“We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves…The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, ‘You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.’ The human spirit is indomitable.”
-Sir Roger Bannister, first runner to run a sub-4 minute mile
Here are 7 questions to ask yourself about how you are running your blog marathon and how well you are utilizing this long blog-race to get your message out.
Answer them to see if you really are blogging purposefully and at the best possible level of empowering a community with your insight.
1. Do I wait until the last possible moment to blog about something or do I treat my blog as if it really can change the world and make certain I blog the change I want to see in the world?
2. Do I blog with envy or do I blog with abundance? Do I understand it’s a marathon not a sprint and I’m not a viral marketer of ideas, I’m an idea-marathoner?
3. Do I celebrate other bloggers’ successes and insights by featuring links to them on my site and my blog?
4. Do I encourage my community to run the marathon with me by blogging questions openly and know that each commenter can contribute to a greater discussion?
5. Is my blog a “have to” or a “can’t but not” blog? Do I view it as a terrible task to get through or do I see it as an immense conduit for expression and empowerment of my community?
6. Do I have a mission statement for my blog? Do I know what I want to engender with my blog content?
7. Do I understand that I’m not blogging just to gain attention, but rather to educate, inform and elevate?
Here are 7 tips to help you blog successfully.
1. The more you post, the more your blog visibility grows. Posting good content keeps the search engines happy and helps drive more traffic to your blog.
2. If you’ll commit to posting on a regular schedule (at least three times a week) for 52 weeks (a year) then before you know it, you’ll have a community depending on you as a perennial resource.
3. Keywords and tags add up over a year’s worth of blog posts and they help drive search engine traffic.
4. If you’ll post for a year, you’ll have an amazing library of content that you can repackage and repurpose for an ebook or another digital offering.
5. The more you comment on other blogs and link to them in your posts, the more you’ll expand your online footprint.
6. Your blog can connect you directly with new peers, partners and potential customers.
7. Your ideas matter and who better to blog about them then you?
Ten Ways to Break Bloggers’ Block Forever:
1. “Use the force, Luke.”
* Writing blog posts are part science, part intuition and part just using “the force” (your keyboard and typing!)
2. Herman Blume: What’s the secret, Max?
Max Fischer: The secret?
Herman Blume: Yeah, you seem to have it pretty figured out.
Max Fischer: The secret, I don’t know… I guess you’ve just gotta find something you love to do and then… do it for the rest of your life. For me, it’s going to Rushmore.
* Blog about that which you love. Truly, madly, deeply. Share the love.
3. Ron Burgundy: I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
* Keep your ego, your mahogany and your leather-bound books in check. Your readers are the most important ones, not you!
4. Cal Naughton, Jr.: Shake and bake!
Ricky Bobby: What does that do? Does that blow your mind? That just happened!
Jean Girard: Is that a catchphrase or epilepsy?
* Find a good catchphrase to brand your blog and its contents.
5. Ethel: Well, I don’t think it’s very intelligent to keep an electrical gadget on the edge of the tub.
Margot: [in bath] I tie it to the radiator.
* Don’t blog from the bathtub – no matter what.
6. Charlotte: I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be.
Bob: You’ll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.
* Don’t blog as someone you’re not.
7. Narrator - “This is a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch. Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations, and remarkably few words.”
*Don’t be a blogger of few words. Don’t endlessly calculate the word count of your blog posts. Be a blogger of infinite content.
8. Dr. Jules Hilbert: What is your favorite word?
Harold Crick: Integer.
*Ask a question as a blog post and get tons of conversations started! Start with one question every Friday, share your answer and encourage others to chime in as well.
9. Veronica Corningstone: I told you that I wanted to be an anchor…
Ron Burgundy: I thought you were kidding. I thought it was a joke. I even wrote it down in my diary – Veronica had a very funny joke today. I laughed about it later that night.”
*Blog your dreams – raise your aspirations - blogger love thyself!
10. Ron Burgundy: …laughing and enjoying our friendship, and someday we’ll look back on this with much fondness.
*Don’t give up! Keep at it and you’ll be amazed at the community you will foster.
Some of my fav bloggers:
Erika Andersen, Mitch Ditkoff, Bill Scheft, Phil Gerbyshak, Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan, Thomas Clifford, Steve Kayser, David Henderson, Britton Manasco, Lois Kelly, Franke James, David Meerman Scott, Arthur Rosenfeld, Alex Skolnick, Steve Roesler, Marty O’Neill , Diva Marketing Blog and most every blog on Alltop.com.
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If you think you don’t have time to blog – then I recommend you purchase a pink egg timer. (I like pink and it’s what I send to blog clients I’m helping.)
It doesn’t really matter what color you purchase, just make sure you put the egg timer on your desk and starting out turn the timer to 15 minutes. Ok, go! You have 15 minutes to create a new blog post.
15 Minutes of Blogging Three Times A Week Helps You:
1. Create short, concise, snappy blog posts
2. Engender fantastic time management for your blogging
3. Focus on posts that are actionable and link to others
4. Keep your reader engaged
5. Maintain conversational blog posts – authentic and your style.
You don’t need to post “War and Peace,” length blog posts. You’ll still get plenty of search engine juice by using keywords on short posts and try to always employ an enticing headline!
Whatever you do, don’t let the fear of blogging taking too much time, derail you from using this amazing communication tool.
Go on, get the egg timer and start your blog cooking!
If you’re new to blogging and you want to come up with posts to inspire viewers to “read and click-forward” to friends, then one way to determine what you want to write for your readership is to look at characters in movies.
One of the tricks that screenplay writers often employ to avoid writer’s block is to write their screenplays with movie stars already in mind. Not only does it help them flesh out their character in livable form, but it also helps them create the minutiae for the character.
You can use this same tool for your blog in determining who you want to read your blog and creating content that movie character might enjoy reading!
If you’re writing a blog around being a mom, then think of the strong mom characters you’ve loved in movies and imagine them reading your blog. I always loved Sally Field’s character in “Steel Magnolias” or “Forest Gump,” strong mom, smart mom and dedicated mom. Here’s a good example of the blog those characters might read.
If you’re writing a blog on auto racing then you might build your content around the Tom Cruise character in “Days of Thunder.” What content would drive that character to read your blog on a daily basis? See this racing blog for example – http://fullthrottle.cranialcavity.net/ or this one – http://axisofoversteer.blogspot.com/ .
This works with real people too – what kind of food blog would Julia Child have enjoyed? Maybe this one – http://chocolateandzucchini.com/ .
With blogs if you can identify a real person or even a movie character who you’re writing your blogs posts to – it will contribute to a more engaging and community focused blog long-term.
Also, speaking of characters, I’m going to upload all my interviews from 1995 to 1998 with the folks who were the movers and shakers on the Internet. Many of them are still around today and I’m looking forward to sharing the early Cluetrain interview, the usability interview with Jakob Nielsen and others who are still on the Web (just like me).
Look for a new regular feature on this blog called, “Archived Web Genius.”
- Image by Hamed Saber via Flickr
Pitchfork Magazine online (one of my faves) has an interesting take and rating system for musicians who Twitter, definitely worth reading if you’re a musician who wants to use Twitter.
Key things to ask yourself no matter what your profession if you’re on Twitter and intend to use it for truly connecting with folks:
1. Am I really as funny as I think and will that come across on Twitter or will it seem snarky?
2. Don’t I always want to manage and directly contribute to my social media initiatives so I’m the only wizard behind the curtain?
3. How can I really connect with the hip fans who are tweeting and make it about them, not me?
4. #3 again because it’s worth asking twice
5. If I followed 1000 folks and half of those followed me back because they really love my music, wouldn’t that be a great way to help foster viral love across the Web and do so authentically?
Answer to #5 – Yes!
Can you handle the truth? Find out below all that you can do with Web 2.0 without paying thousands of dollars to a 2.0 guru or guruess.
Go here to check out this great riff on the end of marketing and PR.
Interesting opinion piece by Shel Holtz that now is the time for every corporation to have a blog. Very good stats in the piece too about the SNCR report on journalists using blogs. As a recovering tech journalist I can tell you that I definitely would have loved to go right to the source (a blog) instead of reading tepid, marketing blather in press releases when a new upgrade was rolled out.
But I don’t agree that every business needs a blog. Shel does have some very good tips on corporate blogging within the post though so I encourage you to read it.
And if you do have a blog no matter what size the business you really have to understand how blogs work, how to blog effectively and how to keep your branding consistent and congruent. If it’s a blog that is just set up to push out your corporate news and your take on issues in your vertical, then you have to be doubly careful to have a good process in place to ensure your corporate identity is not muddled. (And by the way, that’s much easier said than done!)
I’m a fan of M.J. Rose and actually love her book “The Reincarnationist.” I also think she’s very smart about marketing, and I wanted to note her latest article, “Is Blogging Right for You?” for Writer’s Digest here.
She has some good insight in terms of blogging and why to blog. She also highlights Seth Godin’s blog as a blog that works, but I would say his blog works for marketing Seth (and I think Seth is great) but it is not a two-way conversation because Seth doesn’t allow commenting on his blog.
And no one has to enable comments on their blog by the way, but if you’re a book author or a fiction book author, one of the ways to engage folks is to leave your comments on. Also comment on other blogs and get the blog convo happening both ways.
Look at David Meerman Scott’s blog for a good example of convo both ways. Or Toby Bloomberg’s blog. For literary agents look at Nathan Bransford’s blog. Look at how Liz Strauss does her amazing Open Mike nights on her blog. Read B.L. Ochman’s blog. Read Jennifer Robenalt’s blog.
Or my own personal favorite blogger Steve Kayser.
Whatever you do online, always make it balanced with offline even if you make your living online. You don’t need to make it 24/7.
At the end of M.J.’s article, is basically a couple of paragraphs about bloggers who’ve died in the past couple years of heart attacks, which seems to beg the question, “Can blogging kill you?”
Guess what??? It doesn’t!
Stress kills us. Smoking kills us. Not spending enough time being crazy or having fun can slowly kill us. Greed and “not enough itis” can kill us. But blogging? I don’t think it can kill you.
But just in case here are some pointers to ensure you’re a healthy blogger!
1. Don’t spend 24/7 blogging, twittering, facebooking, or on any other online shenanigans.
2. Don’t believe that to be viable or visible online you have to incessantly be communicating.
3. Don’t be a blogging-downer. Don’t post a ton of negative things on your blog or website to build yourself up.
4. Step away from the blog and go outside once in awhile.
5. Don’t engage in flame wars.
6. Reach out to like-minded folks and revel in their spirit, blog posts and take on business, life, work etc.
7. Make peace with your inbox always being a bit too full.
8. Twittering during a movie date with your husband is not kosher.
9. Be mindful that juggling too many blogs makes Jack or Jill a dull boy or girl in real life.
10. One blog at a time, one post at a time, one reader at a time and always focus on expanding your ideas and your reader’s ideas.
Great tips piece on all things Twitter, microblogging etc. on Burrelle Luce’s site via their January newsletter. Highly recommended reading!
I just read an article where the author recommended “not feeding your blog entries into Twitter because they are “typically too long,” according to the article.
Actually, you can feed your blog posts into Twitter, you should do it with some catchy phrase if the blog post is useful to your Twitter followers, and you can do this from your WordPress platform easily!
Here’s the link for the plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/ .
By using TwitterTools you can add the option to send the feed from your blog to Twitter. Twitter actually uses tinyurl.com to reduce the link so of course it’s not posting your whole blog post (which would be too long) it’s just posting a blurb and link to the full blog post. Why would you not want to do this? (That is a rhetorical question.:>)
Here’s a sampling of recent blog posts I’ve also shared on Twitter and what they look like: (Notice, on the ones directly from my blog it says “New blog post…”)
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buzzwords that need to be retired – love this list – http://tinyurl.com/73arv2
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New blog post: MarketingSherpa best enewsletters http://tinyurl.com/9m5rd4
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New blog post: If you pitch the press… http://tinyurl.com/ax5exj
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My recommendation is that if you have a cool insight on your blog that will help other folks (and is not an “all about me” post) that you should definitely tweet it so your followers can have the opportunity to go read it on your blog in full!
A good thing always to keep in mind as well is that even though there are a giant amount of Web 2.0 tools, only use the ones that will really be of value to you and make certain you’re not setting yourself up to be in front of the computer 24/7 just managing social media tools!
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