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blogging

Information, tips and guidelines for making your blog effective and worth reading

Finding a guest blogger to suit you

Published 24 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Having a guest blogger write in your blog has advantages for you and your readers, but how do you find the right person to do some guest posts for you?

You may be lucky and have someone offer to do some guest posts for you when you are ready for them, but if you want a guest blogger without any leads for one, here are ideas for finding a guest blogger:

do a blog post announcing you are looking for a guest blogger! If you want to be a little more subtle, add this information to your about us page or your blog policies
do some research on your regular commenters – those that contribute constructive comments may well be suitable to do some guest posts for you. In fact, their comments may inspire the guest blogging idea so they can expend on something useful they have written as a comment
look at your suppliers – do any of them have a blog that showcases valuable information for your audience? If so, ask them for some guest posts – they get increased exposure and they are helping a client (you!) so are likely to be agreeable
ask for guest bloggers through networks (both real life networks, online forums and social media) but be aware that you may get a lot of responses and not all will be of value
look at your favourite blogs – would any of those people have anything to say that is relevant to your blog audience? You already know they can write blog posts that attract readers!
do a search (in a search engine or through a blog directory of some sort) of blogs in your industry
ask any of your suppliers if they know of anyone who could provide relevant expertise – if they supply you there’s a good chance they’ll supply related businesses
advertise in unusual places and see who responds. For example, if you run a blog on parenting or helping children with homework, put an ad in a school newsletter as you will reach many parents

Good luck – and let me know which of these ideas worked for you in finding a guest blogger for your blog.

Posted in blogging, business info & tools | Tagged blogger, find, guest | 2 Comments

The value of guest blog posts

Published 22 June, 2011 | By TashWord

A few days ago, I raised the question of reading guest blogger posts in a favourite blog.

I think there are a number of reasons to value a guest post in a blog, although I do agree that too many guest posts could detract from the person I visit that blog to hear from.

If the guest blogger is filling in for my favourite blogger so that I continue getting content, that consistency and committment is of value to me. Of course, this is of less importance if the blog is erractic in providing content anyway, but we’ll ignore that for the moment!

Assuming that the blog has carefully selected any guest bloggers and the topics they post on, then the guest posts could provide me with an alternative point of view which can be really useful. It could also provide me with a new blog to read and gain information from.

A different person writing may also inspire different people to comment on my favourite blog which again can lead to new conversations, ideas and leads.

And on a more superficial level, if I comment on a guest blogger’s post, that guest blogger may then know of me and my blog…

While there are obvious advantages for the host and guest bloggers, I think guest blogging also holds advantages for the readers. What do you think?

Posted in blogging | Tagged blog, content, guest, ideas, post | 6 Comments

Decluttering your blog

Published 18 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Last week I found a blog post I just have to share – Skelliewag gives 50 tips for decluttering your blog (yes he posted this list a while ago, but it still applies as far as I’m concerned!)

He raises some great points, such as not including stats (as you rather than your readers care about them) and irrelevant social media conversations in your side bar. And I love his suggestion of having a traditional links page if you really want to list a lot of blogs somewhere.

Why declutter a blog?

Having less stuff around your writing gives more white space and less visual distraction – maybe I’m biassed, but I think that is better for highlighting your content. I do think about where to put things on my blog and avoid having too many plugins, but I hadn’t thought of decluttering like this before reading Skelliewag’s post.

One interesting point was to have a categories/tags cloud OR a categories/tags list – not both. I think that both is excess information, especially if you want to declutter and have more clear space around your blog. Personally, I would choose the list because it takes less space and is visually less cluttered than the cloud. On top of that, the cloud is based on bigger text on most popular words/phrases meaning that those words will give you a long list of posts to search through if trying to find something specific. Have you ever clicked on one of those clouds to find anything anyway? I know I haven’t (in fact I actively ignore them, but that’s just me!)

And I like the logic of getting rid of any advertising that doesn’t really pay well – it is nicer for readers to see fewer ads and does make the remaining ones more effective. I find a lot of ads in a blog distracting and prefer to see a clean page focussed on the content, so it makes sense to me to use fewer ads.

Most of his points already apply to my blog, phew! I will review the rest of his list and make decisions on whether to keep or lose some details. So if you think my blog is too cluttered or want something removed, now is the time to tell me!

* Images courtesy of Dysprosia and WikimediaCommons

Posted in blogging, business info & tools | Tagged blog, clear, declutter, space | Leave a comment

You are making an impression…

Published 16 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Sigh. That’s my immediate response to a blog post I just read – sigh.

Doesn’t give a good impression of that blog or writer does it? Every time you write something that goes public, it affects how people view you – yet some people just don’t seem to get that. What’s worse is that this was a guest post on another blog so I assume they didn’t review it before accepting it. Silly as I closed the site after this post, and the rest may be great for all I’ll ever know…

I started reading the post in good faith but the poor expression made me skim the second half rather than read it which is never a good sign. I honestly only kept reading because I hoped the content would improve and justify it’s existence on a site I was reviewing. It didn’t.

Although appearing to be an article giving information, it was a poorly disguised ad for why company X is a good choice for design work – namely because they are young designers. I commented back as I don’t believe all young designers are good, nor all experienced designers lack passion.

Had I been given that article to edit or at least comment on, my suggestions for this article would have been:

make sure it all flows and that each sentence make sense
give balanced information (eg “while an older designer has experience, remember that new designers are keen to impress and may be passionate about their work” or “new designers have a lot to offer and you may find they charge less to get experience”)
introduce any specifics in the article, not just the heading (in this case the heading mentions web design but the article starts with ‘designing is a creative field’ – designing is more than websites)
use good grammar and punctuation (“give you the brand image as promised because; they want to earn a good name” does not need any punctuation in the middle and certainly not a semi-colon)

Just as I was leaving the page, I noticed the writer’s bio and sighed again. Nearly every word started with a capital letter (which is so annoying and completely unnecessary) and he claimed to be a ‘professional content writer’. With that example of his writing skills, he is not making a good impression for himself or the web design company paying him to write this article.

How do you respond to such poor examples of work?

Posted in bad writing examples, blogging, writing | Tagged flow, impression., information, post | 1 Comment

Why read a guest blogger?

Published 15 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Many blogs use a guest blogger from time to time, some use guest bloggers all the time; in fact, Matt Coddington suggest that just about every blog will include a guest blogger at some point in its lifetime.

A guest blogger simply means someone else writes a post or series of posts that are published on another blog. For example, I have done some guest blog posts at The Study Gurus. Sometimes it is one or two posts, sometimes there are many posts in quick succession and sometimes a number of guest posts are added over a longer period.

As a reader of a blog, why would you read a guest blogger in a favourite blog? Or would you actively not read it at all?

Posted in blogging | Tagged blogger, guest, post, read, series | 2 Comments

Searching people are important

Published 13 June, 2011 | By TashWord

For me, once you take out emails and website admin tasks (including writing blog content), then my key activity online would be using a search engine to find something. Apparently I’m not alone – this is the most common activity after emailing.

Which of course means that people searching are an important part of your online presence – if your site doesn’t get in search results and doesn’t help people landing on the site from a search engine then you are risking a potentially large market.

What’s more, if someone is searching the odds are they are willing to buy – I know I wouldn’t bother searching for a local dentist unless I want a new dentist or search for ‘computer mouse retailer’ for fun. So it seems logical to me that someone reaching your site from a relevant search engine search is likely to want your product/service. Especially in comparison to someone who is just curious about their friend’s latest social media like or follow.

Given the potential importance of people visiting your site from a relevant search, why would anyone waste their time getting people to visit from an irrelevant search? For instance, I am happy if you found my site (and blog) through a search for ‘business writer’, ‘blog content’ or ‘writing eBooks’ but see no point enticing you with ‘childcare provider’ or ‘dress maker’. It costs me time and possibly money to get found via a search engine so I don’t want to waste it on people who are not interested in my services – and I don’t want to waste their time and put them off side either.

So how can we help get the right search engine results? Here are my suggestions, and I’d love to hear everyone else’s ideas, too, as I won’t say no to more targetted traffic, either!

use appropriate keywords in your writing (ie repeat those words you think people may use to find you)
minimise the repetition of words that are not relevant to your message – for example, you may be a designer writing about your latest website project but avoid writing ‘medical business’ too often as you discuss the work
build up some links to your site – quality content is the key here but it does take a bit more than that
if looking for backlinks (ie links form other sites to yours), ask them to use appropriate text for the link and aim for related sites. Use the same strategy if someone offers to link to you, or even ask anyone who has added a link without contacting you
add page-relevant keywords to your blog tags or page metadata as this helps direct a search engine to the right topics. Note I wrote page-relevant so don’t just use the same words on every page – for example, my tags for this post will be ‘search’, ‘keywords’ and ‘relevant’ which would not work on many of my other pages

Of course, it is crucial to write contact of interest to real people and tweak it for search engines rather thna write for search engines and hope people find the hidden meaning.

How else can you get good search engine traffic to your site/blog?

Posted in blogging, marketing, web content | Tagged content, keyword, relevant, search, writing | Leave a comment

Making your blog quality

Published 12 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Often, I read about the importance of quantity for blog posts – that is, there is a message to write frequently in your blog to make it successful. And I have to disagree with that message.

Oh, there is no argument that a certain number of posts and some regularity is necessary to get traffic to your blog and search engines ranking you. And for regular readers it does help to have a pattern to posting or at least multiple posts a week.

But having five or more posts a week that are boring or trashy is not going to get you a lot of repeat visitors either.

Good quality blog posts that engage people is what will bring people back to your blog. That can be done in many ways (informative, descriptive, entertaining and so on) as long as people are interested in what you are writing. Quality posts may or may not generate a lot of conversation (ie comments), but they will achieve the usual aims of a blog – sharing ideas, showing expertise and communicating with real people.

I would much rather read an informative blog post once a month than visit a blog every day to read some drivel churned out – how about you?

How does this affect your blogging time? Well in reality writing one good post shouldn’t take much longer than three or five short, nonsense posts so don’t assume quality means more of your precious time. Remember a quality post can also be short…

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged blog, post, quality, quantity | 6 Comments

Finding quirky blog content ideas

Published 10 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Did I convince you that using quirky ideas (or quirky sources of ideas) can make some interesting blog posts?

Braille writing on a screen – quirky inspiration?

Keeping your blog fresh and interesting can take a lot of thought and effort so why not make it fun at least some of the time?

So where can you find quirky blog post ideas?

Well the real answer is anywhere and everywhere! Just look for what is happening around you and you may be surprised at how much silliness and quirkiness there really is!

However, for specific inspiration of a quirky nature, here are a few ideas to get you started:

find a favourite recipe site and visit it every few weeks. You can post about how delicious something sounds or how complicated a recipe is, the name of a dish may inspire laughter or memories, the layout of the site may spark a post on website navigation or colours, you could get philosophical about food and eating, or you may post about a different type of diet each month.
get yourself a collection of useful sites that you can share. For example, a site that converts metric into imperial, a blog directory, a recipe site that gives you meals to suit certain ingredients, a list of paper and envelope sizes, or a budget-helper like simple savings. You can post these as helpful tips or use them for inspiration – maybe the site is an example of something good or bad in your field, you can post about pricing of website information or you can ask for suggestions for a specific site you need
get a regular dose of a funny site – you can blog about specific stories/jokes/images or the site itself, or use it to get creative or maybe use the content to explain a concept (for instance, a joke about miscommunication is something I could use in a post about the importance of clear communications in a workplace). A couple of examples are damnyouautocorrect, thinkbeforeyousend and the Darwin Awards
really look at the signs you pass – it may be the sign looks great or doesn’t make sense, it may be hung in a silly place or be easily misinterpreted, it may make you laugh or grimace, but signs can give you ideas if you don’t take them for granted
grab an old reference book and note the differences with modern expectations. Think about a plane company posting about the world being flat or a surgeon posting about the latest hair styles for gentlemen, then see what changes could apply to your industry or humour
read some kids’ books, especially something like Dr Seuss or Roald Dahl, or something quirky like a Terry Pratchett novel. Even if you don’t get direct ideas for your blog, they are sure to get you thinking quirky and creative things!

What other quirky idea generators do you use?

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged blog, fun, get ideas, quirky | 1 Comment

Using quirky blog content ideas

Published 7 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Sometimes it is interesting to use a totally different idea to create your blog post. Instead of using case studies, hot news items or client work, for example, you can write a post based on a movie or TV show, something you ate, an overheard conversation or even a product name.

Why use something quirky?

it’s more fun for you to think outside the box occasionally
it gives you a broader topic range to work with
you may just show a little more personality than usual, or a different aspect of your personality, that will help people feel they know the person behind the blog and business
using real life situations and examples is a great teaching tool

You may use a quirky source but write a straight blog post, of course, or you can introduce your post with “Hey I saw a movie last night and was reminded…” or “My friend was telling me about … and I had to share…” or “I know I usually only write about the latest news but today I’m going to share a story…”

What quirky ideas have you blogged about? How did it work? Share the links to your posts in the comments – you may just inspire someone else’s quirky ideas, too!

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged blog, ideas, personality, quirky | Leave a comment

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