Blog Nanny

Basic Post Formats/Getting Back On Track

Darren Rowse over on ProBlogger has just completed a seven day series of posts on the basic post styles. I highly recommend you go there and study them all.

He's calling the series "Rediscover Your Blogging Groove." If you've sort of drifted out of your blogging groove, it will help you get back on track.

And, if you're a beginning blogger, it will be terrific asset toward learning what to post about and how to do it.

Each of the seven days of the series carries an assignment.

They are:

• Day 1 Write A List Post
• Day 2 Answer A Question
• Day 3  Write A Review
• Day 4 Write A Link Post
• Day 5. Write A Tip Post
• Day 6 Ask A Question
• Day 7 Tell A Story

Link, Link, Link

Enrich Your posts with links to material on other blogs, news items, products, whatever you can link to that will enhance your readers' experience will also enhance your traffic numbers.

Who to link to?

Think first about what your reader might want to know, might be delighted to discover via your post. Be generous, link to others who write in your niche, who you might even view as competitors.

Link to high traffic blogs. Go to Technorati and look for the most popular blogs, those with the highest rankings and search for blogs that have relevant material to your post, and link to them. Visit the sites those blogs link to and see if you should also link there. Read reader comments on high traffic blogs, visit the sites of commenters, searching for relevant and useful material there, and link to it.

Link to web sites that relate to your post and also add one or more sidebar link lists. They can be product oriented, service oriented, your own favorite blogs. Don't go link overboard and look like a link farm (a site or blog that consists mostly of links with little or no useful posts or copy), but look for opportunities to link usefully and appropriately to your blog.

Search engines favor blogs rich with links. 

And, for goodness sake, make sure your links are live! Don't make the novice mistake of thinking "If readers want to go there they can copy and paste the URL into their browser window."

Test your links immediately after publishing your post, clicking on each one to see if it really goes where you want it to. And, periodically, test them again. You never know when links will go wonky on you. 

Post Regularly And Frequently

How often should you post to your blog?

It depends to some extent on the blog, the subject matter, area of specialty and how interested you are in the subject yourself. Some of my blogs lend themselves to more frequent posting than others. If you can do it, and I hope you can, a daily post will keep readers coming back to see what's new. If you can post a couple more times on some days, even better.

How to do this?

You need to build a backlog of ideas and subject areas to explore and develop, an ongoing collection of links, and sources for news items your readers may not find without you. Then you will have many items on your back burner, incubating and developing while you write what's most interesting to you, most timely, or what you've picked out of your idea and info barrel because it's the best option you have for today.

Keep a notebook with you, a smallish one that fits in pocket, purse, or tote so you can write down ideas for posts and series of posts, facts, questions, and insights that come to you. No matter how brief, your notes will capture fleeting thoughts and opportunities that come your way that you can develop later.

On your computer, set up a one or more places for notes and links. If you have a Mac you might put them on Stickie notes, or create a simple text document to add them to, leaving it on your desktop for quick access. And/or use a blank email message, one without the TO: field filled in, and label it so you can find it easily. Paste your links into the message body, write your notes there, and save it in your Out box. It isn't going anywhere because it has no email address.

Whatever media you use for it, make your notes and links easily and quickly accessed so you will be able to add to them and retrieve them instantly.

What about when you haven't posted for awhile-when visitor stats dwindle and you wonder if previous readers will ever come back again?

Don't apologize for not posting. Hardly anyone wants to visit your blog to read why you've not been posting. Just begin posting useful stuff again. And market your blog to bring those stats back up to where they were, and beyond.

Prime Importance: Content

If content is king, and I think it is, quality content has to be one's top priority. Content consists of selection of material, and how it's presented. Selecting useful and/or entertaining subject matter is a given. Doing one's best writing is the other part of the equation. You don't have to be a master literary craftsperson to do a good job. But, you do need to run a spell check, and proofread what you write.

If you, like a blogger I know, need some help with this because you can't spot mistakes very well, ask someone who is good at it to check your posts periodically and let you know where you need to make corrections. Unfortunately, he doesn't run it by anyone else, doesn't do a spell check, and as a result his blog looks like it is written by a third grader who is getting a bad grade in English.

Quality content will draw readers like nothing else will and keep them returning. Doing a good job enhances credibility, shows respect for the reader, and provides other bloggers assurance that if they link to your blog it will enhance theirs.

Find And Study Good Examples

First off, I want to share something that has been particularly useful to me. It's like having mentors without asking people to mentor you. I call it finding good models. As a writer, I collect books, have a special shelf for them in my bookcase, that are good models to follow in doing something. Some are good examples of autobiography, some stylistic examples, some have parts that are especially good, such as an opening paragraph or opening sentence. All are there to show me how it's done well. I study them to see how to do as well, or better.

I regularly blog surf, starting with a blog that I'm curious about, maybe then going to links on that blog, and hop scotching to others from there. Whenever I find a blog that has some element of excellence that appeals to me or that makes me curious I bookmark it to come back later for further study. If I like a design I may experiment with it on my own blog, innovate off it, or it may lead me to create something completely different, but that was prompted by what I saw on the blog I visited.

I encourage you to keep links to good writing examples, good design, innovative use of elements, anything that attracts you. Study them when you have a few minutes or want a break from what you're doing, and you'll gradually add to your own options and excellence in blogging.

Every blogger who does something well can be your teacher, at your convenience, and at no charge.

How To Market Your Blog

I could title this series of posts something else, like maybe "Generating Traffic," or "Getting People To Read Your Blog." But, after reading a long and insightful guest post on ProBlogger.net by Tony Hung titled "How To Market Your Blog In 2007," I think it is more useful to think of it as marketing. You're actually selling your work online, even if you don't get paid, just as you're actually selling yourself when you apply for a job, or ask someone out on a date.

Thinking of getting readers and keeping them as marketing has a lot to offer. It moves the subject and tasks up a logical level and automatically widens the scope of options and possibilities you can discover and use.

So, the following series of posts (I don't know how many that will be at this point, but a lot, so come back for more.) is all about marketing your blog, and that includes marketing your words, ideas, and a whole lot more. Use any of the following techniques and suggestions and you'll increase your traffic. Use them all, and you will almost certainly create a huge increase in your reader base.

How To Set And Achieve All Your Blogging Goals

I learned a great way to set and achieve goals years ago from reading a book titled Choose Success, by Billy B. Sharp with Claire Cox. Since then I've applied and innovated with the basic tools in that book to set and achieve goals for myself, and also shared them with readers and clients. Using these methods I've, among other accomplishments, published five books with major publishers, set up my own small publishing house to reprint my books, become a life/success coach and changemaking specialist, and a prolific blogger. I think you will find the following goal setting and achievement methods will work for you too as you apply them to blogging. 

Setting The Goal

1. Is it believable?
I've taken Darren Rowse and Andy Wibbels' Six Figure Blogging course. I believe it is possible to earn six figures. But, is it believable for me, now? The answer may have little to do with whether it is possible. So pick a goal that you believe, right now, that you can do. After all, one figure blogging income is believable for anyone. After one figure, or two figure, or three figure, one can set higher goal that is then believable to the one setting it.

2. Is it achievable?
Select a goal you can actually reach from where you are now. Make it small enough to be done without stress or an uncomfortable stretch.

3. Make it flexible.
Can you find more than one way to do it, if you need to? The more flexible the goal, the easier it is to get it.

4. Does it fit you?
Not every goal, no matter how shiny, fits every person. Make sure you want this goal, that it feels right in your gut.

5. One at a time.
You climb stairs one step at a time, but they still go to the top. Avoid overwhelm and overload by setting and achieving your goals one at a time.

6. Is it adjustable?
Can you drop it entirely and go for another goal if you need or want to? Your goal setting needs to be able to respond to new opportunities, new insights, go around roadblocks, and be droppable for a better goal choice.

7. State it specifically.
If you don't know where you are going, you have no way to get there. Be as specific as you possibly can be. Write the goal if that works for you, and place it where you can see it often.

8. State it positively.
If you've stated your goal in a negative form, restate it in a positive form, what you want instead of what you don't want. You want to go toward a goal, not away from something.

9. Build in rewards.
Add a reward to be enjoyed when you reach it. You may also want to build in rewards for each step you take on the path to the goal. As you reach each step toward your goal, be sure to pause and enjoy the feeling of success. It will also help you reach your goal if you add a pleasurable experience both before and after attempting each step on the way.

9. Make it measurable.
How will you know when you've achieved the goal? What will you see, hear, feel? How many, how much, when? I recommend that you also write this down, and look at it frequently as you move toward your goal.

Achieving The Goal

1. Make sure it is well set, that it's an achievable goal that can be specifically stated.

2. Set a time framework for achieving it. This is not a pass/fail time deadline, but a means to place the goal in a more achievable framework by allowing the element of time to automatically help you move toward the goal at a reasonable pace.

3. Determine the first step, and only the first step, toward the goal.

4. Take that step.

5. Evaluate.
Did you succeed in your efforts? If so, determine the next step and take it. If not, can you think of another way to reach that step? Do you still want the same goal? If not, proceed to a new goal and take the first step toward it.

Evaluate both method and goal after each step, but take only one step at a time.

The key pieces are:

1. Proper selection of the goal
2. Taking only the first step/next step.
3. Evaluating after each attempt or step taken.

Field Evaluation

This isn't goal setting or achieving, but is an important addition to individual goal setting, so I'm including it. You need to periodically look at the big picture, the whole area of your niche in blogging, and blogging itself to evaluate your part in it, think about opportunities at the present and possible upcoming trends and opportunities in the future. You can add these big picture evaluation sessions to your calendar at whatever frequency that seems appropriate.

Are there areas you would like to improve, little things you would like to change, or big things you would like to do and need to give special thought to or talk about with mentors and/or peers?

Evaluate the changes you have made already and decide what you would like to do next. What are your strengths? What is working for you already? Can you do more of that and less of what's not working? Scan the field. What is developing in it, or may in the next six to twelve months? How can you make good use of what you see, of what may happen?

Above all, make sure you create an environment for your blogging that is satisfying and enjoyable. That means physical environment, care and feeding of the blogger, and the way you set and achieve your goals.

For more on goals by other bloggers go to Darren Rowse's series of reader contributions on the subject at ProBlogger.net.

Habits Contributing To Highly Effective Blogging

1. Do it. Ideas for posts, subject areas to explore, ideas for new blogs need to translate into action in order for them to be effective.

2. Carry a notebook. I read that Richard Branson, head of Virgin Airlines carries a Moleskine notebook, one of those little elastic banded nifty noteies, and jots down ideas, reminders, things to do, everything. He says he has to have it, that it's one way he gets so much done. I've adopted the same method. Even when I'm on the computer, I often grab my notebook and make handwritten entries to remind me of variations on ideas that come to me in my online reading and surfing.

3. Write what you need to know. If you want to learn something, research it and put what you find, think through, and discover on your blog. Or, if it doesn't fit your blog, find someone else's blog where it does belong, and post it there as an appropriate comment. Or, email the blog owner, share the info and ask for a link back, or offer to write a guest post about it.

4. Innovate off email messages you've written. Go back through your own personal email archives for goodies you've shared and turn them into blog posts, updating and adding to them. Same goes for other people's email messages, not copying their work, but sharing info that is available online, and innovating on the subject area. Scan your bookshelves for book titles that lend themselves to blog post titles, or innovate on them to create new and relevant post titles for your blog's subject area.

5. Take a break. Don't be a drudge blogger. Get up and move your body, eat, drink plenty of water. I've found I have to watch that, that I can go for hours online without realizing I've not eaten nor had any liquid.

6. Look up from your screen often, resting your eyes by looking at something in the longer distance. Stretch. Shift your position at least every twenty minutes, avoiding repetitive strain problems. Keep your body happy.

7. Create a link stable in an email message that doesn't go anywhere. Save it and label it in your out box so you can find it easily. Click on the live links to do your research, making notes under the link, and deleting them when you've written the blog entry for them.

8. Talk to your reader as though they are in the room with you, and you two are the only ones there. If it helps, create an imaginary reader you write all your posts for, someone you like and respect, maybe even a close friend, maybe a mystery person far away.

9. Don't apologize when you've taken time off, maybe don't even say anything about it. If you do, make it direct and a statement of the facts, "I'm back from my mini-vacation, and here's what I discovered while I was gone..."

10. Keep on writing, take time off, but remember to come back and share more good things with the world. You do have something worthwhile to offer, your voice is unique. Your potential readership is unlimited.

11. Read more habits for effective blogging in the ProBlogger.net series of posts by many contributing bloggers.

Write A Series On One Topic And Add A Graphic For The Series

One way to bring readers back repeatedly to your blog is to write a series of posts on one topic. Darren Rouse at ProBlogger has a series called Battling Bloggers Block. A reader and commenter on that series has spun off a series of her own, 20 Posts In 20 Days Marathon, at It's So Fantastic! which I've picked up to do on my Noodling blog.

It's So Fantastic! has used a graphic image to mark each of her blog posts in that series. I thought that was a particularly good idea, so created one of my own for the series of 20 posts I'm doing on Noodling.

Advantages I've thought of in having a visual graphic to identify series posts:

1. Readers have, in addition to the content of the series posts, and topic, a visual reminder to return.
2. You don't have to limit yourself to series posts and do them only until you've completed the series. By adding the visual graphic you can easily indicate which posts are part of the series and which are not.
3. A graphic symbol adds a bit of class and quality to your posts. Makes it look like you've put some effort into the series, more professional looking.
4. The graphic can indicate at a glance what the topic is all about, or expand it beyond the title of the series.
5. Even when the series is long past, the graphic will lead later readers to look for all the posts. And, I think, it helps persuade them to continue on to the next one. The longer your readers stay on your blog site, the better, not only for recurring visit motivation, but for any ads you have there to generate income.

What other benefits are there to adding a graphic, that I've not thought of?

Getting Listed in Directories

Thanks to a link from Darren Rowse's ProBlogger.net (if you're not reading him regularly, you should be), here is a link to Ari Paparo's list of blog directories.

Whenever you create a new blog, go list your blogsite with all appropriate directories as an important part of your traffic building tasks.

Frequency, Frequency, Frequency

You know how they say the secret to retail success is threefold: location, location, location? Well, the counterpart for blog success is also threefold: freqent posting, frequent posting, frequent posting.

Yeah, look who's talking. But, I've got the message. You're going to see frequency all right. Come back tomorrow and get it hot off the screen.

But, it's not just any old frequency. It needs to be worth reading, it has to have some benefit to the reader. After all, your readers are supposed to be coming to your blog for some actual content. If they wanted to just read drivel, they could get that on other people's blogs.

More later. Don't want to spoil you.

Blog Traffic, How To Increase It

Lots of good stuff at Darren Rowse's problogger.net site.

I recommend you go there, surf around, and keep coming back to learn more. The site has a huge amount of information on it.

This evening I was reading here, finding not only good info on increasing one's blog traffic, but good links as well.

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Welcome to BLOG-L!

BLOG-L FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Are there archives of previously posted messages to the list?
A: BLOG-L has recently moved from its previous hosting service. The archives from that host may be available soon, but aren't yet. Current archives will be available here.

Q: Who owns BLOG-L?
A: Pat Gundry, a blogging enthusiast.

Q: How do I find out who is subscribed to BLOG-L?
A: The subscriber list is available only to the list owner in order to protect subscribers from having their email addresses harvested for spamming purposes.

Q: What is "spamming?"
A: Spamming is the practice of sending SPAM, the term used to refer to unrequested email messages, usually trying to sell something. The term SPAM derives from a Monty Python episode in which an eatery offers nothing on the menu except Spam, repeated over and over.

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Q: What is a "Newbie"?
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Q: What is "Netiquette"?
A: Netiquette is good manners online. To read about netiquette visit these web pages:
http://www.albion.com/netiquette
http://www.fau.edu/netiquette

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BLOG-L: What it is

There are lots of blogs about blogging, but I didn't find much in the way of email discussion lists on the subject. Since email discussion lists have certain advantages over blogs for quickly accessing the collective wisdom of a large number of people, it seemed like a good idea to create one for blogging, so I did.

BLOG-L is an email discussion list about blogs and blogging.  Email messages addressed to the list are received by all subscribers to the list. Subscription is free. BLOG-L's mission is to provide a quick and easy way to share information about blogs and blogging.

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My Blogging Projects

Since examples are usually more useful than descriptions I thought I'd share several of my blogging projects, just as they are at this point, to illustrate how blogs might be used by writers, publishers, coaches, and service providers.

I'm a writer, with many interests and writing related projects in progress at any one time, and so blogging can provide a home for projects, ongoing contact with readers and possible future readers, and  provide low key, non-invasive publicity and marketing exposure. Better than a newsletter in many ways, a blog can be permission marketing at its best, I think.

I'm also a small publisher, so I have books to sell, information to share, and opinions and thoughts on that subject that I now have a place for on a publishing related blog http://www.publishnuisance.com

My blogs were all built at http://www.typepad.com using the template pages, with a little html tweaking (very little) that I learned from Andy Wibbels' http://www.easybakeweblogs.com ecourse. I used Fireworks software to create the banners and graphics and optimize them for the web. And, for a couple of them I also did a little Photoshop modifying.

I created the blog http://www.cookbook-l.com as a replacement for a website, reproducing the pages on the site with posts on a long blog page, with sidebar links to the posts. I replaced the website with a blog version because it will cost me much less money per month, and because I thought it might even serve me and subscribers better in blog form.

I replaced some other websites with blogs, changing their format and name, forwarding their own original domain URLs to the new blogs, which also have their own (different) domain names.

Several of the blogs are project oriented and have to do with coaching or writing projects of mine, and some are also social action projects:

http://www.makeabortionunnecessary.com
http://www.abuseville.com
http://www.tellingaboutabuse.com

http://www.noodlefactory.typepad.com/noodling is a personal opinion/whatever blog.

http://www.publishnuisance.com is for all the stuff I'd be cluttering up my email discussion list PUBLISH-L with if I wrote there about everything I'd like to :)

http://www.ordermybook.com will eventually be an easy to remember way for radio interview listeners to locate my books online.

I created http://www.blognanny.com so I'd have a place to refer blogging related questions and post material I've written elsewhere about blogs and blogging.

The Ariel Network links in the sidebar of this page contain both my regular website and my blogs.

Learning How

Most, if not all, blog providers/hosts have tutorials. So, you can muddle through with more or less ease without additional training.

However, I lucked out with free training from Andy Wibbels, who was developing a pilot program for an ecourse/telecourse on web logging (blogging) and wanted students for the course-in-development. I signed up, and have built several blogs using his excellent instruction and resources. I'll be adding an affiliate link here soon to Andy's course site, but for now you can simply go to http://easybakeweblogs.com to check out what he offers. It's well worth the cost, I can assure you.

He based his instruction on the http://www.typepad.com hosting company's blogs, because he thinks Typepad has the best looking blogs he's seen, and it's pretty easy to use. TypePad has three levels of membership/subscription. Andy asked us to get the middle level for our class, which provides most of the features one would want, and you get to build three web logs there for the same price, if you want to. The top level, which I shifted to when I decided it was the place I wanted to build my blogs, provides unlimited blogs. That's right, I can build as many as I want, for one price for all. So, blogs can be much, much less expensive than websites. And, there are many blog hosts that provide free blog building and hosting service.

Here's what I use to build my blogs: Hosting and online building templates at http://www.typepad.com and the software Fireworks to create and optimize the banners and graphics, which were mostly from Hemera's Photo Objects http://www.hemera.com  And, I also did do some work in Photoshop software on a couple of the images.

Thinking of all the things one could do with blogs bloggles the mind :)

Where To Blog

A few of the best looking blog providers:
http://www.typepad.com  (My top recommendation, the one I use.)
http://www.livejournal.com
http://www.journalspace.com
http://www.blogdrive.com
http://www.modblog.com
http://www.aiyo.com/app/blogs.jsp?aff_id=10002

This one is a website/blog builder/host:
http://squarespace.com

List of links to recently updated blogs: (Takes awhile to load. First thing you'll see is a guy standing up, sideways, looking like Bill Clinton with a drink in his hand. Just be patient, some bloggers have a quirky sense of humor.)
http://www.weblogs.com/

More sample blogs to visit:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0131035/  (religion in the news)
http://www.thiswomanswork.com/  (writer weblog)
http://boingboing.net/ (very popular info blog)
http://radio.weblogs.com/ (most popular feeds for radio.weblogs)

Blog resources, etc.:

http://www.blogshares.com
http://www.blogphiles.com  (blog webring)
http://www.fairvue.com/?feature=awards2003 (weblog awards)

What You Can Do With Blogs

Everybody needs a website. Well, almost everybody. Certainly every author, coach, service provider, and publisher needs one. But, websites can be very difficult and expensive to plan, design, and get up and running. Mine aren't, but that's because I use an online site builder program my web host http://www.bigstep.com provides, and it works well for me. But, even at that, I need to be able to tweak my graphics, and had to buy and learn software for that (Fireworks).

But, a web log, or blog as they are called by bloggers, is easy, and free or cheap to operate. It's fast to set up, and fast to add to or change. You can have a simple blog or an elaborate and complicated blog. And, blogs will do what a website will do, to some extent, and do some things even better than a regular website.

If you already have a website, a blog can add a personal and immediate functionality to the website. You can link your externally hosted blog to your website, or you can use free standing blogging software you buy and install on your own computer to add the blog feature to your website.

If you do not have a website, you can easily and quickly build a blog that will substitute for a website. For some people, businesses, and organizations a blog will be all you will need.

Specific uses for blogs:

1. Authors: A blog is a great way for authors to keep in touch with their readers and gain an online following for their work. The first link below is an author/book reviewer blog that not only promotes the author's book but is a source of affiliate and ad income as well.
http://book-blog.blogspot.com
http://davidakin.blogware.com/blog

2. Publishers: The immediacy of a blog makes it possible for a publisher to communicate with their community of writers and service providers quickly and easily, share tips, requirements, news, and recommendations, and create an atmosphere that reflects their business' personality.
http://www.globalbookpublisher.com/102002/102002ezine.php
http://pneumabooks.blogspot.com

3. Service Providers: A blog provides the personal touch, gives the customer more of the flavor of the  provider, and a chance to have ongoing interaction with the provider, make suggestions, see examples of work, etc., all at low cost and with low maintainence effort.
http://blogs.msdn.com/Andrew_May
http://www.debbieweil.com
http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

4. Organizations: Blogs are the ideal medium for organizational communication and presence, either in addition to a website or instead of one.
http://www.editorsweblog.org
http://homepage.mac.com/nrdtsjcpl/B1732759005/

Here are some blogging info sites for you to surf:
http://ezine-tips.com/list-tips/list-resources/20001206.shtml
http://www.writtenroad.com/archives/000209.shtml

Web Logs (blogs) What They Are

Web logs, or blogs, are simple add-to websites, either with their own domain name, or a subdomain from a blog service provider.

Simple blogs consist of a single front page, with chronological or reverse chronological entries by the blogger, in sequence, usually with an archive of past postings. Links and photos can be added to the text entries. Sidebars contain categories of links and can often also contain photos and graphics. Readers of the blog can add comments to the postings, which will be linked to the message they refer to, or listed on a sidebar.

Blogs also link to other blogs: favorites of the blogger, linked from the sidebar, and blogs that have been recently updated from fellow bloggers using the same host. There are blog directories that will list updated blogs too. One can begin at one blogsite and surf here and there around the web visiting recommended and favorites of the site owners and random ones that have have just been updated.

Blogs range from the simple and banal to classy and complex. A good blogging trek is very satisfying. It's also quite satisfying to publish a blog. They range from personal to completely business.

What Is Blog Nanny?

Blog Nanny is an information site for new bloggers, particularly bloggers using TypePad's blogging software/hosting. I'll be providing useful links, tips, and info for people who want to blog but may be intimidated or confused by the size of the blogging world and not know where to begin, or how to proceed.

Eventually, I may also offer services to the new blogger--blog building coaching, creation of banners for blogs, and optimizing and creating simple graphics to illustrate posts and pages.

I plan to add continually to the information here. If you have questions about blogging, or my blogs, email me your question and I'll answer it here if I can.  You can also add questions and share pertinent info in the Comments feature at the end of each post.

Pat Gundry
Blog Nanny