What do You Know Now About Blogging that You Wish You Knew When You Started?

What do You Know Now About Blogging that You Wish You Knew When You Started?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it?

While I’m the kind of guy that spends more time looking forward than dwelling on the past – I’m a firm believer that from time to time it can be a worthwhile exercise to look back on our experiences and let them help shape our future.

So today’s reader question asks you to do just that:

What do You Know Now About Blogging that You Wish You Knew When You Started?

Perhaps it’s some method of finding traffic, perhaps it’s about your writing style, it could be more about how you interact with readers, maybe it could even be something to do with a blogging tool that you’ve discovered or it could even be that you wish you’d never started.

I guess another way to ask the question would be – name one thing you’d do differently if you could start over?

Looking forward to your answers either in comments below or as a post on your own blog (if you do post it – just leave the link below so we can check it out).

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Using Images to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

Using Images to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

This is the second post in a series on How to make your RSS Feeds POP

One technique that many successful bloggers use to stand out from the crowd is to use images in their feeds. This means switching your feeds to full feeds, enabling html and putting up with a little more bandwidth but in my experience of surfing through thousands of posts a day in RSS it makes a big difference.

Images draw the eye, they pique interested, they grab attention and they have the potential to make what can otherwise be a dry and text filled environment (news readers) a more visually pleasing and sensual space.

I know when I’m scanning my feeds that it’s often the posts with images in them that I pause to take a second look at.

The images you use might illustrate a point you’re trying to make – or they might simply be the equivalent of an image title for your post (like I’m using in this post).

3 Examples

A few blogs that use images regularly and effectively in posts include:

3 Examples

A few blogs that use images regularly and effectively in posts include:

TechCrunch who uses lots of logos and screenshots of companies that it reviews.



Copyblogger uses title images effectively – I know when Brian uses one that I’ve got to pay attention because he’s writing original content. It’s a visual cue to his readers to listen up!



Richard at Read Write Web uses a lot of images in his posts. This is particularly useful for his blog which often features longer and pretty in depth posts that without images could look like large slabs of text.

Readwriteweb


Using Video in RSS

Over the last year Videos have increasingly been appearing on blogs and over the past few months some news aggregators have worked out how to show them in RSS feeds.

The same principles that apply to images in feeds seem to apply with video – they add another dimension!

Perhaps it is the novelty value or perhaps that it’s an ‘active’ thing to press the little play button – but there’s something about seeing video on a blog or in a feed that sucks me in every time. It catches my eye and draws me towards it – I suspect that it does the same for others so smart and relevant use of video in posts can add a new dimension to both them and the feeds that they appear in.

Tomorrow I’ll continue this series in writing for RSS – but in the mean time I’d love to hear your thoughts on images in feeds.

* Do you use them?
* Do you like them in other’s posts?
* Who uses images in posts well?
* What type of images work best for you?
* Can bloggers sometimes use too many images and videos in posts?

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How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

RSS has become an increasingly important way of engaging with blog readers over the last couple of years – but in more recent times with its integration into web browsers and operating systems it’s potential power for bloggers to engage readers has increased.

However – if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably not put a lot of thought into thinking strategically about how to engage with readers through feeds. Most of us simply know we have a feed, ensure we have a link or button to let readers know we’ve got one and hope that people subscribe.

But is there a way to engage readers more effectively through RSS?

While many tips have been written on how to write blog posts, I’ve not seen any that focus upon feed readers.

The Problem of Clutter

I have around 700 feeds that I attempt to follow each week. Some of them only post once or twice a week but some can have up to 100 posts. You can imagine the massive quantities of information that many heavy RSS readers are confronted with in their news aggregators.

How can bloggers break through this clutter and make their RSS feeds get noticed? How do you make your feed ‘Pop’?

How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!How to Make Your RSS Feeds POP!

This week I’ll be presenting a series of short posts on writing for RSS readers. As always – my invitation to you is to join in with the tips. Like everyone – I’m still making sense of new technologies and how to use them most effectively – I’m looking forward to learning from you also.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series.

PS: it should be said up front that some of the tips for improving RSS feeds that I’ll share in the coming days also have the potential to improve the blog posts that actually appear on your blog. Consider that a double bonus for the series!

The Series so Far

* Using Images and Video
* Scannable Content
* Titles with Bling
* Opening Lines
* Avoid Clutter
* How to Get More Subscribers to Your RSS Feed
* 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get RSS Readers Visiting Your Blog

Bonus Post: 34 Reasons why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

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How Long Do Your Readers Stay at Your Blog – Length of Stay Statistics

One of the very first investigations that I ever did on blogging was into the idea of ‘length of stay’ on blogs. It was 18 months ago that I began to dig into the topic and got a bit of attention with the following post. I thought I’d repost what I found here on ProBlogger as its been buried away in the archives on one of my other blogs.

Warning – the following ‘research’ is not intended as anything too serious – the statistics generated are pretty loose and there are some serious problems with how I collected them (see below for the shortcomings of these stats) – but they might be helpful in thinking about your blog. Here’s my original post:

How long does the average blog reader stay on a blog on any given visit?

I searched for the statistic on Google but couldn’t find it so I decided to do some of my own investigations.
I headed over to The Truth Laid Bear: Traffic Ranking Page. It lists blogs in order of how much traffic they attract. It is limited to blogs using the Site Meter stats package that have made their statistic public.
I surveyed 350 blogs – 25% of the blogs listed (it took me a few days on my dial up connection) and found the following results.

According to Site Meter stats the average reader spends 96 seconds reading the average blog.

The blogs surveyed came from across the board in terms of their traffic levels. (ie I took results from everything from Instapundit (who reportedly has 80768 visits a day) through to The Trouble with the Baby (who has 1 visit per day).
Other findings


- The top ten blogs on the list had an average length of stay of only 37 seconds where as the bottom ten averaged 83 seconds.

- Apart from the ‘top ten’ there was not a huge difference between blogs receiving high and low traffic. For example – blogs receiving 60 visits per day had an average visit length of 100 seconds which was almost the same as blogs averaging 2000 visits a day (ave 97 seconds).

- Blogs with comments scored a higher average than those without. (this might partly explain the ‘top ten’ scoring lower as most of them do not have comments) I did not collect data on this, but it became very clear anecdotally.
Implications

96 seconds is not a very long time. It is quite disillusioning to realize that after slaving over a post for hours (or days as this one has taken me) that it is likely to be skimmed over in less than two minutes)The average blogger would desire to lengthen the stay of their reader. This motivation might be that they are trying to create community and build relationships with their readers. It might be that they have advertising on their site (the longer the stay the more chance of a click through) or it might be that they are wanting to have some sort of a lasting impact on their reader through their writing – the longer the stay the higher chance of this.

Is interaction the key?
My study is by no means conclusive in terms of comments adding to length of stay on blogs – however it does indicate that if bloggers allow for their readers to respond and interact with the writer and each other that they will stay longer. Therefore an interactive approach might be a wise move for bloggers desiring lengthy visits.

Questions and areas for further research
- Does blog design/loading time impact the the length of stay?
- Does blog topic impact the length of stay?
- Do bloggers from certain countries (with high local readership) have different lengths of stay?
- Does posting length have an impact?
- How are News Aggregators impacting length of stay?
- How do these figures compare with other websites that are not blogs?

This brief survey is limited by the accuracy of Site Meters measuring of length of stay The way they do this is by measuring the difference in time between page views on a site. Accuracy is a problems as some readers will only view the one page on a site – thus registering a time of 0 seconds for their length of stay. Once again this may partly explain how the ‘top ten’ have low averages as I guess that they would have more readers surfing in throughout the day to check for updates and not surfing through links. As a result of this my ’study’ is not something to base life an death blogging decisions on – but is something I’m posting more out of interest than anything else. Rachel’s written a good piece on the shortfalls of Length of stay statistics. So keep this in mind – I’m not saying 96 seconds is THE average – I guess what I’m hoping to communicate is that people don’t stay very long – and its worth considering how you can lengthen their stay.

After I wrote this post I started writing a few other Blog Tips that you might be interested in (they are from the early days but still have some helpful ideas in them if I do say so myself – you can access them at Blog Tip 1 – Get to the Point and Blog Tip 2 – Keep it Simple…Stupid. I also wrote the following short post which I’ll repost here:

The 96 second window of opportunity

So we’ve established that the average Joe spends about 96 seconds at your blog. Its not long in the scheme of things – but when you think about it its actually a real opportunity.

- The average TV commercial is 15-30 seconds long. (you could fit four in that time!)
- You can learn the Tango in 60 seconds
- You can Learn to be more creative in 60 seconds
- All it takes is 60 seconds to change the world
- All it takes is 30 seconds to become Famous
- It only takes 30 Seconds to make half a gallon of ice-cream
- The world record for speed reading is 1347.81 wpm. (she could read 2156.496 words in 96 seconds!)

Get the picture? – 96 seconds is actually a real window of opportunity!

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How to Eliminate the Echo Chamber and Add New Dimensions to Your Blog

How to Eliminate the Echo Chamber and Add New Dimensions to Your Blog

One of the better posts I’ve seen recently is by Chris Pirillo writing about ways to eliminate the ‘echo chamber’. It’s a post that I’m sure many bloggers will find a challenge (I know I did). Here are his main points (in bold) with a few comments of my own (the non bolded stuff) on some of them. I’m not sure I’d be quite as extreme as Chris suggests – but there’s food for thought in the list and I suspect that enacting some of his suggestions from would add new dimensions to a blog (and maybe even help a little with the echo chamber thing too):

1. Don’t live inside your news aggregator

I was actually thinking to myself yesterday that my news aggregator has become way too central in my blogging. While I love the way it helps me to keep my finger on the pulse of many aspects of life I do worry from time to time that it has the potential to suck the creativity out of me as a blogger as it’s very easy to use it as a lead generating machine and allow it to determine much of what you post on your blogs.

2. Say something original at least once a day


– One of the results of living in your news aggregator is that it’s easy to get lazy and to recycle news and ideas from others – at the expense of exercising your own brain power and developing some original ideas of your own. I’ve got nothing against bouncing off others ideas (I’m doing it now) but starting conversations rather than just responding to others or reporting on the conversations that others start can lead bloggers into a fairly one dimensional type of blogging.

3. If warranted, quote an “unknown” source

Chris is spot on with this. It’s easy to only read the A-lister and use them as the source of a story, but the fact is that there are many other talented bloggers who are saying similar things that also deserve attention. This is of course a challenge (as are all other 9 points) as it can be difficult to find the quality ‘unknown source’ partly because no one is linking to them (hence they are unknown). I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes it takes a little work to find them – but it’s worth it when you do.

4. Don’t link to the same site more than once every two weeks

I’m not sure I’d put a time limit on it but the principle behind this is a strong one. I hesitate to say this (for looking arrogant and not wanting to offend) but I’ve come across a number of blogs in the last year that link to ProBlogger in almost every post. It’s almost like reading ProBlogger itself they refer to it so much. Now – I’m very grateful for the links and am flattered by it (truly I am) but I also feel like saying to these bloggers (and sometimes I have) that perhaps it would be good to not only respond to what I write but to find some other sources for stories also. If their readers just wanted to read ProBlogger stories they’d subscribe to ProBlogger. I know it’s easy to fall into this trap at times (to different extents) as sometimes it’s just easier to always bounce off the one blogger with whom you resonate with – but in doing so you’re also likely to be creating a somewhat empty blog.

5. Wait a week before publishing your thoughts on hot topics

It’s always a challenge to know how to write on a topic that everyone else is writing on. On the one hand unless you’re the one breaking the news your post can on it does have the ‘me to’ feel to it – but on the other hand you feel that if you don’t write something about it some of your readers might miss the story and you’ll end up getting email after email telling you you’ve missed it. Chris suggests that one way to combat this is to wait a week before posting. I think this is one good option as it gives you a chance to not only report a story but add your thoughts (which have had a week to mater) to it and make the post more than just a news report.

6. Create, don’t regurgitate

Lots of blogs report on the cool things that others are doing in their niche but sometimes it’s nice to be the one doing the cool thing in your niche.

7. Think twice before using buzzwords

Every niche has its jargon and buzzwords but I’m constantly reminded (by emails from readers asking me to explain what I mean when I use them) that quite often the people who read blogs and the people who write them live in different worlds. Lots of people accuse the Web 2.0 niche of this but I’d argue that every niche has its buzzwords that you should think twice about using.

8. Make yourself uncomfortable

I’ve long been a believer in this. It’s often not until you’re out of your comfort zone that you’re able to grow. It’s a principle of life and one of blogging also – too many of us are way to comfortable in our blogging (PS: perhaps this is what Chris was thinking about when he did this – by the way – not for the easily offended).

9. Stop whining (or worrying) about what list you’re on (or not on)

I wonder who he was thinking of when he wrote this point. I can think of a few bloggers that I might send it to who seem obsessed with their blog’s rankings in different indexes. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with have a well ranked or highly regarded blog, there’s more to life and I suspect the people who are concerned with them could be a lot more highly ranked if they actually stopped focussing on them and started blogging with creativity, originality and passion.

10. Stop saying we need to get out of the echo chamber

Hmmm – a nice challenge to end on – although… “The day for blogging about blogging, and podcasting about podcasting, is long gone.” OUCH! :-)

Here is one more of my own that came to mind while I read Chris’s list:

11. Look outside the Blogosphere

As long as we, as bloggers, continue to look at each other for inspiration, ideas and creativity we will limit ourselves. Read books, see movies, buy the newspaper, take a class or… if you’re really game… talk to a friend. All of these things (and many others) help ensure we ‘get a life’ and will help us to take our blogging to a new fresh level.

Chris makes some great points (some of which I went against in writing this very post). While I love blogging and the blogosphere – I do sometimes wonder if we’ve created our own little universe (language, rhythms, rules, culture etc). While it’s wonderful it can also be quite insular and self important. Like Chris acknowledges in his post – it’s not easy to get out of the patterns we (as a blogosphere but also as individuals within it) have gotten into. Hopefully some of what’s above reminds us to step back from it all occasionally and ask some good questions about what we’re becoming.

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How To Write Excellent Blog Content – What We Wish We Knew

How To Write Excellent Blog Content – What We Wish We Knew

This post is part of the ‘What we wish I knew when I first started Blogging’ Series. Below I’ll share readers comments on the topic of Writing Good Blog Content as well as some of my own thoughts.

One of the most key aspects of any successful blog is the ability to create content that keeps drawing people back to your blog. I’ve written so many posts on this topic and know that ‘excellent blog content’ means something different on every blog – as a result I won’t pretend that what I write in this post will be a definitive guide to writing great blog content.

However I can tell you five things that I wish I knew in my early days of blogging about writing content (with a few links for further reading).

5 Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier about Writing Content for a Blog

1. The Power of Titles – the title has the ability make or break a blog post. It impacts how (and if) it’s found in search engines and social bookmarking sites, it influences whether people visit your blog in News Readers, it affects whether people leave a comment and is vital in whether people actually read what you have to say. Read more about using Titles Effectively on Blogs.


2. The Viral Nature of Lists – a single well written list post can launch a blog to great heights in the blogosphere. While the prolific nature of lists in the blogosphere can also mean your lists get ignored, I find that when writing the same content as a list that you write as an essay like article the list will almost always get more attention. Read more about why lists are great for getting traffic to your blog.

3. The Importance of Being Original - perhaps the best lesson that I ever learned as a bloggers was that people are drawn to others who speak their mind, who have something unique to say and who say it in a creative and fresh way. Say what everyone else is saying in the same way that everyone else is saying it and you’re almost guaranteed of being largely ignored. Read more about how to avoid joining the echo chamber and saying something original.

4. The Value of Well Formated Content – people don’t read content on line in the same way that they read content in other mediums. Online readers tend to scan content. As a result if you place visual cues in your posts that draw the eye to important points you’ll find people stick with you longer into your posts. Read more on How to make your content Scannable

5. The Impact of a Good Image - another simple technique for providing an additional point of interest in your posts is to provide something visual. I don’t use images in every post on this blog but find that when I do that those clicking through on the post in my feed reader increases. Images have the power to communicate in ways that words cannot – use them. Read more on Using images to make your posts POP in RSS feeds.

Reader Comments on Writing Excellent Blog Content

There are plenty of other lessons I could talk about – but I think my readers have even better insights. Here’s some of their comments on the topic of writing content and what they wish they’d know in the early days of their blogging:

D writes – “Understood the true importance of titles before writing the first post.”

Crazykinux writes – “Great content attracts visitors. Post, post, post!…. Having enough great content takes awhile; we’re talking in months people here, not days.”

NetBusinessBlogger writes – “Posting original content! I started blogging to make money. I created around 30 blogs (i don’t hesitate calling them spam blogs)…. At some point, you start realizing that this method of earning money is not life long as the traffic never grows. Once the visitor comes to know that the content is plagiarized, he is never going to come back! Today I’m happy that I’ve deleted all those spam blogs and currently I’m working on just 2-3 blogs which have genuine original content written by me. Its a great feeling to see your blog grow!”

Deb writes – “There is room for ‘my style’ within the general acceptable practices of blogging.”

SEO Expert Blog writes – “I wish I knew that it is much better to write 1 or 2 high quality posts a week than 1 or 2 medium quality posts a day.”

Arjun writes – “I think the single most important thing I learned over time was that I needed to write content that had value. I know it sounds obvious and stupid, but initially I wrote a lot of long articles that were more for me than anyone else.”

Alam writes – “Using draft and future posting effectively.”

Lisa writes – “Keep the posts short!”

Tara writes – “I wish I would have known that it’s really OK to get raw and blog from the heart.”

Principles of Marketing writes – “Being a lot better at keeping on target is the one thing I wish I could have learned when I first started”

Bret writes – “I wished I had just focused more on producing content on a regular predictable basis. I’ve gone through a week here and there where I just didn’t have time to post. If I had a reserve of posts to draw from I could have filled those low stops with something ready to do. I feel that the dry spells had a negative impact on my slowly growing readership. I would highly recommend to all new bloggers to create a stock pile of posts ready to fill the dry spells and to just focus on establishing a good routine for creating content. Once you have that, go ahead and start to focus on other aspects of your blog.”

Margie writes – “Just because someone else has written about it does not mean you should not write about it too, because your post may offer information or insights that the reader has not encountered before.” and “Also, I wish I would have known that creating a blog post can be like an appellate brief, sometimes you just have to wade in. Start with an idea or a link and research and let it grow as you find more info, edit out earlier stuff, etc. Just wading in is more productive than staring at your blank screen in fear! And when you get done, after a bunch of ‘drafts’ you usually have something decent.”

Danielle writes – “Read blogs. I wrote my first month’s worth of posts without reading another blog. Once I started reading blogs, I learned about the importance of layout and text formatting from my own reading experiences…..Less is more. Concise and clear writing captures a larger audience. Too much flashiness in blog design take any from the content. Catergory tags should be kept to the minimum keeping the ‘feel’ of a blog more focused especially true for personal blogs….. Memes increase your audience. The weekly memes such as Wordless Wednesday, Thursday Thirteen and Manic Monday can be consciously utilized for your own niche and bring a wider range of readers to your blog. I have gained a fair amount of ‘regular’ readers through utilizing memes.”

Tanya writes – “I wish I knew that it takes so much time. It’s different when youre in school – you have that time, but with a full time job and two blogs at which I ’should’ post daily – I’m tired all the time.”

BenQ writes – “Not to ever worry what friends and family think! I wish I would’ve known straight from the beginning not to be scared to blog about certain subjects.”

What do you wish you knew about writing good content on a blog when you first started blogging?

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Scannable Content

Scannable Content

Make Posts Scannable – One of lessons that I would advise all bloggers to get their minds about is that in addition to fact that the average web user doesn’t usually stay long on a web page – they also don’t read much of it As a result, scannable content is a userful strategy to use in your blogging.

One study found that only 16% of people read word for word when they are online and another found that the average person only comprehends about 60% of what they read.

Rather than read word for word – web users ‘Scan’ pages for information – looking for key words, phrases and visual cues.

Here are a few tips and techniques you can use for working with your scanning readers and not against them:

* Lists – This will be no surprise to ProBlogger readers – I’m pretty big on lists and my stats show me its my posts with bullet point lists in them that get linked to ALOT more than similar length posts written in of an essay style. Read more on lists in posts at this list on why lists are good.
* Formatting – Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, teletext and to emphasize points. Don’t go overboard as you run the risk of frustrating your reader. Also consider changing font size, color and style to draw your readers eyes to your main points.
* Headings and Sub Headings – Using headings midway through posts helps with post structure (and many believe with SEO if you use tags) but they also are great for drawing your readers eyes down the page and helping them find the parts of your article that will interest them most..# Pictures – clever use of pictures in your posts can grab attention, emphasize points and draw people down into your post. I’ve played around with pictures pretty extensively on a couple of my blogs and find they add a real air of professionalism and interest to posts – there’s nothing worse than long chunks of text on a page – break it up!
# Borders/Blockquotes – boxes around quotes and key points can similarly get the attention of readers.
# Space – don’t feel you have to fill up every inch of your screen – rather create spaces because they help readers not to feel overwhelmed and again tend to draw readers eyes to what is inside such space.
# Short Paragraphs – Web users tend to get lost in large blocks of text – break it into smaller bites and you’ll stick with it for longer.
# Don’t Bury your Points – Make your main points as clear as you can. One technique to ensure this is to get your main point across in the first few sentences rather than burying it in your conclusion.

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8 Reasons Why Lists are Good for Getting Traffic to your Blog

8 Reasons Why Lists are Good for Getting Traffic to your Blog

Here’s a tip for how to get people to link to your blog.

Write lists!

I’ve been reminded by this again today by seeing just how many people are linking up to Piaras Kelly’s list of Tips on writing content for your blog. I must have seen 10 or 15 people link to it in the last few hours (including me). Even though I don’t agree with all of it there is something about a list that bloggers and blog readers love. Here’s a list of reasons why lists can be good for your blog:

1. Lists are Scannable – online readers are notoriously lazy. A list helps communicate a number of points quickly and easily
2. Lists keep posts succinct - there is something about a list that keeps you from rambling
3. Lists look ‘neat’ - I don’t know about you but when I surf onto a site that is full of messily formatted text – I don’t tend to stick around long. Lists on the other hand can be quite visually pleasing 4. Lists are easy to link to – most of the links to the link above simply summarize the list (giving the keypoints) – bloggers seem to like linking up in this manner
5. Lists can be comprehensive – Piaras covered 12 points in the above list
6. Lists are persuasive – if you want to mount a case for something quickly presenting numerous arguments in a list can be quite convincing
7. Lists can add to the ease of writing – I like writing in lists because they break down my thoughts into bite sized pieces which is good not only for readers but me as a writer as I consider how to express myself
8. Lists as Memes – I’m not quite sure how to describe this – but lists can start epidemics of ideas. For the above reasons (and others – bloggers seem to love linking to lists and as a result they have the ability to spread quickly

There is obviously a pretty good case for using lists in your blog writing. Of course you can use them too much – sometimes a topic calls for something a little more meaty and in depth than a list – but overall I’d recommend that using lists on your blog as part of your writing mix is an worthwhile strategy.

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Tips on writing content for your blog

Tips on writing content for your blog

Here are some tips on writing content for your blog:

1. Use catchy titles: As I subscribe to more and more webfeeds, I tend to flicks through content a lot faster. Short, catchy, tabloid-style titles grab potential readers attention and will ensure that your posts have a better chance of being read.

2. Be unique: One of my favourite blogs is Gaping Void. Hugh MacLeod’s cartoons are great and instantly grab my attention. Try to make some aspect of your blog unique. for example, I now open each post with a quote which tends to reflect the entry.

3. Make sure to credit your sources: Don’t plagerise! Never use someone else’s content without crediting them. You can refer to them in your entry and offer your own opinion on the story rather than be a copycat.

4. Think before you post: Blogging isn’t a race, so take your time . The majority of my posts (including this one!) are prepared at the weekend, giving me plenty of time to think over them before posting. You don’t want to post something that you’ll end up regretting.

5. Stay on topic: Your blog’s content is key. LikeEd says ‘good, interesting blogs get read, boring rants on irrelevant topics don’t’ So if your blog is about Soccer, I don’t expect to be reading about Tennis on it often.

6. Link, it’s polite: If you read something interesting online and tell your readers about it, then post a link to what you’re talking about. It’s annoying to read about something and then have to Google it, instead of simply clicking a link to it.

7. Be conversational in tone: Nobody wants to be bored to death reading your blog and you should also try to attract readers who might not be familiar with the subject you are covering. Some really intelligent people have turned me off with their academic style of writing. You’re supposed to be having a conversation not talking down to people.

8. Respond to comments: It’s great to see that you’re blogging, but if you don’t respond to comments on your blog readers will tend to get annoyed and may unsubscribe. Sometimes it’s even nice to send the person who left the comment an email, IM them or havea real life conversation with them via Skype. When I left a comment on Steve Rubel’s blog congratulating him on his marraige I was surprised to get an email from him saying thanks. What a nice touch! Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to be so quick to reply to comments when people criticise him.

9. When to post: The best time to post I find is the morning when people will be going through their subscriptions. I tend not to blog on weekends anymore because people seem to check their Webfeed/RSS reader during typical work hours on Monday to Friday. People will be able to give your post more attention.

10. Be controversial: Don’t be a sheep, stand out and voice your own opinion. Who cares if nobody agrees with you? As long as you believe in what you’re saying then don’t be afraid to disagree. people are always inclined to get two sides of a story. Mind you, don’t push it otherwise you’ll be seen as someone who just likes to brew trouble.

11. Blogging is not email: A blog might be an online journal, but that doesn’t mean you have to start each post with Dear Diary. The same applies for Hi, Hello World, etc. There’s no need to sign off either, your name will be listed at the bottom of your post anyway.

12. Assuming makes an ass out of u and me: Don’t assume readers are familiar with your product/service/pastime. I had to delete my subscription to a PR blog the other day because the author insists on referring to some model that I am completely unfamiliar with. I got the sense that he was trying to sell me something I wasn’t going to buy into.

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Making Titles Live Links

Making Titles Live Links

One of the first tips I was given when i started to blog that I’ve not talked about for a while here is to consider making the titles of your posts live links (permalinks).

These days most blogging software does this automatically for you – however today as I’ve surfed around the web I’ve seen quite a few blogs that do not do it. Instead they link to the individual pages on their blog with the word ‘permalink’.

I hope they’ll forgive me but let me give you a couple of examples on two of my favorite blogs – A View from Home and Micro Persuasion. You’ll see in both instances that if you put your cursor over their post titles that they are not live links and that they have the ‘permalink’ link to their individual pages. Of course some bloggers are more traditional in their approach and like this approach (and I think there can be some valid reasons for doing so) – however in my experience – making the title of your post a live link can have some significant benefits.

The greatest of these benefits is that it helps with Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engines rank sites on many factors – but one of these is that the words used in links linking to a page carry a lot of weight in how that page is ranked for those terms. It is not just how other external sites link to you either – it is the way in which your site is interlinked that counts also.

Take for example Steve’s post ‘Go Behind the Scenes at Rocketboom‘. If he’d made the titles on his front page, category pages, date archive pages and even his individual pages live links he would probably rank higher in Google in a few times for the term ‘Rocketboom’ than he will by just linking to those pages with the word ‘permalink’.

You’ll see that I’ve used this system here at ProBlogger – everywhere there is a title it’s a live link.

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10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber

These suggestions are not mutually exclusive:

1. Don’t live inside your news aggregator. You don’t see me getting caught up in the daily din largely because I save my favorite tech friends for “dessert” – catching up with their feeds at the end of the week. Doing this has largely kept me from commenting on commenter’s comments on commenting comments commenting on commenters.
2. Say something original at least once a day. Believe me, this is a tremendous challenge. I’ve been trying to do this since 1996, with the launch of Lockergnome. There are times it’s just easier to regurgitate something that somebody else said. If you think it can’t be done, you’re not thinking hard enough.
3. If warranted, quote an “unknown” source. Instead of going for the pundit’s line, why not elevate a non-pundit instead? There’s enough room in the ’sphere for feeding everybody’s ego.
4. Don’t link to the same site more than once every two weeks. If the situation is large enough to be covered by a large amount of people, then we’re going to find related perspectives easily enough. Force yourself to stop seeing and seeding the same stuff over and over and over and over again.
5. Wait a week before publishing your thoughts on hot topics. I realize this point could be taken as an anti-social move – but when everybody’s talking and nobody’s listening, what are we really accomplishing? Scoble (and no, I’m not trying to invoke the Pirillo effect by dropping his name) made me think about this a few weeks ago when we were talking about “me too” trends. 6. Create, don’t regurgitate. It’s fun to talk about new stuff, especially if everybody else is linking to it (and it’s of interest). But what about creating something new every once in a while? And if you never do something original, then how do you ever expect us to rise above the din?
7. Think twice before using buzzwords. There’s a time to employ jargon, and there’s a time to destroy it. My mom thinks that AJAX
is a cleaning product – and so does 99% of the galaxy. Don’t merely mention a function, but how it actually makes the experience better (or worse); tell us about the features, sell us on the benefits.
8. Make yourself uncomfortable. I don’t do it often enough, but whenever I step outside my comfort zone – I grow. I’m an introvert at heart, and the only way I can overcome this social shortcoming is by being gregarious when my gut reaction is to retreat. When you force yourself to do something that you don’t understand, the results might be messy – but they’ll be genuine. It’s cool to swim alongside the cool kids, but it’s more cool to be in a clique of one.
9. Stop whining (or worrying) about what list you’re on (or not on). Dude, it’s not about lists anymore. Lists were designed to be exclusionary and are largely done for marketing
purposes. I’m referring to lists of top people, places, or things – not lists like David Letterman’s Top Ten. People know who you are and where to find you – and no matter what you say or do in the future, their conceptions and misconceptions are ultimately going to cloud their judgements of who you really are.
10. Stop saying we need to get out of the echo chamber. We all realize that we need to get out of the echo chamber, so what are YOU doing to help us get out of the echo chamber? Just saying we need to get out is not actually going to help get
us out. Many of us have similar beliefs – great. The day for blogging
about blogging, and podcasting about podcasting, is long gone.

I dare you to go a full week without touching your feed reader. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again next week. The world will still be here when you get back. And I don’t need anybody to link back to this list in order to feel validated – I’d just like everybody to start thinking about “thinking about” different things.

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12 Tips on Writing Content for your Blog

12 Tips on Writing Content for your Blog

Piaras Kelly PR has 12 tips for writing content for your blog which has been linked to by a few people today. I’d actually agree with most of it – but would also recommend a little caution with a few of them. Let me make a comment on each one.

1. Use catchy titles – there is debate over this. I personally prefer titles that say what the post is about. While catching titles might get you some readers – if you’re looking for traffic from Search Engines a title with your keywords in it that says what the post is about might actually be better than a catchy or criptic title. This goes for RSS feed readers also.

2. Be unique – this is a good tip. Think about how many blogs are out there that look, sound and operate the same as millions of others. Standing out from the crowd is important.

3. Make sure to credit your sources – After my last few posts I think I’d better not say any more about this.

4. Think before you post - This is a definite must – however on some blog topics speed can mean the difference of being the ‘go to’ blog on a topic or being just another of many that are followers. If your blog is on a competitive news topic then speed can be important. 5. Stay on topic – I agree with this. Keep 99% of your posts on topic. An occasional diversion can be ok – but if your blog is on a specific topic – keep to it. The only exception is where you have a wider topic for your blog. The key is to not change mid stream what your blog is about. Your topic can be very wide – but its best you don’t chop and change between wide and niche topics too much.

6. Link, it’s polite - Linking to others is what blogging is all about.

7. Be conversational in tone – I’d agree with this in the majority of cases – but would argue that a consistent tone that reflects your personality is probably more of a key than a conversational one. While I’m as conversational as possible here at ProBlogger – some of my more successful blogs are less conversational. Instead it can be appropriate to be more authoritative on some topics. Again – the important part is being consistent – find a tone and stick to it.

8. Respond to comments - this is a great point – many bloggers don’t do this. Of course it’s easier said than done when your blog attracts a lot of readers..

9. When to post – the argument here is to post in the morning when people are going through their subscriptions. Nice idea – but when is ‘the morning’ when you’re not in the same place as most of your readers? I do think about when I post (for me late at night is a good time for readers) but I’d not get too worked up about it. I do agree that weekdays can be better to publish key announcement or pieces though.

10. Be controversial – This can work for you – but it can also detract from you. I personally don’t get into the controversy thing too much – I prefer a more positive constructive approach to blogging. If you go the controversial route – make sure you have thick skin and are willing to disillusion and even lose some readers. Controversy can build readers in the short term but most blogs need a mixture of positive content as well as critiques, rants etc (of course there are some exceptions).

11. Blogging is not email - Good tips for newbies.

12. Assuming makes an ass out of u and me - ‘Don’t assume readers are familiar with your product/service/pastime.’ – true – it’s worth remembering that your readership is a fluid thing. Not everyone reads everything you write so when you write about things you’ve written about previously you might want to either explain yourself or link to explanatory pages. Also highlight your about page to give people some of the basic information about you

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Should You Use Targeted Keywords in URLs

Should You Use Targeted Keywords in URLs

‘Should You Use Targeted Keywords In URLs?’ – This is actually a question I’ve been asked on numerous occassions by bloggers wanting to optimize their blogs for Search Engines. The theory is that if you are writing a blog about matchsticks that your ranking will be higher if you domain name has ‘matchsticks’ in the URL.

Nice theory – but does it work? Has anyone tested it?

It seems that now we can back the theory up with a test run by WebProNews who found that at least in the case of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN that keywords in URL do help.So how does this impact the way we blog? In my mind there are a number of take home messages in this:

1. Pick your domain name wisely when starting up a blog. I learned this the hard way with one of my blogs which I started on the run one day and later changed the focus of. I now have a blog with a domain name that barely relates to my site – DOH!

2. Try to configure your blog so that keywords of individual posts feature in the permalinks of each page. For example you’ll see that this blog uses the title of each individual post in the URL. When I swapped to this method of setting up my URLs I noticed a 30% increase in traffic inside of a week to my blogs – it really does work.

3. Keywords in URLs are not the be all and end all. I mentioned in point 1 that I have a blog that doesn’t have appropriate keywords in its URL – I should also mention here that that blog is my most highly visited blog and earns more than all of my other blogs put together. The message therefore is to take a balanced approach to Search Engine Optimization. Keywords in URLs are just one of many (some say hundreds) of factors in getting your blog ranked highly on google.

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The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization

The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization

A few days ago I was moaning to a mate about the fact that despite thousands of inbound links and a page rank of 6 – ProBlogger.net is still yet to rank highly for many of it’s relevant search terms in Google – as a result I rarely get any traffic from Google on this blog. Even for a term like ‘Blog Tips’ (something I write about a lot) I only ranked around 60th on Google.

My friend asked a simple question that made me realize how blind a blogger can be when they stare at their own blog all day and lose objectivity. He asked:

‘What is in the title tags of your blog?’

As soon as he asked the question I knew how stupid I’d been. This is a question I often ask other bloggers but had not asked myself!

The title tags of my front page had been ‘ProBlogger: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. A good descriptive term – but not including some of the key terms that I was wanting to get hits on – particularly ‘Blog Tips’.

NB: your ‘title tags‘ are what appears between in your blog’s templates. This title comes up at the top of your browser when viewing a page and comes up in search engine results as the title of your post.

After banging myself on the head a few times for my stupidity I decided to do an experiment – I changed my title tags on my home page to ‘ProBlogger Blog Tips: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. Just a tweak really – the inclusion of two words. I set this up and waited to see what would happen.

The graph above (provided by digital point’s keyword tracker) tells the story better than I can with words. My search ranking for Google on the term ‘Blog Tips’ went from 65th to 10th in two or three days. On MSN I went from 40th to 1st. (the red line is another of my blogs which has always ranked highly on Google for ‘Blog tips’).

Now the term ‘blog tips’ isn’t the most lucrative term in the world and doesn’t bring in hoards of readers – but it is better than what I was doing with Google and it illustrates a point – your title tags are very powerful when it comes to optimizing your blog in Google (and other search engines).

I recommend that on your home page you have a title that incorporates your blog’s name and your main keywords. On individual pages I always recommend that you make your title the title of your post – which should of course include keywords for that post. I also include my blog name on individual pages on ProBlogger as I think it could intrigue people on Search engines to come and have a look. On some of my other blogs I just use the post title without the blog title.

So on my post ‘Does Blog Design Matter?‘ my title is ‘Does Blog Design Matter?: ProBlogger Blog Tips’

I’ve still got a long way to go with Google – my individual pages are not getting very high rankings at all – I suspect that they may have sandboxed me – but making sure your title tags are optimized is another step towards getting ranked and something I’d encourage all bloggers to consider.

Update: Another side benefit of changing your title tags to include your keywords is that you’ll find other people link to your blog using your title tags in the link. Yesterday I noticed two other blogs did this – rather than linking to me as ‘ProBlogger’ they linked as ‘Problogger Blog Tips’. This is good news because search engines look at the words that people link to you with in order to work out what your page is about and how highly to rank you for those terms. This should all help my ranking for those words.

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Using Titles Effectively on Blogs

My Mum drilled into me at a young age that first impressions are important.

Outside of the design of your blog (that’s a whole other post) perhaps the best way of creating that impression is though your post’s title.

Titles are so important on many fronts – including:

• Grabbing Attention in Search Engines – Head over to Google and type in virtually any word you can think of and you’ll often find millions of results. The interesting thing is that for most search results in Google (and other SE’s) there is very little for readers to go by in deciding which result to click on. There is a title, a short excerpt and a URL. The most highlighted of these is the title and I believe it is key in getting SE referral clicks.

• Getting RSS Readers Attention – in a very similar way titles have the ability to grab the attention of those following your blog via RSS in news aggregators. Even if your feeds are full post feeds rather than excerpts it’s likely that most news aggregator readers scan the titles of posts for things that interest them rather than reading full text. The same principle is true in other indexes and directories like Technorati, del.icio.us, digg etc

• Loyal Readers – Good titles also impact the way your loyal readers interact with your blog. As I’ve already mentioned – web users scan pages and one of the best ways to make them pause as they roll their eyes down your site is to capture their attention with a good title that intrigues them enough to slow down their frantic web surfing and actually read some of the content that you’ve pour time and energy into.

• Search Engine Optimization – While there are many factors that contribute to how search engines ranks a page of your blog, one of the most powerful onsite factors are the words that you use in the title of that page. This means making sure that the titles of your posts end up being in the