Tag: blog tools

Changing Blog Formats and Blogging the Extra Mile

People ask me about blogging every day. They often ask me by way of a search engine, but they also ask me by telephone, in person, and a lot of other communications methods (no carrier pigeons, please).

I have written a lot of blog articles, and I have written a lot about blogging. As an example, I offer you my “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“, along with the many others you will find in my blog archive. I have also written about reasons blogs fail.

A blog is a great hub for search engine optimization and social media marketing efforts. This is a fact which is undeniable and proven with a lot of data. A blog can also require a lot of time. Time is money, and somebody must be held accountable.

When I consider the various blogs (websites) where I write, it is as if each one of them represents different aspects of my persona. Some of them bring out my perfectionist side (the prominent side), and I am compelled to read them over and over to be sure they are perfect before publishing. Other blogs (websites) are more fun and I can whip out my wacky sense of humor.

In any blogging effort, I find that the more time and effort I invest, the more valuable it becomes to me. In the case of my blog at awebguy.com, I have invested a lot of time and effort to have all the pieces fit. It serves me commensurate with my effort.

I normally include a creative image to represent each article. The pictures in a blog post have a surprising affect with readers. They enhance the message and set a tone. I suggest always using a creative image in a blog post! I am skipping the image this time.

I also spend a lot of time adding page descriptions, blog tags, blog categories, and even recording a podcast for many of my articles so that people can listen instead of reading. Of course, these things require a lot of work.

When I finish all the production, then I need to share my articles across my social networks. Sure, a lot of this can be reasonably automated, but a human approach is always better. In fact, the effort is quantifiable and I am going against my own style to produce and publish this article.

Changing Blog Formats

The point here is that I am changing formats. I will still provide my lengthy articles making strong points using things I know. In fact, I have some great pieces coming up soon, so if you have not subscribed, I would like to encourage that you subscribe now. I will also be including some short and simplified clips in the mix … like this one. This particular article is intended to be a quickie, and I will actually save a ton of effort which some people will notice.

As I contemplate changing formats to a less time consuming style of blog, I feel compelled to offer the advice given by many parents as follows: “Do as I say, and not as I do.”

I want to offer you this cautionary consideration. Many people think they can get by doing less than what it takes to produce a great blog, but then still expect great results. It does not work! I have paid a lot of dues in the realm of blogging, and I can assure you that this article will garner far less attention than the ones I spend a lot of time and effort to produce and publicize. For me, that is fine, because I am actually not here to sell you anything. If you want to sell something, you really should do all of that extra work that may seem useless to you.

I will likely provide much more of the “bare bones Murnahan” in the future. This time, I just wanted to say something useful and fast. OK, maybe it did not seem fast to you, but I nixed the podcast, image, and a ton of the other work that has helped to make this blog popular. I also hope that you still find it useful, and preferably before you choose to cut corners.

Look Mom … no frills! If you intend to skip the extra work in producing your blog, just be sure that you do not rely on it to bring in more business.

The bottom line is that if you want a blog to boost your bottom line, you should go the extra mile.

Blogging Community: Perhaps You Are More (or Less) Attached Than You Think

Blogging is Better With Community Thinking
Blogging is Better With Community Thinking

Most of us will probably agree that collective thinking as a community is more beneficial than our individual thoughts. This does not mean we will all adapt to the thoughts of our community. Sometimes we will disagree, which can also prove beneficial. The fact remains that communities think bigger than the sum of their parts. This is why we have terms like “two heads are better than one” and why social media has become so useful for cultivating ideas with collaboration, for those who choose to embrace it. My blog thought for today is about the communities which we create, and how much of the community involvement is easy to overlook.

Blogging creates small communities which are often loosely connected, and it does so in some unique ways. Some of these small communities which blogs create are closely connected and some are only loosely connected but yet just as valuable. Often times, the community effect is simply the sharing of an idea which seeds thinking for others. It creates a collective intelligence which guides us on our way.

The ideas I write here on my blog must have received influence from somewhere. I could not have written about SEO and social media marketing 20 years ago. Sure, I largely write from my experiences, but it is influenced by a community of others. Sometimes the influence is a thought that I saw expressed in a blog or combination of blogs, then I nurture the thoughts and add my experience. Thus, it still reflects the community thinking I mentioned. When I can define sources of my inspiration, I try to link to those blogs so they will know that I am a part of their community. I also try to add my thoughts to the respective blogs’ comments and hope that it benefits the community.

Your Community Extends Beyond Your Blog

Many bloggers are too critical with their perception of community, simply because they do not recognize ways to measure it. One of the greatest gifts a blogger can have is a huge stream of comments on their blog articles. Blog comments are just one notch below the prize of a link referencing their work in another blog article. However, this is not always the most important measurement of their community reach.

Sure, I am one of those who wonder “why didn’t people add their two cents” in the comments, or why they will use my work without crediting me, but then I look at the other measures and I can relax again. Yes, the comments bring the sense of community into one place where it can all be sorted out and discussed, but let’s take a look at other ways you can know you made an impact.

If your blog is syndicated through RSS (basic examples of syndication: Squidoo; GoodReads; BlogCatalog), it likely reaches a lot of other places where it is discussed. When I click “Publish”, I know that my blog is automatically published to a lot of other networks, so I try to be mindful of this. I try to keep an eye on what people are saying “over there”, too. There are a lot of blogging tools to help you measure this, and you will find some of the in the article titled “6 Essential Blogging Tools for Bloggers and Non-Bloggers“.

I think of a blog as the hub of social media for a business. It really is the center point, but it is not always the actual website where the blog resides that receives the discussion, or gives and receives all the benefits. It is the information of the blog … the message, which is the hub, and not only the website.

Important Community Tip: Look outside of just your blog.

I can reliably measure that over 80 percent of my blog’s engagement comes from outside of aWebGuy.com. That is a sizable statistic to overlook, and it makes up a massive portion of my community. Just imagine how easy it would be to miss this critical part of the community I work so hard to build.

Syndication can spread a message far and wide, but it also carries a responsibility to know how the information was received and how it may adjust your thinking on a given topic. This could mean Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, other blogs quoting your work, and many other possibilities. Discovering these places and finding out what people had to say can be very useful. Plus, if you seek them out and communicate with the respondents, it gives pretty compelling evidence that you care what people have to say.

If you count on Trackbacks to find all of the places your blog content is being discussed, you will surely miss a lot. Taking extra care to follow the flow of your work can be quite enlightening.

As a person who writes blogs, I do not have any delusion of being a critical piece of a community outside of my own blog. I try to be valuable to the larger community, but I am just a cog in the machine. This big machine will run with my participation, or without it, but I remain here to keep fine tuning it in my own little ways. I add my little piece of “community” with my thoughts and I find that it often benefits me, and hopefully those around me, too.

Thoughts for My Blog Community

I want to leave you with some thoughts to consider about your blog community, whether you are an author, or reader.

  • When you think of your community, what does it mean to you?
  • There are a lot of organized blogging communities, but what about the extended community which influences your blog or is influenced by it?
  • How are you building that community?
  • Are you overlooking your expanded community?
  • Which blogs provide influence to you (links welcome)?

Sometimes the value of blogging is simply found in the collective thinking accumulated from multiple sources and experiences compiled by the author. This does not always require direct two-way communication. All the same, it is often greatly enhanced by participation.

These questions I have posed are not just rhetorical questions to help you think about your blogging efforts. If you have an answer, please share it with the community.

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Photo credit to mitosettembremusica via Flickr.

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Blogging Tips: Use Evergreen Content and Revive Your Archive

Evergreen Content Lasts!
Evergreen Content Lasts!

Have you ever noticed that when you visit a blog, you generally only look through the most recent articles? It is pretty common that upon visiting a blog’s home page, people will just scan through a few items and see if there is something they want to read. In the blogging world, it is often assumed that newer is better, but this is quite often not the case. It is just more visible.

I am guilty of looking at the date something was published. I am not sure why in some cases, but I guess I am just so accustomed to seeing a date on blog articles. I suppose it is just one more way that people can feel that they are getting the latest and greatest news. A reality check for bloggers and readers alike can come in the form of these two little questions:

  • For Blog Readers: What about all of the great information that is not just recent or new?
  • For Blog Authors: What about the people who are not there for the news, but who just want great information?

I have noticed many blogs removing their publish date from articles, and it actually makes sense for some blogs. If the information is still useful, does it really matter whether it was written this week, this month, or even this year? A lot of great information is timeless. As I ponder this, I am reminded of an article I wrote about eight or nine years ago on the topic of H1 tags titled “H1 Tags Improve Search Engine Placement”. Thousands of people per month read that article. It is the top ranked article in search engines on the topic, and has been since the day I published it. Does the date really matter? H1 tags (web page headings) are still as important today as they were then. The information is still useful.

Some Blogs Are “Evergreen”

When I say “evergreen”, I mean that the information is as useful a year from now as it is today. Blogs have widely varying degrees of “evergreen” content, but most business blogs will have a good level of content that is still relevant and useful for a long time. It would be pretty hard for most businesses to have a blog that was no better than a used newspaper.

For blog authors, it can sometimes feel like a huge shame that people are actually missing some of your greatest pieces of work. So what do you do? Do you try to make everything more genius than the last? That is a good idea, but it is probably not always going to work. In my case, I know darn well that some days I am just a whole lot less brilliant than I would like. I often write blog articles on those days, too.

Scanning through the first few items listed on the home page of your blog is often how new readers will decide whether to come back, subscribe to your blog, or schedule an afternoon of reading through page after page of your past articles. This makes it pretty important to have something right up front to impress them, but how? You cannot just leave your best work parked on the front page of your blog forever. Your regular readers would get sick of seeing it. Do you just stop blogging until you can come up with something to beat the last piece? That is probably not the best answer. In fact, that is a pretty terrible answer.

You could republish some of your best work, but the same problem of repetition arises when you consider your long-time readers. Plus for many blogs where the date is part of the URL, there is the tragedy of changing the URL where all of those great incoming links are pointing. Sure, a 301 permanent redirect to the article’s new location is easy, but you still lose some of the link value for those older works.

Of course, you could just count on excellent search engine ranking for everything on your blog, and use Google as your website navigation. That way, if they are looking for it they will find you anyway. I have often counted on this, but then again, search engine optimization is my job. What about the people already on your blog who may find some of your past articles to be really useful? Larger websites often have a user-friendly sitemap to help people find useful information. The equivalent for a blog is the archive. Website search tools are excellent, but some people want to browse, and you should make it easy for them.

What about all of those readers discovering your blog from an older article? Will they even notice your most recent brilliance? What can you do to grab their attention to your latest and greatest stuff? Maybe a better solution is to create more evergreen content and to revive your archive.

Revive Your Archive!

Scanning the home page of a blog makes sense if you are a regular reader who has participated in the blog for a while, or if the blog is mostly about recent news. Let’s face it, though, many blogs are full of “evergreen” content that is not just seasonal or only applies to right now. If this is the case with your blog, it is a good idea to promote some of your past articles for those who may have missed them. The trouble is that you don’t want to annoy your current readers by saying the same old thing over and over. So how do you deal with keeping things current and fresh, while also being sure that people can see that you have been brilliant long before they happened upon your blog?

You can tell where this is going, right? Sure, I want you to go back and browse my blog archive. There are some excellent tips there, and a lot of information that I am confident can help you. I also want to be sure that you are thinking of this with your blog, so I am not just being selfish.

Make Your Blog Archive Easy to Navigate!

I have noticed that it is easy to assume that I have not missed much on some of the blogs I regularly keep up with. However, I still sometimes like to go back through the archives of my favorite blogs. Sometimes this can be a hassle, and sometimes it is a breeze. Now consider the people reading your blog, do you want it to be a hassle for them, or a breeze?

There are a lot of types of archives, but many of them require a lot of clicking back through a chronological month-by-month archive structure or going to the end of the page and clicking on a link for previous articles. Some will have archives nicely paginated so you can flip through them quickly. Other blogs seem to make it a challenge to read what they have had to say in the past.

A lot of blogs have killed their tag clouds, and do not even show their tags on posts. I still love them, and appreciate bloggers who make a tag cloud available, or at least tags on individual posts. For example, go click on a tag for this article (listed at the bottom, such as ) and see how easy it is to find more related information. Some blogs do not even list the blog categories for articles. Call me old fashioned, but I still love tags and categories. I can use them to find other things with similar information. I think I love them even more because I know from my website statistics logs that they are used extensively by readers on my blog.

I hope that you will consider your archived blog content and how you may keep it easily accessible. Making it easy for people to find and for them to browse could add up to a lot more subscribers over time. You may notice that on my blog, I have my archive linked at the very top of every page, just below the recent articles listed on the left, and at the bottom of every article along with links to my most recent articles. Isn’t redundancy awesome?

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Image credit to MPF via Wikipedia

Is Your Blog Sending Mixed Messages?

Meet Cousin Eddie from Kansas
Meet Cousin Eddie from Kansas


Have you been here before? I do not just mean here at my blog, but have you been faced with questions or doubts about your efforts? Maybe you question whether people understand the intent and purpose of your blog, or maybe you question the intent and purpose of the blogs you read. These are legitimate considerations for a lot of bloggers, whether producers or readers.

I am a big proponent of blogging. In fact, if you just google “reasons to blog”, you can see that I am practically a poster child for the benefits of blogging. If you need encouragement, I suggest giving my list of “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” a thorough read. If you need blogging tools, I would recommend “6 Essential Blogging Tools for Bloggers and Non-Bloggers“.

Let’s face it, great blogging is hard work. I have actually considered making a video of my steps to produce a blog article, but then I want to break my own fingers just to avoid the temptation of all the video editing on top of the other efforts.

What does it take to produce a blog article? Here is a one-sentence rundown for you: I get a bright idea, then I research, write, print, proofread, edit, print, give it to an editor, edit again, find a graphic, edit the graphic, categorize it, tag it, keyword it, write a description, produce an excerpt, record a podcast, upload podcast, title and tag the podcast, review the podcast, preview the article, edit it, preview it again, publish it, tweet it, facebook it, linkedin it, stumble it, reddit it, ping it, diigo it, mixx it, delicious it, then watch my web stats and keep my fingers crossed while hoping that some people will digg it, stumble it, facebook it, tweet it, and etecetera.

Somewhere in blogging, there must be an earthly reward. This is not the extent of what it takes to produce and promote a good article, by any means, but I was running out of breath trying to fit it into just one huge run-on sentence. There is a whole lot more to it than just that one breath. Through all of this effort, I hope that readers will appreciate it just a fraction of how sincerely I was trying to benefit them. If I benefit them enough with useful topics, they may help pass my blog along to somebody interested and in need of my marketing services, so that I can keep blogging without my kids getting too skinny.

Ahh, true passion of the SEO and social media marketing blog producer … you want some of that, don’t you?

Fun and Simplicity of Blogging

I already pointed out that I am an advocate of blogging. It it true that blogging holds many great rewards, but blogging is not an easy task for most of us. Some people will promote how fun and simple it is to produce a blog, but then I once heard a woman say something similar about having a baby, too. Yes, blogging can be very worthwhile, but there is also a pregnancy and labor side of blogging. Good blogs come from things like pixie dust and unicorns, but great blogs come from mind-numbing levels of creative effort. This is especially true if they are business blogs, which require a high level of marketing talent.

Knowing that it requires a lot of work to produce a useful blog, it would be a horrible shame to create and promote all that great work and not at least receive a few comments from readers, more subscribers, additional business, or something to justify all the effort and keep you wanting to continue giving your works to this amazing Internet resource we all build together.

Why Do I Make So Much Effort to Blog

Yes, here comes the reason I work hard to serve you. I will break it down really simple to tell you why I work hard to provide benefit to my readers. It is not as despicable as you may have thought.

If you are a subscriber to my blog, you have seen my crafty works to help get your thoughts racing about SEO and social media marketing. You may wonder why I work so hard to help people with marketing tips and ideas. I do not sell advertising here on my blog, so how can this possibly be worthwhile to me? I do not even promote my own company. Actually, the opposite is true, and my company promotes my blog.

What the following description of my efforts should drive home for you is the very most essential piece of the combined art and science of online marketing. Here it is: The most important thing about my blog is to serve people with something useful and compelling. The short version that I often tell people is “be useful!”

Yes, there you have it. The emphasis of my effort is to be useful and compelling. The kicker is this: When I am useful and compelling, people will share my work with others. If they share it on their blogs and social networks, my search engine ranking is improved, my readership is improved, and far beyond any big ego boost you may suspect, I actually stand a greater chance of having a paying customer ask me to help to do the same for them. Now that does not sound so much like the kitten-killer you may have made me out to be, does it? I did not even con you into buying something you do not need. That is refreshing in this day and age, don’t you think?

Have I Helped You?

I want to ask that in consideration for my efforts for you to pass along my work. If you are a do-it-yourself’er, please pass this along to people who may hire out my marketing services. If you are a marketing person and you do not have a conflict of interest, please spread this to others in our field. If you are a marketer seeking a client, just like me, I want to ask you to reach out to me so we can share ideas. Maybe I can guest blog for you and help promote you to your best audience.

In any case, if you find it useful, I want to ask you to subscribe to my blog and share your comments with others here. Also, please do not be too ashamed to pass along what I offer to others on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, or other social networks. I am not your embarrassing Cousin Eddie. Helping me to share my work with people who can benefit is nothing to be ashamed of. I may be just “a web guy” to you, but I may provide a lot of benefit to somebody you know.

I promise that, although I am from Kansas, I will not behave like the famous Cousin Eddie from Kansas depicted in this video.

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