Posted by Alice on Friday 27 August 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
Someone on LinkedIn asked a question if blogs are businesses. Many of the answers wittered on about affiliate and sponsored advertising, as if making money made your blog a business. I sometimes wonder how much money these blogs actually do make… I personally ignore all advertising I see on blogs and just concentrate on the posts.
There is also the old adage that a blog can help your business (and I’ve written plenty about that before), but have you considered how a blog could be adapted to become an integral element of your business, rather than a useful accessory?
You could adapt your blog to become a blogsite (a website using a blogging platform such as Wordpress that is self-hosted) to become a more substantial business tool. The alternative to having irritating adverts would be to write the pages to incorporate e-commerce (shopping carts) for visitors to buy e-courses, products, services, etc, because the blog is self-hosted, you can include any kind of HTML or web-programming for money-making functions.
Your entire blog can be adapted to become a very effective website, suitably programmed to attract SEO, internet and audience traffic, and RSS feeds to social media and elsewhere. The blog news-stream will attract a readership which can be directed to the other pages on your blogsite, which in themselves should be transformed into effective landing pages for email and Google Adword campaigns. I note there are effective sales pages programmes available for Wordpress now.
Why not take advantage of a blog’s ability to become a membership site. The privacy and password protected posts and pages will enable you to gain paid-for subscriptions for members to view certain elements of your business. You could also build up a membership or forum, like a sort of ‘Inner Circle’, or even provide individual page access for particular subscribers or customers. This feature is extremely easy to set up, even for a Wordpress.com blog (see my e-courses on the sidebar).
This proves I don’t see blogs merely as somewhere to post up your thoughts, or even somewhere to put up advertising, but certainly occupying a viable position for making a business successful.
Posted by Alice on Tuesday 24 August 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
There is one thing that will get your blog’s audience going, and that is your passion for your subject. They may be inspired by your writing, revel in your enthusiasm, absorb your knowledge and be in awe of your expertise, but it will be your passion that makes them come back for more!
It will be your passion that will make you write more posts, which means more new material, and thus more information to entice the search engine spiders to visit to index your posts. This in turn will therefore publicise your blog to a wider audience. Your great content will also encourage more readers to subscribe to your RSS feed, which in turn can be fed into social networking sites, exposing it even further through viral marketing and sharing tactics.
Your blog needs to have a subject you really enjoy writing about. It needs to be as wide as possible to stimulate you to undertake relevant research for your readers, to transform this information into something new, taken from your experiences and expertise. If you find a subject that has been blogged about many times before, don’t be put off; write about your point of view, how you see the situation, what slant you can put on it, what you can recommend or what item you have found that you wish to share. This makes the subject far more interesting to read, rather than purely writing blandly about a much quoted theme.
Eventually posting passionately should become a way of life. You will learn to find new content wherever you are, something will stimulate a possible post, or your brain will be inspired to think in another way to express your thoughts or observations. This then needs to be reverted it into something relevant that will interest your readers, providing them with a passionately inspired post written with them in mind, designed to entertain them suitably to encourage them to either comment or return for more.
Posted by Alice on Thursday 12 August 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
Driving to work today, a relevation came to me. For years I had just accepted the forward slash as being parts of a URL or web-address which I didn’t need to question. They seemed to be like the mortar that held the bricks together.
But now I understand them as gateways for the server (the hosting area where your domain name is held) to direct visitors (or spiders) to another portion (file/section/page/post) of your blog.
For example, the URL for this post http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/what-does-a-forward-slash-signify/ shows the domain name (the web address of this blog) followed by a door (the forward slash) to go to the page (the blog post) which contains the above title. (Don’t forget that each post has its own page and therefore a URL allocated to it.) The forward slash also allows these elements to be separated, comprehended and archived.
Let’s look at this URL for the beginning of my Wordpress.com blog course: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/com/create-a-blog/. First is the domain name of this blog, with a door (slash) leading to the parent page ‘com’, with another door/slash which leads to a child page ‘create a blog’, with another slash ready should a grandchild page become available.
If you wrote the full URL without slashes, the server wouldn’t understand that a) the information was separated and b) which areas (page or file) it was to go to, and there would be no methods of conveying the blog user in the right direction.
Well, that’s my interpretation of the forward slash – what’s yours?
Posted by Alice on Wednesday 11 August 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
At my brother’s 40th birthday party last month my father came up to me and said I was looking podgy, just like my great aunt Margaret. Well, that raised my ire (if not my blood pressure), partly because my great aunt was morbidly obese and a hypochondriac, and partly because it was true (ideally I should lose three stone or 42 pounds).
So since then I have been down the gym every week day (can’t quite manage the weekend), pounding away on the treadmill in the hope of losing a bit of weight, the spectre of my terrifying relative looming up to goad me to keep wobbling on…
Treadmills are great places to think, and I wondered if all this consistent activity was doing any good (though the scales said otherwise). With my brain switched into blog mode, I remembered I’d recently read that blogs become more successful the more you post. This is obviously true, as all this new material constantly being churned out is like a continuous buffet for the search engine spiders, who feast on this content before returning it to be indexed.
Prolific bloggers post several times a day. Woah, why? I hear you ask. Well, if your blog’s purpose is to make money through the advertising and affiliate links it contains, this can only be achieved through a constant flow of traffic, and continuous indexing of your posts, combined with your audiences subscribing to RSS feeds and newsreaders, traffic alert systems and social media scrutinising, will bring in the necessary quota of readers to make your financial ventures successful.
But what is the optimum minimum? Three times a week – quite a respectable and achievable goal. I manage this for my boss’s blog, but not my own, partly because I have other commitments after work (going down the gym for example) that take up my time. You can see from your blog stats that consistent posting will easily maintain your traffic and readership loyalty much more than a flurry of activity followed by a period of famine. Spiders are hungry and need continuous feeding, and if neglected may easily search their nourishment from elsewhere.
And what if you want to start up a blog or resurrect it from a period of abandonment? Then you need to publish as many days as you can (a bit like me going down the gym) as consistently as you can manage with the correct kind of content (or diet) that will sustain interest and build up a following. Reduce the size of your blogs (I’m sure mine are far too long) by breaking them down into many subjects that can be posted independently, and keep an editorial diary to stimulate and store new ideas to prevent a post drought. Watch out for another post about what to write about soon – there, I’ve given myself another subject to research and deliver to you!
Posted by Alice on Wednesday 4 August 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
A blog carnival is a great way of getting more traffic to your blog.
It is referred to as a blogging event or community, or even a magazine. All these terms are confusing, so my interpretation is that a carnival is a special blog whose posts contains links or permalinks to other related blog posts within a particular subject or topic.
If you think of it like a magazine, a blog carnival contains a title, topic, editors, contributors, audience and a regular publishing schedule. The editor or host gathers together relevant and recently written blog posts on a predetermined topic. These are then listed in the carnival post, accompanied with the host’s comments, remarks and opinions to assist with comprehending the subject matter and choosing the relevant permalinks to read.
If you think of it like an event or community, it is a place where like-minded bloggers come together to collate, share and follow each others posts within a specific subject. New material is submitted regularly according to the schedule, and the collection of links within the carnival is extremely attractive to both search engine spiders as well as committed readers, hence why it’s good for increasing traffic to your blog.
If you’re interested in contributing to a blog carnival, browse through the Blog Carnival carnival index and find one that is relevant to your niche. Many have a homepage that explains the carnival’s subject, submission details and how often it is published. Also, take the opportunity to read past posts to see if this carnival is the right one for you, and to get the general style and content. It is also a great way to meet other bloggers and use the blogosphere fully. Enjoy!
Posted by Alice on Wednesday 21 July 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
In my research into questions blogging beginners would ask, this question caught my eye. I remember it was a part of a blog that took me ages to work out what it was. I had uploaded the associated widget onto my sidebar and there it stood in its default mode for months. The term ‘blogroll’ was confusing, as it raised other unsuitable connotations within my untechnical brain.
Both kinds of blog
So, what is a blogroll? Basically it is a list of links to recommended websites. Originally it was meant as a list of other blogs the blogger wished to share with his readers (I suppose a ‘roll’ is such a list), but now any kind of website or resource can become part of a blogroll, as long as it has a URL. People usually use their blogroll to link back to their website if the blog is used for business or as an addition to their online visibility.
Links are what makes a blog, as I said in my earlier post The importance of links within blogs. Having a blogroll that links up to many well-rated sites, and to those that return reciprocal links, will raise your status within the bloggosphere. Links are essentially gateways or portals that enable both spiders and humans to travel from site to site, so linking up to a higher-ranking blog may give you necessary credit.
Blogrolls can either be shown as a list of contextual links (the name of the blog with the URL behind it):
(Acknowledgements to Karen Skidmore’s KickAss blog, who definitely knows how to create a good blogroll)
or in image form with each banner or logo of the sites in question:
(Acknowledgements to Success Network blog, in which I regularly contribute)
Obviously the latter is more work, but if you want your blog to be visual, this is an exciting way to do it.
So how do you create a blogroll, both kinds? Well, I have written two visual e-courses on these subjects which I am happy to share with you:
Editing the blogroll or links
Placing images on the blogroll
Enjoy!
Posted by Alice on Monday 19 July 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
Blogging and micro-blogging are both forms of social networking. Of course you’ve already sussed that micro-blogging is a shorter version of blogging, and it is, as a more concise, focused version.
Blogging allows you to express yourself in a chatty, conversationalist manner in as many words as you like. How long your posts are is open to contention and depends on what purpose you write your blog for, but I think they should not be over long. Blogs are newsy and should be aimed at your readers who don’t have a lot of time, and are looking for a quick fix to get their information or be entertained with knowledge that is in the ‘now’. (Anything that is over 750 words could be termed as an article, especially if it is extreme in its technical language and the audience it is aimed at, and really should be allocated to online article directories.) Posts can also be controversial, argumentative, opinionated, poignant, show-stopping or thought-provoking. There is room for expression as well as pictures and other media such as videos and audio. They are also archived for researchers and for reference in the future, and posts are shared with your audience through subscription services and RSS to feed them into other social networking profiles or streams.
Micro-blogging is also known as Twitter. (It could also be considered as updating your social status fields in your social networking profiles, or chatting with your friends on msn or other communication methods.) The nature of this activity is that it is short, quick-fire, concise and limited to a small number of characters (Twitter is 140, on other social media it is more). Because you are constrained in what you can say, it is mostly in letter characters, and if you want to expand your thoughts you need to direct your readers through a (usually shortened) link to a blog post or Facebook fanpage or LinkedIn Group or whatever source you like. This is the same for other media such as pictures, video, audio, etc. But the main reason is to share information with an immediate audience as a real-time updating service, revelling in the concept of ‘now’ or otherwise it has gone, catching your audience as it passes through and hoping your contribution is suitable enough for them to share it with their followers.
Posted by Alice on Friday 16 July 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
Blogs thrive on links. In fact, blogs are full of links, contained mostly in the content of the sidebars, both internal (navigation around the blog) and external (destination exits or entry from referral sites). You can tell which are links on this blog because they are coloured purple, and change to pink when you mouse over them. I’ve also made the images interactive, linking to specific posts and pages within my blog.
Both kinds of blog
Think of links as doors or portals for gaining access to elsewhere. You can see this is how search engine spiders travel through, to and from blogs and websites, and humans can too. Because links are interactive, they both allow access and attract activity to and within the blog. The power of links are such that connections with the right kind of high-ranking website or blog can boost your rankings in the search engines, tags (keywords) interact with what is up-to-date within the search engines, categories aid archiving as well as search engine optimisation, and each post’s permalink is used with subscriptions to search engine readers, and RSS feeds to social networking sites, blogs and other resources.
A blog’s links come in many guises: the blog’s domain name, the post’s headline which becomes a permalink, contextual links (keyphrases linked to relevant destinations) within posts, the tags (keywords) and categories (topics) after the post, comments (links to the commenters), the blogroll or list of links to recommended websites, and RSS feeding your new material to a subscribed audience.
• Your blog’s URL, domain name or web address is a link. People are divided whether keywords should be part of your URL or whether it should just reflect your branding, be rememberable and easy to spell. This is the main form of access to your blog.
• Each post’s headline automatically becomes a permalink, leading to the post’s individual page and URL. This is where keywords become important for search engine optimisation, as well as using marketing psychology to make the reader click on it and read the post.
• When using links within your post, creating them as ‘contextual’ is much more effective. Contextual links are when a phrase within the post is highlighted to become a link, and the relevance of the destination is paramount to increase success.
• After you’ve completed writing your post, carefully select relevant tags (keywords) and categories (topics) to boost your search engine optimisation. If you have a .org blog with the All-in-one-SEO plugin, don’t forget to fill in the extra SEO fields to aid promotion of your post.
• You should encourage comments to your blog, as they are also considered new material by the search engines as well as the links they generate. And you could increase traffic to your blog by commenting sympathetically and appropriately on other blogs within your niche.
• The blogroll is a list of links to important, relevant and recommended websites and other resources. If you can arrange a reciprocal link, then that will not only boost your search engine rankings, but increase your audience too.
• And of course, RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, works totally on links. RSS creates a subscription service to deliver new posts to email in-boxes and search engine readers as soon as they’re published. It also feeds your posts as a permalink to social networking sites, each with the post’s title and link back to your blog.
Posted by Alice on Wednesday 14 July 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
People have various concepts of what constitutes blogging etiquette. Of course there are the obvious ones like being nice to other bloggers, and much of these suggestions are just common sense, so no etiquette is set in stone and does rely on the goodwill of the bloggers themselves.
Here are some to consider (and some of these I own up to breaking throughout my blogging career, a fact I don’t relish in and am thoroughly ashamed of):
1. Don’t be rude, show respect and be polite to other bloggers and commenters.
2. Don’t copy other content without asking first. If you are given permission, fully acknowledge the author.
3. Remember to link to your resources and expert sources.
4. Don’t expect anything in return from linking to others, it’s not compulsory.
5. Respond to your comments in a cheerful, positive and thankful manner.
6. Don’t leave spammy comments on other people’s blogs.
7. Use your identity when blogging, don’t hide behind a persona.
8. Own up to your mistakes, it makes you more human and therefore likeable.
9. Stick to the subject of your posts or blog’s niche, don’t go off at a tangent.
10. Use correct punctuation, grammar and spelling, avoid text speak or colloquial language.
11. Don’t pepper your post with jargon.
12. Don’t overdo using keywords for SEO purposes, less than 10% is acceptable.
13. Check what you say is true by researching your facts properly, and never lay claim to content that isn’t yours.
14. Share good posts liberally on social networking sites.
15. Remember everything you publish is on public display, so check whether you really want to say it.
16. Don’t swear or use bad words, it isn’t impressive and can offend.
17. Make sure your pictures are suitably resized, to prevent lengthy downloading of your overlarge images.
How many others can you contribute to my list?
Posted by Alice on Monday 12 July 2010
Fairy Blog Mother
Many people ask this question – how do you find material to write about in your blog?
Well, once you start blogging, you need to change your mind-set. You need to be able to click onto blogging mode (my family hates it when I do) and you need to gradually train your mind to be always on the look out for possible blogging fodder or to become susceptible to recognising suitable post material wherever you go, what you read, what reacts with you or whatever you bump into.
There’s nothing more irritating than forgetting a brilliant idea, so I like to be able to scribble down the gist of this new concept which pops into my head so that I remember it later and can develop it into a blog post – just that I don’t always get the time to regurgitate or finally write it up!
So where can you find stuff to write about?
1. Look in your in- and out-boxes in your email system; you may be fending off questions at work all the time, and if you think you’ve managed to write a successful or relevant reply to a particular query, why not rewrite it as a post so that more people can benefit from your wisdom?
2. Subscribe to a myriad of blogs within your industry; reading what other people write about in similar subjected blogs as you should not be a daunting experience, you should derive inspiration and write about the same things in your own style, taking advantage in the fact that that’s what people are writing about at the moment – but remember, plagiarism is not advised under any circumstances.
3. Set up Google Alerts to receive prompts from other blog; this is another way to how you accomplish the second point, and certainly you’ll find out daily the main projects and topics that are successfully stimulating the search engines. Being aware of hot news and commenting on it yourself will not only draw attention to you, but show you are riding the wave of ‘now’.
4. Be vigilant on social networking sites; this is another way of finding out what’s happening, and I use LinkedIn to generate new content by answering Questions on my particular subjects and responding to discussions on the Groups I follow (this is how I got the idea for this post). Of course there are lots of other sites specifically created to watch and recommend other blogs, such as Digg and StumbleUpon, where there will be lots of new material to read, learn, respond to and share with others.
5. Researching which keywords are ‘a la mode’ right now; for Search Engine Optimisation to be truly effective, you need to find out the most effective and popular keywords or keyphrases that the search engines are responding to at this moment. Leave it any later and they will become yesterday’s news, and you will have missed the boat. Once you’ve found your likely keyword, base your blog post about it for the most effective results, but don’t saturate your post with more than 10% or you will turn off both spiders and human readers.
6. Go out for a nice walk with the dog to let the creative juices flow; there is always something to be said for a change of scene. Quite a lot of stuff outside your place of work will stimulate new ideas, and sleeping on a problem and allowing your subconscious to work overnight will result in new material in the morning. I don’t expect you go to out and start talking to trees and flowers, but even the process of speaking your ideas into a dictaphone or scribbling down all your ideas quickly in a notebook may be enough to generate the perfect post you are looking for.
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