Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Liz Strauss (@lizstrauss on Twitter) had been at WordCamp Chicago (June 6-7, 2009) and talked about many basics behind blogging. However, it was one thing that I could not pass up to blog about and share. I am always finding time to pull up notes from presentations I have attended because there is a meaningful lesson to be learned or reminded of.

When you blog, you need to be authentic- be yourself. I found myself nodding while listening to Liz. I can remember all the wank through the years from bloggers not being who they were. I even remember people trying to call me out, and guess what… I have always been myself.

How can people visit another’s blog and comment when they do not believe you? Are you consistent about yourself? Are you blogging from experience or are you there to just be another person handing out the same information as other websites?

I can agree with Liz when she said, “I can find information anywhere, blog your experience with your information.”

When your blog might have a similar subject like so many other blogs, I choose to come to read and comment because I am reading about your experience. Especially with blogs about WordPress, I am fairly picky. I want more layman’s terms and a little bit of personality. I want to know why I should use one particular code string, versus another, especially since I tend to read blogs late at night when I am slightly tired and blurry-eyed. If I want WordPress information, cut, dry and straight, I will go to the Codex, but if you are going to pass a catchy-phrased tutorial link through my Twitter stream, it better be as catchy as it sounds.

Remember this, your blog may be visited by many people, or very few, but each are different. The only thing in common is that they choose to visit your site because they find you authentic.

Are your authentic? Do you blog from experience? Have you had experiences with people who were not who they said they were?

(Note: Photo is compliments of @LisaSabinWilson.)

Sometimes blog inspiration might seem hard to come by. What can you do to prevent hitting that dry spell? Inspiration can come from many places, but it is how you harness it that counts. However, there are factors that can get in the way of getting your words to jump to your mind and onto your blog.

Well, you need to think about your blogging habits:

• When do you normally blog? In the evening? In the morning? Midday?
• Have you eaten properly?
• Are you having some type of exercise, even in small increments of time, like 10-20 minutes.
• Have you done your homework by reading around your niche and a little outside of it to keep on top of the news?
• Are you blogging way to frequently?
• Does blogging have to be done in a rush?
• Are you just painfully continuing to blog in a niche you no longer have enough material to provide for?

All of the above factors can affect your blog habits. You do need to blog when you are most creative because this is when you will at least have that extra oomph to get that article done. Also, never rush blogging. If you have an article you think you have to squeeze in before a certain time, you really do not. You are not putting a newspaper to bed for publishing on the next day. Your thoughts might be rushed and not come across as logical as it should.

Yes, your health can be a big factor! If you are ill or not eating properly, you could be running low on both energy and the brain power to even get through the day. Make sure you are eating well and incorporating a few exercises. Some bloggers may even freelance online, so that means those who are living the freelancing lifestyle need to take extra care. 10 or 20 minutes might make a difference. Remember in health class – exercise encourages your body to release endorphins. Endorphins make you happy and a bit more energetic.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK! You might not have a boss overlooking… wait – YOU ARE YOUR OWN BOSS! Make sure to keep yourself on target and do your research. Surf the sites you enjoy, read from people within and outside of your niche. You never know – someone might write an article that you may have a response well worth writing your own blog post.

The biggest thing of all in this is that if you are just doing this for the money and not because you are at least passionate about it – STOP! Most people who are passionate about certain topics are more than likely able to nit pick everything apart and find something new to write about. They are also more willing to do the research and stay on top of the game.

These are merely some things to think about when your blogging inspiration hits a dry spell. However, I know others have their own rituals – so what do you recommend?

Not everyone uses the Links section in the backend of their WordPress. However, there is Adding and editing links in WordPress.

It is important to note that the Links section in the WordPress backend does not have to just be for blogroll links. It can be used for many things like affiliates, relevant sites to yours, supporters, and much more. You have the capabilities in WordPress templating to make a template to call a specific link category to a page if you want.

Repurposing and republishing blog post have both similiar and different meanings. Both mean handling a past post in order to post it again. However, repurposing is merely changing the date to the current day for publishing while republishing is totally removing the old post, and starting fresh.

The reasons for both article marketing techniques are to bring a post that the author may feel relevant now, but it did not get as much attention the first time around. It is also a great way to pull up those posts, freshen them up with any new information and then release it to your readers again.

In repurposing a post, everything is retained, even the original comments. If a person republishes a post, any comments that had been associated will be lost. Also, in repurposing, it could mean that the author could publish the post in another medium, or in several mediums, like video blogging, or even podcasting. While both ways are great for any blog author, repurposing a post might be a better choice.

Why?

In most content management systems and blog platforms, including WordPress, the blog author can change the status, the visibility, and when the article was published. As said earlier, the older comments remain intact with the article, keeping the conversation open for newer comments. The other great thing about re-purposing is that it is posts to the social networks like a fresh new post and put as the most recent post in your RSS feed.

In entirely republishing a post, while the article may be listed, the comments are lost. This really is much like a slap in the face to past readers who have commented on the article.

It is your choice as the blog owner to decide which method works best for a particular article. However, remember, that if you are trying to get more traffic to that article, as well as your readers to leave comments, you will have to do a little more effort on the social network sites other than just posting your article.

Which method do you normally do – repurposing your posts or completely republishing your articles?

One thing that really impresses me about one blogger over another is their relatability with their readers. Ever person has a different background filled with hundreds of unique experiences. It is often at this point, no matter what the article might be about, that a reader can become turned off.

Here is how to be more relatable to your readers.

• Be open and friendly. While you might have some serious topics covered on your blog, while engaging in conversation when readers who comment, make sure to make them feel welcome and that you respect their opinion. Not every reader will agree with you, but if you can make that extra effect to reply, and make sure that they know you at least read their side, they will come back.
• Be honest. “Honesty is the best policy.” That quote rings true in so many ways. When you decide to promote your work on the social network streams, you better be giving honest information. People react in very negative ways and are quick to tell others if you are a dishonest character.
• Be uniquely informative and accurate. You need to be able to give something to people that will stand above other blogs, especially if you are trying to compete for their attention. You might agree with another website on a topic, and you can always link to the original article and expand on your own opinion. That actually keeps the conversation going and for some people, when you link them back, you end up making a nice blog friend that is open to linking you back.
• Do not overwhelm your readers. Long paragraphs are known to be a bore for some readers. Break them up. If your articles are going over 700 or even 1000 words, perhaps look into your article and find a way to break it up into parts. This will allow you to have several posts instead of one, AND those who liked the first part, will be eager to read the rest.
• Use words that are easy and do not intimidate your readers. Another thing is if you choose to use vocabulary that might be difficult for others to understand, you may want to provide a short footnote or some type of explanation. Within the US, most people have an average reading level of a 6th grader. Outside of the US, you are dealing with language barriers, so they will have to look up difficult words in a translator sometimes.
• Always be open for new ideas. If you ever feel you site is missing something, ask your readers for suggestions of what topics they believe you need to cover. Do a survey or create polls. Create open events for your readers to drop in and ask questions.

What other ways do you suggest on how to be more relatable to your readers?

How much of yourself do you put out there on your blog and social network sites? If you are an anonymous bloggers, are you really taking the precautions for keeping your information from wandering eyes?

Unfortunately, for serious bloggers, those who are making a business of blogging and developing an authority amongst the blogging community cannot remain anonymous. Especially in the United States, you are required to file taxes for advertisements and all types of monies earned from endorsements, which in return other people can see your information.

If you want to remain anonymous, the following would be needed to be met:

• You cannot reveal your real name.
• You cannot reveal your address.
• You cannot reveal detailed aspects that will specifically identify you, including work.
• You cannot even share your photograph.

In social media, being transparent is important. This helps build your trust with others in your niche as well as readers in general. While the attention can be tempting for bloggers, you cannot succeed if you want to influence your followers. They will not be able to relate to an anonymous person.

AND it kind of hinders the process of becoming more of an authority in your niche. Many bloggers seek to attend conferences and even speak at them, gaining more authority over their blogging peers who remain behind the screen. For bloggers who choose to remain anonymous, they may not be able to grow more as a blog and brand versus other bloggers who will try to reach more people with any medium they can get their hands on.

While you might just be an individual, take a lesson from companies. They are required to share information. Why would you trust a large company if they cannot give you detailed information about the main hub or their products? If you cannot share a bit about yourself, why would people trust you. If you are making money online, you are building a business with your blog, thus needing that transparency for bloggers too.

While you can limit what you put out online and still be transparent, if you do not want people to know where you live and have your own domain, pay the extra few dollars to privatize your domain registration. Your visitors WILL get curious and even look up your registration, even if it is to see who you host with (despite the fact they could just email you via your contact form and ask.) This might give a little piece of mind of not being contacted by phone or snail mail or even email just by someone looking up your domain registration information at any registrar.

On the other hand, it is understandable why a person wants to keep as much of their information as private as possible, but also try to build a brand. It could be that they had a bad experience with harassers or perhaps had a problem with identity theft. Or it could be that they are parents and have worries that revealing information that could let a person know where they live is very scary.

However, with millions of bloggers online, there is a big difference between bloggers who are transparent and anonymous bloggers – the obvious trust and ability to assure authenticity. There are very few exceptions to being extremely successful as an anonymous blogger.

What advice do you have for bloggers wanting to become more active as a blogger, but try to retain some privacy in the same breath? For those who are anonymous bloggers, how have you assured your readers of your authenticity?

So, you considered guest blogging on another site that was well known and could possibly bring you both some link love and some traffic. However, your site is still new and you are unsure if you might be welcomed in that community. While some of your worries might seem bad to you, they are not. They have simple solutions.

Guest blogging is the same as writing on your site. Most site owners will not allow you to write on their site unless you can either meet their requirements or show an aptitude for the subjects covered on the website.

You might think:

• My site design looks terrible.
• My content does not reflect where I want to be.
• Will I be able to handle the influx of visitors once I have started guest writing at other sites?
• Am I going to be taken seriously?

It is okay to go ahead and guest post at another site, but if you are concerned about your site as it is now, you really should consider re-branding your site to something that you are satisfied with before considering on posting elsewhere. It takes careful planning to make sure you have a fully functional site that reflects you. A site that looks unfinished makes visitors hesitant to come back even if you have made a lot of changes later on.

If you are not happy with your posts, dig for good information and write articles that you can present confidently to your site’s readers. If you are guest posting, you need to somehow show the same passion there as you have in your own site. Any less and not only will you fail to entice readers into other parts of your site, they will also not bother to read your guest article at the other site. Give is more than 100% and you will get back just as much, and sometimes even more.

As for being prepared to receive more visitors to your website because of your guest post, you should be able to handle visitors on your blog. A lot of webhosts give huge amounts of diskspace and bandwidth. You need to watch your database usages (resource usage) and make sure that you do not have too many plugins or components to bog down your site’s speed.

Some users can check their resource usage with their webhosting account. In cPanel, users can check server status. You might even email your webhost and ask them how you are doing on resources so you can avoid downtime. While you might even have unlimited bandwidth and diskspace, even on a Shared hosting account, you are not limited on database resource usage.

What other advise might you have for anyone considering or about to start guest posting?

I was an English major the first time I was in college and I have to say that my writing style is far from what it use to be for my blog. I was the one pointing out the errors and being a real grammar snob. And you know what? It was a put off for other people.

The thing is, blogging ain’t perfect and that comes to your blog voice. Your blog voice is what shines through when you write. Blogging already takes guts to do, especially for newbies. It takes time to develop a voice that resonates who you are and for your readers to become comfortable with you.

Now, that does not mean your blog voice is the same as how you speak, but it definitely is something that should come naturally.

I have some advice for both the visiting grammar snob and the blogger when it comes to blogging and the reader.

For the Visiting Grammar Snob

For those who are grammar snobs, it is not okay to be a complete jerk, even when the post is about teaching people something. Believe me, I had to fiddle around in my mind for a civil word. You can however send an email or leave a comment about a post about suggesting a correction. If you are doing that, you should also leave part of your comment directed toward the topic. And if you are selling services to copy edit, that is wrong and it is spam to even do that.

You can be as strict as you want, but you cannot control others. Get over it, be open minded, be helpful, or just click that ‘X’ in the top right of your Internet browser window if you are that turned off about a person’s post because of their grammar and punctuation.

For the Blogger

Do not be afraid to write. Be natural and just in case you do have trouble writing, proof read your post before publishing. Some browsers have spell check extensions that you can install, which will even pick up spelling errors while you type a post in your WordPress backend. If you are more comfortable typing outside of your blog platform or content management system, use Microsoft Word and take advantage of its spell check tool.

In the case that you have trouble proof reading and have a few buddies online, ask if they can skim your post and do a quick proof read. You do not need to hire someone to peruse your post and correct it unless you are trying to write a professional copy that needs to be perfect.

Do you still worry about your writing style? Or are you the grammar snob?