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Blogging Pitfalls: How to Avoid Lazy Writing and Editing

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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.

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Building Blog Trust: 6 Actionable Items

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Any decent relationship is built on trust. Without it, you have nothing more than two people in a room. Violate it…and you’ll spend a lifetime working (often unsuccessfully) to get it back. Earning and maintaining the trust of a significant other is hard enough, but a bloggers’ job is even tougher. You need to earn/maintain the trust of an audience.

Building trust doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s an important ingredient to cook up a winning product. Here are few tactics to employ in order to build trust…and become a better blogger.

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5 Time Enjoyment Tips for Home-Based Bloggers

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One of the toughest things about blogging from home is being able to separate work and pleasure time. If you’re just starting out and not earning quite as much as you would like to, you might be accepting as much work as you can find, regardless of rates. Which could mean long work days. Or you maybe you’re spending extra time researching your niche or blogging it on your own until you find more clients. Either way, you’ll likely be more productive on a long-term basis if you allow yourself to recuperate each day. Otherwise, the work you love will turn into a chore and you’ll end up resentful. Now the other day I talked about time management tips for bloggers. Here are some time enjoyment tips to help you differentiate work and play time and you keep grounded.

  1. Have a schedule. This is easier said than done. If you’re like the typical creative person, you tend towards being a night bird — or worse, sleeping whenever. However, having a routine helps to differentiate work time from everything else: personal tasks, play, family time, etc.
  2. Use a signal. If you watch any of the financial TV channels, you already know that 1pm EST marks the end of the trading day in the stock market in N. America. Some of the stations play a clip of the clanging bell from Wall Street. You could do something similar, though not necessarily so loud. So if you find it easy to get engrossed in your blogging but want to keep a consistent schedule, give your self an end-of-day signal. It could be implicit, by putting up a large analog clock in front of you. Or you could set an alarm on your phone, or use Google Calendar in a Web browser. For the latter, you get a default browser popup 10 minutes before the start of a new scheduled activity. So schedule something in, even if it’s “enjoy the evening”. So if you want to stop working at 4 pm, put in a dummy (or real) event in Google Calendar that starts at 4 pm.
  3. Schedule non-blogging activities. Schedule real non-blogging events, even if it’s to read a book, watch TV or whatever. This helps to reinforce in your mind that your work day will end. Your workflow will adjust to to the time you have, and you might even find yourself getting more efficient.
  4. Involve friends and family. It’s easy for those around you, such as those you live with, to forget that just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you have leisure time all day. This can be a touchy issue.  Even innocent text messages can turn into a drawn out digital conversation and break your workflow. You have to gently remind chronic interrupters who either forget or just don’t respect your work time that you are working, that you can schedule some time with them after your work day is over. In the worst-case scenario, if they won’t leave you be, turn off your phone and only check your email at scheduled times each work day. On the other hand, if they can enter your work area and disturb you, you’ll just need to learn to be more assertive about time. Send them a bill, with reminders to pay up, and see if they don’t stop. (Or leave you, depending on whom we’re talking about here.)
  5. Split your work day. Sometimes a straight 7am – 3pm, 8-4, or 9-5 work slot just won’t work. Hey, you’re working from home. If your client work allows it, you could always split a particular day (or every day), to take advantage of your most creative times of day but enjoy a chunk of time inbetween. Go see a movie, sit by the pool, or whatever.

Ultimately, you want to do what’s necessary to make a distinction between your work time and the rest of the day. Working somewhere other than your bedroom is a very good idea, if you can manage it. Now that my wife and I are finally in our own apartment, I’ve appropriated the guest room for my work area. I set her up a nice desk on rollers in the master bedroom. However, she’s pretty good at managing her work-at-home time, though it probably helps that she’s a film producer, not a blogger.

As a final bit of advice, I suggest that you read a great post at Smart Passive Income that offers some tips on keeping your work and life balanced and yourself healthy.

Image: Flickr.

Will the New Digg 4.0 Bring Back Bloggers?

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Digg used to be one of the foremost ways to promote Web content, though after a series of changes in algorithm, many users who were bloggers, publishers, or SEOs fled. While it may not be used as much for content promotion as in the past, at least amongst my blogging and Web publishing colleagues, it still has some life in it yet. There’s a brand new version around the corner, Digg 4.0, and it has a number of new features, including several that tend to the social. But is it enough Will it bring back all the lost power users? Can it gain ground over the volume of content sharing done through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter? Or is it too late?

How Digg Used to Factor in Blog Content Promotion

As someone who used to write 3-5 anonymous linkbaits per week a few years ago, Digg was crucial to the success of my work; if my content didn’t get the home page, I’d be in less demand. As soon as people started gaming Digg, and Digg reacted to that by changing their algorithms, there was a domino effect. Many smaller publishers and bloggers felt that they were getting cheated while certain sites still got their content on the Digg homepage, even if a lesser known site had a better post on the same topic. Incidents of domain banning also seemed to go up.

In other words, things had just gotten worse for some bloggers and publishers. So why use Digg for promoting content, wasting time, money, effort?  My own services became less and less in demand, at least at the rates that I used to get, because publishers were not willing to spend money on campaigns that might fail on Digg. That ushered in cheap linkbaits cranked out with little quality (though some still do well thanks to voting networks). I in turn stopped using Digg regularly, as did many of my colleagues. I’m not bitter; I just don’t use Digg all that much anymore unless someone asks me.

A typical approach a few years ago, to promote content, might be to use some combination of Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, Stumbleupon, Delicious and other social voting/ bookmarking sites, depending on the niche. Regardless of the combination and the sequence of submission, Digg was often a crucial part of the promotion for some publishers, and it wasn’t working for them anymore.

How Blog Content Gets Promoted Now

Meanwhile, those who discovered the power of Facebook and Twitter for content sharing went that route. These two social networks (yes, Twitter is one, not just a microblogging service) have potentially greater power for creating viral content than social voting and bookmarking sites. Why? Because of a number of reasons:

  1. Trust factor. With Facebook at least, your social network tends to be comprised of people who know you, even if only online. That isn’t always the case with a voting site, even if it allows for “friending,” because Facebook allows for conversation that helps you get to know someone better. Obviously, you’re more likely to re-share web content posted by someone you know than to vote up content submitted on Digg by someone you might know not very well, if at all. Digg did have limited interaction through their “shout” feature, though I think that was dropped a while back. But it wasn’t the same as conversation. The “conversation” is on Facebook, and to a lesser degree, on Twitter.
  2. Wider audience. With 400M+ users, Facebook has a broad range of users, and ultimately, we’re all much more connected than on voting sites. I’m definitely more connected to other users on Twitter than I ever was on Digg or other social voting and bookmarking sites.
  3. Ease of sharing. It’s easy to share content from a range of topics and have someone re-share it, on both Twitter and Facebook. Facebook even gives you a nice little snapshot of what to expect. That means more people are likely to share interesting content.With voting sites, before voting buttons were available for placing on blogs, if you wanted votes, you had to convince someone to sign up for one or more social voting/ bookmarking sites. The probability of success was low then and I’m not even sure it’s that great now, even with the availability of voting buttons. Now, even if friends did sign up, getting them to spend time daily checking on Digg to see if you needed a vote or ten was an uphill battle. If you voted too fast as a group, or if the same people voted en masse, or if you frowned at Digg the wrong way, Digg might punish you — unless you were one of maybe 10-15 sites that seemed untouchable.
  4. Better viral infrastructure. Facebook doesn’t the restrictions Digg imposed, when it comes to sharing content, nor does Twitter. As such, interesting content can go viral sooner, and having the shortest viral loop is crucial for content to become viral. Even just a half-dozen retweets in short order of shared content can help bring in Web traffic and thus be a more valuable approach than using a voting site full of rules. If you cross-promote on Twitter and Facebook, without managing to p*ss off your friends/ followers, the potential for the success of Web content is even higher.

The Return of Digg?

But Digg has been reinvented. Founder Kevin Rose is at the helm again, and there are a slew of new features, many of which are “social.” I’m not going to get into all of them, but the relevant stuff is that you can import your social graphs from Facebook and Twitter. You can also log in with your Facebook profile, though I believe that was there before Digg 4.0’s release. You can also import contacts from GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and AOL, though I don’t know when these features were added. The other features of Digg 4.0 (which by the way is not live yet) are described in a recent Techcrunch post, but as many people are saying, they seem to be copying some of the better features of Twitter and Facebook?

Will these features be enough to bring lost users, especially bloggers, to Digg? I’m willing to keep an open mind, though don’t have the time to invest again. But before completing this post, I thought I’d synchronize my original Digg account with my Facebook account, in preparation for Digg 4.0 going live. Unfortunately after going through three or four registration screens, I got a “Yikes, we just had an error.”

The voting/ bookmarking flavors of Social Media can still work, provided you follow some simple tips, but I’m not sure Digg will be in my arsenal anymore. Me, I’m sticking to Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Delicious and a few others. Still, if you ask me to Digg and I like the content, I probably will. You can add me on Facebook; just remember to make a mention of why you’re adding in the message area or I’ll ignore the add.

Performancing Blogosphere Roundup – May 18, 2010

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You might already know that social news and voting site Digg is undergoing some changes that’ll be rolled out in the near future. But if you want a glimpse of what the changes might be, TechCrunch has an annotated version of a picture that Digg CEO Kevin Rose tweeted over the weekend, with a bit of an analysis. The picture is of Rose’s MacBook Pro screen, though the sun’s glare makes it a bit difficult to see much. (An updated picture, albeit smaller, shows the screen more clearly.) From TechCrunch has gleaned, it appears that the new Digg will be even more social, with user avatars showing more prominently, embedded status updates related to story items and more. [Image courtesy of X64bit.]

Do you do a lot of downloading, screen captures, podcasting, video blogging or screencasting? Well then Seagate has a monster hard drive for growing data storage needs. Thinq is reporting that Seagate has confirmed an upcoming 3TB drive for later this year. That’s TeraBytes, as in 1,000 times a GigaByte. My MacBook Pro’s 500GB drive is filling up awfully fast, but that’s due to photo and video work I’m doing with my wife, a filmmaker. I have a few internal drives in my blogging setup, though one is for backups and the other requires two USB ports and gets whiny sometimes and simply doesn’t function. While a 3TB drive does sound tempting, from a purely mechanical point of view, I’d much rather have three 1TB drives or six 500GB drives. This would allow you to assign drives for different purposes, and if one fails, you don’t lose all your data.

Postrank is reporting that traditional hosted blog platforms such as Blogspot, WordPress and Typepad are still way ahead of supposedly popular microblogging services such as Tumblr and Posterous. ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick provides a bit of an analysis of the Postrank report, showing that Blogger is the king of comments. But while hosted blog services serve their purpose, if you’re trying to build a brand, you want to host your own blog, using WordPress, Drupal, Moveable Type, Joomla, Expression Engine, etc.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has published a report (PDF, 19 pages) on their findings of a experiment to study browser signatures. It appears that even if you have cookies turned off, 8 in 10 browsers still leave a unique, trackable signature, like a fingerprint, that could be used to track your surfing — especially if you have Adobe Flash or Java plugins installed. That doesn’t necessarily mean the government is watching you, but rather that it would be a boon to marketers. Of course, there’s an inherent violation of privacy if your browser is ratting you out. On a related note, even the speed and rhythm with which you type in a site’s password could give you away.

Does Your Business Need a Blog?

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There’s a growing segment of bloggers who fall into the “business” category, who blog for the purpose of promoting a business, and you might be or become one of them. Businesses are realizing the value of blogging, especially if they’re hoping to establish an online presence.

Does your business need a blog? The short answer is “maybe.” Not every business needs a blog, just like not every business needs a website. However, if you are building any sort of presence online, then a blog is a very good idea.

Why? A website on its own simply isn’t enough to establish an online presence, unless your domain is “aged,” has tons of high-ranking content (from a search engine perspective) that other high-ranking sites have linked back to, and has consistent new content. Many search engines favor sites with regular fresh content — which means the likelihood of more Web traffic.

While you CAN publish lots of regular content on a non-blog site, the tools for managing non-blog content — e.g., a CMS (Content Management System) — are often far too complex and expensive for the needs of smaller businesses. Blogging systems (a lesser form of CMS) may have their limitations, but as most of the best are free and have supportive communities, they can be a benefit when you’re on a tight budget. A few such as WordPress can even be used as a low-end CMS in incredibly versatile ways.

Simply put, your business website needs a blog because if it’s leveraged properly, your site benefits in terms of Web traffic. Readers also benefit, and if they become regular readers due to regular content, their trust grows and they’re more likely to convert to customers. It’s a win-win situation.

So how do you decide whether to have a business blog or not? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself.

  1. Do you have a bricks and mortar ‘local’ business that would benefit from a broader market?
  2. Do you already have a website that brings you customers or leads?
  3. Do you want your customer base to be more knowledgeable about your product or industry?
  4. Do you want to establish an online presence?
  5. Do you want to sell your business’ products or services online?
  6. Do you know about social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and want to leverage them for your businesss?

There are other questions you can ask yourself, but this is a starting point. If you’ve answered yes to any of these, then having a blog might benefit your business. If this is something you’d like to explore further, search our article archives for other helpful content relating to writing, creativity, productivity and other aspects of blogging. If you have decided to build a business blog and need some help, feel free to contact Performancing Services.

Twitter banned from courtroom, as it should be

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Twitter may allow you to share anything and everything from anywhere, but that doesn’t mean that it’s always right to do so.

Spectators at a Georgia state coatroom have been banned from sending tweets during the course of a criminal trial.

District Judge Clay Land said that Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which prohibits the “broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom”, can be extended to include the use of Twitter.

Both logically and ethically, that makes a lot of sense.

Many criminal trials are extremely sensitive, and judges have an obligation to control how both media and public are allowed to disseminate information.

What’s possibly harder is to enforce such a ruling. Short of confiscating mobile phones and other communication devices upon entering a courtroom, it could be quite hard to ensure that such a rule isn’t breached.

What do you think? Was the judge right to ban Twitter?

Via

How Well Do You Know Your Readers?

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If you have a blog, you most likely have at least a few readers that love to check out your new content. You might even have a few thousand devoted daily readers. Regardless of the number, my question to you is how well do you know your readers?

Have you ever set some time aside to scan through and read all of your comments? What about visiting the blogs of your fellow commentators? By doing this, you can get a really good idea of WHO your readers are and what they are about.

Another great tool is analytics software. You can see where your readers are from, how they found your blog, and how long they typically spend there. This is a ton of useful information that can really help understand your readers.

Why Is This Important?

The main reason why it’s important to know your readers is because they are the people that benefit from your blog. These are the people that use your content in some way, shape, or form. If you know who they are, then you can target your content directly at them.

If you plan to monetize your blog, knowing who your readers are is crucial. Not only will you know your demographics for potential advertisers, but you will also know what type of products and services would benefit your readers. That way you can target your advertising directly at your readers.

This works way better than pasting some random ads into your sidebar or below your blog posts.

So take the time to get to know your readers. It will not only make your blog better, but they will appreciate the fact that you took the time to do so.