How to blog

a workshop

Saturday, April 8, 2023

What we’re going to cover

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• Why blog?

• The blogging work flow

• Some useful formats for blog posts

• Useful and Unique Content

• Post Length

• Granular (One Topic) Posts

• Using Titles Effectively on Blogs

• Scannable Content

• Basic HTML Tags

• Useful tools to aid blogging

• Recommended reading

Blogging definitions

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• There’s no point having a blog if you aren’t going to write it yourself

• The whole point of blogging is to start or participate in a conversation

• In cyberspace, nothing ever really gets deleted

Remember

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• There’s no point having a blog if you aren’t going to write it yourself

• The whole point of blogging is to start or participate in a conversation

• In cyberspace, nothing ever really gets deleted

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“Writing is thinking on paper.” William Zinisser

“It was obvious from the start that it was revolutionary.

Every writer since the printing press has longed for a

means to publish himself and reach – instantly any

reader on earth… it heralds a golden era for journalism.”

Andrew Sullivan

• Somewhere to think

• Sharing things

• Connecting to the network

• Listening

Why blog?

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• Somewhere to think

• Sharing things

• Connecting to the network

• Listening

The blogging work flow

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• Reading

• Collecting

• Writing

• Editing & publishing

Some useful formats for blog posts

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• Short advice pieces

• Top fives, top tens, top anything

• Useful links

• Round-up

• Opinions

• Scoop

Useful and Unique Content

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• What is good content?

• Usefulness & uniqueness

• Useful

• Entertainment

• Education

• Information

• Debate

• News

• Community

• Unique

• Research your readership

• Distinguish ourselves

Post Length

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• Reader Attention Span

• SEO

• Quantity of Posts

• Topic/Genre

• Comprehensive Coverage of the Topic

Granular (One Topic) Posts

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• Categories

• Readability

• SEO

• Posts

• Benefits of Granular Posts:

• Ease of Use

• SEO

• Ease of Writing

Using Titles Effectively on Blogs

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• Grabbing Attention in Search Engines

• Getting RSS Readers Attention

• Loyal Readers

• Search Engine Optimisation

• Using Titles Successfully

• Keep it Simple

• Grab Attention

• Meet a Need

• Describe

• Use Key Words

Scannable Content

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• Lists

• Formatting

• Headings and Sub Headings

• Pictures

• Borders/Blockquotes

• Space

Basic HTML Tags

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• General tags

<b>bold</b>

<strong>strong</strong> (usually bold)

<u>underlined</ul>

<i>italics</i>

<em>emphasis</em> (usually italics)

<strike>strike through</strike>

<center>This centers text on the page</center>

<tt>teletype text</tt> (typewriter text)

<blockquotes>blockquotes</blockquotes> (how this looks will depend on your CSS template but it usually indents your paragraph)

• Links

Basic Link: <a href=”url”>link title</a> (where ‘url’ is the page you want to link to and ‘link title’ is the word/s that you want the link to say.

Email Link <a href=”mailto:EMAIL”></a> (where ‘EMAIL’ is the email address you want to be a link).

• Heading tags

• <h1>An important heading</h1>

• - <h2>A slightly less important heading</h2>

• - <h3>A less important heading again</h3>

Useful tools to aid blogging

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• Blog readers

• Search engines

• Wikipedia

• OneNote

• Online bookmarking

• Tagging

Recommended reading

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• Farhad Manjoo: how to blog

Web Magazine Slate’s technology editor has some sound advice on blogging

• Seth Godin: how to get traffic for your blog

Seth's full post contains 50 tips on blogging

• WordpressTutur: how to blog like Om Malik

Raj's full post contains further points, and expands on each.

• Andrew Sullivan’s essay on blogging in the Atlantic magazine: why I blog is an inspirational

piece from one of the masters of blogging as a form.

Thank youTim Aldiss

SEO & SM Consultant

tim.aldiss@thinksearch.co.uk

More tips

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• Interactive Blogging – While occasionally I come across a blogger that doesn’t want too much interaction with their readers I get a lot of questions from bloggers asking how to get MORE interaction – particularly around how to have a more interactive comments section.

While a major impact upon comments is the number of visitors you have on your blog there are definitely strategies for getting more comments (also check out this post on The Secret to Interactive Blogging). The main tip I’d give on this is to be interactive with the readers

you have. Start with what you’ve got and build from there rather than complaining about what you don’t yet have.

• Copyright – This point is so important that it deserves it’s own post (perhaps someone would like to write one and I’ll link to you). But keeping it brief I’ll say this – acknowledge your sources, use quotation marks when you’re writing something that is not your own words, link

to those who inspire your ideas or whom you quote and if want to publish something that is longer than a few paragraphs ask for permission first. Use your manners and you’ll also probably be within the law (my lawyer friends will kill me for that one – but in most cases I’ve

found it to be true). A little more on this topic at The Etiquette of Linking.

• Names are Important – 42% of SE searches are for product, brand and or company names. If you want to be found by people using search engines you might want to consider your use of names as keywords!

• Quality AND Quantity – Quality of posts is so important – I don’t know any reputable blogger who wouldn’t agree with that, but a little written about tip that I’m also a believer is that most successful blogs also have large quantities of content. I’m not arguing for loads of

meaningless and unhelpful posts, but one area to consider in taking your blog to the next level can be how to generate larger quantities of posts on your blog.

• Relevancy – I was speaking with one blogger last week who told me that his strategy for keeping his blog frequently updated was to put a full day each week into writing content for his blog where he’d write 10 to 15 posts all at once. Then he’d set his posts to go off

throughout the week – two per day. This is a good strategy on some levels as it does help keep your blog ticking over – but the problem this blogger runs into is that his blog is a news related blog and that writing 7 days in advance means the posts are a week out of date

by the time they appear. Frequent posting is one thing – relevant and fresh content is another. If your strategy is to use advance posts it might be worth starting a blog in a non time specific niche and genre.

• Time Specific and Evergreen Posts – Related to this last point is that some posts are more ‘time specific’ than others. Some posts are out of date within a day or two of writing them (and as a result won’t ever be looked at much) whereas other posts are more ‘evergreen’ in

nature (ie they will be as useful to your readers today as they will be in a year’s time). It’s worth pondering this topic and deciding what type of posts you’re going to concentrate upon. I’ve written on this further at Evergreen versus Time Related Posts and in a mini series on

Increasing the Longevity of Key Posts.

• Establish Boundaries – One of my first ever posts was on the topic of setting boundaries for your blogging. This is both for your own sake (personal safety etc) but also for that of your readers (in that boundaries can cover what is and isn’t acceptable for your readers to

contribute to discussions etc and that it’s good for them to know what to expect on your blog in terms of topic).

• Mix up your Sources – A problem that I’ve seen some bloggers struggling with recently (and fall into the trap of myself from time to time – especially when tired or in a rush) is to get into a rut in terms of the other blogs and news sources that are used behind stories. While it

will be natural to be linking repeatedly to blogs in your own field it can get to the point where every post you post links to the one place. While the blogger you’re linking to probably doesn’t mind, your readers could well get to the point where they just read the other blog

rather than yours. Mix it up.

• Using Story, imagination, emotion – I’m not going to say much in this one except to get your hands on a copy of a book called Lovemarks (aff link) which, among other things, talks about how sensuality, mystery and emotion are being used more and more in marketing. I

think there are some great hints in this for bloggers.