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Posts Tagged ‘readers’

Elements for a successful blog

Monday, January 11th, 2010

It’s important that readers should be able to understand what your blog’s subject is from first glance, and this is usually accomplished through a graphic header of some kind. Its ingredients should include the name of the blog, the tagline (descriptive sentence), if not already stated the main subject matter and who the author is, preferably with a picture or logo of some kind.

The next thing that should be noticeable is how your readers can subscribe to your blog. There are many methods of doing this, but the most prominent one should be a form for email notifications of your new posts. It’s much easier to receive emails than to regularly go to your Google Reader or glance through the cookies on your personal iGoogle homepage. Make sure the subscription invitations are placed high up on your sidebar.

Is your About Page up-to date? If a reader is interested in your blog, he might well want to know who the author is, and if he finds an incomplete About Page, imagine how disappointed or put off he might be. Make sure you include as much information about you or your business that you can, including a good quality picture of you.

Improve the visual impression of your blog by using multiple forms of media. Even if you are a bit tentative about this, simply adding in relevant pictures can accomplish this. And if you are technologically minded, add in video and audio to provide your message in different ways that would appeal to a larger audience.

I’ve banged on before about using white space in my other blog articles, but again it is extremely useful to aid readability for your blog. Use short paragraphs, subheads to break up the text and graphic images to add to the visual interest. Don’t make your posts too long either. And if you have your blog professionally designed, take into consideration that your template should not be cluttered or too busy.

Use various plug-ins to share your content, especially within social media. For example, use a retweet button to entice readers to feed your post onto their twitter streams, and add in a share-this button for the other social networks, such as technorati, digg, stumble upon, delicious, reddit, tumbr, flickr, to name but a few.

And lastly, provide a method for readers to connect with you on social networking sites. It is quite common to see various icons that link to the author’s social networking profiles, so make sure you have them in place to encourage increasing your connection numbers.

I shall be taking each element individually to elaborate on them in future posts, accompanied with visuals and recommendations – watch this space.

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Posted in blogs, design | 4 Comments »

To comment or not to comment, it’s all about interaction

Monday, September 7th, 2009

One of the aspects of a blog is that it is interactive. This means readers are able to contribute to your blog if they have something to say. Blogging programmes automatically add an area after posts where readers can add their point of view. The ability to comment is also part of the phenomenon Web2.0, which is about interaction on the web.

So, what is special about blogs and commenting? Ordinary websites don’t have areas to put your point across, unless it’s a form to leave your details or send an email. Therefore what you have written is not automatically showed to you afterward for others to read, something that naturally occurs on a blog (unless the blog’s administrator wants to moderate your comment first, to make sure it isn’t spam).

But why should you comment on blogs? Apart from sharing your opinions, your comment may increase the value of the blog post, making it more interest to other readers. The author may also be inclined to respond, and starting a conversation – all adding to the entertainment factor.

Another thing to note, comments are viewed by the search engine spiders as new material, so the more interaction, the more the blog post goes up the search engines.

Comments can vary in content, as their authors can agree or disagree with the topic of the post. As long as you continue to be polite and forthcoming, and your contribution is relevant and resourceful, any comment is good. Sometimes comments lead onto other blog posts, especially if backed up by links. As spiders thrive on links, there are opportunities for comment authors to leave their details.

How do you induce a comment? Simply ask for one, as sometimes it won’t occur to the reader to leave one otherwise. Positioning a question at the bottom of your post may also encourage a response, as well as controversial subject matter. Those who comment are usually used to interaction on the net, and are likely to be avid social networkers, but anything that stimulates a reader to take action is advantageous.

Why is it good to comment? If you want to find your way in your chosen field, visit as many relevant blogs and leave a comment where you can. Then you will begin to get noticed by other bloggers and blog readers, and commenting will also enable you to link back to your blog or website, thus increasing your visitor rate. If you get a name for yourself by leaving good quality comments, visitors are more likely to visit to read your articles, subscribe to your blog and even leave comments themselves.

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Posted in blogs | 4 Comments »

What is the difference between an article and a blog post?

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

An article is a lengthy piece of writing, written in an expert’s point of view, aimed at explaining a topic in great detail. A blog post is a shorter piece of writing, usually in a ‘conversational’ style, aimed at updating or educating your readers, or to spark ideas and interest in your business.

Articles are produced to promote the author’s expertise and prowess at writing and research, hence why they are long. A blog post should take one subject and explain it succinctly within a few short paragraphs, written from multiple view-points to gain the comprehension of the reader.

Articles can vary in length, and even though they are online, are designed to be printed out for leisurely reading. Blog posts are meant to be read immediately. The subject should be introduced within the headline and first sentence, and the concept within the first paragraph. As most blog readers only read the first 25% of a post, or spend an average of 96 seconds, getting the jist across at the very beginning is important to achieve your post being read in full.

Twitter has minimalised this even further (hence why it’s called micro-blogging). There are just 140 characters to get your point across and capture your reader’s interest, but you do have the advantage of interaction: a tinyurl link can be added to direct the reader to a blog post or article for further reading.

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Posted in blogs, marketing | No Comments »

Forget your blog, forget your readers, forget SEO

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

There is nothing worse than setting up a blog and then forgetting about it – like someone said in a Twitter post, “a blog with no new content is like a cheese sandwich”. Although this made me smile, he is right. An inactive blog is the same as a brochure website, looking pretty but with no search engine optimisation activity it is worth nothing.

The answer? Get off your backsides and start contributing.

How? There is lots of material all around you. Look at your old articles, e-newsletter material, past emails answering questions from your clients, stuff you may have read from other blog posts or whatever that you would like to put your own slant on it, articles from business magazines, overhead conversations at networking events, general gossip: this forum is full of it!

How often? Regularity is better than frequency. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger stated in a recent post that he now blogs less than before, but his posts have a much higher value in their content so his SEO impact is higher, as well as the quality of comemnts. See what he says in one of my posts: http://www.designyourmarketing.co.uk/2009/07/blogging-less-can-be-effective-too/

What should you say? The aim is to provide value for your readers, give them something to think about, provide solutions to their problems, pose a question to encourage comments: comments are treated as new material too, so getting lots of these is also good for SEO.

Create an editorial diary so you can draft a number of posts in advance and come back to them later to spruce them up for posting. If you’re really clever, or if your original post is too long, split up a subject into many installments: this will keep the audience’s interest going, and incorporating cliff-hangers will encourage them to look out for the next post. It also will make it all the easier for you if you know what you are going to write next.

Don’t make your posts too long. People don’t have time to read huge articles on blogs, keep it down to five paragraphs, or more if they are short ones. Short, snappy and sweet is my motto. It makes it quicker to write them too.

If you get an idea, write it down in a notebook, or if you’re online, create a quick draft and go back to it later. Once you’re creative juices are following, why waste them?

Constant contributions are more important than making your blog look wonderful, stuffed full of imagery and widgets, but with no content. Get writing – the more your readers, and therefore potential clients, get to know about you, the more likely you are to do business with them.

Oh, and another thing, try and put a purpose into your posts. Blogging aimlessly about everything and anything is also a waste: there must always be an ultimate aim in whatever you do.

My purpose for this post? To raise awareness of who I am, you’ll follow the link to the post above, and you’ll realise that I want to help women to blog successfully to further their businesses by visiting my blogging pages.

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Posted in blogs, visibility | No Comments »

Keywords should entertain blog readers as well as search engine spiders

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Keywords or key-phrases are particular words that are the most searched for in search engines. Found through websites such as Wordtracker, they are, in fact, search engine spider food, and including them in your blog posts will help raise your status in search engine optimisation (SEO).

Keywords or key-phrases should be inserted into four places in your blog post:

• in the headline (because it later becomes the permalink or URL for that post)
• in the first paragraph (preferably in the first sentence so that both readers and spiders immediately ‘get’ the subject)
• in the middle (because that’s a place spiders look)
• in the final paragraph (another place spiders are programmed to search)

But remember to keep your writing entertaining as well as being aware of how relevant keywords are to the subject.

I was reading a post about article marketing the other day and I noticed how the author had incorporated his keywords into the post. He had followed the concept stated above to the letter. The final paragraph was so bad (every sentence had the keyword either at the beginning or the end), the result was it was so incredibly boring to read I didn’t bother continuing.

Here are some other points it might be good to take into consideration if you wish to retain readership as well as spider interest:

• be aware that people skim read an article or post to see if it is relevant
• bullet points are a good way of highlighting elements
• keywords should be positioned also to catch the reader’s attention
• only the first 25% of an article is truly read before the reader decides it is worth continuing with or not
• small paragraphs also helps with the reader’s comprehension as well as attention span
• the average amount of time spent reading a blog post is 96 seconds
• therefore short and sweet posts fare better than long ones

Another keyword tip I picked up is that spiders cannot ’see’ punctuation, so if you adjust your sentences by inserting full stops or commas into the middle of your key-phrase, this will add enough variance to help maintain readership interest.

Use keywords for your reader’s benefit as well as strategically placed for spiders, therefore not penalising your audience purely for search engine optimisation.

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Websites and blogs: how are they different?

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Actually a blog is a kind of website, as they have many similar attributes.

They both occupy a presence on the internet, use an URL or web address, need a host server to keep them online, contain information such as text content, pictures, links and keywords, both benefit from search engine optimisation and can be tracked through Google Analytics.

But why don’t we call blogs websites? What is it that makes them different?

The difference is in their programming, and how they make use of Web2.0. The are pre-runners of social networking before Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They thrive on interaction, new content, feeds and optimisation.

Blogs are designed to be self-editable. This means you don’t to pay a web designer to make changes or add content. You can update them through very easy access (a username and password) from any computer in the world. The programming is self-contained, and if you can write in Word, you can update a blog.

They thrive on being updated frequently and regularly, their programming is designed to attract search engine spiders who are looking for new content all the time. This is very good for web optimisation which puts blogs higher up the search engines than websites. Another consideration is that blogs are visited by spiders hourly, whereas websites could wait for months.

Unlike websites, blogs only update new material each time it is posted. Every time a website is updated the new stuff supersedes the old content, whereas blogs store previous entries like a news-roll, each post dated accordingly and assigned it’s own URL for access at a later date.

Blogs are designed to encourage interactive communication between author and readers. Those who comment can link back to their own sites, and this content is also considered as new material by internet spiders. This concept is not available in ordinary websites, except through sign up forms, and then contributors cannot view afterwards what they have written.

And another consideration to note: blogs are much cheaper to create and maintain!

OK, so what else makes blogs better?

Blogs are created to help businesses to spread their expertise, explain what their business does in different ways, maintain a relationship with their visitors and customers, offer subscription services for regular contact, channel traffic back to relevant websites, and can be fed to other websites like social networking for a higher readership.

Most websites, especially ‘brochure style’ ones, are static and once created are rarely updated, and can’t provide an opportunity to explain everything as space is often limited. In fact, over cluttering your pages with too much information can be counter-productive. Visitors will not return for new content, websites are unlikely to get bookmarked, and only through a sign up form to a newsletter can the business maintain a relationship with potential customers.

But this is only my opinion, what do you think about this subject? Since this a blog, leave a comment in the box below to share your views.

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Posted in blogs | No Comments »