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Category Archives: Writing tips

Magic Moment: Unleash the kitchen sink

Written on Thursday 11 August 2011 by Alice

Click my logo to ask me a question!

When you’re writing a post in WordPress, you will see a number of icons at the top of the text field. These will give you access to some applications that help you to make your post look better, such as bold, italic, ~~crossing out~~, bullet points, numbered lists, how to emphasise that some text is a quote, text alignment on the page, link creation, ‘more’ breaks and a spelling check provider.

Magic Moment #5 is looking at the end icon which is called the ‘kitchen sink’.

If you click on it, another line of goodies appears:

And now you can select the size of your headings, underline, enforce justification, change the colour of your words, paste copy into your post from ordinary text or from a Word document, remove formatting if necessary, select and insert a custom character, such as àccénts and symbols ©, indent your text and back again, return to the last action you made and get help.

But a word of warning – don’t go mad and use them all at once! Your post will become almost unreadable – they’re there to be used only when required.

Why bees and wasps would make good (and bad) bloggers

Written on Friday 5 August 2011 by Alice

A busy honey bee (iStockPhoto)

Sitting in my garden, soaking up some much-needed vitamin D, I had time to look up from my book to marvel at the industriousness of the insects amongst my flowers.

We have quite a number of flowers in bloom, in spite of lack of rain recently, and the bees were busily visiting every invitingly-open, brightly-coloured geranium, black-eyed susan and marigold that adorn the side of the lawn. Their persistence was amazing, unwittingly busy in their quest for food and pollen, darting from flower to flower, expertly extracting what they needed.

Of course other insects are equally persistent, as were those pesky wasps that ruined our lunch in the garden when our friends came round. Unphased by waving hands, squeaks and squeals (mainly from me), their aim was to get to the source of available food, unaware of how annoying their presence was to us.

I suppose bees and wasps have to be persistent in order to survive. Bees can be contributed to good bloggers, who regularly provide worthwhile material to read, their hard work providing a source of nourishment that feeds our desire to learn more and improve our lives. Their persistence will maintain the health of the hive (compare that to your niche or business), and when carefully harvested can ensure the survival of your objectives in years to come.

Wasps also have a community to maintain, which in this case is not so desirable. Their maliciousness is unparalleled, and they will use their weaponry in such a way that bees cannot. They will bother and annoy us for their own purposes, and spread havoc wherever they go, leaving behind continuous destruction. Wasps could be compared to spammers, who litter our comment inboxes, bother us with hard-selling tactics and even destroy livelihoods with malware and other unfortunate occurrences.

Persistence is a very good thing if properly managed with the best intent, but it can also be detrimental to all concerned if used inappropriately and without consideration for others. If you want to pursue the persistence path, make sure that what you provide is full of added value, providing material that will help others rather than crowing about yourself, and offering material that is worth sharing and won’t get eliminated by a click of the delete button (accompanied with a scowl).

blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, marketing methods, Writing tips - Tags: added value, annoying, bees, best intent, bloggers, busy, community, health, industrious, nourishment, persistence, sharing, spammers, survival, wasps, worthwhile - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Help! I’m stuck for blog content – ten top tips to ease the flow

Written on Monday 1 August 2011 by Alice

Blaze Communication - guest blogger!

Guest post by Natalie Smith of Blaze Communication‘s The Blaze Blog:

So I’m sitting in front of a blank screen, scratching my head and racking my brains. Surely there must be something I can write about in my blog this week. Back at the beginning of the year when this blog was just a baby I was bursting full of topics, updates and information I wanted to share. But as the winter turned to spring and slowly into summer, finding new content has become increasingly challenging.

As a relative newcomer to blogging I’m keen to take advice on board from those with more experience. I’ve spoken to colleagues, picked the brains of those I know who blog, and trawled the net to gain some inspiration.

I’m not saying that finding new topics now is always easy, nor am I constantly bursting at the seams with industry knowledge to share – but as I continue down the winding blogging road, I find that I worry less about finding new content and each week have something (hopefully) interesting to say.

Having gathered all this information together from a variety of friendly sources, I feel it only fair that I continue to share and help anyone else who is currently also scratching their heads in desperation looking for that elusive blog content.

Here are my top 10 tips I’ve received for producing blog content.

Turn detective – investigate something new and share your findings. In today’s fast paced marketing communications environment there is always something new being brought to market. Be one of the first to give it a go, test it out and share your findings with your readers

Let the press work for you – I love my trade press and am lucky that marketing and communications has plenty to choose from. I’m particularly interested in comment pieces and these are particularly useful for inspiring blog content. Pick one that gets you going. Do you agree completely or disagree vehemently? Either way, use this point of view upon your chosen topic as a starting point and let it flow from there.

Get out and about – it’s going to be depressingly difficult to produce blog content relevant to your industry if you have little contact with that industry – get out there, meet people and interact with industry peers to get your ideas going.

Use your clients – there must be a list of questions that you’re asked regularly by clients or customers. If one person has asked you, there’ll be others out there wanting to hear that answer too. Use this as blog fodder by writing it up and sharing it with the world!

Mistakes – what mistakes or misconceptions have you recently experienced? Again you won’t be the only person out there to have made this mistake or interested in learning how to avoid making it themselves. If you can bear to, write it up and let others know the lessons you’ve learnt.

Learn – training sessions and conferences are massive sources of blogging inspiration. Whether you choose to share what you’ve learnt or comment upon what’s been discussed you’ll get plenty of blog-worthy material from these events.

Break it up - nobody wants to read an essay so don’t tackle big problems head on in your blog. Break down big subjects into bite sized themes and use these to produce multiple blog entries, you’ll find that this is better for the reader and beneficial to you too!

Pick colleagues’ brains – you don’t work in a vacuum so make use of those around you; talk to colleagues, ask them about the projects they’re working on and the questions they’re asked regularly. You’ll often find that a second viewpoint inspires blog content you would never have produced going it solo.

It’s all about give and take – blogging can’t be just about you giving your ideas to the world, read other blogs, get involved in online conversations and be part of the community that you’re setting your stall out in. You’ll soon find ideas popping into your head as a result of participating in the social media community.

And if all else fails? – how about blogging about having nothing to blog about. It’s worked for me today!

If you found this post useful, you may also enjoy reading these blogs from our archive: Top tips for writing web copy and A beginner’s guide to blogging

I hope that you find some of the above useful. If you have any further tips, please do share them with us – all inspiration gratefully received!

The Fairy Blog Mother loves to republish posts that she approves of and thinks would be valuable to her readers.

Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Writing tips - Tags: blog, communication, industry, information, knowledge, Questions and Answers, share, topics, trade press, updates, viewpoint, writer's block - 2 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

How important is spelling to you?

Written on Wednesday 4 May 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

I probably represent the old school by saying I think spelling is really important.

If you think about it, are books published with bad spelling? Even though The Guardian was renowned for its mistakes and typos, it doesn’t conform to that misdemeanour nowadays, with spelling checks on computers there is really no excuse for getting that sort of thing wrong.

(As I type this, WordPress reminds me I’ve spelt ‘misdemeanour’ wrong, and the word ‘spelt’ too, because it is programmed to use American spelling, and being British, I refuse to change it!)

But that is not the kind of bad spelling I’m going on about, it’s the obvious examples due to poor schooling or pure misunderstanding in how the English language should be put together.

Coming back from town today I noticed a new café on our high street, decked out with brightly coloured wording on a fresh, glossy sign. But instead of rejoicing, I sighed deeply. Why is there the need to put apostrophes before every plural ‘s’? To be informed that they provide All Day Breakfast’s, Salad’s and Snack’s was just too terrible for words. I feel like being Lynne Truss and getting up there with a black marker pen and scrubbing out all those miscreant and superfluous pieces of punctuation!

Walking in the country (Berkshire is wonderful at this time of year) I came across a beautiful little cottage with roses above the door and a perfectly manicured garden. A lovingly painted sign on the gate told me to Beware of the dog’s – oh dear, just enough to burst my bubble…

OK, it’s possible to overlook the odd mishap, for example, the correct use of its or it’s, which many people get wrong (including my children’s headteacher from their primary school!), but when confronted with an article that is literally littered with mistakes, which is obvious the writer hasn’t got a clue, really does put you off reading it.

So take heed of your computer’s spelling check when writing your posts – unless it itself is wrong, and there has been plenty of times when that has been the case…

blogs and blogging, Writing tips - Tags: article, bad grammar, bad spelling, computer spelling checks, English language, important, mistakes, misunderstanding, poor punctuation, poor schooling, spelling, The Guardian - 3 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

What is your blogging focus?

Written on Tuesday 19 April 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

I’ve just got time to add a quick post because I wanted to share with you this comment I got from someone I have been communicating with via LinkedIn to help them with their blog:

“I love your blog so much I just added it to my blogroll on my blog. It really helped me. So many people tried to give me advice, but it was all too complicated. Thanks for putting this stuff in easy to understand language for us newbies. I hope your blog helps others as well.”
Connie

Now can you provide a comment that sums up your objectives for having a blog? I know some of you won’t be blogging for a purpose, solely for the pure pleasure of it, but ideally it is wise to have something to focus on when you are writing your blogs, even only to give your posts structure.

My focus is to help beginner bloggers create, start up, survive and succeed with their blogs. Every time I manage this I feel I have achieved a job well done. Certainly Connie is on the right track – long may it continue.

So what is your blogging focus?

Update from 20 April 2011:

I received another comment from a contented blogger which I would like to share with you:

“Your blog is my absolute favorite. I have learned so much from your helpful advice. I am new to blogging and writing. At first my blog was going to be about my unwritten memoir but as I got into it I have written about past present and future and little things in between. I thank you for your dedication in helping folks like me become better in the blogging world. Thanks a million!”
Jan

This is so gratifying to hear I am helping these beginner bloggers get their blogs off the ground. Keep ‘em coming…

blogs and blogging, non-jargon, Writing tips - Tags: achievement, advice, blog, blogroll, comments, complicated, easy to understand language, focus, helping, LinkedIn, objectives, purpose, structure - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

What should be your true reason for blogging?

Written on Thursday 14 April 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

Notice I put in ‘should be’ – because I can’t dictate what you created your blog for. But I can advise you on your blogging style, and how it will relate to your readers.

There are plenty of blogs and their posts out in the blogosphere yabbering away about how to make money. And that is one of the reasons why people create blogs – to make a fast buck. Some do succeed, but you’ll find there are plenty of different ways to do this, and some find it easier than others.

I could include affiliate and sponsored advertising, but then I feel this blog would become too commercial and my readers would be turned off. If you want to make money fast, then by all means go down this route, but it does depend on the kind of readership you may want to attract, on the subject matter you’re blogging about, and how much you post every day. The idea is to create traffic to supply the advertising, and sometimes the quality of the posts do suffer as a result.

But when you come across a blog like that, isn’t it really unwelcoming, distracting, annoying and disturbing? I hate the fact you have to glean the posted material somewhere amongst all that hype and irrelevant material – and let’s face it, much of the advertising doesn’t relate to the post’s subject.

So without these interfering interruptions, you need to be more canny about why you are blogging and how you go about it. Without the advertising you won’t make your immediate fortune, so you’ll have to rely on good content, a scintillating and entertaining style, relevant and required subject matter with excellent, pertinent headlines to compensate.

And another thing, don’t try and sell in your content if you’ve decided not to include advertising. Having established that your blog won’t be commercially cluttered, don’t spoil your posts with hard-sell tactics, as that is not the true nature of blogging.

Blogs are a medium for expression, education, entertaining and example. They are an integral part of social networking, and you don’t sell on this kind of media as it isn’t tolerated. Your blog is a place to explain your ideas to your audience for free, as a gesture of goodwill and an altruistic attitude towards helping other people succeed or have a better life. It is somewhere to expose your expertise, show off your knowledge and spread the word, a resource that highlights the all important answers and provides the solutions for nothing – except for a following, subscriptions, sharing on social media and recommendations to others to come and read your posts.

And of course you reciprocate by thanking them, commenting on their blogs and acknowledging them on social networking and bookmarking sites – once they’ve scratched your back it’s definitely time to scratch theirs!

What makes a post attractive?

Written on Thursday 7 April 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

Your posts need to be attractive to anyone and everything that reads them, as it’s not only people that read blogs; you have to consider the robot element as well.

And when I say attractive, I don’t necessarily mean adding pretty pictures. Certainly your readers may appreciate them, but the search engines and their internet spiders cannot read images and graphics, as they are only programmed to look for words.

When writing a post, it’s important to consider whether it would appeal to your audience. You need to communicate by letting them know you are writing for them, accessing their wave-length and empathising with the way they think. Your posts should be attractive by providing readable, educational, entertaining and informative material that would benefit everybody within your readership.

But your posts shouldn’t only contain pure content alone. You need to consider the other ‘beings’ that frequent your blog.

It is in the nature of blogs to provide continuously updated material on a regular basis, perfect for spider fodder. Spiders also thrive on keywords, especially ones that are in vogue, prominent or heavily requested in the search criteria.

Blogs have specially programmed gimmicks that are designed to appeal to the search engines. These are called categories and tags (I prefer to call them topics and keywords) that should accompany your posts.

The categories group posts together according to their subject matter or topic, and are particularly good for archiving or research purposes. Each category has its own page with the posts that have been allocated to it.

Tags are sourced from your post’s content, and ideally should consist of the keywords so desired by spiders. This is where you highlight the words you think are important, or have found to be popular, so the search engines can find them easily. Each tag has its own page, listing all the posts that have used it, and can be displayed on the sidebar within a ‘cloud’ that shows the most heavily used tags as much larger than the others.

Posts that omit the use of categories and tags are empty and ineffectual. They are missing a trick when it comes to attracting the search engines, gaining new traffic and increasing the readership. They don’t detract from the post’s content, and the audience is hardly ever aware of them, but they are certainly a vital part of making your blog more attractive.

blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, Writing tips - Tags: attractive, audience, blogs and blogging, categories and tags, keywords, people that read blogs, posts, search criteria, search engines, spiders, topic, writing a post - 2 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

The first thing you need to do with a brand new blog

Written on Wednesday 6 April 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

In the beginning, with your new blog, the first best thing to do is to write as many posts as you can. This is because you need to encourage search engine spiders to visit your blog, and once they are there, give them something valuable to crawl over.

Believe it or not, a spider will be sent to a new blog within hours, maybe even minutes, to check it out, just because it is a blog. Blogs are designed to be regularly updated, therefore search engines are programmed to notice new blogs and keep an eye on them just in case they are the ‘next best thing’. Blogs are much more likely to be indexed at the top of the search pages than websites, basically because they are regularly updated, and websites are not.

Therefore, with a new blog, and while you still have the enthusiasm, try and post as much as you can. You need to build up an archive of good quality posts, not only for the spiders, but for the human readers who will be guided there by the search engines, or by those you have invited personally.

Don’t be ashamed of asking your friends and family to visit your new blog – they are ideal candidates, as you may well get truthful, honest and very practical comments. In fact, invite this kind of feedback – how else are you going to know how to improve? They will tell you whether your posts are interesting, the style is good or appropriate, even what niche you should concentrate on.

At this stage, your posts may be more important than what your blog looks like – that can be concentrated on later. Many new bloggers make the mistake (myself included) of concentrating on the appearance of their new blog, whereas actually it’s the content that is the most vital – spiders can’t read pictures and graphics, only words. They won’t give a tinker’s toot about how pretty your new blog is, all they care about are the new posts (sorry all you designers out there!).

Concentrate on getting traffic by making yourself noticeable within the blogosphere (great word!), and then take the time to tart up your blog’s appearance. By then you’ll know what to put into your sidebars, how many you need, and there will be enough content to populate the automated ones.

Next post: what to include within your posts to make them more attractive – to all kinds of ‘readers’.

blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, Writing tips - Tags: archive, comments, content is vital, encourage search engine spiders, feedback, indexed, new blog, regularly updated, traffic, visit your blog, write many posts - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

How you ought to write a blog post

Written on Tuesday 5 April 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

Blogging is not for the faint-hearted. It may be considered something to hide behind, especially if you prefer to write rather than stand up and talk (I used to be like that), but then the danger is your blog becomes stilted, too perfect, too precise.

When I first started blogging and article writing, all those years ago, I was insistent my writing should be the absolute best. I took hours over it, rewriting and changing it, looking up alternative words and fussing over the syntax. And in the end it wasn’t all that good after all!

Then I relaxed, and wrote down whatever came into my head. It made it so much easier to write a post, and I like to think it showed more authenticity in my subject matter. The answer is to become more open and transparent in what you write, and I reveal little quirky bits (which I really should regret) in order to show up my personality(?)!

The idea is to try and get inside your readers’ heads, and think like they think. Don’t sound too intelligent, blogs aren’t meant to consist of academic thesis or much laboured articles. If you don’t understand your readers, do some simple research (it needn’t be complicated or expensive) or even just ask them – what do you want me to write about?

Hang out where your readers are. Immerse yourself in their environment, ask the same questions, wallow in their predicaments, gather this information together and then formulate the solutions. Once you’ve found out what is wanted, write about it in your posts.

What kind of readers would you prefer? Find out what other blogs are they reading, and then comment on them, to draw attention to yourself and your blog. What discussions forums do they frequent? Contribute your opinions or begin a new discussion, post up one of your blog posts and ask for comments.

Be enthusiastic and sympathetic to prospective readers and they will eventually come round to you, especially if you write the kinds of posts they want to read.

blogs and blogging, Writing tips - Tags: article writing, authenticity, blogging, blogs and blogging, discussion, easier to write a post, open and transparent, perfect, precise, questions, readers, research, solutions, write - 5 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Should your posts have a personality?

Written on Monday 4 April 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

It doesn’t matter whether you’re blogging for pleasure or business, it is how you communicate with your readers that will determine your blog’s success.

How your posts are written may depend on the niche, subject matter or industry you have chosen, but you should not lose sight that a blog is not merely an online diary, or somewhere to write articles to get them published on the web, for more people to read your work and to expand your online presence.

Unfortunately that kind of stuff is incredibly dull. For me a blog should not be boring, it should be somewhere to inspire your readership, cultivate your knowledge, practise your passion, explore your expertise, strive to succeed as ‘the’ thought-leader in your chosen subject – and all this hard work will show up in your posts, making them readable and more likely to be shared.

And sharing is important! A blog should resemble a community, or the ‘hub’ of your business, somewhere for you and your readers, followers and subscribers to communicate. It doesn’t matter whether they are potential customers or not, who knows what influential person may read your posts and share them amongst his colleagues? And remember ‘every’ reader is equally important, not to mention valuable, so make sure your posts reach out to everyone who visits your blog.

Ideally you should be ‘talking’ to your audience through your posts. For me, ‘talking’ is the operative word, as good and readable posts are ones that ‘communicate’ with their readers, rather than preaching to them. When I write my posts I try to make it as if I am holding a conversation with my readers, with me desperately trying to type it down fast enough before it disappears into the ether…

And this ‘hub’, this ‘community’ your blog is trying to emulate, make it so that anybody who is interested can visit to read what’s on offer, and can feel free to participate. It’s the commenting on the latest post or adding their pennyworth to an existing discussion that makes a blog come alive! Cultivate these conversations by putting in a personality into your posts; make them encouraging, informative, friendly and accommodating – and add in a leading question or call to action to prompt a response too!