What is a blog – Internal blog – External blog
What is a blog: A blog is synopsis for web log, it a collection of information for the purpose of distributing it to others to view.
There are Internal blogs and External blogs.
By nature, blog can be used to describe an event, broadcast post about an experience, start a discussion or just for general entries of commentary.
Prior to web 2.0 discovery ways of using blogs, blogs are common among big corporations. Most corporations have two different blogs.
Internal blog for communications within the organization (employees, contractors, and distributions) and
External blog for communication to the entire world about their company.
In my opinion, most blog today is like a diary, which you decide to write for the public to view.
Of course, many people have seen blog as an opportunity to make money and have moved it to the next level of using it to brand their name and to promote their products/services. Some people without product or services are using some other form of monetization options (like Adsense) to make some money from their blogs.
A couple of years ago not all techies knew what the new web2.0 blog is. Today things have changed and even some kids in kindergartens have heard about blogs and the advantages they offer.
More and more people start blogs of their own and even though not all blogs are masterpieces of literature or cinematography, there are blogs which are really worth reading or watching.
In many cases blogs are not personal diaries anymore but instead focus on serious topics, such as politics, sports, computers, celebrities, etc.
Many blogs have actually turned into online magazines where top news is frequently reported first. In almost all areas of life, there are such blogs, which manage to report breaking news even before the major news agencies do.
The beauty of a blog is the ability of readers to leave their comments, which makes it interactive and provide more free content for the blog owner. Most interactive blogs are text based.
Blogs can also come in the form of audio, video or graphics and the user interaction would be through voting and grading the usefulness of the site.
Blogs are so popular because they are interesting to read or watch and because they offer unique tips, techniques, or processes which cannot be found elsewhere.
Additionally, there is one more good reason for the growing popularity of blogs – blogs are a cheap and relatively easy way to have your own personal space on the Web where you can publish your thoughts, pictures, or movies.
So, even if you are not a top reporter or photographer, you can have your personal blog and make it accessible to the world.
There are sites where you can host your blog for free – such as: –
www.blogger.com
www.blog.com
www.wordpress.com
If you want to have your own domain name, you should register a domain of your own and find a hosting provider for your blog.
Domain and hosting prices are cheap – you can get a .com domain for under $10 a year and a host for less than $10 depending on if your blog is for fun or business.
For many people blogs have become a way of life and a full-time job. You can call these people lucky.
But in fact, it is not so difficult to make a living out of blogging. If you know how to monetize your site, you can make a lot of money from your blog if you have the time to dedicate to it.
Well, the majorities of all bloggers are making $100 or less a month from their blogs but this does not mean that you cannot make thousands or even tens of thousands from your blog.
One of the ways to achieve blogging success and to make money out of this is to have a popular blog with good content. Good content is what attracts and retains your readers. If you have good content and keep on moving, sooner or later success will come.
When your blog becomes a high-traffic one and you run ads on it (i.e., Google AdSense), or affiliate programs, or start selling products, you can make a lot of money from your blog.
How To Create Good Blog Content
Good content is the most important factor for the success of your blog. Good content is the meat in the sandwich and if you want to keep your readers happy, you need to serve them quality food (i.e., quality content) frequently.
There is one frequent misunderstanding regarding content that we feel we need to clarify before we move further. This misunderstanding stems from the fact that for many people, content is limited to articles and posts.
Yes, articles, posts and other textual content is still dominating and in terms of SEO textual content is the most natural content because currently search engines index only text directly, but content is not limited to texts only.
Images, audio (music or podcasts), video, downloads (such as useful tools), links to other resources, etc. are also content and they are also the meat in the sandwich.
So, if writing is your forte, you can safely have a text-centered blog but if you have other talents – i.e., if you are a good photographer or cameraman, then the best you can do is show your talents on your blog.
- First, you need to have an idea what you want to blog about.
- Then you must set up a blog (with a free blogging service, such as Blogger or WordPress or on a domain of your own).
- Write the posts about the news you want to share.
- Publish these posts.
- Decide if you want user comments and if yes, enable them for your blog.
- Last but not the least, form an alliance with other bloggers – i.e., read their blogs, quote them, and exchange links with them.
Tips For Creating Good Blog Content
As you will see in the Podcasts and Videos chapter, there are many similarities in the process of creation of content text and audio/video content.
So, here are some tips, which are valid for most types of blogs, though the emphasis is on text blogs. The tips, which apply to audio/video blogs can be found in the Podcasts and Videos chapter.
One of the first things you must do before you start creating your great content is to choose the niche of your site. This is especially important for text blogs, because if your blog is a mixture of many topics (i.e., cars, computers, traveling, college life, pets, etc.), many of your readers will not appreciate the diversity and search engines for sure will not.
So, if you really have so many different topics to write about, consider starting several blogs instead of mixing everything in one pot.
Finding the right niche is critical; it pays to invest some time to discover good niches.
It might look discouraging at first if you cannot get your niche because it is hard to find a free good niche, but just do not give up and you will find your place under the Sun (or in the blogosphere).
Choosing the Content Management System (CMS) to run your blog is another critical decision you need to make before you start pouring in content.
It takes a lot of time and effort to migrate hundreds of pages from one CMS to another (and above all – to check if everything has been done smoothly), so even if you spend a week or two on CMS selection, this is not a waste of time.
There are tens of good open source and commercial CMS, such as Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, etc., so you may want to review a couple of them before you make your final decision.
You’d better choose a CMS, which has lots of features, many extensions and is easy to maintain because these are some of the best features a CMS can offer.
One more point you need to consider is if the CMS you have chosen is SEO-friendly or not because if it isn’t (i.e. does it display URLs like that: http://mysite.com/ blog?src=feed.php) or like http://mysite.com/blog/welcome-to-my-blog.html), this can seriously hurt your chances to achieve good rankings with search engines, which in turn will affect negatively the amount of traffic your site gets.
Tips #3 – Choose a professional template.
While we are still on the preparation stage, it is worth mentioning that choosing a good template for your blog is also something very important.
There are tons of free and paid templates and if you perform a search with Google, you will find many sites, which cater templates for the CMS of your choice.
You might opt for a free template in the beginning but since there are good templates that will make your site unique for $30-60, you may want to spend some money but get something more outstanding. Of course, this does not mean that free templates are junk – on the contrary, many of them are real jewels.
Have a look at 4-5 or more templates for your CMS and see which ones are cool (and readable). For a text-based blog readability matters a lot, so don’t choose a template with text font size under 10pts or a template which uses fancy colors (i.e., pink text on a red background) because these are all usability issues, and they seriously affect the ease with which your readers will read your posts.
If readers have to go an extra mile to read your posts, it will make them leave your blog and they may never return again.
Posting new content regularly is one of the vital prerequisites for blog success.
While it is not always possible to post every day, or even better – a couple of posts a day, posting at least once a week is strongly recommendable if you want to retain your readers and keep high search engine rankings.
Writing good content frequently can be very time-consuming.
If you are blogging just for fun, you will hardly have 1-2 hours a day to prepare new posts. On the other hand, if your blog has already grown considerably and you want to post 10 or more posts a day, you might also be unable to do it on your own.
One workaround to these issues is to get syndicated articles or videos.
Article and video syndication allows you to use for free content from other sources, so you still can have new content daily and not spend much time to prepare it.
Just to take you back to memory lane…
We mention in the content creation section how to borrow contents. You can always borrow content through private label rights (PLR) or resale rights article – to juggle your memory on this topic, refer to content creation for detail.
Tips #5 – Search Google for good RSS feeds in your niche
Join newsletter or other article provider relating to your niche to tap into their resources will help you research and keep a good swipe file of what information you might use to improve your blog now or in future.
For instance, if your blog is about dating, try ‘dating RSS feeds’ and see how many feeds are available and which ones of them you can use.
Or if your site is targeted at women, you might not want to use RSS feeds from dating sites, which target at the male audience (i.e., adult sites) because your readers may not be happy with you.
One of the disadvantages of syndicated content is that it is not unique, which very often is bad in terms of SEO.
As a last resort, you can hire somebody to do the writing for you as we discussed earlier.
There are sites such as http://guru.com, http://elance.com and many others, where you can post a project and writers will bid for it. Very often you will get 10+ bids, so you need to review the writers’ profiles and choose the writer who you believe fits best to your project.
If you hire a good writer, this will not only save you time but generally will help you have better, more interesting content, which is not to be underestimated.
My personal take on hiring a writer is for you not to just copy and paste their content. Use it as your research base and update it to meet your standard.
Tips #6 –Publish unique content.
Uniqueness of content is another factor, which can make or break your blog.
Search engines love unique content and value it highly but more importantly, your human readers hate when the ‘news’ you post on your site are available all over the Net.
Yes, having unique quality content is not always an easy task but as the saying goes, if there is a will, there is a way!
Tips #7 – Don’t steal your content.
You might think you have discovered a quick and easy way to get good content regularly, if you use Copy and Paste from another blog into yours but actually this is a theft, and it is illegal.
Unless you want to get into hot waters, do not do it.
Almost all CMS offer the tagging functionality either by default, or as an extension, so do not skip this step.
Tags are words (or phrases), which you use to describe your post.
For example, if you have a post about how to find a dating partner online, some good tags would be ‘dating,’ ‘online dating,’ ‘finding a partner,’ ‘dating tips,’ etc. Usually, 5-6 tags are enough, but it all depends on the particular post, so if you feel you need 10 or more tags, just write them.
It is good for SEO purposes when you write tags, which contain the right keywords.
Additionally, tagging is a way to tell your human visitors what the post/article is about.
There is no optimal number of the words you use to tag your content but generally 5-10 tags are best.
Lies are one of the ways to commit a blogging suicide because if you lie and your readers catch you (and you can bet that sooner or later they will), your reputation will quickly be ruined.
It is a basic rule that if users do not trust you, they will not read your blog and what is worse – they might start posting messages over the Web that you are a liar.
If you have not experienced the negative aspects of bad publicity offline, you will hardly want to learn how it feels online.
Tips #10 – Beware how much personal info you disclose online.
One of the first things you will learn about blogging is that the content you post is almost always publicly accessible – i.e., unless you take special measures to protect it, anybody on Earth can read your posts.
Free publicity is great, but it is a double-edged sword – pretty much anything you write can be used against you if people want to be nasty.
So, if you want to avoid embarrassing situations, watch out for what you write.
For example, if you do not want the whole world to know that your current boss is a stupid loser and you plan to quit as soon as you can, don’t write about your boss’s failures or about job interviews you have attended recently.
It is a small world, and you never know who might read your blog and tell your boss and co-workers what you have been blogging about.
Tips #11 – Ask your readers for input or at least feedback.
Web 2.0 is all about user content and communication. You might not have the chance to know all your readers/viewers personally and it is not necessary to do it, but it is great if you give your users the opportunity to communicate with you.
Communication can have many forms. For instance, you might want to start a forum, where users can exchange information and opinions about your posts.
However, moderating a popular forum is a very time-consuming task, so if you do not have the time to do it, the easier way is to enable comments. Moderating comments also takes time but not as much as moderating a forum.
Finally, if you do not have the time to deal with forums or comments, a simple Contact Us form, or an email address are also fine.
Tips #12 – Update and expand old posts.
Sometimes you just run out of post ideas. No matter how hard you browse the Web to see what other bloggers in your niche are writing about, you are stuck and clueless.
One way to get out of ‘writers block’ situation is to ‘recycle’ old posts.
You can update an old post (but do not forget to keep the original), or even better – you can write a follow-up.
For instance, if you wrote last year about your visit to your relatives abroad and now you have received some recent pics from them, you can post the pics and add a few lines of explanation.
Such follow-ups are great because they show how the story is developing.
It is great if your blog becomes a sensation overnight but do not give up if success does not come quickly.
Sometimes it takes months or even years before your blog goes on the mainstream and you start receiving server-crashing traffic.
Just be patient, do not give up and above all – keep on the good work!
Tips #14 – Check your spelling and grammar.
This tip might come near the end of the list, but it is very important.
It is just common sense that your blog is not the showroom of your illiteracy but on the other hand, when one reads through blogs, he or she often questions if the authors of the posts have ever had any kind of schooling.
Nobody says that you must be a Pulitzer-winning writer but checking your spelling and grammar is mandatory.
Additionally, if you target at international visitors, use simple language (English, French, Spanish or whatever your language your site is written in) without slang.
This way you will make sure that every reader who is not so proficient in that language will be able to understand what your posts are about.
Tips #15 – Keep your sentences and paragraphs short.
One of the most important recommendations regarding style is to keep your sentences and paragraphs short.
Sentences of under 15-20 words are best and paragraphs with up to three sentences are easier to understand.
Also, if your content permits, use bullets because this way you improve your blog’s readability further.
For instance, if you are writing stories or describing your experiences while on vacation using bullets might not be the greatest idea.
But if your posts are of the type ‘Tips for …’ then bullets come in quite naturally.
Tips #16 – Short posts vs. long articles
There is some discussion in the blogging community about the optimal length of blog posts and as you guess, there is no particular length everybody considers optimal.
In some cases, 100–150-word posts work great (i.e., if you want to direct your readers to another blog, 100-150 words or less is enough to include the hyperlink and a short description), while in other cases posts of 400-500 words are better because they provide more room to introduce the topic and describe it in more than just a few words.
In other cases, posts over 700-800 words are optimal because if your topic is a serious one, you just need more words to exhaust it.
Still, it is up to you to decide what the optimal length for your audience is and if you cannot answer these questions right away, don’t worry but just experiment with posts/articles of various lengths and see what works for you.
We hope that these tips are useful for you, and you will take advantage of them in your blogging life. Now, after you are already familiar with blogs and what they can do for you, let’s move onto some of the more specific types of blogs – i.e., audio and video blogs.
I found an article by one of blog usability guru – Jacob Nielson, which explains why short posts are not the best idea for business blogs – good luck!
- Blogs are so popular because they are interesting to read or watch.
- Blogs are a cheap and relatively easy way to have your own personal space on the Web and to publish your thoughts, pictures, or movies.
- You can host your blog for free or a small fee and get a cheap domain name.
- Blogs are fun and you can make a living out of blogging in the long run.
- How to create good blog content – good content is the most important factor for the success of your blog. Plus, step-by-step how-to create blogs.
Tips for creating good blog content.
- Choose a niche.
- Choose a good CMS.
- Choose a professional template.
- Post regularly
- Publish unique content.
- Don’t steal your content.
- Tag your content.
- Don’t lie.
- Beware how much personal info you disclose.
- Ask your readers for input or at least feedback.
- Update and expand old posts.
- Be patient.
- Check your spelling and grammar.
- Keep your sentences and paragraphs short.
- Use short posts and long articles.
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