10 practices for successful blogging!

Being a fellow blogger myself and the owner of a social media marketing company I have been going over the do’s and dont’s of successful blogging! What works and what doesnt work and how to market you blog . You can have the most interesting blog in the world, but if you dont market it, then who knows it exist? Or why are people not reading my blog? maybe it isnt that interesting or maybe you are not reaching the people you want to reach with the content you have!  Below are 10 important rules for blogging! 

With Blogger, WordPress, MySpace, and Facebook, its easier than ever to start your own blog. However, there’s nothing easy about creating a GOOD blog. It takes time and effort but I’ve come up with 10 rules that should make it just a bit easier.

1. Update frequently – Look, nothing is worse than having a great blog and then abandoning it. You lose momentum, any buzz you might have generated and most importantly, you lose readers. Its not easy (and to be honest I need to follow this rule more often) but a lame post every now and then is much easier to recover from than going two months without posting.
2. Cite your sources – Everybody and their dog has a site now. No seriously look. So, linking out to a few authoritative sources to help support your claims might not be a bad idea. It gives you more credibility with your audience and shows that you actually put a little bit of work into the post.
3. Be controversial – There’s nothing like a little controversy to help promote your site. Take a stand on a controversial issue, and then write intelligently about it. People who agree with you will link to you to in support of their arguments, and people who disagree with you will link to you as they attack your position. Just remember not to take disagreements too personally.
4. Include images – We live in a society of over stimulation. We’ve got flashing billboards, instant information at our fingertips, and about 15 different forms of media on our phones. So, if you can break up your posts with a picture or two, you might be able to retain those of us with shorter than average attention spa…
5. Stay on Topic – Along the same lines as the previous point, nothing is worse than trying to wade through a rambling post. On a website, it’s not exactly like you’ve got a captive audience. Most people will click the back button as soon as you start to bore them. (See that? I probably just lost 6 readers right there)
6. Link to other sites – This one is pretty simple, the more you link to other blogs or sites, the more likely they will be to link back to you.
7. Be original – As we talked about in point 2, there are a ton of blogs out there. Don’t just rehash the same stuff that every other blog in your area is talking about. If there is a major news story, don’t just post the news; post your take on it. Take a different angle. Do something to set yourself apart from the mass of other blogs. Be original.
8. Grab them with the headline – Just like a newspaper, the headlines are critical. If it’s interesting, people will check out your post. If it’s not, they’ll ignore it. It’s as simple as that. And, just like in newspapers, there are some words and phrases that are attention grabbers. “Top 10…”, “How To…”, “Warning:”, or any other alarming words work great in headlines.
9. Remember that its public – Have you ever heard the saying “Say it words but not in writing?” That holds true on the internet. Always remember that whatever you write is instantly public information. So, it might be unwise to slam your boss, badmouth your company, or hit on someone else’s wife via your blog (or any other internet medium for that matter).
10. Tell people – So you’ve got a great blog post. Now what? The last rule for blogging is to tell people about it. Mention it to your friends and family, ping sites such as pingomatic.com, and submit it to social sites such as digg.com, reddit.com, fark.com, or any other appropriate site. Sure it’s a bit of self promotion but if you wait around for someone else to do it for you, you’ll probably end up blogging to yourself.

If you need any help getting your message across then stop by our site at www.businessinmotion.weebly.com or email us at businessinmotion@att.net

or visit www.seorefugees.com they are one of the true sites who know what they are doing!

Watching out for social bookmarking!

While I am a huge fan of social bookmarking ( you can find me on digg, stumbleupon as well as delicious) I to have recgonized the trouble that comes with these sites. The tampering and the “gangs” that inhabit the sites.

 

Below I have listed a few points that I think you the reader should be aware of. Let me thanks google for helping me put this together. Research, research and more research ( and some personal experiences) have brought this together.

This my first blog on bookmarking and like I said previously I am a huge fan of bookmarking and have seen this social trend rise and now become a dominat force online and groups such as  Yahoo! are clearly convinced that social bookmarking is the way of the future with their purchase of Flickr, Upcoming, del.icio.us and now *maybe* Digg, all along side their own “MY Web” that “moves beyond bookmarks”.

Add to that the comments made by Yahoo! Director of Search (france), Olivier Parriche, who said, “Yahoo is going to change in the following months and years. We’re going towards “social-search”. We’re going to use users behaviors, comments, users choices and the communities where they evolve to improve our engine.”

Google is also experimenting with this, though in a reverse sort of way. Instead of adding bookmarks users can now remove results from their SERPs. (search engine result page)

It’s clear the search engines are looking to give users what they want, but this may come at the cost of relevancy.

I have a list of more than 20 or so SB sites now. Many are obscure but some have sprung to life in just a few weeks. There’s big traffic to be had here, and where there’s traffic *someone* will find a way to make money.

Expect more to come. The applications are nearly limitless and marketing gurus and data miners can do a lot with the information garnered by SB users. Imagine knowing what sites appeal to your customers. You could build a design and include content based on factors that are similar accross your user-base.

But!

With all the hype and popularity of these new SB communities there are some dangers to watch out for:

1. SB Users are prone to peer presure. Some SB users vote for sites because everyone else voted for it! Depending on the site, popular URLs may get promoted based on the fact that they are getting promoted. Put another way, if a user sees an article is shooting up they may mark that article so they have it to look at later – this vote does not mean the article is any good.

2. SB Users are not experts. As I have come to see articles that sound convincing may get voted up even when they are not accurate. This can do a lot of harm to any industry. Imagine a bogus article about disease-ridden cattle making it’s way to another country. That country may block the passage of cattle hurting the rancher’s proffits. And once cattle is blocked from crossing a border, especially if a disease is attached to it, it becomes news. At this point the stock market is affected…

This may sound far-fetched but I really dont think it is.

3. Some SB sites influence the SEs already, some don’t. Del.icio.us does not give link-pop but Digg and Furl do. The rest I’m not sure about… yet!

4. SB Sites are easy to tamper with. Simply by creating multiple accounts you can give your links multiple votes. Another phenominon is SB “gangs” where groups get together formaly or informaly in forums and other places just to vote each others sites up.

5. SB Users are trendy, not loyal. Most SB Users prefer FireFox over IE but use Windows XP over Mac or Linux. This shows that they are technical to some degree but more likely following the trend of FireFox popularity. Also, FireFox has plug-ins for most SB sites making tagging more convenient.

6. SB Sites give spikes of traffic, not steady growth. Depending on your strategy this could be important. “Link Bait” sites may pick up additional backlinks from SB Users that helps them long-term, but the average link submitted will get a few hundred hits in the first day and dwindle fast after that.

7. Some SB Users are weekend warriors. I’ve noticed that links submitted on the weekend outperform links submitted during the work week.

8. SB Users have a lot of pride. While this may be the most practical and useful post I’ve made about it just the fact that it mentions negative aspects of social bookmarking would get it panned in the SB Sites. Go figure.

9. Social bookmarking is getting competitive without competitive differentiation. While more and more sites spring up the benefits and differences between the sites remain cosmetic. Some have different social customs or likes but the only way to find out what those are is by testing them out yourself. We should soon start seeing SB Communities spring up around niche markets instead of the general “news” categories that exists so far.

There’s more information about social bookmarking at 14th Colony including other things to watch out for and specific site reviews.