Bloggingtricks

Even if you don't post to your blog, it's a good idea to set aside some time each day to work on your blog. You may want to spend time researching ideas for new posts. You may want to read competing blogs to see what kind of things are working for your competition. Or you may just want to write. I like to write several weeks ahead. That way, if I am busy, have a slow day or just feel uninspired, I can use a previously written blog post and save my time for recharging or just reading.

The main point of this post is to remind you that you should be thinking about your blog regularly. Pay attention to it and you'll see the results in improved traffic and feedback.

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Eventually, you may hear a term called "blogfade." This happens when someone stops updating their blog.

The reasons for blogfade are many. Sometimes people just get tired. Or they move, or they get sick or they face other personal problems.

But many times, blogfade comes from the simplest of problems: Lack of new ideas. Once you've written 100 blog posts you may find yourself scratching your head over what to write about next.

Well relax. You probably have lots of content sources and ideas already that you could tap into.

Here are some ideas to jumpstart your fading blog:

1) Have you written a book? Take very small bite-sized chunks of it, update it, and turn it into a series of blog posts. Same goes for old magazine and newsletter articles you've written.
2) Create a glossary.
3) Create a FAQ.
4) Interview a prominent person in your field, Q&A style.
5) Create a top ten list in your field of expertise.

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Can you use too many links on your blog? Yes. Some search engines can't handle a single page featuring more than 100 links. Sometimes it's a technology problem and others, it's a spam fighting method since some spammers use pages of links to create sites that might attract AdSense dollars.

So count the links on your page. If you have more than 100, strip some out for better search engine placement.

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I spoke with my Internet service provider last week and had an epiphany...blogs may replace "web sites" as we know them.

In fact, I think that most of the "web sites" I used to traffic would do better as blogs. Notice I said used to traffic? I no longer visit many of the web sites I did 24 months ago. Why? Because of RSS and blogs. I find myself drawn to syndicated content. I visit very few places online that aren't actually blogs.

Blogs bring out the best in most people. Blogs force you to write shorter, more concise posts. Blogs are usually more frequently updated than "web sites" and blogs are more personal. Blogs allow for more interaction with the reader and offer the benefit of RSS which means, they come to you, not the other way around.

I discussed this wit a few clients who don't have blogs yet. I asked them why they didn't just use a blog to spread their message across the Internet rather than a traditional web site. After listening to their reasons, I was able to ascertain that in almost every case, a blog would do the trick.

So why switch to a blog? They're usually easier, cheaper and faster to set up and maintain for one thing. And if you have a good designer, or know CSS and HTML, you can make a blog look quite like a traditional web site.

Look at my blog called PodcastingTricks.com. Notice it has tabbed navigation across the top of the screen? Just like many web sites. To the uninitiated, it looks like a regular web site.

So back to my question: Will blogs replace web sites? I think the answer is yes. Over time, blogs will outnumber web sites by a significant margin. So the next question is, will you be ready?

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If you're a careful reader of this Blog, you've seen me post about Blogger and WordPress.

While I usually suggest that brand new bloggers start with the free Google-owned blogging platform called Blogger, I also use and very much like WordPress. But there is some confusion about WordPress and I will try to clear it up with this post.

There are actually two WordPress sites. WordPress.com is a free blogging platform. Just as you can with Blogger, you can sign up for a free blog and WordPress.com will host it and provide you with all the basic front-end and back-end blog management tools you need to get started. But there is another WordPress site and that is called WordPress.org. This second site is the home to the free open source software project. This is where your Internet Service Provider or web hosting company can go to download the WordPress server suite. This provides more access to the power features of the WordPress platform that are not generally available on the free hosted site, WordPress.com.

So this is the key. If you want a free blog and you want to let someone else do all the work of hosting it and administering it, go to WordPress.com. If you own your own web server or you want to contract with a company to operate a server on your behalf and you want all the full power and functionality that WordPress has to offer, go to WordPress.org and download the WordPress Open Source Project.

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If you're a Blogger user and you'd like to understand what the Blogger template is all about, this guide may help you. It's a list of common Blogger tags and their meanings. You should know that not all Blogger templates will have all these tags and there are lots more out there. These are just some of the standard tags, and if you know what they mean, you may be able to determine how to customize them.

<$BlogTitle$>
The Blog's title

<$BlogArchiveFileName$>
The name of the Blogger archive index filename

<$BlogDateHeaderDate$>
Daily date header

<$BlogItemNumber$>
Item number for an individual post

<$BlogItemDateTime$>
Date/timestamp of a post

<$BlogItemBody$>
The body of an individual post

<$BlogItemAuthor$>
Blog author

<$BlogItemAuthorEmail$>
Blog author’s email address

<$BlogItemArchiveFileName$>
Archive name for an individual post

<$BlogItemAuthorNickname$>
Nickname of blog author, if any

<$BlogItemAuthorURL$>
URL for blog author

<$BlogItemSubject$>
Subject (title) of the posting

<$BlogURL$>
Your blog's uniform resource locator (URL)

<$BlogArchiveLink$>
In archive template, link for archive page

<$BlogArchiveName$>
In archive template, link for archive name

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I promised that I would talk more about the new version of Blogger that's coming up. It's now in Beta and Google is allowing only limited access to the new site. If it shows up in your existing Blogger Dashboard then you can try it out. Otherwise you have to sign up for a whole new account at BloggerBeta.

That's what I did and I put the new features through their paces. It looks like Blogger has caught up to WordPress. Since I use both, I am familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms.

And almost all my previous complaints about Blogger have been addressed. As for how this will fully play out, it's hard to say because this is after all, a Beta release. Also, Google (Blogger's owner) isn't allowing people to publish the new sites on any outside server yet. They plan to allow this at some future date, but it appears that some of the new features won't be available unless you host your blog on the Blogger.Blogspot server. That's what I am waiting to hear more about.

Here are some of the new features:

You can now run javascript and even create categories (Blogger calls them labels but you can rename them to categories).

The WordPress plug in called Widgets must have inspired the new template features because you can now add and arrange your “Page Elements” using a similar drag and drop interface. It's true WYSIWYG template editing and it's been long overdue in Blogger.

The spell check has been greatly improved and now uses the same engine as Google's GMail. There's also support for RSS 2.0 feeds in addition to Atom 1.0 feeds.

You can also now set up private blogs. This may be important for corporate intranets or blog-based development teams.

Overall, I'm very excited about the new platform and can't wait to see how it migrates to an external server. Blogger has always been a great solution for blogging newbies. These changes are more likely to improve that standing and at the same time, improve performance for power users. As soon as I know more, you'll know more so stay tuned here for more details as they become available.

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If you're looking for a job as a blogger, your prospects just got better. Darren Rowse has just launched the Pro Blogger Job Board. The service is free to bloggers looking for a job and costs companies just $50 to post a job ad that runs for 30 days.

Darren said, "Every week I am asked by companies, networks and individual bloggers where they can find good bloggers. I've often tried to set people up but these boards are about providing a space for bloggers for hire and those looking for them to meet - sort of like a blogging dating agency."

Well this is it. There are already 10 jobs posted on the board.

UPDATE: I just found another blog that helps bloggers find paying gigs. It's called Performancing.com.

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When you write a blog post, you should save and preview it before publishing it. That way, any errors in spelling or formatting can be detected before your audience sees the post.

It's a good idea to test your post in several browsers. I typically test using Apple Safari, Camino, Flock and Firefox. If you're primarily a PC person or you think you're writing for a primarily PC audience, you'll want to add Internet Explorer to that list.

Not every browser displays content in the same way and occasionally, your post won't look right in one or two of the browsers you test. You then have the task of figuring out what formatting changes you need to make to get the best general representation you can out of all the browsers.

Speaking of browsers, sometimes your browser may be stuck on an old version of the post, even after you correct it. This is usually caused by the browser's cache. And the fix is simple. Clear your browser's cache.

I use Apple's Safari as my primary browser. To clear the cache in Safari, I just close all open browser windows, go to the menu that says Safari select "empty cache" and then close and re-open my browser. Then the problem goes away. Consult your browser's help menu to learn how to clear its cache.

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Are you checking your referral logs? If not, you're missing a great opportunity to network and to figure out who likes your blog and why.

Even if you only have a free blogging service like Blogger or Wordpress serving your blog, you can find out who's linking to you.

Your referrer logs will show where people came from who visited your site. Depending on your hosting company's statistics package, you should also be able to see what browser your readers use, what country they're from and what pages on your blog they clicked on.

These logs answer the all important question, "Who's sending me traffic?"

If your host doesn't provide this service, ask about it. Some of the most popular stats packages are AWStats, WebTrends and Webalizer. You may also use Google Analytics, siteMeter or StatCounter.

Whichever program you select, make sure you regularly check to see where your traffic comes from and what posts generate the most traffic. This will help you to figure out who your audience is and what they want from you.

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I am working with a client who has a blog. The blog is aimed at people working in her company. The blog contains information, that if released to the public, would require lawyers to okay it since there may be regulatory compliance issues.

So to make a long story short, she doesn't want search engines to index her company blog. There are two solutions.

1) Don't submit your blog to search engines if you don't want them to index it. I know this sounds obvious but many people think you HAVE to take this step and you don't.

2) You can include code on your blog template that tells search engines to go elsewhere.

Here's how it looks. (Where you see a left bracket [ replace that symbol with a < and where you see a right bracket ] replace that with a >.)

Put this meta tag in your blog's template, anywhere between the [head] and [/head] tags

[meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"]

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I read 60 blogs each day. I look at hundreds of other blogs each day. Once in a while I find a blog that does a great job of serving its readers. Ron Ares re:PDX blog is one such blog.

While most realtors write blogs about the business from an inside perspective, Ron writes his blog from the readers' perspective. Ron realized that potential home buyers want to know how a real estate agent can help them, not how hard their job is.

Ron provides detailed and valuable reports on his blog that you might expect to pay for somewhere else. He's generous with the information he has and that's the secret to writing a good blog.

This is a near textbook case of how to build a blog if you happen to be in the real estate business.

The design is clean and professional with good use of photography. The posts are well formatted and content rich. Ron provides his contact information and his blog is nicely broken down into categories.

Ron makes appropriate use of keywords. How do I know? Search Portland Condo Market or something similar in Google and you'll see Ron's site show up early and often.

He also lists plenty of feeds and makes it easy to subscribe. My only potential suggestion would be that he move the RSS chicklets up higher on the page. That's the first thing many blog readers look for and placing it on the bottom might cause some subscribers to bail out early.

Still, based on content alone, I'd rate this site in the high 9 out of 10 range. Check it out and see what kind of ideas Ron's blog can inspire.

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Over the last week, I've received more than a dozen spam e-mails from a person calling himself John Palsson from a company called Top Blog Area. He says he's starting some sort of blog search engine. Just a note to my fellow bloggers out there, when you respond to spam like this, you encourage it. If this guy is legitimate, he needs to understand that sending a dozen unsolicited commercial e-mails is NOT the way to make friends and influence people.

If you want to promote your blog using e-mail, don't send spam. You should never send e-mail to someone without their express permission. Anything else is not only a bad business practice, it might get your site black listed.

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One great way to build traffic for your blog is to get noticed by the media. Traditional news releases can be helpful. But the media is flooded with news releases every day, so it's hard to stand out that way.

A better way to get noticed by the media is to become a source.

There are generally four ways to accomplish this:

1) Send your local media an "Available For Interview" kit. This is like a press kit, only instead of pushing news, it shows off your credentials, accomplishments and knowledge. The folks in the trenches at the mainstream media companies are often looking for sources to quote. If you are truly an authority on the subject you blog about, they'll be interested in talking with you.

2) Offer the news media a tip. I once received a tip about a major software product's impending launch. I could have blogged about it. But instead, I held the story and shared with a journalist who covers the same space and let her have the scoop. I did this because I think she's good at her job and has a larger audience than I do so, it was best for everyone if she broke the story. But the side benefit is that she now uses me as a source and regularly quotes me.

3) Be a great interview. This means actually listening to journalists' questions and framing answers that are adapted to their questions, not your agenda. Short, direct answers that actually provide valuable, to the point information will make you a media favorite. And be quotable. Don't be afraid to say something that shows off the real you. For instance, I won an award from my statewide technology association a few years back. When I was interviewed by the reporter, he asked me how I'd compare Washington state's technology climate with southern California's business climate. My answer was, that Washington state was to the technology business, what Pam Anderson was to a bikini. Yes it was bold, and yes it ran in newspapers all over the state and yes it raised my blog traffic ten fold that month.

4) Join a speakers' bureau. This is an old page from Barber & Associates touting me as a speaker. The media will often peruse speakers' bureaus looking for sources. Not only can these bureaus get you speaking engagements that will raise your profile and that of your blog, but being listed by one can get you news coverage.

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Since I publish a blog about blogging, I get lots of spam. Today I received spam from a link broker.

A link broker is a person who offers to link to your blog for a fee. The broker often arranges lots of links from different sites. The problem is, these links are usually generated by bots (robot pages generated by content automation) and Google is getting wise to this trick. They are seeking out and delisting web sites that engage in this activity.

While it may sound attractive to bring in outside links, there are only two really simple ways to do that:

1) Write great stuff that people will want to link to.
2) Buy legitimate advertising from places like Google's AdSense and let your potential audience know why visiting your blog will benefit them.

Link brokers may get you more trouble than links.

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You may hear the word TAG and the word KEYWORD used interchangeably. While they are similar, there are some important differences.

The primary difference is that a keyword is something used by professionals to identify the content on their site. As the blogger, you have control over the keywords you use. Tags are generally something generated by users to help locate content. Tags can be anything. And as the blogger, you can suggest tags, but ultimately, the tags used to describe your content will be decided on by the users.

Tags are more flexible than keywords. They can be used to create categories, for example. Keywords are something you might use to trigger activity by a search engine.

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This week, Google launched a new version of Blogger in BETA.

The new version allows you to:

* Categorize your posts with labels
* Control who can read your blog
* Change the appearance and content of your blog with your mouse instead of HTML

Google is limiting the number of people who can switch over. (You'll see a link on your Blogger dashboard when you are able to move.) Eventually, of course, everyone will be able to transition their blogs to the new version. For now, I am not able to test these features since the BETA hasn't been offered on my account. When it is available to me, I will report on it here.

NOTE: You may be able to access the new BETA version by signing up for a new Blogger account.

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Microsoft has released a BETA version of Windows Live Writer.

WLW is a desktop application for bloggers that allows WYSIWYG authoring. WLW offers photo publishing and map publishing too.

WLW works with Windows Live Spaces or most current blogging services.

Windows users can download the free Beta software here.

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If you hold events, speak in public, open a store or do anything that requires you to give directions, you may want to add a map to your blog.

How about one of those cool maps with a pin cushion that links to your location? Sound hard? It isn't. You can build one for free.

The map above was created free of charge at a nifty little website called ShowMeWhere.net.

You simply point to the place on the map you want to describe, add text and links and then copy the code to fit into your blog.

It couldn't be much easier than this.

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I've talked about tags before in my series on increasing blog traffic.

Have you seen a tag cloud? My tag cloud appears on the bottom, right side navigation bar of this blog. Tag clouds help your readers see which tags (similar to key words or phrases) you use most often in your blog. Readers can then click on these tags to see related posts. It's sort of like an archive of search terms.

While tag clouds are primarily popular with the more technically minded (My politically correct way of saying geeks), they are still something everyone should at least know about. They are particularly helpful to folks using Blogger.com for their blogging platform. Since Blogger doesn't support categories, tags can help serve the same function for those who understand how they're used.

Assuming you want to use a tag cloud on your blog, the next challenge is creating one. Fortunately, a company called ZoomClouds.com makes that easy. Just complete three easy steps and they'll give you the code you need to publish your own tag cloud. On Blogger, you will need to be able to edit your template in order to make the tag cloud work. Just scroll down and look for the comments in the template that indicate where the sidebar content is. Then paste in the free JavaScript supplied by ZoomClouds.com and you're done.

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Why should anyone visit your blog? One answer to that question is YOU. You're the reason. People are hard up for reality in their lives. They want to know the real you. They want to see what real people say and do. They want to know what real people think. They aren't going to find it on TV or the radio or at the magazine rack. Heck, there's even a trend with magazines to air brush the pretty girls on the covers to the point that they look like cartoon characters.

People don't trust marketing. They barely trust what they see on the evening news. They don't trust their politicians.

So where do they look?

Some have turned to "reality TV." American Idol and Survivor are two of the top-rated shows on television because they supposedly deal in "reality."

So if you want to attract readers, give them the real you. Don't spend all your time quoting someone else. Don't just vomit back at the audience everything you learned in school. Instead, think about how your subject impacts you personally. Think about how your subject impacts your audience personally.

Then write. Write from the heart. Tell the audience what YOU think. Don't tell them what you think they want to hear.

Blogs are successful because in part, they are one of the last places that real people can connect and share their feelings, their thoughts and their beliefs.

Keep that in mind as you write and hopefully, you'll feel empowered to share more of yourself with your readers. In turn, they'll share more of themselves with you.

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At the end of every post on this blog, you'll note a small envelope graphic. This is a hot link that allows you to e-mail this post to a friend. And that is what we call viral marketing. Instead of me finding your friend and asking if it's okay to send them something, you do it for me.

And if you use Blogger, as your blogging platform, this option is available to you on the Settings/Basic tab. At the bottom you have a YES/NO pulldown menu. Select yes and the words "Email Post links let your visitors easily email posts from your blog to their friends" are enabled. That's all there is to it. You now have offered your readers a chance to promote your blog.

It's up to you to create content that's good enough to make them want to do it.

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Does your blog have a calendar and if so why? What benefit does it provide your readers? Most bloggers I've spoken with admit that they feature a calendar on their blog because everyone else does it.

Precisely!

If everyone else does it, why should you? It's not like there aren't 1,234,837 ways to figure out what day it is.

Blog calendars were originally created so that bloggers could alert readers to the dates that featured posts. If you post every day, this is meaningless. And even if you don't, what's the point? Do you really think that people come to your blog searching for information that you shared last Tuesday? People search for topics not dates.

Since calendars take up a great deal of room on your sidebar, and since that's valuable real estate you can use for sponsors, ads or promos, my advice is to get rid of the calendar unless you can articulate with specificity, a good reason to keep it.

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Does it matter what your blog looks like? The answer is yes. A reseach project completed in 2003 shows that there are certain patterns to how people read information on the web.

The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media, and Eyetools Inc. took 46 Internet users and looked through their eyes -- utilizing sophisticated and non-intrusive "eyetracking" equipment -- as they each spent an hour reading news websites and multimedia news content.

The graph above shows how the users scanned the pages.

You can read the full details of the study at the Poynter Institute site.

My conclusion from reading this study is:

1) Design matters
2) Top left page position is premium
3) Headlines matter
4) Use lots of headlines and subheads because these get noticed first
5) Try to have at least five headlines on each page

Food for thought.

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I admit it. This is an area where I am weak. You see blogging is both beautiful and ugly all at the same time. The beauty comes from being able to quickly jot down your thoughts and then publish them for millions to read with the press of a button. But that's also the curse. The ugly side is that it's almost TOO easy to publish. And one thing that I sometimes forget to do is spell check first. And there's no excuse for it. There's even a free web service called SpellCheck.net that will do it for you. Some of the popular blogging platforms like Blogger also have built-in spell checkers. Yet I read countless misspelled posts, some of them right here on this blog.

So today's trick is as much advice to my readers as it is reminder to me. Check the spelling and THEN hit the "publish post" button.

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There's tremendous power in having a blog. It's the kind of power that used to be reserved for wealthy media moguls. Now, anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can become a publisher.

So it's only natural that when you feel wronged or suffer injury, that you might want to turn to your blog to lash out. Think carefully before you do. What you write on your blog can be read by anyone. It will live forever in search engines, even if you close down the blog. If you slander someone, you can be liable. If you threaten someone, you can be liable. And more importantly, your words might come back to haunt you.

I have an associate who decided to apply for a job at a large software company. He'd attacked that company on his personal blog some years before because they provided him with sub-standard technical support.

He'd forgotten all about it.

But when he went for his interview, the first question the human resources person asked him was, "Tell me about your blog."

I think you can guess the rest of the story.

So think before you type.

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If you want to build awareness for your blog, write a review. Reviews can rocket you to the top of Google almost as fast as writing about sex.

Here's an example of how and why this works. I am on the blogging team at O'Reilly Digital Media. I wrote a review of the Sony PCM-D1 handheld recorder for the O'Reilly Blog.

That review was posted on a Saturday. By Tuesday, anyone searching Google for PCM-D1 or Sony PCM-D1 saw my review on the front page. Prior to writing that review, the first page of Google was devoted to ads for the PCM-D1 from various music stores. The power of blogging is that it's a search-engine friendly medium. And the search engine picked up my post, indexed it and ranked it sixth from the top within 72 hours.

Reviews also get you other benefits. In addition to getting good Google juice, they tend to get attention from the subject of the review. Sony contacted me and asked for permission to reprint the review on their website. I said sure, as long as you link back to me. They said no problem. It might take them a while to actually build the link but when they do, the value of that link from a large company like Sony will be fantastic both in terms of actual traffic as well as linkbait for the search engines.

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There are lots of "blogging experts" out there. You know, the people who will tell you that you HAVE to accept comments, that you HAVE to use strikethrough characters if you make a change to your blog, etc.

The advice of the pundits may be well-intentioned but it's not necessarily accurate. While there are some universal truths about blogging, including the blogger's need to provide good content on a regular basis without ripping someone else off in the process, almost everything else is up for grabs.

If you want to blog, blog your own way. Taking advice from the new book by D.L. Byron's new book, Publish & Prosper, New Riders Press, here's how you should blog:

1) Write what works
2) Start easy
3) Start small
4) Keep at it on a regular basis
5) Don't lie, cheat or steal in the process
6) Blog about what you love
7) Be interesting

That's it. You have no other obligations. Don't let the pundits get you down. Do what works for you and serve your audience. They matter. The pundits don't.

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I've noticed something that I want to share with you. When you put links into your blog posts that refer to other blogs, it can help generate traffic. Here's my story...

Recently, I've started linking out to other blogs more often. As part of my editing process, I click each link before I take my post live to make certain that I have the right link and that it isn't broken.

Well guess what...when I click those links, my site shows up in the stats and referrer logs of the sites I've linked to. If those site owners are like me, they check their stats regularly and may be curious enough to pop over for a look. If they like what they see, they may even return the favor and link back to my blog.

It must be working because I have seen an upsurge in traffic since I have used more outbound links. But it was me clicking on those links that made the real difference.

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You wouldn't think of opening a bank account without keeping track of your money. Neither should you start a blog without paying attention to who visits your blog, how often they visit, where they're from and what they read.

There's a simple, free, web-based tool that can help you with all that and more called Blogpatrol.

You do need access to your blog's template or HTML to use Blogpatrol. If you're not technical, the company has an FAQ you can access with e-mail tech support.

It's important to check your blog stats weekly, or even daily to monitor trends and traffic. Over time, this will give you valuable data you can use to evaluate what does and doesn't work on your blog.

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You want search engines to be able to find you and you want to score well in the search engine rankings. How do you do that? There's no magic pill. But you can engage in some best practices that improve your odds. Make sure to follow these three important rules for search engine optimization (SEO) of your blog.

1) Stay focused.

Getting off topic will hurt your SEO efforts. Search engines will index you higher if you're a constant source of information and inbound links relative to one topic.

2) Keep it short

Overly long posts aren't attractive to search engines. Short, highly topical posts attract search engine spiders and, no surprise, more humans as well.

3) Titles matter

Take the title of this post for instance. It is plain and descriptive. That's what you want from a title. If you get cute with your titles, chances are the search engine won't know you're being cute and won't rank your page as highly as a result. Use any important keywords in your title that you can to improve SEO.

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