Successful Blog

How Images Can Make Your Blog Post Demand to Be Read

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How to blog series

A Guest Post by
Chris Lamphear

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Successfully Working From a Home-based Office

Be Compelling. It’s one of the most important commandments for any successful blogger. But after you’ve written a post full of value for your reader, your job isn’t done. You have to figure out how to make your post jump off the page and demand to be read, otherwise all the work you’ve done writing the perfect post will be for naught.

I’ve been writing articles and promotional copy for more than twenty years and have learned that an attention-grabbing image is a must if you want to be read. I even started creating my own images and over time figured out the type of images that do the best job. Here’s what I’ve learned …

1. The image should communicate a concept.

Your reader wants to learn about a certain topic; that’s how he or she landed on your article. An accompanying image must clearly illustrate the same concept the reader is interested in. Don’t go with a pretty but generic picture. Ask yourself, “If I just stumbled here and didn’t know what this post was about, would this image tell me?” Make sure you pick a photo or illustration that clearly makes the very same points you’re writing about.

2. The image should be simple.

You have about one second to convince your reader to spend time with your article, and the less complex detail getting in the way of communicating your message, the better. The reader should not have to study the image to get to an “Aha!” moment and uncover your point. Think of the picture as a billboard shooting through your field of vision while you speed down a freeway. The most effective and powerful images are those that make an immediate impact. Be clear and you’ll get attention.

3. Intelligent use of vibrant color is candy for the eye.

Certain colors like red are flags that tell the reader the image is important and pull the eyes in. Stay away from drab, dull colors; instead look for primary and bright colors that jump off the page and say “look at this!” Here’s an example of an image of the word Goal with a target and arrow. Red is a color that tells the eyes “This is important,” and when the reader sees it and absorbs the message, determining this is in fact the subject he or she wants to learn about, you have succeeded.

4. Words in pictures tell a story.

Sometimes the best way to make your subject matter jump out and demand attention is to pick a picture that embeds that very word right inside it. Here’s an example: a two-way street sign with the words You Decide. Sometimes an image that incorporates a word or two can pull double duty, telling a reader what your post is all about more quickly than a wordless image can. In this sense, a word truly is worth a thousand pictures.

5. Relevant images = good SEO.

As a bonus, having images with titles and alt tags that support your subject could help you with SEO efforts. Communication is becoming more visual every day, and Google Image Search is being used by more and more people to quickly find the content they need. Be sure to include the appropriate image information in your code, such as title and alt description, and make sure you title the picture file something that matches your content.

I’ve decided to share my images with others like you to help you communicate your messages. Use one of my pictures in a post and see if it makes a difference! I’ll give you one in exchange for a link and credit. Just take a look at my royalty-free stock photo website and let me know what image you’d like to use. Click on the Contact Us page at www.theideadesk.com and tell me what you’d like to use. Good luck!

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Author’s Bio:
Chris Lamphear is author and owner of the ideadesk blog. where he writes about how to use design to boost the effectiveness of your communication, from winning new customers to growing relationships. Through the blog, I also offer free images from his site for royalty-free stock photos, theideadesk.com

Write For A Blog Reader And Not A Book Reader

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By Terez Howard

How to blog series
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When you sit down to read a book, you read from left to right, paragraph to paragraph, page one to page two. That’s how I read a book, anyways.

When you read a blog, how do read it? I scroll like I’m looking for something, even if I don’t know what I’m looking for or what I’m going to find. I go up and down like a yo-yo, deciding whether or not a post is worth my time to read it. I check out subheadings, bullet points, bold characters, italics, a discernable font, and I love short paragraphs.

Time for a new paragraph. That last one was getting too long for my eyes. Why should you care how people read blogs?

First impressions – the worst impressions?

Because if readers don’t like the way your blog looks, even if you’re a first-rate writer, they are not going to read what you write. I do it all the time. I discover a post with an interesting headline and excitedly click on that link. When I see huge clumps of text and yellow-colored, size 8 font on a black background, I’m done.

It doesn’t matter what that blogger wrote. I’ve made a judgment call. Slap my wrist and tell me that I’m wrong. I don’t care. I’ve decided that if that writer doesn’t know the basics about blogging, then he/she couldn’t possibly have anything worthwhile to say.

It’s not the nicest way to be. I wasn’t always like this, tough. I’ve stumbled upon poorly constructed blogs that I have attempted to decipher. A deeper dig reveals typos galore, poor English and terrible content again and again. So why waste my time trying to translate?

You never get a second chance to make a first impression

Make a good first impression on your readers. First and foremost, you need original, well-written content. That is the foundation of a great blog.

Second, and this may seem ridiculous to say, but please make sure that people can read the size and style of your font. If you try to be too fancy, say with a script-type font, people will click away. If your words are too small for the average pair of eyes, people will click away. If the font is too big and overbearing, people will click away.

Either while you write or after you write and edit, you should try to include:

  • Subheadings. These break up text and summarize what readers can expect as well as build anticipation.
  • Bullet points/numbered lists. These are my favorites to read and write. They, too, break up text so well. I notice that if I read nothing from a blog post, I will read the list.
  • Bold, italics, underline, etc. Pepper your post with these font features when you want to stress something. But do not inundate a post with them. No need for the entire post to be bold.
  • Short paragraphs. Don’t write an entire blog post with just one paragraph. Staring at a computer screen with one long block of text is rough on the eyes. You can’t see anything. Experienced bloggers recommend three to four sentences per paragraph.

Use common sense

When you write for blog readers, don’t be a stickler to any rules. You’re thinking, And what’s the reason for this post if I can do whatever I want?

Well, of course you can do whatever you want. I’m saying that you don’t have to count the number of sentences per paragraph or include a bulleted list in every single post. Be natural. Think about your audience. Remember, write how you read.

A computer screen looks much differently than a book. Make it easy for people to read your blog.

How do you write for blog readers?

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Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas . You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

Thanks, Terez!

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

4 Headline Types that Grab Attention Immediately

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By Terez Howard

How to blog series
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One Blogging Secret That Everyone’s Telling You

I have something to tell you. You’ve heard it before. You know it’s beneficial to every blog. The great bloggers write about this regularly and practice what they preach.

Attention-grabbing headlines. There, I said it. Secret’s out. or it’s been out for years.

4 Headline Types that Grab Attention Immediately

When I worked for the newspaper, my editor told us that our headlines had to tell our readers something. Sounds simple enough, right? It is pretty straightforward.

I wrote the following story back in 2005: “Katrina victims in Chester tell their story of survival.” I could have written “Hurricane story.” My now five-year-old headline told readers what to expect from my story and why they would want to read it. My second, obviously bland headline example doesn’t tell you anything. It sounds like a fictional piece on a hurricane’s journey through an area.

Your headline needs a voice. While it doesn’t have to be a summary of your entire blog post, it should give your readers a taste of what to expect.

What kinds of headlines should you write? Here are four:

Raise a question

You can specifically ask a question, but your headline does not have to be a question. Rather, readers will ask themselves a question and want to know the answer.

For instance, my headline for today: “One Blogging Secret That Everyone’s Telling You.” What secret? Why’s it a secret if everyone’s telling me? Who’s telling me? These are the questions my headline raises, and I provide the answers in my blog.

So when you write a headline that raises a question, be sure to provide a satisfactory, thorough answer to your audience.

Include a list

“101 Blogging Topics That Will Keep Readers Coming Back In Hundreds”

Once again, readers know what to expect, that when they click on your post, they will see a numbered list, from 1 to 101. Why do lists make wonderful headlines? Bloggers will tell you how the search engines love numbers and how numbers are memorable to readers. These points are true, but not my focus.

From a blogger’s standpoint, lists are easy to write. As a writer, a list organizes my thoughts for me from 1 to whatever. From a reader’s standpoint, lists are easy to read. You expect a comprehensive, systematic piece of information.

Make a how to

People love a good how to. I love how-to’s. I followed a how to count calories and lose weight story and shed 10 pounds.

Tell your readers exactly what they will be able to do if they follow your how to. A how to headline does not have to be so basic, though. It could be a “How to not…” or a how to do something metaphorically, like “How to pop eyes with your headlines.”

Be compelling – Make it urgent

What makes you want to click on a blog post? It piques your interest. With the three aforementioned types of headlines, each and every one should be compelling. It kills me that bloggers spend their time writing a well-researched, thoroughly engaging post and don’t give any time to the headline. It’s an afterthought.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write your headline last. That’s a fine idea and preferable to many bloggers. I tend to write my headline first and tweak it as I write make it fit the entire post. Do what works for you, just so you give time to your headline.

Your headline is your appetizer. It prepares your audience’s appetite to the main course. Does your headline induce hunger? Hey, sounds like a headline!

What do you do to write an attention-grabbing headline?

 

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Author’s Bio:
Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas. You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

 

Thanks, Terez!
–ME “Liz” Strauss

7 Real Ways a Blog Raises Influence and Increases Expertise

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How to blog series

140 Ch Can’t Say It All Intelligently from the Heart

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Every day I greet the Internet with my coffee and a clear purpose and I find lots of opportunity — information, ideas, and input — offering itself. Never a question about finding that.

If I’m not focused my head is filled with thoughts and energy sparking and flaring in directions that look something like this …

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Unfortunately without focus so much can stay dispersed in that beautiful, but disintegrating way. I can end up responding to and considering bits of data like swatting gnats. Not much progress is made in a world of randomness.

Twitter, in particular, offers ideas I can encounter and pass along, but if I do that, most of what I think vanishes into past thoughts considered and soon forgot as unconnected bits.

If we want folks to know us we also need longer conversations in stronger venues. Telephones help. Personal conversations at meetings are great. If only we could stretch and scale our resources to share that way. So we write.

It’s why I keep my blog. In fact, that fact makes me passionate about why I write every day. But it’s not just the connections that keep me writing.

7 Real Ways a Blog Raises Influence and Increases Expertise

Writing is one way to share our thoughts with more folks more efficiently. Publishing makes the connection more natural and accessible. The words stay present and available through time for anyone who wants to access them. We get visibility and benefit others when we write, but we benefit ourselves as well. By recording our thoughts we make them more in so many ways.

  1. Writing gets us to clarify our thoughts. We have to find words to communicate ideas. We think the ideas through for ourselves. In that process we make them more concrete.
  2. Writing teaches how to see what we think. We have to find words to articulate what’s on our mind. We think the ideas through for ourselves. In that process we make our ideas more concrete, more transportable, and more memorable.
  3. Writing teaches us how words communicate meaning. Every time we write we choose the words we need to express a thought or idea. The more we practice the more we learn how to make choices that help people connect to what we mean.
  4. Writing helps us develop a voice that is natural and consistent, strong and confident. Even when we write for ourselves, we go back to read, listening to what we wrote. We question. We consider. We critique our choices.
  5. Writing teaches to manage our internal editor — to value our own thoughts and to be quiet until feedback is useful. Too often when we just think ideas we can shut them down before we’ve fully considered their possibilities. Trying to put them into words keeps us going to a longer process.
  6. Writing is an opportunity to share our expertise. Everything we write has an audience. Every time someone shares something that we write they add value to our ideas — when they change them and when they don’t.
  7. Writing makes us more thoughtful readers and responders. We bring the insights and appreciation of a writer to what we read. It gives us a venue to ask questions and solve problems with help from the world.

As efficient as Twitter is for conversation, it’s not enough for working out ideas. 140 characters can’t express a full-on deep thought. A soundbyte might get attention, but it doesn’t show depth of knowledge.

Writing is clear thinking made visible. — Bill Wheeler

 

I heard that quote a long time ago and I hold it close every day on the Internet. It keep as a reminder that writing raises my game.

We meet more people in print than we can ever possibly meet face to face. Many people will know our written voice as well as they know our names. Writing is a huge opportunity in a noisy world to teach what we know and to learn from the best of the people we meet.

What sort of thinking have you shared today?

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

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SOBCon? Develop strategies and tactics with the best of the Social Web for an entire weekend.

A 12-Step Strategy to Fit Your Blog into the Social Web

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How Does a Blog Fit into All of This?

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Once upon a blogosphere, people on the web connected and talked through text, audio, and video, linking from blog to blog. That linking made a community of people who were related by content and conversations on those same blogs.

Then about 4 years ago, the blogosphere got interested in social media tools. Microblogs and social networks were new ways to reach out, connect, and talk. The blogosphere was evolving …

  1. As the blogosphere grew up, some members stood out. They were fluent, proficient, had abilities as practitioners and teachers. Their subscriber lists grew faster. Their voices were heard first and sounded louder. People started looking up to them. Smaller groups formed around what they said.
  2. As the blogosphere grew out, some members built new tools, new sites, and new communities. The businesses offered new things to do, new places to meet, to ways to interact. People looked out for others who even more like themselves. We had new choices. The larger community split off into more like-minded groups.

The effect has been that the community has diversified into smaller groups and spread out. The conversation is bigger, but it’s no longer concentrated on our blogs. The new sites and communities, the speed, mobility, and breadth of the tools attracted even more people to the check out this social web community.

Some of these folks found that they could be a part without having a blog.

Millions of people are spending their time on the social sites. They will out their many profiles with a to Facebook or LinkedIn. The commitment is lower and requires less editing.

How does a blog fit into all of this?
Having a blog was a having a home in that community — a place people could visit, get to know you, engage with you and your ideas.

It still does.

In fact, a blog is even more foundational. Have you noticed how noisy the Internet is? When people visit our blogs they can come in from the huge noise of the larger conversation stream. A blog can offer a respite. They get room to breathe and a chance to share a larger thought. But it’s time to step back, think strategically, and adapt to how people act now. Habits have changed.

According to PostRank study from 2007 to 2009 which followed 1000 of the most engaging feeds, they found:

  • 30% more people are engaging in the social web
  • less than 50% of that engagement is happening on blogs … it’s moved to social sites.
  • trackbacks linking blogs have dropped from 19% to 3%
  • Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook and other social sites have gone up from less than 1% to over 29%
  • Blog posts have a longer life-span. In 2007, 98% of the engagement occurred in the first HOUR. In 2009, only 36% of the engagement takes place in the first DAY.

Unless you’ve just started blogging, you’ve probably noticed some of that — fewer visitors than last year, how the conversation has moved away from the comment box to the social sites. But you might have missed how quickly more people are coming or that our post are lasting longer and reaching farther.

That calls for a serious new strategy as the Blogosphere evolves into the Social Web.

A 12-Step Strategy to Fit Your Blog into the Social Web

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Your blog numbers might be down, but the engagement in what you do and think could be growing exponentially. The bloggers and blogs that do well offer outstanding and meaningful content that is in tune with where folks engage naturally and easy to read and share with their friends.

Here are 12 Steps to consider to refit your blog to the Social Web.

  1. Mark your place … Find the tools you need to measure where your blog is today. Some include: Google Analytics, Woopra, Quantcast.com, Alexa.com, Technorati.com PostRankAnalytics,and Compete.com Identify and track information so that you have a historical marker.
  2. Do Reconnaissance … Use the tools and study conditions to find where your main audience spends their time. Look beyond Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Find the niches. Learn their habits. Starter tools include: Google Alerts, Search.twitter.com, addictomatic.com, and topsy.com Internet’s Largest Twitter Tools Resource List.
  3. Watch, Listen, and Make Alliances … Be constantly aware of what other people are doing. Ask for help. Turn great conversations into content. Invite savvy bloggers to write guest posts on topics they know more about.
  4. Clarify Your Identity / Message … Who are you and what do you talk about? In this fast-paced trust economy, people want to instantly who you are. Design and content need to say who you are. Does your design look like everyone else’s? Content is the main context of your web identity. It establishes your authority and your expertise. Google loves new content to index. People love new ideas.
  5. Define a Consistent Workable Plan … Identify 4-8 key niche topics you’ll write about and 4-8 types of blog posts you favor. You might make a blank monthly grid with the types across the top and the topics down the side. Even a loose plan — one that allows you to respond to new ideas and unexpected events in your area of expertise — will make the blogging work more predictable to you and more accessible to your readers.
  6. Use Best Practices … Save time by brainstorming several ideas first and later writing several drafts at one time. Then, you’ll have “almost ready” blog posts captured when you need them. Link out, cite, and promote others at least 6 times more than you promote your own work. Understand when sharing your work is passing on value and when it’s being a pain.
  7. Test Constantly … When and where will you publish? How often? Which days? Which time of day works for your audience? Should it be more or less than one a day?
  8. Mind the Details … Write outstanding headlines over outstanding content. Take more time than ever before making sure your ideas are sound and attractive. Target them to your niche. Loyal fans will see, read, and share.
  9. Network and Connect … Plan time at social sites and commenting on other blogs. Divide that time between people who do what you do and your ideal customers. Start conversations online and off. Be interested and interesting. Look for reasons to offer a hand.
  10. Innovate New Forms … Try a “Twitter trackback.” When you reply to a reader’s comment, take the link back to him or her. A quick tweet saying, @ReaderX I answered your great comment [link] promotes the reader as well as your reply.
  11. Feed the Content Community … Write content and answer questions wherever your readers are. Engage people where they are. Don’t hide all of your ideas and expertise on your blog. As Google starts indexing more social sites, this can only work better and better.
  12. Invite People Home … Constantly add resources and repackage content to readers to explore your archives again. When it’s appropriate, invite people back to see other things you’ve written or to make sure they don’t miss something they’ve said they need.

Having a blog is even more important now that the blogosphere is evolving into the Social Web. Blogs still offer the place where we can “go deep,” expressing thoughts with clarity and conviction, where we can talk and engage under our own terms of service. A power strategy can leverage your blog to grow your web presence, your business, and your brand.

What other strategies are you using to fit your blog into the Social Web?

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

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Setting Goals for Your Business Website

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goal-postsThis is the question you should be asking yourself every day:

How effective is your website at achieving the goals you have for your business?

If you do not know the answer, it may be because you have not set your goals properly. Do you know what the purpose of your site is? What are the benefits for you and your business?

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Lets take a look at these questions, and potential answers.

  • Your website should position you as an expert in your field. Perception and reputation are everything to your potential customers and clients. Having a website that effectively conveys that expertise to your visitors improves your visiblity in the marketspace, your credibility as a business-person, and begins to build trust in your products/services.
  • Your website is a starting-point for the identity of your brand. It is a starting point because it is impossible to control all aspects of your brand identity anymore. Your customers have blogs, forums, and Twitter now – where they can and will discuss your product’s price and quality, your customer service interactions, even your advertising strategies.
  • Your website expands your marketspace beyond yesterday’s geographical boundaries. Depending on the products and services that you offer (shipping may be a consideration) you can now offer the services of your business to a global audience, not just the people within a few minutes’ drive.
  • Your website is a tool for expanding your list of potential clients. Due to the expanded nature of the marketspace and the rapidly growing number of people who do their research online before making a purchase. Having an e-mail capture/site registration application on your site can help you to build a list of self-selected potential customers.
  • Your website is a venue for providing value to your market before you ever make a sale. E-books, white papers, product reviews, service explanations – all of these marketing tools can be made available throught your site. For free, or for the price of an e-mail registration. When your visitors see your site (and your business) as value-added then doing business with you is an opportunity, not a risk.

Does your website do these things? If not, do you need help putting them in place? Let us know how we can help.