21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optmization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided. So, rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).

1. Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
   The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.
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2. Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
   Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).
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3. Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
   First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.
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4. Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
   Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).
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5. Tag Your Content
   Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.
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6. Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
   There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.
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7. Don't Jump on the Bandwagon
   Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren't. Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
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8. Link Intelligently
   When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
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9. Invite Guest Bloggers
   Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.
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10. Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)
    I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.
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11. Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
    Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
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12. Cover Topics that Need Attention
    In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
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13. Pay Attention to Your Analytics
    Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.
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14. Use a Human Voice
    Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We've certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.
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15. Archive Effectively
    The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
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16. Implement Smart URLs
    The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I'm not walking the talk here, and hopefully it's something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn't hurt, I'd take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we've worked with.
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17. Reveal as Much as Possible
    The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
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18. Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
    Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
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19. Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
    If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.
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20. Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
    When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
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21. Build a Brand
    Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they're solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.

Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you've got additions or disagreements, I'd love to hear them.

10 Killer Ways to Increase Blog Traffic and Stickiness

was reading Mike's post over at Twenty Steps entitled "How to get traffic to your website for free".

In it he lists 5 great methods:

1. Subscribe to forums related to your subject. Include your website in your auto signature and don't ever mention your site directly for fear of being branded a spammer;
2. Leave comments on related blogs;
3. Create a newsletter and send it to subscribers;
4. Trade links with other sites in your niche;
5. Write articles;

He ends his post with a call for more ideas for increasing traffic so I thought I would add to that list:

6. Write killer posts that will guarantee regular traffic to your site. I define a "killer post" as one that is designed specifically for your targeted niche market and covers a topic that you know your readers are looking for. So even if I don't write as often as I should, those posts will keep traffic coming in regularly to my blog.

7. Pack those posts with specific keywords that you know your targeted market is looking for on the search engines so they can find you. And don't forget to put the most important keyword in your post title too.

8. Put your best posts prominently in your sidebar. That will increase 'stickiness' to your site and showcase your best stuff to new readers that might not be familiar with your work.

9. Put a "similar reading" list at the bottom of your post pointing to other work that covers a similar topic. And now that I mention it, most bloggers often forget about the sorely neglected "post" page. (That is the permalink address where your post actually resides, separate from your main page). You can add more lists to your template there, RSS links, advertising, etc... the skies the limit. Most of your incoming traffic will land on your post page so get it working for you.

10. Write often and they will come. This one is an extension of #5. The more that you write, the more posts you are throwing out into the blogosphere, and the more chances you will have getting hit. The bottom line is you will catch more fish with more than one pole. It's a numbers game so play it.

11. Whoops, did I say 10? Ok, I lied. Remember to add your posts to social bookmarks such as Del.icio.us and Furl. Make it easy for your readers to bookmark your post by providing links within your template including content aggregators such as Digg and Reddit like I do at the bottom of my posts.

12. Trackback on the back of your competitor's success. Search Google to find who is getting the top ten hits for your particular niche. Visit their post page and find the trackback link and ping it, or if they don't have trackback leave a comment with a link back to yours. Or if they offer backlinks such as Blogger does, just link to their post and watch the traffic come in. Believe me when I say this tip alone will you bring tons of traffic.

Ok, now it's your turn. Let's turn this thread into a viral thing. What other ideas can you add to the list?

8 simple SEO tips for blogs

Follow these simple rules for search engine optimization and your blog will rank much higher in Search Engines.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

   The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps.

   For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html. So choose a URL like www.htmlhelp.com.

   You can also use the keyword in subdomains like www.web-design.com/htmlhelp

2. Use your primary keyphrase in the title of your posts

   If your primary key phrase is html help make sure that the word html and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

   If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.

   But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

   Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog. Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

   Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs

   You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily.

   So how do you get backlinks?

   • The first thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories.

     Start by submitting your blog to all the directories listed on this page:
     http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

   • Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities.
   • If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. The trackback will become a link back to your blog.
   • Lastly posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs will help you get backlinks. Regularly post legitimate comments in similarly-themed blogs with high traffic to get many backlinks.
7. Update your blog frequently

   Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.

8. Stick with your blog

   Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.

   Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it’s about pets don’t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget’s because you will loose traffic.

3 Ways to Market Blogs Using MyBlogLog

I’ve heard from many prominent bloggers about how they have used or at least recommend using MyBlogLog to increase your traffic, so naturally, soon after I launched my blog I went over to MyBlogLog and set up a profile for myself and my blog.

Although, simply setting up my account did bring in a small bit of traffic I was a little disappointed because I expected great results since so many bloggers have recommended this social networking site.

Then I started to notice how MyBlogLog helps others reach your profile through various ways.
So here is a list of 3 ways to market your blog by using MyBlogLog:

1. Add 15 Communities a day. This is the maximum amount of adds you can use for communities and contacts because each time you add a community to your ever growing list it features your profile on the top of that communities page as a “new member” and it will feature you on other peoples home pages that have added that community to their profile as a “new member” as well. You can see why this would help you get more visitors than simply letting your profile sit around and collect dust.

2. Add 15 Contacts a day. This doesn’t help you reach as many people as adding 15 communities does but it does help you reach 15 people, plus others that view those peoples profiles as well.

3. Warning: this is more gray-hat than the above two. Comment on a MyBlogLog users blog and then repeatedly click on the link that goes to your profile (from the comment). This makes your link appear on their site’s profile’s top links of the day. This exploit has been blogged about by quite a few people and may be frowned upon by some so use it at your own discretion.

One last tip for using number 1: the number of community members a community has will directly affect traffic to your blog because of the amount of people being reached by you being in the “new member” area.

Ten Ways To Write A Killer Blog

Robert and I have been preparing for our upcoming session at ConvergeSouth about tips and tricks on writing great blogs. Personally, I am of the opinion that the best way to blog is not to blog at all. It’s like what they say about keeping your computer safe from viruses: the best way to protect your computer is not to turn it on at all and the best way to blog is not to blog at all. Barring that good advice, and understanding that no blog post will be perfect, here are some tips that could help you blog and prosper. I have also included some additional reading at the end of this post for your reading pleasure.

1) Pick a defining title tag: What keywords do you want to be known and searched for? If your blog is about food, then the word food needs to be in your title tag: i.e. Maryam’s cravings: will blog for food.

2) Pay attention to your headlines: write snappy, sexy headlines filled with relevant keywords. i.e. Microsoft’s iPod killer: coming Zune to a Walmart near you

3) Add more Media: podcasting, videoblogging, and photography. Adding sound, photos, and video to your blog makes it more attractive and gives you more ways to communicate your message to the audience.

4) Write frequent and precise posts: Post often even if your posts are short. Think of your audience as a new love intrigue. Not every contact you make needs to be filled with meaningful, deep and romantic content. You need to show them you are interested though. Sometimes you call just to say hi, sometimes you show up with a bouquet of roses and sometimes you write them a poem that will put Lord Byron to shame. The point is you need to show up and you need to make the effort. You catch my drift.

5) Find your own niche: Get some scarcity and focus on a single niche. There are millions of blogs out there. What makes your blog worth reading? It might be the corky way you view the world and most importantly it is those interesting details that are interesting just to you. For example, check out this highly popular blog about the London Underground.

6) Give free link love: Network with other bloggers and influencers and link out to friends and enemies alike. To become an authority, you need to network and learn from others and you’ll earn credibility when you give credit when it’s due even if happens to be your competitor.

7) Get up-close and personal: Develop your own style and persona online and cover stories by adding your own perspective. Don’t be afraid to be controversial, agree to disagree, or just over the top from time to time.

8) Tag baby, tag: make your blog optimized for search engines by tagging your posts.

9) Admit mistakes and make amends.

10) Allow comments on your blog, make commenters feel welcome, provide a safe environment for your commenters in your blog and respond as often as possible.

11) ok one more bonus tip: write well. Read and reread, check your facts, spelling, grammar and your state of mind before you hit publish. Once you hit that publish button, your post is going to live on the Internet forever. Does it represent you in the best way possible?

Now, I am not an A-lister and I doubt I ever will be. What I have shared with you are not my own brilliant ideas. I have been hanging around some great bloggers for the past few years though and have been reading and continue to read many blog posts. The above is just based on my observations, but by no means a complete list. Please do your own research and if you come upon words of wisdom please share it with the rest of us.

If you have the time and the resources, attending conferences and un-conferences, are always helpful. I learned quite a lot at the Blogher conference back in July, and look forward to the upcoming gatherings at ConvergeSouth and Blog Business Summit in October.

Additionally, I suggest reading Helen’s posts on how to pick the best blogware, and how to drive traffic to your blog, Shel’s nine random thoughts on blogging, and Dennis A. Mahoney's article: How to write a better weblog.

If I missed anything please feel free to comment and improve this post. Thanks for stopping by. Good luck and keep on bloggin’

One quality blog post is enough to make you famous

After spending some time looking that A-Listers (top blogs in the blogosphere) today like ProBlogger, Micropersuasion and Lorelle on WordPress, I realised that the highest level and best form of blog marketing (or rather, the marketing of any website) is the good old quality content.

The way most people do it

There is no doubt that the best way to increase the profile of a website on the net, whether it is about enhancing search engine rankings, or about getting more targeted traffic - is to get more quality incoming links to your site, and with that in mind, the commonly used methods of getting backlinks are like article submissions, adding to directories, commenting on other blogs and basically leaving your URL wherever you go.

However, think about it. There are only 24 hours every single day. Let’s just say you work from the moment you turn out of bed until the time your mother or spouse starts to nag at you for being a computer addict… that will be about… 20 hours! And imagine each submission takes 3 minutes.

In total, you will get 400 backlinks in 1 day! That sounds pretty nice doesn’t it?

But look - this is a finite number, because your time is the scarce resource.

Consider the “quality content” strategy.

You may spend 6 full hours putting up one solid blog post of 400 words. (I’m sure you could do with 2 words per minute?) You could have spent most of this time doing research, reading other blogs, thinking through, and structuring your argument.

But that one post would be so addictive, so intriguing, and so viral! What happens now is that while you are asleep, people are reading this post and they will recommend it to others. Your content will automatically be Digged - readers online just cannot wait to share what they have found with their own readers and the world.

One post is enough to make 400 backlinks… and maybe even more. And the most magical part is - you don’t have to do any of those linking work! These people WANT to link to you, because being a reporter of a good post makes them credible as well! Moreover, you get linked in people’s blog post itself, not in the comments!

How powerful can that be?

Granted, not everybody is a born writer, and not everybody can entertain with words or have perfect grammar. However, I think what is more important than the words is the argument or the opinion - the thinking that goes behind the post. Both writing and thinking can be learnt, and they have to be learnt through constant practise. Liz from Successful-Blog.com posted her thoughts a while ago on the benefits of writing everyday, and the first in her list is “Writing every day makes us better thinkers.”

Drawbacks and Strategy

One drawback of this strategy is that you need a small readership to start with. Afterall, you need to have people to come in and read your post in order for them to share it with others.

So what I would recommend is that for the first phase in building your blog, you could do a 50-50 focus on writing and marketing.

But after the first three months, after you get a consistent readership of about 100 unique visitors a day, you can pay more emphasis on building quality content. At this time, one well thought post is more than worth 10 quick posts, because quality content is the best marketing tool, ever.

The rules of the world don’t change. Well, at least not so quickly. What goes on in the offline world will be duplicated in the online world, only quicker and more effectively. Academic professors in the top universities today spend years doing research on one single topic, and summarizing that into a 20 page journal paper. That paper will be the one cited by other researchers, and used as case studies in course syllabuses all around the world.

One quality paper is enough to make them world known. One quality blog post is enough to make you famous.

Will One Popular Post Make Your Blog Successful?

First, let me ask you this question: Do you believe that a jackpot post exist in blogging - one post that can turn your blog successful? I’m sure many of you will go for a NO answer with an argument that success in blogging is all about hard work and consistent high quality post. I agree with you but reserve a second opinion on this. Why? This post will tell you exactly why.

Let me clear my premise. Maintaining a successful blog and turning a blog to become successful are two different things. I believe that maintaining successful blog comes only by hard work and consistent delivery of high quality post. I also believe there are two paths to turn a blog successful. One is all about hard work and consistent delivery of high quality post. The other one is by a post that turns to be very, very popular, the jackpot post.

Let us now look at the difference between high quality post and popular post. High quality post is all about the structure and the message itself. They are all good candidates to become very popular post but only few of them will turn to be very popular. But what can a jackpot post bring?

The jackpot post can bring your blog:

• a surge amount of traffic - This happens right after posting and will run for about 2 to 5 days. You will definitely notice a spike of traffic from your blog’s statistic.
  
• a tremendous amount of inbound links - You will definitely notice your blog’s technorati ranking increasing. The traffic from the newly generated inbound links will run indefinitely.
  
• a higher traffic from search engine return - Remember, search engine consider inbound link as a vote of trust in favor of your blog. The higher the trust is, the higher the traffic your blog will be receiving from search engines. This traffic will last indefinitely.
  

Let me site an example of a very popular post and the benefits it bring. The post entitled 66 Successful Bloggers and What they can teach you is considered very popular post. It’s popularity has been described by another post entitled Blogging and the Long Tail – What every blogger needs to know. The later post basically tells us the following points:

• around 8000 visits are made 3 days after posting
  
• Technorati recorded an increase of more than 50 inbound links from other blogs 3 days after posting
  
• additionally, a sister site, KnowMoreMedia, enjoyed a huge spike in traffic - double the normal traffic it usually receives.
  

What happens in the next week, even month and beyond of a spike in traffic is expected to be more than what happens in the first few days. According to Bill Bewel, If the long tail is a true phenomenon, and it is, I can indeed expect more visits and possibly more links in the days and weeks to come than I got in the first couple of days that the 66 Bloggers made the rounds.

One important question here is that: Can we intentionally create a popular post? I’d like to answer this, we can’t. It’s totally market driven. But as they say: you may not be able to control the market but you can certainly influence the market. What does this mean? While we cannot intentionally create a popular post, we can create a post with great popularity potential. How? Visit How to Turn Your Blog Into a Link Magnet?

One final word: If you cannot find your one jackpot post, just keep on giving high quality content. As I said before, there are two paths to turn a blog successful. One is all about hard work and consistent delivery of high quality post. The other one is by a post that turn to be very, very popular.

You may agree or disagree about what I believe or what just I said. But if you think your ideas will be fruitful for my blog readers, maybe you got some ideas that can add value to this content, feel free to place it to the comment section.

Good luck!

How to Write Killer Posts?

Hi There!. The following post includes 4 fantastic tips on how to write killer posts for your blog, they really work, I´ve seen posts out there that really catch my attention, after some research I conclude that these are maybe the main tips on how to do that with your own posts, I hope you implement them in your blog, you´ll see the results. Follow these tips on each post you write.

Write killer-attention-grabbing headlines

Since your title is what’s going to attract most people to read your article, you need to work on creating a killer headline. One that’ll stand out from the rest and grab the reader’s attention. Some great pointers when it comes to creating a killer headline include usage of the following phrases - How to, Discover, Attention, Did you know, etc, etc. Titles containing these words have always proved effective, so it’s a good idea to follow this technique.

Do research to see what are you going to write about

Subscribe to as many blogs as you can related to what you are blogging about to receive their feeds, by doing this, you´ll be able to see what are the latests topics and news, Don´t copy, this is just to give you an idea on what you should be blogging about. Subscribe also to newsletters, most of them are weekly or monthly newsletters, so this is another way to get ideas for your posts. Let me give you an advice, do research every night, let´s say 3o minutes to 1 hour, write down your ideas, and start writing your posts the next day.

Make sure your posts are keyword-rich

It’s always better if you can incorporate keywords into the posts you write. You need to place that keyword in your headline, in your intro, and you’ve also got to maintain a keyword density of around 2-3% in your paragraphs.
why? Search engines rate your post or article according to its keyword density. Also, if readers type in the keyword term matching yours, your article is likely to come up in the top 10 results. When they click through to read it, and then visit your blog thereafter, you’ll be generating targeted traffic…and hopefully some money.

Create small and direct posts

Small posts are easier to read and easier to remember, most readers like to read small and direct posts. Sometimes I tend to write long posts because I want to give you all the information I can, anyway, what I´m trying to say is that most of your posts (not all) have to be small and direct, lets say about 250 to 350 words. I´ve seen blog posts with more than 2,000 words.

Use paragraphs

This may sound a little bit strange, but readers hate posts where all the information is contained in just one paragraph, its harder for them to read and to scan, organize your posts so that your readers can understand it.

Add your style

What´s this? Well, what I´m trying to say is that always use the same format and the same style for your posts, if you are going to use add your signature at the end of a post use it at the end of all your entries, that´s just an example, if you already have a style for your posts stick to it.

How to Write Killer Blog Posts and More Compelling Comments?

While basic writing talent is innate, many of the skills for writing compelling blog posts and and salient comments can be learned. The basic guidelines: keep your copy lively, factual, tight, clear and short and search engine optimized. Here are basic blog style guidelines to follow:

Tips for Writing Better Blog Posts

Short, declarative sentences are best. Web readers demand them. Link like crazy. One thing that distinguishes blog posts from dead-tree journalism is that bloggers link prodigiously. Link to any other blog or website you mention. link to articles, books, products, bios, explanatory materials on other sites that you mention in your blog. Always link to information that clarifies or gives background on information and opinions in your post. Write less Omit all unnecessary words. The best advice I ever got about writing was from my first boss, the late "press agent" Leo Miller, who taught me a game to play with sentences. He'd keep taking out words until removing one more word destroyed the meaning of the sentence. For example: He'd take out words until removing another destroyed the sentence meaning. Aim at keeping your posts at about 250 words. Include complete thoughts in headlines Most people use a news feeders like Feed Demon to scan blog headlines. They decide after seeing the headline to click into the post. Tell as much of the story as you can in the headline. Examples: Before: Pakistan: NA body on S&T meets Huh? Who's' NA? What is S&T? After: Pakistan National Assembly Calls Water Resource Problems the Nation's Major Issue Before: The B. B. King Book After: I'm Writing The B.B. King Biography Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Don't take yourself too seriously. Blogging isn't brain surgery. Don't get pompous or dictatorial. Never lose your sense of humor. Write like it counts. "No matter what your audience size, you ought to write as if your readership consisted of paid subscribers whose subscriptions were perpetually about to expire. There's no need to pander. Compel them to re-subscribe." said Dennis Mahoney on A List Apart White space is your friend. It makes reading from the screen easier. Nothing is harder to read than a solid block of copy on a computer screen. Use the simplest possible word and sentence structure. Read your post out loud and make sure you don't get stuck on complex construction. If you trip on a word the midst of reading a sentence aloud, re-write the sentence. Forget what you learned about business writing in school if you graduated before 1990. Go ahead! Start sentences with "and"or "but." Don't be afraid to break archaic rules. But, jeez, follow all grammatical rules that provide clarity to your content. Cardinal Sin: Say "This is about me," never "This is about myself." Same with "you" and "yourself." Stiff, formal writing is only for lawyers. And you know what Shakespeare said about them. Use bulleted points whenever you can. Use subheads every few paragraphs, even in a 300 word post. Use bold text and italics for emphasis on words and phrases. Make sure your posts are easy to scan. Choose your voice and keep it consistent. Don't be afraid to voice opinions. Questions to ask yourself before you hit "Publish": __ Is the topic clear to someone who only reads the headline? __Does the lead paragraph tell who and what the story is about and why the reader should care about it? __ Is the angle you've used likely to seem newsworthy? __Would someone who knows absolutely nothing about this topic understand this post? __ Is the post free of jargon? __ Is it written in journalistic style and does it make an effort to be objective? __ Have you peppered the headline and the post with keywords and phrases that will be attractive to search engines? HOW TO WRITE COMMENTS ON BLOGS Commenting intelligently on blogs, even if you don't have a blog of your own, can be a very good way to build a reputation as an expert in a field. Some blogs are more influential than others and many are trolled by journalists and your potential clients who are seeking ideas, trends and sources. The key is to provide useful, factual information so that, over time, it becomes clear to other readers of the blogs to which you post that you know what you are talking about. In general, it is a good idea to keep your posts short and on point. Since blogs are archived online, anything you write in a comment will be there until forever. So think before you write and edit, edit, edit before you hit "submit." Blog Comment Guidelines It is necessary for you to sign your comments. In most cases, anonymous messages will not be published. You're also generally asked for: Your e-mail address Your URL A signature that looks like an ad will simply be cut. Stick to the facts about what you do. The quality of your comments will prove your expertise. Because of comment spam, many bloggers ask you to register or to have a Typepad key If you have a business connection to a product or service mentioned in the blog post, this should be clear to anyone reading your comment. Comment only when you feel you can offer something of value that is relevant to the types of issues that are discussed. Size constraints make space limited and bloggers may shorten your comments. Better to simply write shorter. Bloggers are free to reject inappropriate posts, including, but not limited to, overt solicitations and personal attacks. When quoting material, strive for accuracy and note where you have omitted copy; provide attribution for the quote, including source and URL (if available.)

How to Write a Killer “How To” Article That Gets Attention?

icture your blog post sitting on the del.icio.us popular page, or the front page of Digg, for a day or so. By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll be in a better position to make that scenario a reality.

It’s no secret that “how to” articles and blog posts are some of the most sought after, linked to, and bookmarked content online. People want useful information, and they’ll reward you by promoting it to others when you provide it.

The biggest battle is getting enough people to read in the first place. And that battle is won or lost at the headline. What’s more, writing a killer “how to” headline will help you write even better “how to” content when you fulfill the headline promise you made to get people to read in the first place.

It’s All About Benefits

The crazy thing about the popularity of “how to” content is the fact that people don’t really want to learn how to do anything else.

They’ve got plenty to do already, thank you.

But it’s exactly due to the crazy busy lives we lead that prompts us to seek out tips, tricks, and methods to make things better, easier, and ultimately happier for ourselves. Focusing on the “better, easier, and happier” is the key to great “how to” headlines and content.

It’s not that people aren’t smart enough to understand the implied benefits of learning how to do something. It’s quite the opposite, actually. It’s just that implied benefits don’t prompt action like express benefits do.

People smartly employ aggressive attention filters when scanning headlines, and you’ll get through the filters of a lot more people if you spell out the benefits rather than relying on implication. Plus, body content that focuses on benefits as well as procedures is more emotionally engaging, which leaves the reader feeling better satisfied at the conclusion of the piece.

It’s been said that it’s almost impossible to write a bad “how to” headline. That may be true, but what comes after those two magical words can make all the difference in the amount of attention and readership your writing gets.

Let’s take a look at the structure of a few famous “how to” headlines, and see if we can’t figure out why they work and adapt them to new situations and content.

Double the Benefits, Double the Power

This may be the most famous “how to” headline ever:

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Before Dale Carnegie’s classic book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” was conventionally published, he sold it by mail order with that same title as the headline of the sales letter. Certainly Carnegie’s content was compelling, but that headline is brilliant all by itself.

The headline structure is powerful. You’ve got benefit number one right after “How to,” with another benefit following the word “and.” Simple, right?

Deceptively so, as copywriter David Garfinkel pointed out in his book Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich (Amazon link below). There is a subtle relationship between the first benefit and the second that suggests if you can achieve the first, you can automatically achieve the second.

In this case, that implication doesn’t make sense — lots of people have friends and yet are completely lacking in influence. But that cause-and-effect relationship still likely helped Carnegie achieve greatness with his home-study course, and later with the ubiquitous book.

It’s much smarter from a credibility standpoint to use this structure when benefit one and benefit two are actually related. Here’s a few examples that Garfinkel gives in his book:

• How to Save Time and Get Things Done (Time Management Coach)
• How to Get a Better Job and Make More Money (Recruiter)
• How to Save Money and Retire Rich (Financial Planner)

The dual benefit “how to” structure will always work if you logically link the two together and deliver relevant and substantive tips with your content. Give it a try.

How to [Mundane Task] That [Rewarding Benefit]

It’s often harder than you might think to extract the true benefits of learning how to do something. Often, you can simply take a normal “how to” title and make it better simply by using the transition word “that” immediately following the subject matter of the tutorial.

Once you add “that,” just ask yourself what the top benefit of your tutorial is. Then figure out the best way to say it (which usually means being as specific as possible).

• How to Get a Mortgage That Saves You Money
• How to Get a Mortgage That Cuts your Monthly Payment in Half
• How to Get a Mortgage That Gets You in Your Dream Home While Saving You $937 a Month

Leaving Out the “To” Works, Too

Want to increase the curiosity factor of your headline, while just about guaranteeing that you’ll nail the primary benefit of your tutorial? Start with “How” but leave out the “to.” You’ll still be making a beneficial promise to your reader that will be fulfilled in the content, but the intrigue factor will be higher and your results perhaps even better.

Let’s look at these famous headlines:

• How I Improved My Memory in One Evening
• How I Made a Fortune With a “Fool Idea”
• How a New Kind of Clay Improved My Complexion in 30 Minutes

Those are pretty intriguing headlines, right? Likewise, let’s say you’re a brilliant techie who has just solved a problem that affects millions of computer users, and you’re aiming to live on the Digg front page for a week.

How about this?

• How One Easy Tweak Makes Windows XP Crash Proof

Then again, that article faces the rather steep challenge of being impossible to write.

In Summary

The more you focus on the benefits to the reader in your headline, the more readers you’ll have. And by touching on the beneficial aspects while laying out the procedural content, you’ll have more happy readers at the conclusion of the piece.

And then they just might bookmark that post on del.icio.us. :)

Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article…

You are in a dimly lit room. You are alone on a stage before an audience of 1,000. 10 minutes into your presentation, your hands no longer shake or sweat. This is going well, you think. But just then you notice a vaguely familiar sound--tap, tap, clickety-clack--which in one horrifying moment you recognize--it's your audience. IMing, checking email, live blogging ("wifi sucks at this hotel and OMFG this is the most boring speaker ever")

What went wrong? How did you lose them in the first 10 minutes? How can you get their attention?

Nobody knows more about the importance of beginnings than novelists and screenwriters, but too often we think their advice doesn't apply to us. After all, we give technical presentations. Lectures. Sermons. We cover professional topics, not fiction. Not entertainment.

Oh really? Regardless of your topic, the only way they'll read or listen to it is if you get them hooked from the beginning. And like your mother always said, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." (Or as one writer put it, "You can't be in the room with the reader to say, 'trust me...it gets better.')

So, we took some tips on making a good beginning from those whose work depends on it.

1) Do NOT start at the beginning!

Advice for first-time novelists is often, "Take the first chapter and throw it away. Chances are, chapter 2 is where it just starts to get interesting, so start THERE." Start where the action begins! What happens if you remove the first 10 minutes of your presentations? What happens if you remove the first chapter? Or the first page, paragraph, whatever?

Yes, this means dropping the user straight in to the fray without all the necessary context, but if the start is compelling enough, they won't care, at least not yet. They'll stick with you long enough to let the context emerge, just in time, as the "story" goes along. One of my biggest mistakes in books and talks is overestimating the amount of context the listener/reader really needs in advance.

2) Show, Don't Tell

If you have to TELL your audience that they should care, you're screwed. The motivation for why they should care should be an inherent part of the story, scenarios, examples, graphics, etc.

3) For the love of god, DO NOT start with history!

If I read just ONE more book about the web that starts with a history of the internet, I will have to take hostages. Seriously. Do any of us really need to know about DARPA and CERN and...? Do most web designers and programmers really care? No, and No. And it's not just web design books that suffer from this worst-thing-to-put-in-chapter-one syndrome. WHY DO AUTHORS KEEP PUTTING THE HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK?? If you feel driven or morally obligated to include the history of whatever, fine, but don't put it at the front. Stick it in an appendix or on a web page, where it'll do the least damage. (To be fair, there are plenty of topics where the history is interesting and useful, but rarely is the historical overview the grabby get-them-hooked thing you need up front.)

If you do have context that matters--including history (although I'd fight like a mother tiger to convince you it wasn't needed)--let it emerge during the talk or book, not before, when they're the least motivated to hear it. Think about all the things you've pursued where the history became interesting to you only AFTER you developed a strong interest in and knowledge of the subject.

4) DO NOT start with prereqs

Decide what is absolutely, positively, crucial and then... stick it in an appendix. If you write for an audience that you assume probably has those prereqs, then why ruin the first chapter for them? Why slow them down? Chances are, they won't just skip chapter 1 and start at chapter 2. Chances are, they'll just skip the whole book.

5) MYTH: you must establish credibility up front

How many talks do you see where the speaker has multiple bullet points and slides just on their background? I did it once because I thought it would help people understand the context of my talk, and it did NOT go over well because:

A) Nobody cares
B) Bullet points do not equal credibility
C) Nobody cares
D) You already HAVE credibility going in... you don't have to earn it, you just have to make sure you don't lose it.
E) Nobody cares

But I also see this in books, where it feels like the author is trying to prove to you how smart he is. A better approach might be to prove to the reader how smart HE is, by not dumbing it down. And by demonstrating to the reader/listener that he's capable of "getting" this really tough thing. I have no illusions about this--the reader/listener cares about himself waaaaaaay more than he cares about me.

Trying to establish credibility is backwards. Don't try to get the reader to respect YOU... the reader wants to know that you respect HIM!

Demonstrate that respect by caring about his time. By caring about the quality of time. Your audience should know right up front that you're grateful for the time they're giving you, and you show that by being entertaining, engaging, compelling, interesting, or at least useful. You demonstrate it by assuming they're smart. By recognizing what they already bring to the discussion. By not insulting their intelligence. By being prepared.

IDEAS FOR BEGINNINGS
A few tricks of the novelists, screenwriters, and world's best teachers. Use one or more of the following to open with an impact:

Begin with a question. A question the listener wants to have answered

It doesn't have to be a literal question, just something they want to find out. In a good movie or novel, you find yourself thinking, "Who is this guy? Why is he in this situation? Will he get out of it? What's this secret thing they keep referring to?" Make them curious. Curiosity is seduction. I'm astonished by how often we suck the life out of technical topics, when they could be fascinating. Find the passion. If YOU don't care about the answer, why should they?

Be provocative

Challenge a belief. Even if they instantly disagree, they'll stick with it long enough to find out where you got that crazy idea. Start with your most dramatic and/or unpopular assertion.

Evoke empathy

Start with a story about real people, or about a fictional character they can identify with.

Do something surprising... VERY surprising

They'll want to stick around to see what strange thing you do next.

Start with something funny

Forget the advice to "open with a joke", unless you happen to be one of those rare funny people. But you don't have to start with a joke to get them laughing early. Sometimes a picture, story, or just a quote can get them to stick around because you entertained them... at least for a moment.

Promise there will be conflict

We would rarely read a novel or see a movie if not for the promise of conflict. Tension and suspense are compelling. How will this turn out? How will you ever scale that thing? How can you build this system in this ridiculous amount of time using only duct tape and a tin of Altoids?

Start with a dramatic key event or turning point

Mystery, suspense, intrigue

How many bad books and movies have you stuck with just because you had to find out who did it? Look at your topic and find a way to set up a little mystery. ANYTHING worth talking or writing about has potential for mystery (which leads to curiosity).

Deliver an emotional experience

Your job is to touch their emotions in some way. Not a "I laughed I cried I was moved" thing, but remember: people pay attention to that which they feel. Look at your first set of slides and your first few pages and ask yourself, "what feeling does this evoke?" Raise your hand if you've been to way too many talks and read way too many books where nobody asked that question.

"Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph, send your thumbs into his windpipe in the second, and hold him against the wall until the tagline." -- Paul O'Neil

That's the goal, but only the truly talented can actually do that. Me? I'll settle for getting the reader to give me just one more moment. Then another. Then another. And I value deeply (and feel lucky for) each moment y'all are willing to give me.

Where to find free Photos for Your Blog?

I’ve been collecting a variety of resources for free photographs to use on your website and blog. These images are, for the most part, free to use, but may have copyright and usage restrictions. Some may require registration, use only on non-commercial sites, and/or a link back to the source. Others may require more. Check thoroughly for the specific usage rights before using any of these images.

Flickr is a major resource for images, but many of these have restricted use. Not every image on Flickr or the web is free to use. Check thoroughly for usage rights, and if in doubt, get permission or don’t use the image.

The images featured range from people, places, wildlife, and space, as well as textures, patterns, and artistic graphic images. These free photos sites listed may have nude or violent images, though I did my best to exclude image sites which specialize in those.

General Photography Images

• Aarin Free Photo
• Getty Images - Royalty Free Images
• Cromavista
• Image Base
• Free Stock Photos
• Image Blowout
• Majestic Imagery
• Orangetrash
• PDPhoto
• PIX
• Creative Commons Image Search
• DeviantArt
• Stock Exchange
• tOfz
• AboutPixel
• A Digital Dreamer
• Afflict
• Bajstock
• Barry’s Free Photos
• Big Foto
• Big Stock Photo
• Buzz Net
• Cepolina
• Demny Onink
• Design Packs Photos
• Flickr
• Fontplay Free Photos
• Fotodatebank
• Fotogenica
• Fotolia
• Free Digital Photos Net
• Free Foto
• Free Images UK
• Free Images
• Free Media Goo
• Free Photographs Net
• FreePhotos.com
• Free Photo Station
• Freewebpics
• Geek Philosopher
• Image After
• ImageTemple
• iStockphoto
• Lightmatter
• Litetek
• LogoDesignweb
• Mayang
• Morgue File
• NWYH Stock Images
• Open Photo
• Our Media
• PhotoCase
• Picture Station
• Piotrpix
• Pixelbag
• Pixel Perfect Digital
• Pixelquelle
• The Photo Repository
• Stock Vault
• Stock.Xchng
• Triparalbum
• Truly Free Stock
• Twice Pix
• Unprofound
• Woophy
• YotoPhoto

Nature and Science Photographs

• Gimp-Savvy - Images from NASA, NOAA, and US FWS
• Insect Images
• NASA Images
• US Fish and Wildlife Photos: FWS2 and/or FWS1
• US National Park Service Royalty Free Photographs
• Earth from Space
• NOAA Photographs and Images
• USDA Images

Patterns, Texture, and Art Design Photographs

• Amazing Textures
• Four Bees
• Mandragora
• Creativity 103
• ArtFavor
• Texture Warehouse

More information on Finding Free Images and Photographs on the Web

• Master New Media - Where to find free images
• Google Answers - Finding Free Images on the Web
• Graphics and Graphic Design - Free Stock Photos List

I’m sure I’ve missed a few. Know of any free photo stock sites that should be included in this list?

10 Tips on Writing the Living Web

Some parts of the web are finished, unchanging creations – as polished and as fixed as books or posters. But many parts change all the time:

• news sites bring up-to-the-minute developments, ranging from breaking news and sports scores to reports on specific industries, markets, and technical fields
• weblogs, journals, and other personal sites provide a window on the interests and opinions of their creators
• corporate weblogs, wikis, knowledge banks, community sites, and workgroup journals provide share news and knowledge among co-workers and supply-chain stakeholders

Some of these sites change every week; many change every day; a few change every few minutes. Daypop’s Dan Chan calls this the Living Web, the part of the web that is always changing.

Every revision requires new writing, new words that become the essence of the site. Living sites are only as good as today’s update. If the words are dull, nobody will read them, and nobody will come back. If the words are wrong, people will be misled, disappointed, infuriated. If the words aren’t there, people will shake their heads and lament your untimely demise.

Writing for the Living Web is a tremendous challenge. Here are ten tips that can help.

1. Write for a reason

Write for a reason, and know why you write. Whether your daily updates concern your work life, your hobbies, or your innermost feelings, write passionately about things that matter.

To an artist, the smallest grace note and the tiniest flourish may be matters of great importance. Show us the details, teach us why they matter. People are fascinated by detail and enthralled by passion; explain to us why it matters to you, and no detail is too small, no technical question too arcane.

Bad personal sites bore us by telling us about trivial events and casual encounters about which we have no reason to care. Don’t tell us what happened: tell us why it matters. Don’t tell us your opinion: tell us why the question is important.

If you don’t really care, don’t write. If you are a student and everybody is talking about exams and papers and you simply don’t care, let it be. If your job bores you, it will bore us. (If you despise your job with a rich, enduring passion, that’s another thing entirely!) Write for yourself; you are, in the end, your most important reader.

If your site belongs to a product, a project, or an enterprise, you must still find a way to represent its passion and excitement. If you do not understand why your product is compelling or comprehend the beauty of your enterprise, find the reason or find a new writer.

Write honestly. Don’t hide, and don’t stop short. When writing about things that matter, you may be tempted to flee to safe, familiar havens: the familiar, the sentimental, the fashionable. Try to find the strength to be honest, to avoid starting the journey with passion and ending it with someone else’s tired formula. The work may be hard, it may be embarrassing, but it will be true – and it will be you, not a tired formula or an empty design. And if you can be satisfied with that tired formula, you aren’t writing for a reason.

Never, for any consideration, publish a statement you know to be false.

Though you write with passion about things that matter greatly, always remember that it’s a big world, filled with people and stories. Don’t expect the world to stop and listen. Never expect any individual (or, worse, any quantity of individuals) to read your work, for they may have other things to do. At the same time, steel yourself to expect the unexpected visitor and the uninvited guest; the most unlikely people may read your work. Your mother, who never uses a computer, may read your intimate weblog one day in the library. To be honest with the world, you may need to be honest with your mother; if you cannot face your mother, perhaps you are not ready to write for the world.

2. Write often

If you are writing for the Living Web, you must write consistently. You need not write constantly, and you need not write long, but you must write often. One afternoon in grad school, I heard B. F. Skinner remark that fifteen minutes a day, every day, adds up to about book every year, which he suggested was as much writing as anyone should indulge. You don’t need to write much, but you must write, and write often.

If you don’t write for a few days, you are unfaithful to the readers who come to visit. Missing an update is a small thing – rudeness, not betrayal – and readers will excuse the occasional lapse.

If you are inconsistent, readers will conclude you are untrustworthy. If you are absent, readers will conclude you are gone. It’s better to keep religiously to a once-a-week, or once-a-fortnight schedule, than to go dark mysteriously.

If you cannot write for a time, and the reason for your absence is interesting, write about it. Your honeymoon, your kidney transplant, your sister’s gubernatorial inauguration – all these can be predicted and worked into the fabric of your writing so that the interruption, when it comes, seems natural. But avoid, if you can, sudden cryptic pronouncements: “I’ll be unable to post for a while” gives us nothing we can use or learn from.

Don’t assume that you will find something to say every morning. The day will come, sooner or later, when you need inspiration and find you have none. Store topics, news items, entire articles for slow times. Carry a notebook or a PDA and jot down reminders. You cannot have too many notes saved up, but you can easily find yourself with too few.

Since you write often, use good tools. Select them to fit your hand and voice. Learn to use them well.

3. Write tight

Omit unnecessary words.

Choose a visual design that fits your voice. Unless the design is the point of your site, select colors and visual elements that support without dominating. Resist the temptation to add features, for it is often best to use only those few technical and design elements that support your mission. Don’t rush to replace a good design: you will grow bored with it long before your readers do.

Read your work. Revise it. Don’t worry about being correct, but take a moment now and then to think about the craft. Can you choose a better word – one that is clearer, richer, more precise? Can you do without a word entirely?

Omit unnecessary words.

4. Make good friends

Read widely and well, on the web and off, and in your web writing take special care to acknowledge the good work and good ideas of other writers. Show them at their best, pointing with grace and respect to issues where you and they differ. Take special care to be generous to good ideas from those who are less well known, less powerful, and less influential than you.

Weblog writers and other participants in the Living Web gain readers by exchanging links and ideas. Seeking to exchange links without ideas is vulgarly known as blogrolling. Begging high-traffic pages or famous writers to mention you is bothersome and unproductive

Instead of begging, find ways to be a good friend. All writers thrive on ideas; distribute them generously and always share the credit. Be generous with links. Be generous, too, with your time and effort; A-list sites may not need your traffic, but everyone can use a hand.

Many prominent web writers travel a lot – to conferences, meetings, trade shows. Sooner or later, they’ll come to your corner of the world. Offer to feed them. Invite them to parties. Offer to introduce them to interesting people. They might be too busy. They might be too shy. But the road can be a lonely place, and it’s always interesting to meet thinking people.

Small, thoughtful gifts are nice. Share books you love, or that you’ve written. If you’re a photographer or an artist, prints and sketches can be unique and memorable. (Include permission to reproduce them on the web.) Join their cause. Donate to their charity.

Friends are vital for business sites as well, but business and friendship can be a volatile mix. Your prospects, customers and vendors are obvious friends, but both they and your readers will understand that your friendship is not disinterested. Unlikely friends, including your competitors, may prove more convincing.

5. Find good enemies

Readers love controversy and learn from debate. Disagreement is exciting. Everyone loves a fight, and by witnessing the contest of competing ideas we can better understand what they imply.

Dramatic conflict is an especially potent tool for illuminating abstract and technical issues, whether in software engineering or business planning. At times, choosing a communications protocol or adopting an employee benefits plan may seem an abstract task, barely related to the human crises that daily confront us. If each alternative has a determined, effective advocate, however, it may reveal the source of the conflict and to remind us of the consequences of the choice.

To make an abstract or difficult point more real, identify and respond to an advocate who holds a different position. Choose your opponent with care. If you choose a rival who is much less powerful than you, readers may see you as a bully. If your rival is a business competitor, you may seem unscrupulous. The best enemy, in fact, is often a friend – a writer you cite frequently and who often cites you, but with whom you disagree on a specific questions.

A handful of individuals seemingly live for controversy and seek out ways to create and inflame disputes. These so-called trolls are chiefly the bane of discussion groups but occasionally find their way into the Living Web. Never engage them; you cannot win. (Trolls, when ignored, will usually retire. If they cause danger or damage that cannot be ignored, the police and the courts will assist you.)

When beginning a debate, always have in mind a plan for ending it. Ill-planned arguments can drag on, lost in a mass of boring detail or irrelevant side-issues. Worse, the personalities of the advocates may become more engaging than the issues, obscuring your purpose entirely. Have in mind, from the outset, an idea of how long you want to engage the issue and how you expect the exercise to end (or reach a resting point). Plan a conclusion before firing the first salvo. You might devise an event – a final meeting, a live debate or online poll – that will provide a sense of closure. Write a joint communique for your readers or your management, summarizing the outstanding issues and highlighting progress. Then archive both sides of the exchange – perhaps with annotation from a neutral authority – so future readers may enjoy and benefit from the conflict.

When it’s over, try to make good friends with good enemies.

6. Let the story unfold

The Living Web unfolds in time, and as we see each daily revelation we experience its growth as a story. Your arguments and rivalries, your ideas and your passions: all of these grow and shift in time, and these changes become the dramatic arc of your website.

Understand the storyteller’s art and use the technique of narrative to shape the emerging structure of your living site. Foreshadowing hints at future events and expected interests: your vacation, the election campaign, the endless midnight hours at work in the days before the new product ships. Surprise, an unexpected flash of humor or a sudden change of direction, refreshes and delights. Use links within your work to build depth, for today’s update will someday be your own back story.

People are endlessly fascinating. Write about them with care and feeling and precision. Invented characters, long a staple of newspaper columnists, are rarely seen on the Living Web; creating a fascinating (but imaginary) friend could balance your own character on your site.

When the star of the site is a product or an organization, temper the temptation to reduce the narrative to a series of triumphs. Although you don’t usually want to advertise bad news, your readers know that every enterprise faces challenges and obstacles. Consider sharing a glimpse of your organization’s problems: having seen the challenge, your readers will experience your success more vividly.

Interweave topics and find ways to vary your pacing and tone. Piling tension on tension, anger on rage, is ultimately self-defeating; sooner or later, the writing will demand more from you than you can give and the whole edifice will collapse in boredom or farce. When one topic, however important, overshadows everything else in your site, stop. Change the subject; go somewhere new, if only for a moment. When you return, you and your reader will be fresher and better prepared.

7. Stand up, speak out

If you know your facts and have done your homework, you have a right to your opinion. State it clearly. Never waffle, whine, or weasel.

If you are not sure you are right, ask yourself why you are writing. If you are seeking information or guidance from your readers, ask them. Don’t bore them (and discredit yourself) with a hesitant, unformed opinion. If you are writing in order to discover your mind or to try out a new stance, continue by all means– but file the note in your desk drawer, not on your website.

If you believe you are right, say so. Explain why. It doesn’t matter that you are young, or unknown, or lack credentials, or that crowds of famous people disagree. Don’t hesitate or muddy the water. The truth matters; show us the right answer, and get out of the way.

Never lie about your competitors, and never exult in your rival’s bad news.

Try, if you can, to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain and humiliation on those who have the misfortune to be mistaken. People err, and you too will be wrong tomorrow. Civility is not mere stuffiness; it can be the glue that lets us fight for our ideas and, once we recognize the right answer, sit down together for drinks and dinner.

8. Be sexy

You are a sexual being. So are all of your readers (except the Google robot). Sex is interesting. Sex is life, and life is interesting. The more of yourself you put into your writing, the more human and engaging your work will be.

If your writing is a personal journal, and if it is honest, you will have to write about things that you find embarrassing to describe, feelings you might not want to share, events that you wouldn’t mention to strangers (or, perhaps, to anyone). Decide now what you will do, before it happens.

Undressing, literally, figuratively, or emotionally, has always been a powerful force in personal sites and web logs. Pictures don’t matter in the long run; what matters is the trajectory of your relationship with the reader, the gradual growth of intimacy and knowledge between you.

9. Use your archives

When you add something to the Living Web and invite others to link to your ideas, you promise to keep your words available online, in their appointed place, indefinitely. Always provide a permanent location (a “permalink”) where each item can be found. Do your best to ensure that these locations don’t change, breaking links in other people’s websites and disrupting the community of ideas.

The promise to keep your words available need not mean that you must preserve them unchanged. In time, you may find errors you want to correct. The world changes, and things that once seemed clear may require explanation.

Today, this permanent location is often a chronological archive, a long list of entries for a particular week or month. These archives are useful and easy to make. Many popular tools build chronological archives automatically. But chronological archives are limited: you might someday want to know what you wrote in May of 1999, but why would anyone else care? Topical summaries and overviews are much more helpful to new readers and to regulars alike, and if they require a modest additional effort every day, that effort pays dividends that grow as your archives expand.

New tools like Six Degrees and Eastgate’s Tinderbox can make it easier to keep track of categories, to find where new things fit and to find old things that need new links. Topical archives are Google’s natural friend. Remember that your old pages will often be read by visitors from search engines; introduce yourself on every page, and be sure that every page, however obscure, has links to tell people:

• who you are, what you want, and why you’re writing
• your email address
• where to find your latest writing

Link to work you’ve already written – especially to good work that you wrote long ago. Don’t be shy about linking to yourself: linking to your own work is a service, not self-promotion.

10. Relax!

Don’t worry too much about correctness: Find a voice and use it. Most readers will overlook, and nearly all will forgive, errors in punctuation and spelling. Leave Fowler and Roget on the shelf, unless they’re your old friends. Write clearly and simply and write quickly, for if you are to write often you must neither hesitate or quibble.

Don’t worry about the size of your audience. If you write with energy and wit about things that matter, your audience will find you. Do tell people about your writing, through short personal email notes and through postcards and business cards and search engines. Enjoy the audience you have, and don’t try to figure out why some people aren’t reading your work.

Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Do let your work on the Living Web flow from your passion and your play, your work life and your life at home. Establish a rhythm, so your writing comes naturally and your readers experience it as a natural part of their day or their week. But if the rhythm grows onerous, if you find yourself dreading your next update or resenting the demands of your readers, if you no longer relish your morning web routine or your evening note-taking, find a new rhythm or try something else. Change the schedule, or voice, or tone. Switch topics. Try, if you can, to resist the temptation to drop things entirely, to simply stop.

Don’t worry about those who disagree with you, and don’t take bad reviews to heart. The web is filled with caring and kindness, but thoughtless cruelty can and does cloud every writer’s spirit from time to time. Ideas matter, but name-calling doesn’t, and petulant critics wrap tomorrow’s virtual fish.