A to E of Blogging Tips And Tricks

Now that you intend becoming a professional blogger, you will need to remember some basic tips and tricks to make life easier. Whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned blogger, you need to make sure you don’t become complacent and go into ‘auto-pilot’ – acting without thinking – too often!

Read and remember the following tips and tricks to become a successful blogger, and stay one.

A

Ask for help

• When you aren’t sure about how to do something, what you should do (or not do) and how to do something the best way – just ask.
• The best way is often the simplest, quickest and has been tried and tested by others. Before hacking away at something, let your search engines do the work for you.
• Create for yourself a bookmarked list of blogging and resource sites that you know or suspect have or will have the answers.
• Buy or borrow some good books.
• If you need a tutorial on something, then you need to know how to find it. Chances are there is one out there and if not, there are people who will create one if they think somebody is interested. Just ask [around] and you shall receive the answers.
• Post a comment, send a personal message or check out a forum that addresses your needs. If you use a particular WordPress theme, then have the forum and expert users of that theme in your bookmark list. The same goes with all of your plugins.

B

Backup your files

• There is no excuse for losing all of your hard work if you remember to backup your WordPress files and databases. There are plugins to help you do this if you don’t understand how to use cPanel.
• Before you make any changes to the code of your WordPress files, make sure you have a saved copy of files – the original ones you got with your theme files, your original custom style sheet or each version of your style sheet, in case you want to go back to an earlier appearance.

Banner

A form of advertising where a visual banner appears across the top or bottom of a site. The term has come to mean any form of graphical display element on a page, including down the side of the page (skyscraper) or in the middle of the page (island), and are often referred to by position (Top Right).

Blogs

A shortened form of the term ‘web logs‘, which were thought pieces written to be read by a (possibly unknown) audience. Generally, consideration and thought is put into a blog, and blogs are a great place to find out about new concepts, new ideas or new sites.

Buzz

Generating word of mouth, excitement or interest in a product of service. Things with ‘ buzz’ are talked about, shared with people and forwarded on to others. Buzz is the current zeitgeist – or the hot topic of moment.

C

Comment love and respect

• Make sure you allow comments on all of your posts (you probably don’t want them on your pages).Every time somebody leaves a comment they are adding content to the page, updating the cache of your site and triggering the search engines to come and visit.
• If you don’t update your site for more than 2 weeks and nobody comments, either because they choose not to or you have the comment function disabled – there is a chance that the search engines will love you less and your pank rank will fall.
• People are more likely to comment on your site if they can get their link in the comment. If you don’t allow at least one link, people may not bother commenting. Better still if you have DoFollow for your links.
• There is a great plugin called CommentLuv that also allows the commenter to leave an automatically drawn link to one of their last posts. The commenter just registers their blog with CommentLuv and whenever they go to a site that is CommentLuv enabled, they know they will get some link love from your site.
• Respect your readers by responding to their comments, especially if they ask a question. Also, respond soon after they comment. If you can’t find the time to do this, you might need to reconsider if blogging is for you.
• If you are asked a question you don’t know the answer to – find out. If you still don’t know, find out who does and refer them there with a link.

Citizen Marketing

• The idea that people will engage in marketing your product for you. Sometimes people do this of their own accord, but more and more creators are overtly attempting to facilitate this happening, by supplying assets or calling for collective action.

CPA

• Cost per Acquisition/Action. Similar model to CPC, where payment is made based on action such as signing up to the site clicked through.

CPC

• Cost per Click. Unlike CPM, the revenue is paid based on the number of people who respond to the ad (click on this). The rates are generally higher than for CPM, as few people will respond to an ad – but are more likely to be interested in the offer.

CPM

• Cost per Thousand (M) - Online advertising model where the revenue is agree based on the thousands of people to whom the ad is shown. Like other broadcast advertising, response is not relevant and the cost goes up as the ad is shown to more people.

Creative Commons

• A form of licensing content which allows the rights holder to define the rights that can be shared/used by other people. Simliar to an ‘open source’ licensing system.

D

Draft your articles

• This is an important step between writing [typing] a post and pushing the publish button! The “Save Draft” button is there for a reason.
• Write your post, “Save draft” and then right-click and open in a new tab “Preview”. You can see what it looks like if you were to publish it. The text, images and layout will be larger and different to how they appear in the dashboard edit post view.
• Re-read your post, word for word, taking note of everything that needs fixing. Jump back to the tab with your edit post view and make the changes as you go. Re-save the draft. Only after you are happy you have found all the typos and format bloopers and you have saved the draft – should you click “Publish”.
• Warning: if you publish your post and then make changes and edit and resave it several times, you might get banned, blacklisted, punished and other bad things for excessive “pinging”. Use a plugin like MBP Ping Optimizer to prevent this happening – even if you do use the “save draft” function!

D

Downloadable

Content which is delivered in the form of a file that can be saved and accessed at a later date. Usually there is a delay in the delivery of the content (while the whole file is delivered) but the user can normally access this at leisure without restriction. Most Digital Rights Management is focussed on ensuring that downloadable content cannot be shared.

E

Expert knowledge

• If you are an expert in your niche, blog, topic you are writing a post about, etc – fantastic. Keep it really simple for your readers who aren’t an expert.
• If you aren’t an expert then make sure you don’t make out that you are. Say what you know, quote others [and attribute your source] and refer your readers to somebody who does know what they are talking about.
• You should blog about something you have a reasonably good knowledge about or will soon because you love the topic so much.
• Your credibility will take an unrecoverable hit if you bullshit or make shit up. Don’t embelish. Don’t go places you aren’t comfortable.
• I started writing a tutorial for coding a particular function on WordPress blogs some time ago. After researching and find the top 5 expert posts about how to do it, I started to rewrite and before long found that I had made it sound much more complicated that it was. If my readers had read the instructions and messed up because of my dodgy advice or felt so confused that they decided not to come back, that is one less reader – everytime the article is read!

eBook

A book provided in an electronic (digital) form. They can be in different formats and can require dedicated readers (e-book readers). Some e-books are provided in PDF (Portable Document Format) which can be read using a free reader (from Adobe Acrobat).

[Sources include The Writer's Guide]