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’
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Ten Ways To Write A Killer Blog
One quality blog post is enough to make you famous
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?
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?
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
How to Write a Killer “How To” Article That Gets Attention?
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?
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
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.
10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
So, you’re seeing too many of those “how to” and list headlines, and want to try a few different angles?
Let’s move beyond those common headline formulas you see over and over, and add some new blood to your attention-grabbing arsenal.
1. Who Else Wants [blank]?
Starting a headline with “Who Else Wants…” is a classic social proof strategy that implies an already existing consensus desire. While overused in the Internet marketing arena, it still works like gangbusters for other subject matter.
- Who Else Wants a Great Blog Template Design?
- Who Else Wants a Higher Paying Job?
- Who Else Wants More Fun and Less Stress When on Vacation?
2. The Secret of [blank]
This one is used quite a bit, but that’s because it works. Share insider knowledge and translate it into a benefit for the reader.
- The Secret of Successful Podcasting
- The Secret of Protecting Your Assets in Litigation
- The Secret of Getting Your Home Loan Approved
3. Here is a Method That is Helping [blank] to [blank]
Simply identify your target audience and the benefit you can provide them, and fill in the blanks.
- Here is a Method That is Helping Homeowners Save Hundreds on Insurance
- Here is a Method That is Helping Children Learn to Read Sooner
- Here is a Method That is Helping Bloggers Write Better Post Titles
4. Little Known Ways to [blank]
A more intriguing (and less common) way of accomplishing the same thing as “The Secret of…” headline.
- Little Known Ways to Save on Your Heating Bill
- Little Known Ways to Hack Google’s Gmail
- Little Known Ways to Lose Weight Quickly and Safely
5. Get Rid of [problem] Once and For All
A classic formula that identifies either a painful problem or an unfulfilled desire that the reader wants to remedy.
- Get Rid of Your Unproductive Work Habits Once and For All
- Get Rid of That Carpet Stain Once and For All
- Get Rid of That Lame Mullet Hairdo Once and For All
6. Here’s a Quick Way to [solve a problem]
People love quick and easy when it comes to solving a nagging problem.
- Here’s a Quick Way to Get Over a Cold
- Here’s a Quick Way to Potty Train Junior
- Here’s a Quick Way to Backup Your Hard Drive
7. Now You Can Have [something desirable] [great circumstance]
The is the classic “have your cake and eat it too” headline — and who doesn’t like that?
- Now You Can Quit Your Job and Make Even More Money
- Now You Can Meet Sexy Singles Online Without Spending a Dime
- Now You Can Own a Cool Mac and Still Run Windows
8. [Do something] like [world-class example]
Gatorade milked this one fully with the “Be Like Mike” campaign featuring Michael Jordan in the early 1990s.
- Speak Spanish Like a Diplomat
- Party Like Paris Hilton
- Blog Like an A-Lister
9. Have a [or] Build a [blank] You Can Be Proud Of
Appeal to vanity, dissatisfaction, or shame. Enough said.
- Build a Body You Can Be Proud Of
- Have a Smile You Can Be Proud Of
- Build a Blog Network You Can Be Proud Of
10. What Everybody Ought to Know About [blank]
Big curiosity draw with this type of headline, and it acts almost as a challenge to the reader to go ahead and see if they are missing something.
- What Everybody Ought to Know About ASP
- What Everybody Ought to Know About Adjustable Rate Mortgages
- What Everybody Ought to Know About Writing Great Headlines
5 tips for writing timeless content
Some time ago I wrote that bloggers should focus on timeless content. Quoting the post “Blogs that are focused on news or current events die as soon as the articles stop coming on a consistent basis. If you write timeless content, on the other hand, people will still be reading your blog for months or years after you stop writing as long as the content has some value for them.”
Below you will find 5 practical tips for making your content more timeless, regardless of the topic you are writing about:
1. Avoid words that bring the idea of time: whenever you are writing about a particular topic try to avoid words like today, yesterday, recently or expressions like this week or this month. If someone comes across those words while reading your blog posts it is very likely that he will associate the article with a specific time frame, say “the summer of 2005″. The problem is that the reader might think that the content is not fresh and therefore no longer valuable.
2. Put dates at the bottom of posts: the standard design of many blog templates and Wordpress themes feature the date at which the post was published right below the title. Many readers get discouraged to read a certain post if they see that it was written long ago. A good way to prevent this is to move the date to the end of the post. Do not remove the date altogether because a minimum time reference is useful.
3. Get rid of the calendar: if you wander through the blogosphere you will notice the enormous quantity of calendars on the sidebars. This feature could be useful if you write content that is dependent on time. Someone writing about his journey across the Sahara desert, for instance, would need to have a calendar so that readers would be able to track posts in a chronological order and find posts of a specific day. Most bloggers, however, write about topics that are not dependent on time. The first question you need to ask yourself is: “Will my readers benefit from having a calendar where they can click on a particular day and check what I have written on that day?”
4. Get rid of the monthly archives: the same reasoning of the calendar applies to the monthly archives. Unless it makes sense for your readers to search blog posts by month (for example if you are blogging about a long journey or about the World Cup) you should avoid using monthly archives.
5. When blogging about news or current events make sure to add value: every blog will mention a certain news or an interesting event once in a while. When you do post something that could not be relevant a couple of months ahead make sure to add some value to it so that a future reader will not lose his time completely by reading it. Value could be added through your opinion on the matter, a deeper analysis, a cross reference and the like.
