Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You're only a stranger once.

Take Readers on Your Travels

Filed Under Blog Review, Content, Successful Blog, Writing | Leave a Comment

You love to travel and want to put pen to words, be it before summer ends or down the road.

If you’ve thought of creating a travel blog, it is probably easier than making your travel plans, packing up the suitcase, and making sure you have a good time.

In order to craft a good travel blog to draw in readership on a regular basis, have a few basics in place.

Content, Content, Content

First, review different travel portals online to see how others do it, what to avoid, and what niche you may be able to fill that readers could be missing.

Whether your travels take you not too far from home or halfway around the world, the goal of any quality travel blog is to make readers feel like they’re along for the ride with you.

In order to have your blog followed regularly, the first and most important aspect is providing regular content.

While you’re probably not going to be able to afford to travel every month (unless you do it for a profession), a blog that is sparingly updated stands much less of a chance of gaining a regular following.

The next and most obvious factor is having a clean looking blog that is grammatically correct, flows nicely, has attractive pictures, and makes the reader feel like they’re part of the journey.

While your writing tone should be informative and to the point, don’t make it out to be an instruction manual. We travel for the simple purpose of getting away and enjoying new experiences or rekindling old memories, so keep the tone of the blog enjoyable.

It sounds rather obvious, but it is important to maintain a travel journal during your journeys so that you can look back and pinpoint items to a rather exact science. Hopefully your travels involve lots of fun activities, so recording them for posterity will make it easier when you begin to blog.

 

Adventures in Life

When traveling down the blogging road, be sure to engage your readers in your adventures. If your readers comment or ask questions about your journeys on the blog, be sure to respond in kind.

Another plus to writing a travel blog is that it can lead to new friendships with others who also like to set sail on new adventures. In some instances, you might actually find new travel partners to share journeys with. Sharing blogging information is also a plus, as travel bloggers can promote each other’s sites, therefore leading to more readers.

While travel bloggers should not expect to make a fortune or even any money early on with their sites, there is potential to profit from one’s journeys.

Assuming that your travel expenses are not going to come easily, making some money off of a travel blog can help assist in covering some of those costs.

In closing, a travel blog should be done in order to convey your travels to others and share the good times that traveling can bring.

Update the blog regularly, engage in conversation with readers, and make the experience one that is fun and doesn’t seem like a job.

If you follow those basic rules, your travels and writing about them will be a vacation.

Photo credit: freetraveltime.com

Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like call center services and is based in San Diego, California.  He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

What inspires you?

Filed Under Basics, Blog Review, Bloggy Questions, Community, Connecting Dots, Guest Writer, Inside-Out Thinking, Links, Motivation/Inspiration, Strategy, Successful Blog, Writing | 5 Comments

One of the best features of twitter is the opportunity to connect with other people around a specific topic each week or month via online chats using a hashtag (#) to “sort” the conversation stream apart from the rest of the flow of general tweets. These twitter chats expand my horizons, introduce me to other minds and concepts and also gives me an opportunity to refine my thoughts about any given topic.

If you are interested in knowing more about the online conversation about any number of industries or ideas, here is the link for an evolving twitter chat directory.
This past week, I had a chance to participate in a chat for the #SOBCon community. Having attended last year’s conference, it’s a great chance for me to not only re-connect with some of the the folks I met there, but I’m also able to chime in/learn from new folks. This week’s topic was about blogging; specifically, what inspires us to write.

There are as many ways to be inspired as there are ways to write. Some write each day, training The Muse to show up whether She wants to or not (ie. The Artist’s Way). Some feel as though they can’t write unless they have anything of interest to say and are moved to commit bytes to the ether.

To answer the question as it relates to me? I draw inspiration from other bloggers, quotes, songs, my children, interactions with people in my daily life and seemingly random coincidence.  But that’s not really what this week’s blogpost is about, actually.

After talking about it with others during our chat, I started to become more aware of being inspired and looking for inspiration in everything. This twist on the concept of “breaking the fourth wall” and being a dispassionate observer of my life helped me to learn more about how I interact with others.

Which leads me to the overarching concept of this blog and Independent Ideas. In order to be independent, one must be apart from the pack, so to speak. Having an awareness of one’s actions, how those interactions affect others and being mindful of our choices leads to a different way of Being by default. One cannot be aware and remain unaffected by the consequences of one’s actions. It’s impossible.

Writer/poet Paulo Coelho’s blog about the archer and the Zen Master underscored this concept for me when I read:

“You may have great skill with the instrument you choose for your livelihood, but it is useless, if you cannot command the mind which uses that instrument.”

It really is mind over matter. Thinking makes it so. We each have the capacity of conquering our own minds. We decide what is important to us. We decide what inspires us and we decide what drives us. Our choices are how those decisions are made manifest.

One of my best friends was an 80-something jazz pianist, now deceased. About 14 years ago, over coffee, Bob shared with me a nugget of wisdom he had collected over his decades of living. “Molly,” he told me, “everything is cumulative.”

Our independence is built moment by moment, day by day, choice by choice. What inspires you? What is your vision? What are you willing to decide in order to make it happen? It is ultimately up to you.

——-
Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation)

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Optimal Elements: Two Column Blogs

Filed Under Blog Review, Successful Blog | 3 Comments

A Guest Post by Louise Baker

cooltext455576688_blogging

Let’s face it – there’s no aspect about your blog that is more important in the long run than its design. No matter how good your content, no one is going to want to read your blog if they can’t get past the design. As blogging becomes more mainstream and advanced, design elements are becoming more and more flexible, allowing people to do whatever their imagination desires in terms of their blogs’ layout. Unfortunately, this has led many bloggers taking the route of overcrowding their design. Two column blogs are considered to be the most streamlined and clean type of design, and there are many tweaks that can be made in order to optimize this layout.

Designing a two column blog is all about working as clean as possible. Blogs are like periodicals, and the idea behind this realm of design is to make the content as attractive looking and easy as possible to read, so as not to alienate any visitors. Since two column blogs are somewhat minimalist compared to 3 column blogs, you have a much larger area to work with regarding content. This will allow you to mess with font sizes and photo layouts until you come up with what you feel works best. Finalizing a design is all about trial and error, and often comes down to personal opinion. Regardless, it helps to have a few associates or friends critique your layout.

Since two column layouts tend to have less sidebar room than other types of layouts, the framework itself forces you to be minimalist, which is a good thing. Instead of crowding your sidebars with widgets, comments and the like, make an effort to design them to be as clean as possible. There are other areas on your blog that you can sneak in a few widgets, but you should strive to keep your sidebars clean.

Remember that the most important part of your blog is the content, but the design will determine how the content is viewed. Choose fonts, sizes and other variables that really seem to stand out to the reader. The design is not meant to be focused on. In fact, its main goal is to let the content shine while helping out backstage. If your design is clean, your content will pop. Take this into consideration and your next blog will look clean and professional.

Here’s an example of a clean, well-designed two column blog.
_____
Louise Baker ranks online degrees for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the best colleges online.

Thanks, Louise. A clear path to information is so important to online learning sites.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

Great Headlines on the Web Always Win … Except When They Don’t

Filed Under Blog Review, Marketing, Successful Blog | 30 Comments

Got Traffic? Want Traffic? Why Do the Clickers Come?


If you’ve been studying How to Get Literally Everyone’s Attention on the Internet, you probably know that headlines count.

An attention-grabbing headline is everything. Whether it is something completely original and novel, ultra-specific and geared towards a niche, or just incredibly compelling, good headlines on the Web always win.

They always win, except when they don’t.

A great headline will get traffic and attention, but what sticks? What turns a click into a subscriber? Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. What transforms a clicker into someone who hangs around?

It starts with with the reason the clickers came. People come to a website for information, entertainment, and communication / engagement. When they click through on that headline they’re looking for one or more of those three.

Our greatest achievement in building a Web site is helping a person achieve his or her goal. During our research our biggest discovery proved to be that navigation and content work best when they are wed tightly together. “It seems that you can t really separate content and navigation” says Jarod Spool, “without losing something important in the process.” How to make your Web site fast and usable

If folks who click find something that delivers on that promise in that headline they stay and possibly return. If not, they feel thwarted and leave. Here are five things you can do to make it more likely they get what they came for.

Five Ways to Deliver to the Clickers Who Follow a Headline to Your Blog …

  1. Deliver what your headline promises.
  2. Deliver it in short paragraphs using subheads surrounded by lots of white space so that people have room to think and breathe.
  3. Deliver it without making folks jump over ads or through hoops to get to the prize that the headline promises.
  4. Deliver it by recognizing the people who take time to comment.
  5. Deliver it by making it easy for folks to stay..

The most important thing is deliver — do what we say we’re going to do.

It’s not the click that doesn’t come that’s a loss. It’s the click that comes to find that we’re not what we suggested we would be. A great headline followed by something less doesn’t win. It doesn’t even finish.

Great headline, lame blog post — you’ve been there. What’s your response when you end up on one of those?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Open Mic 7pm Chgo Time: Let’s Talk About Things That Went Wrong!

Filed Under Blog Review, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 10 Comments

Yes the Mic Will Be on Tonight

Join Us Tonight

We”ll Laugh About This One Day . . . Right?

We can talk about blind date stories, most embarrassing moments, things we lost, cakes that went flat, glasses we sat on, times we got caught breaking the rules, something we forgot we were supposed to do, and whatever else comes up — even flamenco dancing.

Oh, and bring links about things that went wrong that you want to share!

The rules are simple — be nice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

keep looking »