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10 Things I Wish All Bloggers I Read Would Do
10 Things I Wish All Bloggers I Read Would Do
by Guest AuthorThis is a guest post by Jonathan Brill. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
Most of the advice for bloggers online is given from other blog owners and blogging experts. Well, I would like to turn this around and offer you some advice as a reader. Below you’ll find a list of things I wish all the bloggers I read would do.
1. Be easy to understand. Maybe I’m an expert in your field or maybe I’m just trying to be. Either way, domain-specific words and acronyms can be daunting to the uninitiated. Since blogs are the gateway to getting initiated, please spare me from having to learn the language before I can read your blog. If I need Babel Fish to parse your writing, you’ve already lost me.
2. Be relevant. I’m going to read dozens of blogs today. That may seem like a lot but considering there are over 900k posts uploaded every 24 hours; it’s obvious I’ve already done some serious filtering. Even so, that’s a lot of reading for someone who has a real job. I’ve picked blogs that I think are relevant to my career or life in some way. You’ve gone through a process to select me as a reader and I’ve reciprocated by subscribing. Make sure your posts are written for the audience you’ve cultivated.
3. Be consistent. Nothing worse than going to my favorite blog and see they’ve taken off a week or two without notice. Should I stop going there? Will it ever come back? Is there a schedule I can follow? If you want regular readers, then be a regular writer.
4. Be interesting. Let’s make a deal: I’ll give you the most valuable thing I have, my time, and you give me something interesting. It doesn’t have to be funny, although that certainly helps. But it does have to be interesting or new or at least novel. This has as much to do with personality as it does with story. If your topic is one I’m already familiar with, like a well-covered news event, then at least give me a fresh take. It’s OK to blog about events with observations, but you better make sure your observations of those events are worth reading.
5. Be thorough. I get that blogging may not be your full time job and that you won’t be able to explore every topic fully, but I still need a resolution. Give me closure. On every single post. Don’t just introduce me to topics and then leave, like a person at a party who starts a conversation and then walks away mid-sentence. Respect the rules of composition and the anatomy of any good story: make sure your posts have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
6. Have authority. I appreciate that your interest extends past what your blog may usually cover. But you need to qualify your authority so I don’t question it later. If you run a tech blog and start riffing about politics you better know enough to stand up to the political blogs I’m also reading or admit that your opinion is unqualified. I respect that you’re an expert at tech blogging but that doesn’t make you an expert at everything. To paraphrase Colin Powell on what makes a good analyst: tell me what you know, tell me what you don’t know, and if there’s any time left, you can tell me what you think.
7. Be authentic. Considering there’s now tens of millions of people throwing up everything they’ve heard or thought about on the internets, there’s a fair chance that whatever it is you’re about to write already exists in some form or another. That’s OK. I’m reading you because I think your opinion is interesting or valuable. If I find out that it’s not really your opinion, but the opinion of your Master or Advertiser or Sponsor, you’ve lost me. If I want compromised corporate crap journalism I can go to a major newspaper. I’m reading you because you have a quirky opinion that occasionally flies in the face of conventional wisdom. I dig that about you. One that trust is gone, however, so is any appeal of reading your work.
8. Show you enjoy writing. You don’t have to smile when you blog, but you should enjoy writing. You don’t have to love it every day but you should enjoy it enough to be good at it. Every day. The day you stop having fun writing a blog will be the day it becomes less fun to read. Our relationship is built on mutual satisfaction and it’s more fragile and transparent than you may realize. It’s OK to not want to blog for a day or two. Or even longer if you give your readers a heads up. Better than tossing up forced content that makes your readers the worse for reading it.
9. Be accessible. Regardless of the teachings of our social media czars, blogging is still largely about one person publishing so many people can read it. Occasionally, however, you’ll blog about something that inspires the normally uninspired to want to interact with you. Do yourself a favor and be accessible. This doesn’t mean having to respond to every comment or mail but it does mean at least taking part in a conversation you may have started. If you’re not willing to interact with readers who are looking for conversation, someone else in your space will.
10. Be something other than a blogger. As good as your writing may be, much of the value to your readers comes from your knowledge and experience in other areas. This doesn’t mean you have to “Hemingway” all over the world to bullfights and battles so you have fresh content; it does mean, however, keeping people interested in what you’re doing and thinking will be much more challenging if you never do anything interesting. Most of the blogs I read are an output of lives so full they crave to be documented, not random musings from people bored with television.
One of the best ways to improve as a blogger is to be a prolific blog reader. Hold yourself to the lofty demands to which you hold your favorite bloggers.
About the Author: Jonathan Brill is the owner of Prolific247, a company that has been building and managing business blogs since 2007. The company has a collection of best practices and current information for corporate blogging. If you’d like to learn more, you can reach them at blogger@prolific247.com.
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38 Responses to "10 Things I Wish All Bloggers I Read Would Do"
How about #11…Shocking. Gizmodo and their recent iPhone post has given them more interest than they could of imagined.
Thanx friend. Real advice from a reader’s point of view. A must follow post for all bloggers.
Daniel, check the link to the Guest Author’s blog, it’s not in correct form hence not working.
Correct it.
Thanks
Regarding #1, I don’t mind reading about technical things now and again that might be over my head (and most things are!), but sometimes the blogger just carries on with the assumption that anyone with half a brain would know this stuff. Well, we don’t. I don’t need a full blown tutorial with every post, but a link to another post or site that gives more in-depth information goes a long way towards making me a happy reader.
Hey Edward.
This is really a great Post bro. I strongly agree with point 9. “Be something other than blogger” Great point bro.
Thanks for sharing this great post bud.Excellent read! I recently taught a class to a group on “how to set up a blog” basics on how to get started in the blog world. It was more on the mechanics and not on what to do once you had the blog.
This article would be a great to send to that class. I will send off a link today!
Thank you for all the valuable information.
Chris
I think the most important points that I’m struggling now is #4 and #3. Not sure why… but I’m trying my best to be a better and more creative writer…huh… staying consistent is just another issue. Not having enough time and failure to plan will show how inconsistent we are…
awesome list, only a better blogger can understand this accurately
This list is great, definitely worth bookmarking for a future “all about blogging” reference post.
I have made strides with #3 and #4 by using an editorial calendar.
Now I am working on #10. I think you must bring in other subjects and find a way to weave them into your theme to keep your blog from sounding like a rehash of everyone else’s in the same niche.
Tammi Kibler
Great Guest post!
Hi Daniel, the link to the author’s site is still not working (I read your reply to a comment that it is fixed but it is not).
Thanks,
OnibalusiTranslated —> be unqiue, ridgey didge and make it compelling….so many bloggers have a story they want to tell, but few have the ability to capture you completely….or at least put a smile on your face.
Good post.
Great point of view. #3 is really big for me as a reader. Even though no one is paying monetarily to read our blogs, they are paying in their precious time. If an incredibly great blog is updated erratically it can lead to lost readers and even resentment among readers.
I answer comments so number 9 is covered. And, yes, you have to enjoy writing or the torture you’ve gone through while forcing yourself to write will shine through in your post, so people should post when they are in the mood. As for being interesting, I think this is a tough one, because you don’t know if people consider your to be that. It’s even tougher if you have a cultural blog, like me.
thanx Daniel for this wonderful post.
I really like the 8th one that is “Show you enjoy writing”. It is very important according to me as I believe doing only those things what I enjoy. Blogging is the thing if one is not passionate about he should not go for blogging..
Really liked what you had to say, I have a blog but not really a blogger so much. I do post my quilting photos so I can easily share my quilts with my family and friends.
I do very much enjoy and appreciate bloggers. Reading blogs allows receiving a wealth of information it may have taken me my lifetime to learn and put to use.
11. Use a contextual spell, style, and grammar checker! If you want me to read what you write, spend some time getting it right. This is my biggest pet peeve – posts that are thrown up there carelessly. I read my posts several times, both on the dashboard and in preview, and try to see it as a new reader. I generally makes several rounds of changes, until I feel it’s right.
One thing that indicates to me how serious the blogger is, is proof reading. There’s nothing like trying to figure out what the writer is trying to say when there are typos that leave me up in the air. Great list, thanks for sharing!!
I strongly agree with your point #8 – Show you enjoy writing.
I noticed that when I stopped writing for a week or two in the past due to busy workload, then my blog traffic dropped dramatically, it was sad to see that. But from this incident, I found out that my readers actually want me to write more and they’ll come back to read.
Right now, I write very frequent and the readers come over and over again to read my posts.
Great write up Jonathan!
Regards,
LeeI always worry about number 3. It’s not that I have lost the passion for the niche but it’s more of trying to fit it into my schedule.
When every I get a moment or two off I try and write a few posts and just schedule them instead of writing and releasing them on the same day.
Number 3 for me really just comes down to time management.
On the consistency thing, I’ve read a lot of bloggers with a lot more experience than me suggest writing a lot of posts in advance and releasing them when you’ve hit a dry spell. I haven’t been able to do that but I have stashed away ideas for posts. I think what I’ll find as I keep blogging is that my subject matter will have to diversify to some extent. I can’t think of one newspaper columnist whom I’ve followed for any length of time who confined themselves to one narrow subject. The good ones seem to experiment a little and retain readers by broadening their horizons. No reason to think the same can’t work for bloggers.
first of all i would like to thank the author for this great article about blogging . . . .
3. Be consistent is the most important part as far as i think because i read 10’s of blogs daily and i never go back to the blog again if its not updated for 2-3 days . .. .Fantastic post Jonathan. Time is a major issue.
You forgot one thing that is incredibly irritating. Affiliate marketing. I can’t stand sites with ads every paragraph and keywords highlighted so that you get push to some horrible ad site. I refuse to ever come back to those sites. I wish there was an option on Firefox where I can automatically boycott sites. I want it to pop up and remind me, you hate this site so don’t go there.
I understand that you need to make money with the site even if it’s only to pay for the cost of maintenance but plan it out first.
One of the problems with blogging and especially in the last two years is that some bloggers have a lot of time on their hand. TV, the internet and the watercooler gossip has all these get rich quick stories about the internet. A lot of unemployed people are blogging. Most bloggers probably throw up a site and start writing without thinking it through. They have time and forget that others don’t.
I try to write with this concept in mind: Would I want to spend any time reading this article and do I have something different to say? As a reader, I’m too busy and give 3 seconds to decide whether I want to read something.
If you’re a masochist: Create a review committee. I have one and they are brutal. 5 women from 25 to 80. They have ripped every article apart and I spend hours rewriting but it will make me a better blogger.
Wow, a review committee of 5 women? I wouldn’t get anything posted! I’m afraid to ask my wife about my necktie much less about my writing.
Can’t agree with you more about affiliate marketing. It’s one thing to have ads around the text area but stuff popping up in the content really wrecks the reading experience.
Mahalo (thank you) so much for these 10 tips. This is very important for all of us to remember what the reader wants to hear.
Thank you for taking the time to educate all of us.
Aloha,
Kellie
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Quba F1831 - InterWeb
via interweb.in
QUBA is a new entrant to the Indian mobile handset market. With competition stiffening by the day making a mark is a tough task. In an attempt to create its own brand value. The company has launched the QUBA F183l an entry-level device with music as its USP It is a cute little phone with a combination of black and red glossy plastic.
The F183l is primarily a bar phone with a flap that covers the keyboard. On the outer side of the flap is a circular D-pad that doubles up as a control for the music player so one doesn't have to open the flap to use the player. On either sides of the D-pad are two cir¬cular keys. Basically the D-pad on the outer flap is simply an extension of the default D-pad on the keypad. It has plastic spokes in small grooves so when you press the outer D-pad the inner one gets pressed.
Opening the flap reveals a keypad with red and black keys. The keypad glows with LEDs of various colours. The LEDs blink dur¬ing a call or when the music is playing. On the left are the SIM1/menu and SIM2 calling keys while on the right are the names and call end/power keys.
The four direction keys can be set for various shortcuts and the D-pad takes you to the menu. The device supports two GSM connections but during an active call the other one is switched off. The QUBA F1813 comes with CIF camera. The highest resolution can be set at 352 x 288 pixels and also included video player, e-book reader, sound recorder and melody composer. The device also has GPRS capabilities.
Teen Blogging a Good Thing, Study Suggests | LiveScience
A new pilot study is supportive of teenage blogging, as the vast majority of study subjects used the blogs to nurture relationships with their peers and build a sense of community.
In the investigation, Ohio State University researchers studied 100 teen bloggers from around the United States.
The finding that the blogs were used in a positive manner, rather than to admit misbehavior, was a welcome discovery.
This preliminary study suggests that blogging could be used therapeutically to help troubled teens express themselves in positive ways, said Dawn Anderson-Butcher, associate professor of social work at Ohio State.
She and her students examined blog posts from the public Web site Xanga (pronounced "Zanga") for an entire month, to find out whether teens blogged about risky behaviors, such as skipping school, doing drugs, or having sex.
In the current issue of the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, they report the contrary: Most teens in the study blogged about positive behaviors, such as studying, participating in school activities, spending time with family, and going to church.
"We looked at every quote, and the kids wrote about very few problem behaviors," Anderson-Butcher said. "They showed a lot of creative expression through poetry, lyrics and song. It was very exciting — and for me, positive — to see the typical developmental activities that they were writing about in their blogs."
The blog data in this study came from 2007. Xanga is less popular with teens now, as the majority are "micro-blogging" their activities on Facebook.
Anderson-Butcher said she can't replicate this study on Facebook, however, because unlike Xanga, it offers safety measures to keep strangers from reading kids' profiles.
"That's a good thing in relation to privacy," she said. "It just means we aren't able to access the data as freely."
While the researchers couldn't know whether parents were supervising the Xanga blogs used in this study, the teens were clearly writing blog entries as messages to their peers.
Quotes from typical blog postings included:
- "OK! Now my 4th quarter is startin' and I am sooo scared b/c I didn't start it off very well in honors Geometry and Biology and I'm scared that I'm not gonna get a good grade (A) by end of the year. Plus finals so I'm soooo dead. Pray 4 me guyz!"
- "I'm getting my wisdom teeth out Friday, wanna come over and be my nurse? We can play monopoly and listen to music. It'll be great!!"
- "Wuts up every1? Just got back from church. Yeah it was oh so exciting. I have to go to church at 5 instead of 7 every Wednesday since I play keyboard in the band."
- "Hey, hey, I'm grounded so I'm not gonna be able to post for about a month. Sorry!!!! I'll explain later."
Most of the postings were simply conversations with friends, the researchers found.
"They use blogging the same way my generation used the telephone when we were kids. They're just talking, only now they can talk to each other any time, anywhere," Anderson-Butcher said.
Researchers went through the blog postings and counted how many times the teens mentioned any good or bad behaviors.
Among the most common positive activities the teens described were playing video games (65 percent); watching television (45 percent); doing homework (40 percent); going to lessons, such as music, dance, or martial arts (38 percent); browsing the Internet (29 percent); and participating in faith-based activities (22 percent).
These are traditional youth development activities kids engage in during their out-of-school time, Anderson-Butcher said.
Even the teens' most common complaint — boredom (65 percent) — isn't such a bad thing if they are blogging about it instead of engaging in risky behaviors, she added.
"Think about the other things they could be doing. We know that when kids are bored, mostly between the hours of 3:00-6:00 p.m., that's when they're most at risk for using alcohol or having sex, for example. It's the time when their parents are working and they are often unsupervised. But instead these youth sought out social expression via Xanga," she said.
"So that's definitely a positive. They're filling their time with this social networking."
Some teens posted to Xanga every day, while others only posted once or twice during the month used in the study.
Teens did describe some negative feelings, such as feeling blue (30 percent); feeling angry (28 percent); and feeling like they don't fit in (22 percent). They complained that they didn't want to do their homework (16 percent), and worried about getting bad grades (11 percent).
Very few mentioned cutting class (8 percent); using drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes (6 percent); or having sex (1 percent).
Anderson-Butcher stressed that parents should supervise their kids' blogs, perhaps by making such supervision a condition of blogging. That way, parents can notice problems when they come up in the blog.
Her advice: Parents can keep an eye on kids' Facebook micro-blogs by being part of their circle of Facebook "friends," or by enlisting the help of another trusted adult who is "friends" with them.
She also sees a potential for social workers to suggest blogging as a tool to support further relationship-building with teens on their caseloads, and maybe even texting as a way for teens to stay in touch with mentors, coaches, youth workers and therapists.
"I wonder if we have an opportunity for mentoring via the Internet in general. With appropriate boundaries, an adult could text message a kid to offer support between in-person appointments."
- Bloggers Share Unspoken Ethical Code
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- Fake Week, Real Drug: K2 Causing Hallucinations in Teens
via livescience.com
The night I met Sir Alans right hand man
Wacky Web Tales
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
via eduplace.com
MadLibs are great fun for all the family. Cant wait to try these out with my kids.
LukeW | "Mad Libs" Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%
"Mad Libs" Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%
February 25, 2010by Luke WroblewskiA while ago, I came across a unique registration form built by Jeremy Keith for his audio sharing site, Huffduffer. Though it asked people the same questions found in typical sign-up forms, the Huffduffer registration form did so in a narrative format. It presented input fields to people as blanks within sentences (Mad Libs-style, if you will).
Jeremy built the form to work as you'd expect. You can tab between the "blanks" just the way you tab between standard Web form input fields. You can click on any "blank" to start entering text. The password "blank" masks any characters you enter just like a standard password input, and the whole form manages errors if you answer any questions incorrectly. In other words, it works like a standard Web form but it looks quite different. The presentation is inviting and fun, which is quite unlike a standard Web form.
After seeing the Huffduffer form in action, I was curious how it would perform against a traditional form. Would people be more inclined to complete it because of the narrative format? Or would the unfamiliar presentation format confuse people? Thanks to Ron Kurti and the team at Vast.com, I now have some early answers.
Ron and his team ran some A/B testing online that compared a traditional Web form layout with a narrative "Mad Libs" format. In Vast.com's testing, Mad Libs style forms increased conversion across the board by 25-40%. You can see a before and after view of the Contact Dealer forms where they ran these tests below.
Most of the input fields have stayed the same but the "comments" text area has been replaced by a "personalize this message link" and the phone number set of three input fields has been replaced a single flexible input. While it's possible these adjustments also contributed to the increase, it's unlikely they were solely responsible for it. As a result, the mad libs layout likely had an impact as well.
Examples of this form are live at Vast, Kelley Blue Book, and several more sites. Ron and the Vast.com team are rolling out new versions of these forms over the coming weeks and will continue to test improvements. Hopefully, they'll be able to share their results again.
Thanks to Ron Kurti for sharing these images and performance stats!
For more on Form Design...
Check out Luke's book about Web form usability, visual design, and interaction design considerations: Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks.
About Vast.com
Vast.com, Inc works within the auto, travel, and real estate industries to create online marketplaces for the world's most respected companies. Partners such as Kelley Blue Book, Orbitz Worldwide, AOL, and Overstock have integrated Vast's custom platform into their portals to serve over 20 million consumers per month.
via lukew.com
THE BANANA SPLITS
via youtube.com
Kids TV at its finest - awesome!!
ROA, Belgium - unurth | street art
Quba Blog » Recycling Push at Quba Removes the Equivalent of Four Cars off the Road
Recycling Push at Quba Removes the Equivalent of Four Cars off the Road
At Quba, we try to be as environmentally responsible as we possibly can. A year ago we arranged for a company, Recycling Revolution, to start collecting all our cans, glass and plastics. As you can imagine, getting people to use the correct bins for the correct waste can be pretty tricky, after all it is pretty complicated. It took dedication to nag, pester, threaten and even confiscate personal bins for weeks at a time where necessary – at times I felt like giving up.
But in today’s post I finally got reward for all of my hard work, a certificate that Quba has now saved over 10 carbon tonnes which is equivalent to 4 cars off the road. Fantastic news! However it isn’t all good news I’m afraid, unfortunately for my colleagues I now feel that we, as a company, now need to beat this figure over the next year so I will be stepping up the supervision of the bins and the pestering will increase with vigour! Sorry fellow Qubans….
![iStock_000007972778XSmall[1]](http://blog.quba.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/iStock_000007972778XSmall1.jpg)
via blog.quba.co.uk
