Blondish.net » Blogging

Blog At Your Own Risk, And When You Do Blog…

Nile — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:06:51 +0000

I was reading Chris Brogan’s Rules of the Pool article and I really had to reiterate that when you blog, choose what you think is best. Using together Blogging and social media are knocking all the rules of the normal pool we have come to know over the past decade, literally right out of the water. As long as you are not violating any terms of service or doing anything illegally, you can blog and use social networks to your hearts content. Of course, you may offend some, but you will successfully have influenced people.

If you write paid to review/ pay to blog articles every so often, that is great. If your site has a few advertisements on it, great! There is no shame in that. Although I have heard from others their displeasure about paid to review, it really stems from some bloggers have no real content and excessively use the paid to blog system as a reason to blog.

Blog about what you know, and perhaps things you are learning, or even things you want to know. Blogging today is more than ever a ‘blog at your own risk’, just like those pools that have a sign that says ‘swim at your own risk.’

I also heard from Jim Turner (Founder of One By One Media) at WordCamp Chicago 2009 a quote that he got from Paul Chaney (social media speaker) that said -

“Publishing something to the Internet is like peeing in the pool.”

It is not easy to remove things from the Internet. The search engines tend to take a while to let things fall into an abyss, so really when you blog, be confident in taking the risk, and be prepared to share your words with others. Be dedicated to blog because you enjoy it, not because you are trying to profit from it.

I remember one gal who had a site (and I will not mention her name, but I can vouch that this really happened in the past few years), and still has it, she would blog a little about her daily life, but she would keep adding in her affilate links for those ‘free’ gimics that you have to sign up for several opportunities just to get a ‘free’ camera or computer.

She constantly plugged them, and when she was not blogging about them, she was also writing paid to blog articles. On top of that, she had her own in house banner advertisements too. It was totally a fail situation. Her site had gotten plenty of traffic when she was not getting so heavily involved in writing to get some kind of compensation. Her content was severely lacking any value to influence anyone. Eventually her blog turned towards being more for commercial gain, she lost a lot of followers and people who would normally comment. In fact, I remember seeing her catch a lot of flack from those same people tired of feeling spammed when visiting.

Clearly, her risk in the end drowned her. What kind of risks have you taken for your blog? How did it work for you?

Webmaster 101: Making Sense of Your Site Stats

Nile — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:05:31 +0000

For those who already know how to harness the power of their site stats and how to adjust their site focus, this article will be a real breeze. For those who are just getting into blogging and finding their way, this might be handy.

Reading your site stats whether you use your StatPress plugin (for WordPress users), Google Analytics, Quantcast, Lijit or some other tool, your stats will tell you quite a few things:

1. How many people come to your site
2. Where your visitors entered your site
3. What your visitors were looking for
4. How long your visitors stayed on your site
5. Where your visitors left your site
6. What areas your visitors stayed longest on

Of course there are more, but the above are just some of the general ones. The goal is to retain some of those visitors and keep them coming back. Whether you apply nifty plugins like the Thank Me Later plugin (for WordPress users), or invite people to subscribe to your RSS feed, have Subscribe to Comments, subscribe to your site’s newsletter, or have a few featured posts that are eyecatching, you are trying to achieve whatever goal you have set for your website. However, the hard work can be seen in your stats.

You can install as many plugins or try as many tricks, but your control over your content is very essential. The rate at which you publish your articles could harm your site. Although you could pump out many articles per day, it may not be ideal if you are the sole owner of the blog. You might run out of topics and into the proverbial ‘Writer’s Block’ also known as Bloggers Block. On the other hand, if the time between your articles leave your visitors feeling like they are pulling teeth just waiting for your next post, you may be hurting your site.

Your stats can help you come up with the perfect formula for your blog to not just regulate, but improve your site statistics. Here are a few pointers to make sense of your stats.

Always compare your stats on a day-to-day basis. Even this small of time can help you in the long run as you can plan posts to reach more of your visitors since they are more apt to visit at one time of day versus another time.
Make sure to check what people are searching for on your website. If you do not have it and it is relevant to your website, perhaps you should consider writing about the topic?
Check how long your visitors are staying and think about ways you could implement tools to increase that time.
Check your referral links (where your visitors came from) and determine how effective those links have been. If they are from other bloggers, find out if they are recommending you are be an ambassador to your site by thanking them for giving your site a shout out.

What other suggestions would you have for others to help people make sense of their stats? How often do you check your stats?

Has Blogging Become A Chore to You?

Nile — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:16:38 +0000

You blog often and spend time writing quality articles, but feel you are not getting traffic or your blogging seems all for nothing? Has blogging become a chore?

There could be several reasons why you might feed blogging is a tedious chore:

Creating a post takes too much time
Lack of motivation
Discouraged because you do not have any blog comments or socal interactions.
You have no passion for the topics you chose for your website’s focus.

Each of these are excuses! If you want to succeed as a blogger, you need to keep writing! It might take some time, and engaging people, but the reward is far more worth it.

If it has, then perhaps you need to look at your blog’s focus and plan. Much like most businesses have some type of plan in place, a blog should too. If you are wanting to build a reputable site that has at least decent traffic, you need a blog plan in place.

So, back to the excuses. What can you do to stop these excuses? Well, it might take going back to the basics with your blog’s plan.

Your blog plan should include at least these basics:

The focus of your site. This includes the topics you will write about, any products or services.
The design and structure of your website. This is what you will use for your site’s functioning in relation to design and development. This might mean if you choose to solely have a blog on WordPress or a total static site, or perhaps choose another content management system.
How you will reach your audience. You will want to think about whether you want to connect your website to social network sites, do social bookmarking, or even ad marketing.

Your first blog plan for your site can include your plans for monetization, in the case you will solely depend on advertisements, paid posts, and other revenue making tools. However, it should not be put in place from the beginning. Making money on your blog from the first day should not be your goal. You can always make money with traffic, but plastering your site with ads off the bat is a big clue that your focus is not on providing unique and quality content.

It should be reaching out and engaging with people. With integrating your site to post to social network sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as submitting those articles to social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, you are literally putting out your content to the masses. If you already talk to people online, then they may be open to reading your blog posts.

Now, if you do not have any connections… come on… starting engaging. Unless you spam someone or come off as rude, connecting with people is not hard. Be prepared to listen. As a blogger and person in general, you can learn a lot, and even find topics to fuel your blog.

So, stop thinking of blogging as a chore! Get writing, engage, and have fun!

Please – No More Fake Reviews On Blogs!!!

Nile — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:06:27 +0000

You have probably read product or service reviews online. I know I have. You also have spotted fake ones or perhaps ones that just really make little to no sense. A lot of people rely on reviews from both blogs and other review sites to determine if a product or service is well worth the money.

There are reasons why people do fake reviews:

They were paid by someone else to do it.
They want to make money through paid to post programs.
They want to make money through affiliate advertising.

Do I have to list more? As you can see, it all boils down to making money.

However, it does more than make someone money. Fake reviews on sites or blogs:

Have little regard to their own readers and do not care to provide honest reviews.
Have little regard to actually working with companies to feature a worthwhile product.

You basically lied while earning money. The economy might not be that great, but when people have money to spend, they will spend it on products and services that they can trust.

And what happens if your readers call you out on a fake review? Retracting your post seems really unprofessional and pretty much a turn off for readers. Remember, that article could be deleted, but how many places did that article get pinged? How long does that article stay in the search engines? How about- how long will it take for you to regain your reader’s trust?

That is what you should be focusing on.

What can you do to avoid writing a bad review that might be construed as fake on your blog?

Well, the obvious would be to write a real honest review. Try the product or service first or do not attempt to write about it at all. If there is any pay involved, or affiliate programs attached, Without focusing on that, make be thorough and try to cover as much as you can like: product description, first thoughts, expectations, end result of product or service’s use, and final thoughts.

It might take a little more time to blog a real review, but in the end, you are letting your readers know where their money is best spent. Being helpful = #win!

RSS Feed 101

Nile — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:55:54 +0000

What is the purpose of an RSS feed? That is one of many questions I get from people on a daily basis. I decided I would share. First, you have to understand what it is before I go onto explaining how you can use your RSS feed to your advantage.

According to Wikipedia, an RSS feed is:

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

The format is really simple (exactly part of its definition.) In fact, you can view my own rss feed here at Blondish.net and see for yourself. You will be able to subscribe to these feeds too. One way you can subscribe is to plug the feeds you into your Google Reader. You can simply click on the title of the feed on one side and it appears in a window for your to reading convenience.

However, here are a few things to help you with your blog when harnessing the power of RSS feeds:

You can use your social networking places and spread the news about your blog and ask those who like your blog to subscribe to your feed. The feed is something that your reader can choose to come back and not forget about after some time.
You can make money with your RSS feed. There are programs out there that will allow you to add text links or advertisements to your feed so you can make a little money.
You can hold subscription drives. RSS feeds are free to subscribe to. In fact, Chris Brogan holds them on occasion, and encourages others to hold them too. These subscription drives could pull in more readers who are curious about your content. You can also take this time to ask your audience on what they would like to see on your site so they may come back again and again.
You can encourage your readers to make comments on your blog through your feed too! This is a great way to keep your blog’s conversation rolling!

The great thing about the feeds are that all you have to do is blog and it will be published not just to your website, but your feed page too. It can drive traffic to your site on days you did not do much to promote your blog, and possibly bring back old viewers you have not seen in some time.

Do you have an RSS feed? If so, what do you do to harness its power? If not, have you ever considered putting one on your site?