Fairy Blog Mother
I keep an eye on many LinkedIn Groups, especially those about blogging, and one post caught my eye. It was from someone who wanted to know about forming a blogging mentoring service, and being the altruistic kind of person I am, I gave him my 10 opinions of what a blogging mentoring service should provide:
1. You need to be aware of business’s blogging needs; this includes explaining how blogging can benefit a business, small or large, to increase its online visibility and its audience on the net;
2. You need to research into why people have blogs (or don’t have blogs); blogs are created for a myriad of uses, business and personal, and therefore have very different styles – alternatively there may be many potential bloggers who need encouragement to start one;
3. You need to understand what blogs are used for, and whether they are used properly; similarly to above, blogs fall under many categories, but you need to understand their purposes to advise on the best practices;
4. You need to explain blogs need to be regularly updated, and to find out whether help is required with writing posts; blogs aren’t really blogs without consistent new material, so ideas for post subjects and writing styles are usually welcome;
5. You need to find out whether bloggers fully understand SEO and explain how keywords can help their blogs; this subject, once properly aired, stimulate a vast change in a blog’s performance towards its success;
6. You need to check whether they have they fully optimised sidebars; so many blogs have neglected sidebars and don’t use their widgets adequately, mainly because they don’t understand or appreciate their functions;
7. You need to advise on which plugins they need; for WordPress.org blogs these applications help enhance the blog’s performance to further it towards popularity and success;
8. You need to talk about integrating their blog’s design with their website or corporate image; using the myriad of themes available, some of which can be adapted or redesigned to match an existing style or personality through specialised blog designers (the Fairy Blog Mother is one);
9. You need to show how to get RSS and see if is it being used to its full extent; once acquired, the online world is opened up to automation of post publishing, feeding to social media and other related websites, and visibly interactive headline links;
10. You need to explain how to integrate blogs with social media; related to above, your blog should be the hub of your social networking strategy, fully optimised to interact with your audience, and present and potential customers.
I’m sure there are many more things I need to include (and if you know them, tell me in the comment box below). But in the meantime these 10 will have to do.
Fairy Blog Mother aims to offer much of this advice in this blog, and eventually through her book which she plans to publish in the future. She benefits from people asking her questions, especially specific things you would like to know about blogging and particularly from blogging beginners who may have a selection of questions they are too embarrassed to ask elsewhere.
I plan to change my style in future posts to a more advisory nature, in concise, focused subjects, and if the subject is large, to break it down into smaller posts for easier understanding. The Fairy Blog Mother was formed to explain blogging in easy to understand, visual e-courses, using non-jargon and everyday language, step-by-step with no assumptions that the reader understands technical blogging requirements. She doesn’t mean to be condescending, just informative and educational.
So, what questions about blogging do you have?
