Let's turn our attention now to actually publishing your first article or item. Let's start first though with a few basic guidelines that will make your articles more effective for your readers much loved by the search engines and respected in the blogosphere.
Before you can publish an article you first have to select a blog software tool to publish with. I recommend signing with TypePad first and then BlogHarbor (the company that hosts this blog)
Cost:
TypePad Price Plans:
Basic $4.95/50MB diskspace monthly
Plus $8.95/100MB diskspace monthly
Pro $14.95/200MB diskspace monthy
TypePad's blog hosting service offers a 30 day free trial. If you decide not to continue your account during your trial, you must cancel the account.
BlogHarbor Price Plans:
Standard $8.95/1GB diskspace/1GB bandwidth monthly
Extra $11.95/1GB diskspace/2GB bandwidth monthly
Plus $14.95/2GB diskpace/2GB banwidth monthly
BlogHarbor's blog hosting service offers a 30 free trial. If you decide not to continue your account beyond the 30 days, you don't need to do anything. The account will automatically be deleted.
There is a reason I recommend TypePad first and it isn't because Typepad is a better blog software tool. Typepad has a post scheduling feature that may be of benefit to those short on time for blogging. But here's the deal with this. Not every service is for everyone. BlogHarbor rocks. This service is feature rich with PLENTY of room to grow. I do highly recommend them as their service is outstanding just as is Typepad. You needs may dictate choice here. Typepad may be more commonly referenced because of it's creator SixApart but BlogHarbor is heavy hitter. This guys know what they are doing from where I sit.
If you desire a more detail opinion on which one to go for you can drop me an email at "tpierce3 [ at ] gmail dot com" <-- will you look at this craziness?? Who would have thought the Internet would have come down to writing email address like this? Spammers. *Ack!*
Moving along...
Tutorials
Open An Account And Publish With With BlogHarbor
approx 7 minutes
Open An Account And Publish With TypePad
approx 10 minutes
How To Publish Effective Content For Your Readers
Before you begin writing anything you must know who your market is what is they want. If you are saying to yourself that these questions aren't relevant for your blog because your blog isn't business oriented in any way, I would argue that if you want readers then these questions are indeed relevant.
Where there are readers there is something wanting. People read because they want something. If you want any kind of readership then your content must be something they want.
After viewing the above tutorials you now know how to open a blog hosting acount, write your content and then publish to your blog software tool.
Here are some guidelines to publishing content your readers will love.
Communication. Your communication must be authentic. When you blog or publish content let your true self come through. Blogs are by nature personal and up close in communication. You must let your authentic voice come through. Each blog will be unique because each publisher is unique. Whatever the topic you are blogging about make sure you inject your personality into your writing.
In order to create a loyal readership, visitors must come to trust you and feel like they know you in some way. It doesn't mean that they need to know your personal details but you do need to connect with your audience in a very real way. Keep it simple by just being yourself.
Credibility. Your content must credible and authorative. Your credibility with rest largely with the "voice" of your blog. That is, your authenticity. However, credibility is a slow build over time. Some individuals and businesses bring a level of credibility to the web and have a built in audience. If that isn't you then read on. :)
As you begin to publish content that is found be of high value and useful by others, you begin to build authority. When your audience comes to believe in the value of your content you are building credibility and authority. They will look to you and seek your opinion and advice. These are some of the key factors you will need to build reputation.
Blogs are fantastic reputation builders. What better way to have automated blog promotion and blog marketing activities then with other people who will reference you without you having to ask?
You can build your audience exponentially when you get other blogs to reference your blog content and send you traffic. Blogging has given way to what some are calling newsmasters. Bloggers are in the business of referencing relevant news, facts, information, and content of various kinds that they find useful and when they find something of value to their audience they talk about it or blog it (blogging). Each reference you get to your content can lead to a multitude of additional references as more people who find their way to you also turnaround and link to you as well.
Bloggers act as level of filtering and when people find a blog that is useful they will link to it and refer others to it. You can become the authority within your niche. Others will look to you to filter the news for them on what is valuable and newsworthy.
Your content builds page reputation with Google as others reference you and your blog builds reputation as more people reference you and your readership grows and rewards you with repeat visits. As you learn how to blog, remember you are building credibility, authority and reputation.
Publish Frequently. Publish frequently and publish regularly. A stale blog will not generate traffic from the search engines and it will have visitors leaving your blog like crazy. If you aren't up to the task of publishing on a regular schedule then one of the following:
1. Get someone else to write and publish for you.
2. Publish ahead of time.
3. Get out the game. Blogging isn't for you.
Numbers one and three are obvious. Let me talk about number two which will explain why I recommend Typepad first. I recognize that many people are very interesting in blogging but don't think they have enought time to blog or feel that blogging is consuming more their time then they originally had in mind.
Typepad's blog hosting service offers the option to post to the future or "schedule" posts. So you can manage your time by planning you content ahead of time and then publishing it on a date and time of choice future. This is a powerful feature that is soon to come to BlogHarbor as well. You could site down and write your content on a Sature and have your content publish according to a schedule set for the rest of the week.
Link Often. Take your readers on a journey and link to relevant supporting content and facts to boost the level of important for the point you are make. At the heart of all Internet activity is "search". People like to find stuff! We search for stuff all the time. Take not of how you feel when you read content the references other great content. You get a sense of joy and discovery and you feel smart to for having found it! Help your readers find stuff that get them more reasons to trust you. Your readers will come to your site for leads on other good finds.
Take advantage of the growing obsession with "time" we all seem to have these days. That is one reason why RSS feeds are powerful. They help people subcribe to great content without having to hunt for it and a gazillion individual websites. Help people save time by being an authorative and trusted source of filtered news and high value content.
Teach or Breach. Teach or breach is decide to deliver content that will teach something or breach something. This is highly dependend upon your niche and topics. Brash and irreverant blogs aren't quite what blogs are known for these days. However, having and opinion and breaching sensibilities are is great way to create content that attracts readership. You don't have to breach sensibilities with vulgarity although some find that attractive. You can be witty, humorious, outrageously funny or extremely opinionated and confident. Don't forget authencity. You can inject any ofthese elements without losing your self or your voice. Just do it as you would do it.
You could also decide to teach something. Enlighten people with material that helps them do something that they desire to do. Nothing speak value then content that actually helps people do something. This type of content is of very high value. We all like to learn to do something but more importanly, on the Internet people are always searching for something to learn or something to buy that will solve a problem they have.
Open Comments & Allow Trackbacks. Turn on comments and Trackback so that you can develop a dialogue with your readers and allow other blogs to ping reference your content. If you want to connect with your audience with content that will move them or move them to do something you need to allow them the means to talk back to you. When you give people the opportunity to react to your content you allow them to connect even deeper with your content. This is powerful. Trackback allows other blogs to reference your content by pinging (I talk about this in an earlier How To Blog lesson) your content item. This lets you know that you content is getting attention and it also drives additional traffic to your content.
Riches in Niches. Being a generalist or writing for a broad audience will not be as profitable as writing for a niche. Your riches returns will come from targeting a niche market, topic or theme and focus on the informational needs of those in that market. Focusing on a niche will allow you tighten your message and keep your content relevant.
I believe blogs are identified by two major characteristics that span the multiple types of blogs out there. Blogs build reputation along the lines of personality or topic/theme. I'll stay away from branding for the sake of this discussion. If a blog has a "personality" reputation then this blogger can cover and several interests that don't have be closely related. A personily blog is a blog that is popular because the blogger his or herself is the focus of the blog.
Like a radio "personality' gains popular for their particular "voice" or view on the world and personaly blogger become popular because of certain views they have that appeal to an audience. The kind of blog can carry multiple unrelated topics because the focus isn't the topic or theme of the blog. The focus is the opinion of the "personality" regarding the topics or themes chosen for discussion in that blog.This blogger could blog about technology, law and several other "interests". People are interested in what the personality has to say.
A blog that builds reputation around a theme will need to be more on topic with each published item. General rambling insn't as productive. A themed or topical blog should publishing content that doesn't move away from the central theme but it should touch on any and related information that would assist in reaching and relating to an audience.
There is crossover between the two. A "personality" blog may start out or become popular from within a niche but can also contain blog content about other things as well. Conversely a themed or topical blog should still be infused with the personalily of its publisher and so it still requires the voice or opinion of the publisher to come through while needed to stay on topic.
3 Great Ways to Fighting Bloggers Block
There are more ways than one to lick bloggers block. Your blog software is there to serve you and not intimidate you. You don't have to approach your blog software with the idea that you have to a prolific writing, deep thinker or maintain a journalism degree.
You DO have something to say. If you are feeling stuck, here are some idea making suggestions for creating content for your blog.
Visit other blogs. Visit other blogs that you like and pick up threads of ideas and topics they may be blogging about. If it is relevant for your blog and audience blog about it. You could reply to a post that you like from your own blog using trackback instead of posting a reply directly on that blog. That gives you a reason to post and entry to your own blog and get that content created.
Your inbox!. Oh yes. You know you have something in there of interest that you could blog about. How many newsletters are you subscribed to in areas that you like to stay abreast of? Odds are that your blog might be center around the same and similar topics. You can take content from emails you get and rebutt them, expanding on them, or perhaps blog about information that wasn't covered in that email piece but on the same topic.
Syndicate Your News Updates. You need to subscribe to news services like Topix.net. Topix.net allows you to save searches using keywords. This is essential for bloggers. You can subscribe to the news and get it as it happens. You can go to blog search sites like Feedster, Daypop or BlogDigger run queries using your favorite keywords and them save them as search with and RSS feed. Also PubSub is a great place to run searches and subscribe to them using RSS.
Suscribe to Search with RSS and BlogDigger
approx. 7 minutes
Extra Tip: Did you know you could subscribe to Gmail with RSS (Gmail Google's Web-based Email Server...and it's Free!)? Yep. You can sign up for Google News alerts/updates and have them sent to your gmail account. Using RSS you can you be alerted to the news updates but you also get alerted to all mail that comes in to you inbox. But wait...there's more! You don't have to fire up your browser and log in to Gmail. You can do it straight from your RSS reader. You reader will need to support secure RSS. FeedDemon supports. If you decide to got with FeedDemon and need some assistance with getting it configured to recieve RSS notification for your Gmail inbox, let me know and I can help you.
If you are even remotely considering an RSS reader, there are many on the market that are free. I've tried several and couldn't justify paying for one....that is until I met FeedDemon. You can learn more about FeedDemon my FeedDemon affiliate link a whirl. ;D
This product is quality through and through.
Thank you for continuing with me as we walk through a few blogging basics. Understand that these tutorials are designed to get you started. I'm not trying to capture a comprehensive list of all features, tactics and tips for blogging. Space would not permit. Blogs allow for a wide range of creativity in content creation. We are really only beginning to see the effectiveness of blogs in online publishing and communication so don't worry about watch you don't know. There's a lot out there and news things developing by the hour.
Just get it started and have fun. Our next lesson will be How To Blog 105 where we will discuss strategies for developing a blog that attracts search engines and increase the visibility of your blog and spread the word that your out there. Traffic generation will be our focus.
Until next time. Enjoy!
Then CLICK HERE NOW and I'll Show You Step-By-Step!"!
