Blogging Pitfalls: How to Avoid Lazy Writing and Editing
At the end of the day, the most basic activity a blogger must do is write.
While it is true that bloggers are, with good reason, expanding more and more into video and audio, at some point every blogger is going to have to write something. It might be a description, a bio or even just an advertisement but, at some point, a every blogger is going to have to put words onto paper.
But not every writer has the heart of a poet or the writing skills of a hard-hitting journalists. Bloggers come from all different backgrounds and styles and many have had little training or experience with writing prior to starting up their blog.
The good news is that you don’t need to be the next Shakespeare to be an effective and popular blogger, in many ways it helps not to be, but you do have to be able to write clearly and in a way that is engaging to your reader. It may not require a Ph.D in literature, but it does require that you work on honing your craft and make your writing as good as possible.
Failure to do so can sink an otherwise great blog and make your previous hard work a complete waste of time.
Branding Your Business or Blog with an Avatar
Veronica Davis is a freelance writer and internet business columnist for Examiner. She works with and writes for businesses online, and recommends every business create an avatar to call their own.
Unless you have been hiding under your bed for the last few years, you know social media is the new norm. It’s how you meet people, communicate ideas, express your thoughts, interview for a job, grow business and just have fun. The days of a big smile and a firm handshake are no longer by any means a form of introducing one’s self. Your avatar is your first impression as you meet and interact with others on blogs, social networks, and in other online communities.
Your avatar defines you on the web. It represents your personality or interests and can even represent what your business stands for. Ladies and gents, welcome to the new way of branding your business, your blog or simply yourself on the internet.
Why You Need to Create an Avatar
In online communities, not having an avatar can be a fatal mistake. Can you say pure laziness? When you set up a social media account, make sure you have an avatar ready to go. Lack of creating an avatar can create feeling of suspicion, doubt, and frustration from online users. If you cannot see what someone looks like, are they trying to hide something? How serious are they about contacting you and using social media as a means of communication? Maybe, this individual does not know how to create an avatar. In a world were jobs are given through online interviews, does this person lack basic skills? Avatars also create a sense of connection in a world were face to face communication is slim to none.
When creating your avatar, there are many things that you should consider. An avatar is like a first impression; you are either well-groomed and confident or you aren’t! Here are some tips to defining yourself when creating your avatar:
• Know what your brand should stand for. Which words and images best describe the image you are trying to portray of yourself or your organization?
• Do you want to be seen as professional, creative, helpful, honest, etc?
• Create multiple avatars. Consistency is one thing. However, you can use create multiple avatars that are consistent. More than one image can convey the brand and personality you are going for. You could also use a variation of your business avatar for your personal one, so they’re easily associated with one another.
• To establish the most trust, you should create an avatar from a photo. An avatar that uses a photo of you is by far going to earn you more trust than one without a photo.
• A popular and good-looking trend that can put a twist on your photo avatar is to create a cartoon avatar from your photo.
• Be careful when creating avatars using photographs. Using an online editing tool, such as Picnik, PiZap, or FotoFlexer, can add special effects or touch up plain photography. Just be careful not to overdo it. In the event you would ever meet in person, you want to be recognizable.
Careful of Accidental Messages…
Express yourself carefully. Images may have underlying meanings that when creating your avatar you may not even think of. For example, creating a green avatar can indicate involvement in social movement. Even if you are involved in politics or social movements, avoid using these concepts when creating your avatar. People and organizations may steer clear of you if they do not share your views or see that you are promoting a cause or event that their organization is firmly against. First impressions are everything and there are plenty cases of social media campaigns gone wrong we could list. In the online world, it is important to remember that your avatar is your first impression.
Veronica Davis is a freelance writer and internet business columnist for Examiner. She works with and writes for businesses online, and recommends every business create an avatar to call their own.
Blogging Back to School
In my neck of the woods, a new school year is starting and parents are collectively rejoicing as kids head back for another year of learning. The timing seems right for a blogging back to school post!
With that in mind, following is a refresher on the fundamentals for successful blogging:
1. Publish useful content.
This fundamental rule of successful blogging applies not only to the content in your blog posts but also to the content in your blog comments and across the social web. Make sure it’s useful or no one will read it, share it or talk about it.
2. Avoid things that make you look like a spammer.
Go light on the links, disclose paid posts and ads, and don’t crowd people’s in boxes. In other words, be honest and play nice.
3. Give credit where credit is due.
Cite your sources. If you quote content from another website or blog, link back to that site or blog as the original source. If you use an image with a creative commons license that requires attribution, make sure you link back to the owner of that image.
4. Follow the laws.
Claiming ignorance won’t get you off the hook if you’re caught breaking the law. Make sure you don’t plagiarize, and only use images, audio and video that have the proper copyrights and usage permissions attached to them that allow you to legally do so. If you publish paid posts or reviews on your blog, make sure you follow the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 16 Title 255.
5. Remember your words live online for a long time.
Don’t publish content on your blog or elsewhere online that you might regret later. What you publish today can be found in Google searches for many, many years. Even your Twitter updates are archived by the Library of Congress!
Remember those rules you learned in grade school about being nice to others, being respectful, listening, taking turns, and so on? They apply to us as adults, and even to bloggers and online publishers, just as much now as they did when we were children. Follow those golden rules you learned in kindergarten, and you should be just fine.
Are you still following the blogging basics or is it time to go back to school?
Add Subheadings to Your Blog Posts with the SubHeading WordPress Plugin
Is the title box always too small for your blog posts? Do you find yourself wishing you could add more details or catchy copy to your blog post titles? Are you tired of adding header tags to the subheadings you create for your blog posts? Or perhaps you just want subheadings that appear directly beneath the title of your live blog posts rather than at the top of the body copy?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above questions, then the SubHeading WordPress plugin is for you!
I tried this plugin for the first time recently, and I love it. It’s useful for clarifying a catchy blog post title or adding some keywords for an SEO boost. You can see it in action on a live blog post below:
And here it is on a blog home page:
Looks good, don’t you think?
The SubHeading plugin is available for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory (just search by “subheading” or by the plugin author’s name from your WordPress dashboard’s plugin installation page or download the SubHeading plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory.
Once installed, you can follow the SubHeading plugin installation instructions and configure the settings so subheadings are allowed on posts and pages, display in your blog’s RSS feed, and more, as shown below in the SubHeadings Settings configuration page:
Once the plugin is installed and configured, a new area appears in your blog post editor where you can enter a subheading for that post beneath the title box, as shown below:
It’s that easy! What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
How to Set Up a Blogger ‘Rainy Day Fund’
This is a guest post by Timothy Ng, an experienced personal finance writer, specializing in credit card comparison. Check out his balance transfer for life guide
As a blogger one of the hardest parts of sharing your views and knowledge with the world is making a decent enough income to reward you for your time and energy. Most bloggers will likely give up after months of blogging, especially when they don’t see a fair ROI (Return on Investment) for the their time. Therefore you are best advised to save up for a rainy day, to avoid this disappointment in the first place.
Have a Backup Plan
Don’t Quit Your Job - A lot of bloggers make the colossal mistake of quitting their job too soon. It’s a good idea to hold on to your regular income, even so you might want nothing more than to quit your job. As long as you have bills to pay you have to cover your outgoings with regular income.
Once you’re starting to earn some money with your blog you might be able to cut back to part-time work.
Consider becoming a niche blogger – The tighter your target niche is, the more chances you stand on building a regular readership. Especially if you build up a strong brand name for yourself.
Plan for exponential growth – When you blog you should never forget that it takes time to build up traffic, and income. If you expect to be rich within weeks, you are better off forgetting a blogging career. Even famous bloggers like Darren Rowse took their time to strike it “rich.”
As Rowse says, “it could be likely that your income will grow exponentially over time.” Even a small increase in your income every month could lead to thousands of dollars of income a couple of years down the track. In the end your income will be governed by the following:
- Readership
- Age group of readers (if your readers don’t have the authority to spend money you’ll be hard pressed to earn a lot)
- Your niche
- Traffic
- The power of your relationship with fellow bloggers
Keep a Next Egg - It’s a good idea to keep aside some nest egg funds for hard times. You’ll never know whether your blog will become a success, or not. If you can, put aside some money from your regular income every month.
Tips on How to Save Money
Making money with your blog will help you preserve your funds for the long term, or at least until your blog is starting to earn you some serious moolah. The following income-generating advertising platforms are often favored by bloggers because they are easy to implement, and quick to set up:
Adsense – Google’s Adsense ads can be a good little income earner for you, especially if you are blogging in a high-paying niche. A high-paying niche is any niche that fetches high Google Adwords clicks for the advertiser. Think financial, mortgages, insurance…
Chitika – If your blog is product oriented, then Chitika eMiniMalls and related Product Units can work well toward earning you a nice, steady income. Some bloggers earn hundreds of thousands of dollars with this advertiser alone.
Amazon – Favored by many, loved by even more people, Amazon is a great little income earner for bloggers. As an affiliate of Amazon you have multiple options to present products on your blog with the help of widgets, mini stores and more.
Private ads/Link sales – Selling ad spaces on a busy blog can earn you some decent money. You might be already familiar with the square boxes often featured on blogs (in the sidebar). These can fetch a few dozen, or even a few hundred dollars for a popular blog each month. Imagine how much money you could earn with these alone if you have half a dozen for hire?
Content production - Another great income stream (for the right person) is content production. If you are a good designer, writer, VA, or SEO specialist you can monetize your abilities to keep your blog running.
Eager applicants can find a multitude of online jobs by looking at the various job boards and job posting sites available. Below are a few to get you started:
- ProBlogger Job Board
- Elance
- Guru
- Freelance Writing Gigs
- ChipIn & Kickstarter
In the likelihood that your blog takes time to build up a decent income stream (which is very high), you need to have some kick-starting funds to keep going. Smart bloggers do this by learning some basic CSS, HTML and Photoshop skills. Doing so will save you money because you will be able to code your blog, and make small changes without having to spend money with a designer.
You’d be surprised how quickly the bills can add up for little things, such as changing your design, adding a header, using special effects, making a logo, etc. The more you know about these things, the better you will be able to self-manage your blog’s administration.
Once your blog starts to earn you some money you should consider re-investing a portion of your income to further your education.
ChipIn – ChipIn is a handy application that allows you to collect money from your readers via an easy-to-install blog widget. You sign up with them for free, determine how much money you want to raise, install the widget on your blog, and the rest takes care of itself.
Your readers can donate money to your cause (whatever that may be) at their own discretion).
Situations Where the Rainy Day Fund Could Come in Handy
Your blog’s rainy day fund should be able to cover the bare essentials of your running costs. Typically you will need money to cover expenses for:
- Your domain name
- Your host
- Your broadband Internet connection
- Your computer
- Your electricity
- Possible inventory if you sell online goods from offline suppliers
- Other sundries
In Closing
By now you’ve probably realized that blogging – serious blogging – is big business. You should be 100% certain that you want to do this for the long term to avoid unnecessary costs and disappointment.
A blog should be fun to keep, the moment it starts to feel like a chore you are best advised to either sell your blog (if you think it can fetch some money), or simply call it quits before you burn more money.
By setting up a blogging rainy day fund you minimize your risks, while maximizing the fun factor of being part of the blogosphere. What are you waiting for?
This is a guest post by Timothy Ng, an experienced personal finance writer, specializing in credit card comparison. Check out his balance transfer for life guide where he will step you through the process of finding the best long term balance transfer credit card.
