular subjects and topics as you can visualize all of the different aspects and you see the possibilities for useful blog posts. Darren wrote an excellent guide to mind mapping a few months ago at ProBlogger.
4. Outline Posts Before Writing Them
If you are typing your posts with little or no direction you will have disjointed articles that are less productive than they could be. I find it to be very helpful to outline every post before I actually write the content. This may require some research, depending on the topic, but it will make the writing process easier. It also helps you to identify ideas that really don’t develop into quality posts. From the outline you should have a pretty good idea of how well you can develop the post, and you’ll know pretty quickly when an idea isn’t worth the time of trying to write the full post. This way you will be spending your writing time on ideas with better potential.
5. Keep a Journal
Although it is extremely helpful to have specific time for brainstorming, you’ll still have some ideas that hit you at random times. In these situations if you do not have a journal or notebook for jotting down ideas you’ll probably forget more of them than you will remember. My notebook is one of my most valuable possessions. It has more ideas and outlines than I’ll ever have time to write. Sure, some of them are pretty bad, but whenever I need a post or whenever I have time to sit down and type, there’s always something of quality there waiting for me.
6. Take Your Ideas and Plan a Posting Schedule
I find it to be very helpful to plan out my posts a week in advance. Every weekend I’ll look through the ideas that I have been working on, and I’ll select the ones that I am going to finalize and publish during the upcoming week. This helps me to avoid last minute posts that don’t have much of a point except to get something published.
7. Don’t Publish Something Unless You Are Happy With It
If you finish a post and you feel that it doesn’t live up to your standards of quality, either keep working to improve it or just get rid of it. It’s never fun to give up on an idea that you’ve spent some time on, but that is better than publishing something that could lower your readers’ opinions of your blog.
8. Improve Your Title Writing Skills
Some bloggers start the process of writing a post by first coming up with an attention-grabbing title and then working from there to develop the content. While this may not always work, it is a different method that can help to give your writing process a spark.
The titles of your blog posts will have a huge impact on how many people actually read what you’ve written. If you’re going to spend your time researching, writing a post, and proofreading it, why just publish it with the first title that comes to mind? Coming up with the best title usually takes a few attempts, but it will be well worth your time. See Daniel’s post 3 Rules for Writing Effective Titles for a little bit of help.
9. Analyze Your Results
Part of creating posts that attract attention is knowing what types of content have worked well for you in the past. Most bloggers check their stats regularly, but often times this is not done with much detail. Have you ever gone back over several months’ worth of stats and really analyzed what types of posts consistently drew the most traffic and comments, and which other types of posts and subjects drew very little interest? When I took a more detailed look at the stats from my own blog I saw some interesting trends that I hadn’t noticed before, and that knowledge has helped me to produce ideas for posts that perform well.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
No Pressure
Really.
It's not rocket science. As you begin this process and get over the initial set-up issues, blogging will come naturally to you. Learn to schedule your time for posting and analyzing your results. I had a friend tell me "Manage your blog. Don't let it manage you". Good advice indeed.
I have seen several of these "how to" blogs that were so crammed with pop-up and affiliate ads, it was hard to see what the actual content of the site was. The Idiot's Guide is here for you and we're not doing this just to make money. That will come later ;-) Seriously. We're here to help you get started and point you in the right direction and hopefully to answer questions that you might have.
Now...how is your brainstorming coming along? Have you gotten alone with your pen and notepad yet? Take a long walk. Take some deep breaths. Turn off the input and get quiet for a little bit and see what comes to you. Then take some action and put your ideas on paper.
I leave you with this quote from Randall Jarell...
"It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life."
Friday, March 21, 2008
Getting Started!
How does one start a successful blog?
CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT!
1. Get alone with your thoughts
2. Take a pen and a pad of paper
2. Take a pen and a pad of paper
3. What's important to you?
4. What are you passionate about?
5. What interests you and what do you talk about?
Write all this down and see what you come up with. Don't just blog for blogging sake. Have a point. Make a difference. You can change the world with your blog if you set your mind to it.
There are blogs that average nearly a million visits per week with ad revenue over the six figure mark. There are also blogs that sit stagnant with no one reading. Which one you will be depends on how you write and market your site.
Here are a few topics we will cover in the coming days. I hope to have bloggers on the big 3 platforms sharing their tips - Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad.
Google Adsense
Keywords
Links and Networking
Guide to better posts
Using Pictures and Video
Writing from the heart
Pay Per Post/Paid Reviews
Link Baiting & Post Submissions
Proven Money Making Strategies
Formatting for Success
Analytics - Measuring Your Progress
The First Post
(A blogger holding a Google Adsense check for $132, 994 - We'll talk more about Google Adsense and this guy in a later post)
Welcome.
We here at T.I.G.T.B have established this site to assist you, the beginning blogger, as you hack your way through the proverbial weeds called "the blog startup".
Your blog is your new home. You will sink hour upon hour into it. You will shape and mold it and it will become an extension of who you are. We are here to help you manage this new extension. What do you want to do with your blog? What are you looking to accomplish?
Are you looking to make enough income to retire?
Are you looking to impact the world and display a widespread message?
We are here to help and it won't cost you a dime.
Please feel free to ask questions, pick our brains, and visit as often as possible.
We don't claim to know everything there is to know about this subject but "The Idiots Guide to Blogging is written by people who have been doing this and can share the successes and failures along the bumpy road to blog-dom.
Now...on with the show...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)