Focus, innovation and joining the conversation - just 3 things that characterise the art and fun of blogging. This article continues on from “A to E of Essential Blogging Tips and Tricks“.
F
Focus
- Successful blogs focus on a particular niche or topic area. You probably won’t find a blog about cats, dogs and whales that is successful unless there is another common thread, e.g. dog, cat and whale surgeon.
- Search engines read your content and based on the number of words (above those of your anchor text in links, sidebar links, background code such as alt and title text) that appear on a page. I’m not talking about your archive pages – which includes your running blog pages. I’m talking about each individual post and page.
- You want your topic to be narrow otherwise the search engine will be confused as to what your focus is. If you are writing about cats, dogs and whales in the one post with many unrelated keywords, and you are running Google AdSense, you will be surprised what ads appear – nothing you want for instance. If you want to know what your pages are known for, keyword wise, just run the text of a page through a keyword analyser and see what your top 10 words are, after and, if, the, then for example.
- Visitors to your blog are interested in a few things and depending on how they came to your site, may be interested in just one page or all of your posts. If you want visitors to subscribe or come back to visit another time, you need to be predictable, consistent and respectful of a few main topic areas.
Freemiums
Offering a product or service free in the beginning to generate interest and take-up and then a charging model is applied. It is important that consumers know that the service will only be free for a period of time.
Fun
- Keep your blog and emails light. People who web surf do it because it is quick, entertaining, informative and non-threatening. They don’t want to think too hard (generally) so keep it fun.
- Add pictures, different font sizes, white space and a chance for their eyes and ears to see and hear something different. Don’t be too serious.
- Embed a funny YouTube video - you have the technology!
- Add a picture from Flickr - it’s free!
Funny But Informative Video: The writer’s guide to making a digital living
G
Google tools
- From AdWords and AdSense to Feedburners, Site Maps and Analytics – there is something for you to use to make your site better and become a more successful blogger. You can make money too! You can get a Google search engine for you site and make it easier for search engines to index your site. Check out what Google has to offer today.
H
Have a plan
- You might not think of this because sometimes the best way to get a blog up and running is to just start. Planning, which is different for a website and different again for a physical business, is still necessary.
- You need to identify many things including: the purpose of your blog, its market/niche area, what kind of readers you want so you can write for them successfully, your competitors, your main categories and what type of articles they will cover, your main keywords, the style of your writing, source for images and how you will attribute them, what template you will use ….. and the list goes on.
- Just keep in mind that your life will be a lot easier if you think a little about what your goals are and how you will achieve them.
I
Innovation
- Don’t always do what everyone else is doing. Think outside the box. If you identify a goal and have some objectives in mind to achieve this goal – be creative in devising how you can meet each of these objectives. If you need to increase your traffic – in addition to the tried and tested methods of others that are covered in detail by ebooks – what else is there you can do? Reinvent an old way that hasn’t been done or do something better than the rest.
- I wrote an article reviewing a new product that I thought was pretty good. Before I knew it, not only were my visitors interested in getting their hands on this free product, but the makers of the product had put my testimonial in a most prominent place on their site. I easily get hundreds of visitors each month from my thought to write a post, review a product and make it interesting enough for the high-ranking site to use my content and link to me.
- The original article was 10 Reasons Why You Should Try Wowzio Widgets On Your Blog/Site and the follow-up article was Use Unsolicited Reviews To Get Free Traffic To Your Site.
Internet
- The Internet, as in computers connecting to each other, has been around since the early 1970s, but its use was mainly for education, government and defence purposes.
- An interesting history of the Internet (based on the personalities involved rather than just the facts).
- It was the development and open release of the World Wide Web in 1992 and particularly HTML (Hypertext Markup Language – the format language for web pages) that provided the conditions through which the Internet became an open, mass-market source.
J
Join the conversation
- Social networking is the essence of blogging. People talk about topics they are interested in openly, candidly and sometimes controversially. If you have a blog but don’t get involved in conversations around the web about your topic – you will not be informed and will not be considered a credible conversationalist.
- Start by commenting on other blogs that cover your blog’s topic areas or that you are interested in but yet to blog about. Get involved in forums, offer guest posts and put articles on article directories.
- If you answer people’s questions on another blog often enough they may think you are a part of the furniture and when you include a link to your site, they will be more likely to “click-on” and visit your site. The owner of the site may also invite you to write something for them. It could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
- Make sure you find the time to express your views across the blogosphere and not just on your site. It will help your credibility, understanding and traffic.
[Sources include The Writer's Guide]
