Tag: blogging

When to sunset your blog

As a frequent speaker on social media, marketing and blogging (and a blogger myself), one question I come across on a recurring basis is when someone should “give up” their blog and just be done with it. You’ve probably come across a blog like this, if not your own, in the past several months. Basically, the way it works is that a blogger starts out with grandiose ideas of writing daily about this-and-that, tweeting out their posts, sharing content on LinkedIn, and creating lively discussions that lead to dozens of comments and follow up posts… In reality, what really happens is you write a few posts for the first month or two, maybe add in a couple shares, that dwindles to a post a month, and then after a year blogging it seems like just another item on your ever-growing to-do list that is put off indefinitely. Months go by and the best you can wrangle up is a retweet of an interesting news story you saw on Yahoo.com.

So what do you do? And, how do you know when it’s time to throw in the towel versus “keep on trucking”?

[Keep on reading at www.OnlineLearningTips.com for the remainder of my article.]
My New Favorite Thing: Word Clouds

I was just doing some work at explaining word clouds (or tag clouds) and have been looking at some tools that create them automatically from your website. Here are some amazing tag clouds generated from my blog using various tools:

Wordle – http://www.Wordle.com

Tagul – http://www.tagul.com (these are fully functional below):
Blogging Ideas – Best List of 52 Yet

I just came across one of the best lists of blogging ideas I have ever seen. It is full of inspiration… and you don’t need to do or be good at all 52… there’s enough on this list for everyone…

Check it out here: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/09/03/52-types-of-blog-posts-that-are-proven-to-work/
Blogging Tips – Make an Impact at the Start

Ever wonder how to open your blog post to ensure the post gets read? Look no further… Darren Rowse at ProBlogger penned an outstanding post entitled,
“10 Tips for Opening Your Next Blog Post“. It is a must read for all content creators out there.
The Single Most Important Question to Ask Before Blogging
I give a number of presentations about how to blog, how easy it is to get started, the tools you need, and how much time you should allocate to such activities… and so on and so forth… It all comes down to first addressing the single most important question when it comes to blogging: your objective.

What is your objective?
1. Generate buzz?
2. Engage your customers?
3. Evangelize?
4. Journal?
5. Feedback?
6. Commentary/editorial?
7. Generate business?
8. Scientific?
9. Reporting?
10. Entertainment?
You must first answer this question to be able to proceed and actually start a blog. Once I address this question for my audience (if giving a lecture/training session), or for my client if consulting, I can then identify the proper tools, time and resources that they will need.

I often encounter clients who are intimidated by blogging. They think it is too time consuming, and that they’ll have to post articles that are 1,000’s of words long with deep primary-source based references.

On the contrary!

There are so many methods for creating a successful blog, and they all go back to identifying your objectives before you start.

So, have you stopped to identify your objective? If not, then read no further. Once you have an objective, only then can you get started with all the rest…

And if you already started to blog and you wonder why it’s not going well, here’s more support for my hypothesis from an article by Mark Ivey for MarketingProfs, entitled, “7 Reasons Your Blog Sucks (and What to Do About It).”
E-mail or Email – Which Spelling is Correct?

Updated October 1, 2014

Both methods for writing “email” are correct. But this highly debated topic was somewhat put to rest recently when the AP Style Guide officially announced it was dropping the hyphen from “e-mail”. And atlas, the world rejoiced. I never appreciated the hyphen in e-mail, so now we can write it (and not be accosted by our editors) without the hyphen.

If you’re looking for more tips on email marketing, you can start here.

Read all the other updates to the style guide here:

http://www.mpdailyfix.com/unfollow-unfriend-retweet-ap-stylebook-adds-another-21-words/
Get Comments and Get Rankings

When leading instructional sessions on blogging, I often discuss the value of comments and how most blogs these days are not “if you write it they will come”, but rather “when you write it, no one cares”. While pessimistic, it’s quite true. If you want to people to find and read you blog, you need more than just high quality content, you need a marketing strategy. One of the ways to market your blog is to get comments. But, how do you get comments when no one knows your blog exists?

Well, you start by commenting on other people’s blogs first. When you do, you want concise comments that reference your blog.

Next, you want to write about what other people are writing and then reference their posts. This will encourage other blogs to read and follow you.

This takes time and effort, but doesn’t cost a thing.

Here’s a great post by HubSpot on this very topic:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/news/search-marketing/index.asp?nlid=2236&cd=dmo121&adref=nlt031511
Facebook Comment System Might Reduce Spam

The new Facebook commenting system requires you to log in to Facebook in order to leave a comment on a site (that is using the plug-in). Therefore, the 99% of comments that this blog receives (as well as most others) that are spam, might be dramatically reduced. So too might be anonymous bashing, a stall worth of the web. Dave Fleet points out these and some other compelling pros and cons in his recent blog post article: http://davefleet.com/2011/03/facebook-commenting-platform-pros-cons-business/.
Get More ReTweets – Ten Tips

Chris Lake write’s a concise and simple post offering 10 essential tips for gaining more retweets. Some tips are easier to follow than others, but if you can follow even a few of these, you’re off to a good start and ahead of the pack.

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7073-how-you-can-attract-more-retweets-a-10-step-guide
Search Engines & Content Providers

As more and more search engines enter the content creation world, will the boundaries of editorial integrity be crossed?

If Google starts acquiring blogs to sell ads on those blogs, wouldn’t they be more inclined to ensure those blogs spoke positively of Google and negatively of its competitors? Okay, perhaps not entirely conspicuously – but if you network of content creation is large enough, maybe it doesn’t matter. Google just wants to make money, and that requires articles people read (a.k.a ad inventory). Sometimes negative articles make you more transparent and create plenty of ad inventory.

Further analysis here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=144500&nid=123530#