A blog is a great tool for expressing your own opinions, networking with others (building community), and driving traffic to your online storefront (your business). Most people however are at a loss with "how" and "where" to get started so this post is meant to give you a template to follow (to serve as a guide if you will).
Enjoy! And if you have anything else to add, please drop it in the comments below...
Steps to Blogging More Effectively
1. Find Inspiration.
Well written content is fueled by inspiration. If you're passionate about the subject you're going to be writing about (it's your profession), then that makes it a little easier. If it's still challenging for you, here are some additional places that you can find inspiration...
Read Other Blogs
Keep track of what others are doing by reading/subscribing to their blogs. Some blogs you should be reading:
Stay Up-To-Date on Current Afairs Wether you're reading the local paper or the Wall Street Journal online, keeping track of current affairs is very,
very important. But don't just regurgitate information. When you blog the news, inject your own opinion into it (give it your own spin). That's what makes you unique. That's what makes you interesting.
2. Research.
You're searching for other blogs in your local area that are covering your same topic. How are they similar? How are they different? How can you stand out and be unique?
Use Twitter To Collect Feedback
3. Writing.
Start with the title first. At least that's how I like to do it. Why? Because headlines sell! Here's a great blog to read to get ideas on great headline writing:
www.CopyBlogger.com.
When writing new posts, one of your primary objectives is: readability. Here are some tips to consider:
- Avoid large blocks of texts. If you have a long-winded post, it might be a good idea to break it down into a series of smaller posts.
- Write list posts. They're easy to read/skim thru. Remember, people have a short attention span and are always skimming through content.
- Highlight important phrases. Again, this makes it easier to read/scan through content.
Contribute Content Consistently
For some people (myself included), this is the hardest part. But I did put together a post recently on how to go about building a good writing habit. That process is helpful to me. Hopefully, it's helpful to you too.
4. Multi-Media.
Written content alone can have a tendency to be very dry to a reader. If you're not accustomed to reading long portions of text (and most people aren't), then you're articles become quite boring to read. Take this post for example, there's not photos in it. I'm banking on the hope that you find the content useful (if you do, I'd appreciate your comments below). But really, my point here is to say that you should be using the following to supplement your written text:
- Photo: services like Animoto, Flickr and many more make it easy for you to insert images into your posts. Animoto in particular produces stellar slideshows!
For Example:
The 2009 REBarcamp Los Angeles Recap
Animoto Property Slideshows
- Video: when you run out of post ideas, it's easy to surf YouTube for good content. Take this post for example: A Case of the Mondays! It's a presentation given by Jonathan Baxter at Ignite Atlanta; and a pretty awesome one. It wasn't hard to come up with this post idea. Instead, it was rather timely considering it was Monday after all :-)
- Audio: some people find it easier to speak than to write. If you find yourself in that position then you might consider using services like posterous and/or utterli.com. I've talked about Posterous before here. Basically, you can record an audio file and blog it straight from your phone if you have a posterous account. Utterli allows you to do the same thing; well sorta (there's more steps involved). With utterli, you dial into your account from your phone, record your file and it's then hosted on the utterli network. It's up to you at that point to grab the embed code and embed it into a blog post. Posterous has fewer steps than this but utterli allows greater recording lengths.
The point of all of this is that you should be injecting some multi-media into your content to spice it up a bit. Get creative with photos, video and audio.
5. Review.
Last week I hit publish on a post a tad bit too soon. I realized I hit the publish button too early so I went back and unpublished the post. But it was too late! I'd already made a BIG mistake. You know why? Because once you hit "publish", that post goes out via your RSS feed so all your RSS subscribers see it even if you go back and "delete" or "unpublish" the post. I felt kinda silly to tell you the truth but ah well, "sh*t happens" as they say.
The Lesson To Be Learned: make sure to go back and give your posts a once (or twice) over. It doesn't have to be super perfect. After all, blogging isn't writing, it's conversing. I always stress being conversational in your writing which means it's ok to get casual with your writing. But before you hit that publish button, read your own content and make sure you've hit on all of your talking points, and then go for the publish button cuz once you hit "publish," what's done is done (well, sorta).
6. Publish and Promote.
There's two parts to the whole "blogging" process: 1.) Content Creation, and 2.) Content Promotion. You know that saying: "if you build it, they will come." Well I'll let you in on a little known fact, blogging doesn't exactly work that way. Just because you blogged it doesn't mean everyone is going to magically flock to read it. That's where the power of social networks and your level of influence comes in (or what Tara Hunt would call "Whuffie").
My Step-By-Step Process:
- Tweet my post using su.pr: I love su.pr because the bookmarklet makes it ridiculously easy to share content via Twitter AND it gives you pretty awesome analytics (like click-thru rates and number of retweets).
- Share my post via my Facebook Page status update: notice I said my Facebook Page not my profile. I share social media related content via my Page (not my personal account). I've set that expectation with my subscribers and I share my content with them there accordingly.
- Share my post via my LinkedIn status update: as with my Facebook account, I share a link to my post via my LinkedIn account but first I grab a su.pr link so that I can track statistics there as well.
- Lastly, I broadcast my new post via my email newsletter: I perform this step less regularly but from time to time, I'll share a link to a recent article with my newsletter subscribers. I tend to do this when I post a poll or a tutorial of some sort. Otherwise, I try and keep the content via my newsletter and my blog separate.
I'm sure your process is rather similar. My point here is that if you're taking the time to build your network, growing your community across various platforms, use those relationships to promote and share your content. But remember to be helpful first, otherwise it's a bust!
7. Follow Up.
Lastly, if and when people comment or someone takes the time to write you an email, please, PLEASE take the time to respond and follow up! There's nothing worse than when a new comment, email or inquiry goes ignored. It's like reaching out for a handshake and getting blown off.
Respond to comments. Respond to emails. Respond to voicemails. Heck, be responsive PERIOD.
Do that, and you're well on your way!
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