Posts tagged blog community building
Five of the All-Time Biggest Blogging Questions Answered
May 1st
As I teach and speak, I start to see certain themes in the questions I’m asked. Here are the most common questions I am asked about blogging and some answers!
How do I get started with blogging?
- Start with your strategy. What are you trying to do and why? What does “success” look like to you? Money? Community? Actions? New friends?
- Write out the first 25 blog posts headlines you think you would like to compose. Compare this with your strategy. Does it fit? Is there a common theme you can stick to for the long term?
- As far as technology, I recommend using WordPress. It works and it can expand with your needs over time. Leave the tech stuff to the tech people. Spend your time on CONTENT.
- Write consistently. It may take months for you to find your voice and your rhythm. You have to just do it.
- Commit. Carve out time on your schedule to work on this every week. To be successful, it can’t be an after-thought.
- Don’t be discouraged at first. It takes time to find success. Last month, I had the same number of page views as my first 18 months of blogging all put together. Be patient.
How often should I blog?
Depends on your strategy (a common theme!) At a minimum, shoot for one new post per month. But here’s an easy regimen to follow if you want to shoot for one great blog post per week:
- Can you write a 500-word essay on a topic that interests you? Sure you can. In analog terms that is one-page double-spaced. In the old days, you could probably crank that out 10 minutes before class, right? There’s post number one.
- Now, find a a really interesting article in your field. Summarize it, comment on it, provide a proper link and attribution. There’s post number two.
- Find a success story or a customer to love on. Celebrate why these people are special to you. That’s post number three.
- Walk down to customer service. Ask them what the biggest customer question is. Answer it. That’s blog post number four.
Don’t forget to leverage existing content like videos, presentations and speeches. Deputize other resources to help you. Get guest posts from sales, PR, customers, suppliers, community members. It adds to the content diversity and helps build your community.
What do I write about?
In addition to some of the tips above, here are five fail-safe ideas when you get stuck for a topic:
- When you don’t know what to write about, google “what should I write about.” You’ll be amazed at the creative prompts that are out there.
- Go to a relevant LinkedIn group for your industry. Scan through the questions being asked in a forum. Pick an interesting one. Answer it. Great blog post!
- Carefully look at the comments and questions that come in from your community. I would say I get 25% of my ideas from community comments or my own comments on other blogger posts.
- Look at your Google Analytics for the keywords people are using to find your blog. These offer insights into the topics people are interested in. For example, I recently had a keyword of “beginning blogging” so I thought it was time to write an article like this one.
- Collect ideas all the time — something you read or view, an idea in a meeting, a comment from a customer. Just write the headline for the idea in your blog as soon as possible. That way when it is time to blog you’ll have a list of topics to riff on.
How do I promote traffic to my blog?
Depends on your strategy (naturally!). Are you even sure traffic is the right goal?
There are two camps on this — the keyword camp and the creative content camp.
The keyword camp would have you stuff keywords into your content as much as possible — especially headlines and early paragraphs — to attract search engine love.
The creative camp would say people will come to your blog, and eventually the search engines will too, if you really put an effort into fantastic content.
I am firmly in the creative camp. I’m aware of keywords but I’m not wedded to them. My goal is to build community, make new friends and have some fun along the way and I would die if I had to force keywords in every sentence, or even every post. Who wants to read that?
There have been tons of blog posts written about this subject but here are seven things (other than content) that have helped me grow a great community:
- be active in other relevant blog communities;
- earn the right to do some guest posts
- surround myself with awesome people on Twitter (who may be interested in my content;
- make the content easy to share;
- respect and support the people who honor you by reading your blog and commenting;
- blog consistently so people expect new content.
- if you write something truly stellar, ask your friends to help get the word out.
How do I make money from my blog?
There are six ways I know of to make money from your blog:
1) Advertising. This will not work for 99% of all bloggers because the traffic simply is not great enough.
2) Affiliate links (for example links to books on Amazon). Every time somebody clicks and buys, you get a small pay-out. This also will not work for 99% of all bloggers because (you guessed it) the traffic has to be huge to make any significant money.
3) Re-purposing your blog content. Many bloggers have assembled blog posts to create books, e-books and other content they can sell in a number of ways.
4) Sponsored posts. Link-hungry SEO promoters are eager to pay people to add links or even entire pieces of content to a blog. Once you do that, you turn your blog into an ad. People do it. I won’t. Ever.
5) Selling adjacent products. I have no plans to monetize my blog directly, but I’m hoping that people who love the free content will support me by buying adjacent products on my website such as my Social Media From Scratch video tutorials, books, or instant coaching services.
6) Indirect sales. This is the strategy behind my blog. I want to create great content that will make people want to hire me as a consultant, come to their office to teach a class, or give a speech to their association. My blog is basically my marketing strategy.
OK, so there are some answers for you. I’m sure I missed a lot, and as usual, you will provide some more great ideas in the comment section. Your turn!
In an information-dense world, headlines prevail
Apr 18th
By Neicole Crepeau, Contibuting {grow} Columnist
I’ve been extremely busy, lately. With a lot of client work, I have neglected my blog and have been sharing content less on Twitter and G+. Often, I only get to read blogs and share content one or two days a week. When I do, I have to pick which blogs and posts to read from my Feedly list and FeedMyInbox items. My position now is a lot more like that of the average social media user. And it made me ask myself how I’m deciding what to read.
When you’re pressed for time and can only read a few posts, which ones do you pick?
We work to build a subscriber list and a fan base, and we hope that our fans will loyally read our content. For those who have chosen to opt in to our blogs, we hope when push comes to shove, they’ll choose us to read.
I’m finding that being a subscriber isn’t, by itself, though. For me, it’s a combination of:
- The feeds from people I’ve subscribed to. I click less on links posted on social networks now, because I’m spending less time scanning my Twitter feed or G+. I’m more inclined to look at posts from my short-list of trusted bloggers. That’s the good news.
- The headlines that speak to me. When you’re scanning, the headline makes all the difference. Whereas before I might have clicked on a headline that I deemed semi-interesting, now I only click on the headlines that convey a topic that really interests me.
- The hit-rate, or historical quality of the author’s post. This is the one that I think most of us wouldn’t expect. I subscribe to a lot of blogs. Some of them put out posts almost daily. Others weekly or even intermittently. It doesn’t really matter to me how often they post. What does matter to me is what percentage of the posts I find valuable.
It’s the last bullet that I want you to think about. Because I expect that our readers have the same back-of-head quality meter that I do. How many times have you seen a killer headline, clicked on it, and found the post was sub-par? It’s happened too often to me. So while I certainly judge a post by the headline, that’s not the only factor.
Over time, we develop a sense of how often a given author’s posts prove truly really valuable. We have an idea of how well the author delivers on the headline. And when all other things are equal between bloggers, I’m going to open the posts of those writers who have a high batting average—the ones whose posts I almost always find valuable, insightful, thought-provoking, or useful.
So, if you’ve been striving to post every day, even when you don’t have something really ground-breaking or valuable to say, remember that the average reader has a quality meter. When push comes to shove, the historical quality of your posts may be the deciding factor on whether users read your latest post. That fact might change your approach to blogging.
Neicole Crepeau a blogger at Coherent Social Media and the creator of CurateXpress, a content curation tool. She works at Coherent Interactive on social media, website design, mobile apps, & marketing. Connect with Neicole on Twitter at @neicolec
What do I write about?
Apr 12th
In our information-dense world, I know how hard it is to keep coming up with consistent, compelling, original content. And sometimes you just get STUCK.
The problem is, many folks think they need to have all the answers to write a great, original blog post but most of the time, quite the opposite is true. You don’t need to have the right answer. You need to find the right question.
The most relevant, interesting and timely blog posts often are created in response to relevant, interesting and timely questions. If you can find a great question, and answer it, you are likely on your way to a dynamite blog post! So how do find the right question? Here are four ideas:
Look to your peer groups. There are so many great places on the web to find questions. My favorite place is a LinkedIn forum. Did you know there are 800,000 different groups on LinkedIn? There is bound to be one that fits your interests. Go there. Look in the community forums. Find an interesting question. Answer it. Voila! Blog post. Other possible sources are Quora, Focus and Yahoo chat groups.
Look in your comments. I would say 25% of my posts come form comments from my readers. If it is relevant to them, it wold probably be relevant to other readers too, right? Ironically, this post was inspired by a comment about writer’s block from my friend Jon Buscall.
Look in your key words. Many people post questions as their search terms. Go to Google Analytics for your website and see what questions people might be using to find your blog. Recently one of the search terms used to find this blog was “how do I start blogging?” I thought it was probably time to write about some blogging basics.
Google it. If you are really, really stuck, go to Google and type in “what do I write about?” You’ll be amazed at what you find. People have planted lots of seeds of ideas and prompts for you out there.
How do you get unstuck? Where do you find the best questions to blog about?
An inside view of the blogging process
Apr 8th
Mitch Joel recently threw down the the gauntlet and challenged a number of bloggers to blog about how they blog (does that make sense?) I highly recommend you read his original article called “Watching me Blog.” I only caution you about trying to match Mitch’s pace. There is Mitch, and then there is the rest of us!
Here is an insight into my typical blogging process:
THE BIRTH OF A BLOG POST
I am constantly bombarded with ideas so collecting inspiration for topics is a continuous process. I may have an idea from something I see on TV, something I read, or a question from a student in class. The trick is to have the discipline to capture these ideas when they occur. As soon as I can, I record these topics as a headline in WordPress, nothing more. That way, when it is time to blog, I have a wide selection of potential topics.
I currently have about 70 ideas in the hopper. Some of them will never see the light of day. Maybe some of them will be combined or trashed. Some of them you will see this week!
TIME TO WRITE
I usually do all of my blogging for the week in about a 3-4 hour period on a weekend morning. It has to be quiet with no distractions. In this period my goal is to write at least two blog posts for the upcoming week. Usually I can write though an idea quickly but sometimes it takes adding and massaging over a couple of weeks to flesh out a big new idea.
During this quiet time I JUST WRITE. I don’t necessarily spend a lot of time trying to be perfect right off the bat. Editing and refining can come later.
I also try to write ahead if I can so I have a few completed posts in case something happens and I can’t blog for some personal reason. I have about 10 posts in reserve. I rarely write during the week unless there is a short-term topical opportunity.
FINAL FLOURISHES
On Sunday night I’ll figure out what posts I’m going to publish for the week. I’ll take a last look at these pieces, do a final edit, and then “decorate” them with illustrations or graphics as needed. I don’t often get feedback on the funny illustrations I come up with, but in my mind this is one of the fun reasons to come to the {grow} blog and it is a creative challenge for me to come up with something that will make you snicker. My rule is that if I can’t execute an illustration idea in 10 minutes, I move on to something else. I have to be very disciplined about the time I spend on blogging.
At this point I’ll also spend some more time on the headline. Headlines are so important — more important than the actual blog copy because if you don’t grab your reader’s attention, they’ll never even get to the copy. I find headlines very difficult to write. They must be accurate, descriptive, interesting and most of all, “tweetable!” You have to make your posts easy to share!
PUBLISH
I have never posted an article that I have been completely happy with, and many times I’m a little nervous about what the reaction might be. Ultimately it takes courage to be an effective blogger, to put yourself out there, to be confident enough to be imperfect, and to take your licks.
My decision on what to publish is often determined by my work schedule. If I think a post will generate a lot of comments, I won’t publish that on a day that I can’t pay attention to the comment section. I post from one of the amazing {grow} contributing columnists on Wednesdays and a cartoon on Friday so I know I will have at least those days completely free to do client work.
COMMENTS
The best part of the blog is the community commentary. Here is my philosophy on comments:
- Comments are an opportunity to celebrate the people in your community.
- When people offer you a gift of their precious time to provide a comment, it only makes sense to give them a gift back and at least say “thank you.” I try to acknowledge most comments.
- Comments build community. This is where you create meaningful connections. I have written a lot about power and influence on the social web. In my estimation, the blog comment section is where the action is (and ironically it is not considered in a Klout score!).
- If you put yourself out there, you’re not going to connect with every person, every time, even in a community of well-intentioned professionals. Don’t be thrown off-center by criticism. It’s a sign that you took risks. Take the high rode, stay positive.
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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