Successful Blog

Think Before You Link

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Good friends come to town. You want to show them around. There are so many options, but they have limited time. You consider your choices before making them. Only the best sights for your friends.

That’s the approach you should take to linking your posts. Only the best for your readers. Before you add any link, stop to think about it:

  • Does this link clarify what I’m saying here? If the answer is yes, link. If it’s not, don’t. (Drop it, or put it at the end of the post.)
  • Have my readers seen this link 10 times already? If so then drop it or find another. You’ll gain credibility as a leader.
  • Is this information they will care about? Would you want to go there, if you were the reader? If not, don’t link. Readers are counting on you to value their time.
  • If the link does belong, label the link and credit the writer. Don’t just put a nebulous click here. Readers want to know where they’re going before they go there.
  • Will this link take my readers away forever? You wrote a post filled with good information. Check the link to make sure that readers can get back. If it’s near a key point, maybe you shouldn’t interrupt things. The link might work better at the post’s end.

Keep in mind that too many links make us lose concentration. We literally stop reading completely.

Think before you link. Readers might not know you’re performing this service. But they’ll know they get more for their time when they read you.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Checklist for Linking to Quality Blogs
Think Before You Intra-link
Intra-Linking as Promotion

Audience is Your Destination

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An airplane traveling from New York to Chicago is off course 98% of the time. Still it gets there. Why? The pilot is always adjusting with his destination in mind.

The audience is your destination. If you’re writing for yourself, you’ll head in a different direction than if you’re writing for people learning what you already know. It may sound obvious, but it’s still worth stating–if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to get there.

Too often bloggers don’t think through who their readers will be. As a result their blogs are all over the place. Ever loved a blog one day and didn’t know why you went there the next? That’s a blogger who hasn’t picked an audience.

Have you really thought through who your audience is? Here are some questions to help you do that. Take a shot at answering them all in one sentence.

  • Who am I writing for?
  • How are they like me and how are they not?
  • Why do they read blogs like mine?

Write down your audience profile. Revisit it every now and then. Adjust it as your readership grows and you get to know them better. Use it to guide what you choose to write about.

Now that you’ve got a clear destination. Other decisions get a whole lot easier. In my next post we’ll put this theory in practice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Clean Message, Clean Blog

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From the Archives:

There’s gold in them there hills . . .In addition to adding current links within posts, I’ll be searching the net archives of great sites for interesting articles that extend the conversation or add a new voice, new information, or a new point of view. These will be carried in separate posts like this one. So that you can identify them immediately as non-date dependent information.

From the Blog Herald

While putting together the Blog Review Checklist, I remembered a post Duncan Riley wrote about Spring Cleaning your blog. It was posted early last September.

Speaking of clean . . . notice the clean, clear message. The herald states their purpose there in the logo where readers can’t miss it. The audience knows immediately what they can expect to find on this blog.

Click the logo to access Duncan’s tips. Be sure to share any that Duncan or I might have missed.

From Joshuaink

This one isn’t from the Archives, it’s from today. But it’s lots of fun. After reading the checklist above. Joshuaink.com answered it. The answer is such a fun read. I thought I should share it with you.

Note again. The purpose of the site is part of the logo. Same drill, click on the logo to go to the site.

 

 

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Who’s ME Strauss and What’s She Doing Here?

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Look Closely.

Can you see the difference? Can you tell I’m not Scrivs?

Liz Strauss is ME Strauss

I’m almost as tall as he is. My hair’s way longer than his.
Still he’s Scrivs, and I’m not.

Who am I?

I write as ME Strauss, but call me Liz. The ME was my parents’ idea, and it stuck. It worked in the publishing world. That’s where I started–but you didn’t come to read about me. Well if you want to there’s always my profile. . . . It’s over there in the sidebar on the left.

What am I doing here?

I’m the new face at Successful Blog. I’m doing all kinds of things–researching, writing, editing, talking, interviewing, questioning, learning, analyzing, strategizing, and a whole lot of other “ings”–whatever it takes to get to the bottom of whatever questions we can come up with about what makes a successful blog.

What can you expect?

One way that Scrivs and I look exactly alike is in what we have to say about success and blogs. We agree there are as many definitions for those two words as there are people to give them. I could have written what Scrivs wrote in his post What Makes a Successful Blog?

The generally accepted dictionary definition of success is, an event that accomplishes its intended purpose. Easy enough. Know your purpose and you’ll know how to define success for you. We’ll talk quite a bit about defining your goals and purpose here.

A Blog, or Weblog, is defined in the Wikipedia thusly:
A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log) is both a web application used for entering, modifying and displaying periodic posts (normally in reverse chronological order) as well as the totality of content constituted by these posts.

The key terms in there, at least for our purposes, are “Web application” and “content.” For me a blog at it’s most basic is an enabler of content, a mechanism through which you publish something. It could be photos, video, artwork, poetry, news, stories — anything. Content, that is what’s key when it comes to blogging.

Here at Successful Blog we’ll talk about content, blogging applications, personal blogging, business blogging, blog design, writing, photo blogging, and . . . tips, techniques and pointers that you can apply to your blogs and your blogging experience.

You can expect we’ll do plenty of that. Conversations like that are what successful bloggers do. You can expect a new post every Monday through Friday and lots of new features. You can also expect that I’m not going to do all of the talking. I’ll constantly be asking what you think about things too.

Here’s what I see.

Successful Blog is the place where all kinds of bloggers meet to share their successes and swap strategies. The content is organized, thorough, and relevant. The conversation is fun, fast, and sometimes irreverent.

This week we’re going to talk about audience and Blog Reviews. You’re my audience. So as they say, enough about me, let’s talk about you.

What do you think I should know about you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How Often Should You Post?

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From: D. Keith Robinson

Knowing (or trying to figure out) how often to post to your blog is one of the most common questions many bloggers have. It’s a hard question to answer and it really depends on the kind of blog you’re writing and who your audience is. There are as many answers to the question as there are bloggers out there.

Basically what you need to do is figure out what works best for your own situation. And there are lots of factors that go into finding that optimum frequency of posting. I’m afraid I don’t have a “one-size fits all” answer for you, but I’d like to discuss some of the options and the pros and cons of those options. As well, I’d love to get your take on this age-old blogging question.

Post as much as you can! A common response.

In general I think most feel that the more you can post—the better. And, in general, I agree with that notion. But it really depends on the kind of blog you’re writing. For example, if you’re a link or news blogger, you might want to post several times a day at least. During my stint as guest editor for Lifehacker we had a posting quota of 12 posts a day!

Needless to say we didn’t make it everyday. But then again, I’m not that kind of blogger. My posts tend to be more like articles and so I feel that more than one a day is usually overkill. But again, it’s dependent on the blog, the audience and your own writing style.

If you’;re like me, and post more original content, and you’re able to come up with something good to talk about for you blog every day than good on you! Post away. However, I’ve found this to be very challenging for the kind of blogs I write for. In fact my goal is 2-4 posts a week and I usually don’t make that. Then again, I’ve got a few sites and together I average about a post a day.

One could easily argue I’m spreading myself too thin when it comes to posting frequency. But then again, there is the opposite argument.

Infrequent posting and success

I realize this stuff also depends on your definition of success, but I know many bloggers who’ve found success by posting as infrequently as twice a month. No joke. The theory here is that you’re posts are of a higher quality and when you do take the time to say something, you really mean it.

You can have success, again depending on what kind of blog you run, with infrequent posting, but it’s a rare situation.

A recommendation and a caveat

My recommendation for most bloggers trying to build and keep and audience is to try and post at least three times a week. However, this should be a goal and not a requirement. Again, there are exceptions. I run a product/recommendation blog and it might seem that my goal there should be to post several times a day. I’m no where near that. In fact I’ve not posted there in quite awhile. But then again, my goals for that site aren’t what you’d normally expect for that kind of blog.

As well, there are times of year, holidays and summer, where I find my posting naturally slows down. This usually doesn’t seem to have a large effect on my success. In the summer months I tend to have less time and less energy, so I post less. But my audience seems to read less as well. I notice a dip in traffic across all my sites that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with how often I post.

Consistency is more important

I think what’s more important is that you post on a semi-regular basis. One thing I recommend to new bloggers is they start with a weekly wrap-up of their chosen topic. This gives them something to post about every week, and something their readers can come to expect. Over at Asterisk I started a weekly music post. I’ve been doing that for over two years now, with only a few breaks, and it’s something that helped draw people to my site early on.

Do what works for you

There is no absolute formula for how often you should post. I’m of the opinion that quality content is more important and if you can write well and write often, you should. If not, don’t let the stress of getting something out overwhelm you. Experiment, talk to your readers and try to find a frequency that you can work with and that will meet your goals.

If you falter, don’t worry too much, just get back to writing and do your best. It is possible to bring a dead blog back to life and sometimes you’ll need to choose between blogging and something more important.

Related articles:
Audience is Your Destination
Blogging and Perseverance
10 Ways to Become a Miserable Blogger

The Benefits of a Conversational Style

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From: D. Keith Robinson

Some of this post is adapted by one I wrote almost two years ago. Back then I saw the benefits of a conversational style and since then I’ve not only realized many of those benefits, I’ve learned a thing or two about blogging, writing for the Web and developing online community. Oh, and my writing is much better.

(It was kind of scary reading my old stuff–but good to see a definite improvement.)

When it comes to a relaxed, conversational style and tone I find that, for me, that style works very well. In general I think it’s a good style to develop for any Web writing–especially blogs–whether they be personal or business related.

A conversational style fits in perfectly with what the Web is all about. As I’ve said quite often, the Web is about people. If you write like you are speaking to your readers, like you’re having a conversation with them, you’ll be laying the foundation for building a relationship with the people that read what you’ve got to say.

Benefits of Conversational Style

  • Identification with your readers. This is especially true with Web sites that allow comments or encourage feedback. You’ll score points with your readers if they feel like they have your attention and can get to know the writer.
  • Easier editing. With a this kind of style you’ll be able to self-edit more, and if you are doing it right, your readers will edit your writing and be very tolerant of mistakes, but be careful.
  • Less writers block. By adopting this style you can be yourself, talk about things that are important to you and your ideas and words will come a bit easier.
  • More reader participation. Your readers will feel more involved and want to be a part of what you are doing. On a professional site this can translate into more business. On a personal site–more fun.
  • More honest writing. A conversational style allows you to be yourself.
  • Makes for a more entertaining read. I personally much prefer a personal, conversational writer. It comes of much less “dry” and makes it easier for me to “get” what they are trying to say.

There are a few drawbacks you might find with a conversational style. While I don’t see them in any way outweighing the benefits, they’re still something you may want to consider.

Drawbacks of Conversational Style

  • Poor writing quality. This type of style can lead you easily down the road of sloppy writing and factual mistakes. This is something to watch out for, as you may lose credibility with your readers. Still, you can have great quality and still keep the conversational tone, just be careful.
  • Criticism. If you adopt this style and have any measure of success you may be criticized or seen by some as unprofessional, and that is something you’ll need to deal with. Personally I’ve not seen very much of this. Not enough to worry about, that’s for sure.
  • Misrepresentation. It can be very easy to misrepresent yourself with this kind of style. After all many of your readers may have never met you in person and may not get some of the subtleties of your writing style. Sometimes what we think we’re saying doesn’t come through. As you get more comfortable with your style, and learn how your readers react to it, this will get less common.

In my experience, if proper care is taken to make sure it’s done right, a casual, conversational style can be perfect for many blogs, both personal and professional. There are drawbacks, but I feel the positives outweigh the negatives in most cases.

It’s all dependent on your audience and your goals, but as I’m sure you know, writing for the Web is unlike any other type of writing and the old rules, while shouldn’t be disregarded entirely, need to be bent a bit.

Much of our interaction on the Web is two way, and a conversational style helps invite that all important second party into the mix. No one wants to talk to themselves and when it comes to blogging it’s all about making connections and engaging the reader in that all important conversation.

Related articles:
Audience is Your Destination
Writing for a Diverse Readership
A Blogger’s Personal Narrative Checklist
Tips: Writing Clearly