Everybodysagenius’s Weblog

Hey everybody,

This question comes up a lot and I don’t see a lot of good answers out there. So I thought that I would take a swing at it. Hope it is helpful.

11 Tips on How to Blog

1. Get Found Easily: Choose a blog name, and tagline that can let people in your niche find you easily through search engines. Use the most effective keywords for you blog and post titles.
2. Follow the Conversation: Read a bunch of blogs and add comments to them before you start your own and as you are writing your own. Try to establish a conversation with other peer leaders in your category. Use blog searching and ranking sites to find out what the most popular themes in your category are at the time and address those. This will also help you get story ideas.
3. Keep it Simple, Keep it Focused: Each post should contain just one idea or one set of links.
4. Demonstrate Passion: Post often, post about what you care about. Take a position on issues.
5. Demonstrate Authority: Blog about what you know. Be generous with what information you give out.
6. Allow Comments: A good blog is a conversation, not a one-way channel so let others make comments back to you.
7. Be Accessible: Make it easy for people to contact you through your blog either through an e-mail or phone number posting. This includes being honest and open with who you are. No lies or misleading.
8. Tell a Story: Tell your story – a compelling story helps entice people to read on. A personal story makes you seem more human. Even your set backs and defeats make you likeable.
9. Be Linky:  By directing your readers to other sites, even competitors, you become their absolute best resource and they, in turn, will reward you with lots of inbound links. These links increase your search ranking and credibility online.
10. Get Out In the Real World: Nothing beats face-to-face meetings. To build relationships you should go out and meet the people you are speaking with in your blog. Invite others to visit you.
11. Use your referrer log: The Referrer Log tracks who’s linking to your site and how much traffic those sites are sending you. Read them often to know what people are saying about you.

An Additional Note on Blog Advice:

These are really the standard recognized rules of blogging. They were originally laid down by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel in their book Naked Conversations. These guidelines have always served me well. The one important factor that I would like to touch on beyond their recommendations is the importance of personality. It seems to me that there are a lot of corporate blogs flooding cyberspace these days, but the ones that we remember – no matter what their category – are those written by people with character. Out of the supposed 60 million active blogs out there, I can only think of about 50 or so that I really enjoy reading. A family story or a disappointing turn of events on a business deal make great blog posts too. It isn’t just about bragging or even conversations, it is about appearing human enough to seem approachable.

If you want anything more in-depth, just let me know. Just send me a comment and I will try to answer. I work in social media and would be glad to give advice.

Thanks,

William Flavell