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6 Basic Ways to Becoming a Better Blogger

March 15, 2012 by 49 Comments

Running a site takes time and effort. However, it is not hard to do. By simply applying some of the following to your site, you might become a better website host/ hostess as well as a blogger. These suggestions could prevent you from losing valuable traffic.

Keep your blog updated regularly. No, this does not mean you have to blog daily, but if that is your norm, you might want to stay consistent, even harnessing the power of scheduling future blog posts if necessary.

Visit and comment at other blogs. Visit people you blog roll and people who have commented on your site. You might even want to go out of your way every so often by commenting on sites you have not visited before. You never know – you might learn something.

Be a regular participant on the social networks. Like blogging regularly, it is not necessary to be on Twitter or Facebook all the time, but make sure to continually connect with your friends/ followers to keep updated.

Keep your comment open and remember to participate in your own comment streams to keep the conversation going. Sometimes your readers comment because they would love to carry on the conversation that you started with your blog. If you do not participate, then why bother to have written the article?

Offer something even if it is advice, graphics, layouts, or a giveaway of some sort. People love free stuff. Contests are great, but they are only a quick way at attracting temporary traffic. There are no guarantees that your visitors will stay after the contest or giveaway has ended.

Be open-minded and willing to not always be the center of attention. There are always people who are or will be better, and you must be open-minded as you could be stifling your own learning as well as others who are interested in the topic at hand.

Do you have any other suggestions on how to be a better blogger?

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How To Be More Relatable to Your Readers

March 3, 2012 by 26 Comments

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?

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Blondish.net Podcast: Guest Blogging 101

March 2, 2012 by 9 Comments

Episode 3 of the Blondish.net Podcast is a little over twenty minutes and all on guest blogging basics. This Guest Blogging 101 podcast covers strictly basics as there is a lot more to it that needs to be split into a series. The reason for this is that there are a lot of things to cover for both the blog owner and also the guest writer, so I had to make a decision to start with an intro-like basic episode on the subject.

This podcast on Guest Blogging will cover:

  • What is guest blogging?
  • Some tips for the blog owner on preparing their site for guest bloggers
  • Some tips for the guest author when applying and submitting articles
  • A couple ways to find places to guest blog at

This podcast is not for blog owners running a community blog where they have many contributors. This is for the individual blogger that wants to brand themselves and retain blog purity without using guest blogging as a crutch. Some of this can be helpful to community blog owners, but it is not intended for those who are.

Please feel free to ask questions and I hope you enjoy this podcast on Guest Blogging 101.

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Why Anonymous Blogging Is Not for Serious Bloggers

February 27, 2012 by 77 Comments

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?

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Guest Blogging: Preparing For Your Debut

February 26, 2012 by 29 Comments

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?

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Blogging Ain’t Perfect: Your Blog Voice

February 22, 2012 by 37 Comments

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?

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How To Have a User-Friendly Hiatus For Your Blog

February 15, 2012 by 32 Comments

When you go to a site and it reads ‘HIATUS’, is it annoying? For me it is and I have heard from quite a few other bloggers that it can be irksome for them too. What is equally annoying is no updates for a while. Come on people… do you care about keeping your visitors?

Usually the reason a person has a hiatus can vary, but usually boils down to the fact that the blogger does not have enough time and blogging is put on the backburner.

There are a couple ways bloggers alert their visitors to when they are having a hiatus.

1. The blogger shuts the site down completely and posts a short note that they are on hiatus and when they will be back.
2. Leave their blog up but do not update for some time.

Both are annoying. Of course, I know that anyone understands that life can get hectic and perhaps blogging is either a chore or just not important. However, from experience, several things can happen during a hiatus.

  • 1. Your Page Rank in Google or Alexa could become worse due to not updating.
  • 2. Your traffic will decrease.
  • 3. You may lose visitors temporarily or permanently. If you are on hiatus often or for extended periods of time, it could be a total turn-off.

To prevent this, totally shutting the site down or lack of inactivity is not a solution. Instead, you should reduce your number of bloggings to at least once a week. A post only takes 5 to 30 minutes, depending on how fast you type, the topic, and if you need to do in-depth research. Four times a month is great. This will keep your site updated enough to keep your visitors coming back.

When you do blog, you do not have to make the blog long and go over every single thing you did. Just highlight some of it.

And because you can schedule posts, you can write posts ahead of time, schedule them during the time you will be gone, and voilà…. your site is still pumping out fresh content.

You could also do guest bloggers, but make sure to make the call for one ahead of time… perhaps a friend or two that is really good in their niche could spare 10 minutes to write a post for your site.

The point is- keep your site active for your visitors and the search engines.

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Finding Inspiration For Your Site’s Content And Design

February 15, 2012 by 43 Comments

I was talking with a gal, whom I would probably call a colleague when it comes to art in general. She was having issues finding the right colors to inspire her to make her next website layout and not being inspired. Of course, for color issues I told her right away that she should try ColourLovers as a way to look at palettes others have put together. However I also went into explaining about inspiration works for writers and artists in the same way. It is all about experience.

Inspiration can be in anything: the color of a dewdrop dripping from the petals of a flower, in the way a person walks, the shape and texture of an object, and much more. Life is an unending inspiration. Art is Life and life is art. I am not sure if there is a famous phrase similar, but if there is, I would have quoted it already. I am just writing from my experience.

If you want to write about something, but do not know anything about the subject, you research the matter. If you want to draw a picture of a rare object, you find pictures or the real thing. All of the senses are used in finding inspiration.

Web design is a form of art. Yes, it involves a process that may be difficult for some, but the design of a webpage is very much a part of expressing oneself. Often website design takes on trends from time to time and it can be seen. Webmasters learn and inspire each other to build the next layout that becomes eyecandy for others to enjoy. Some share how they accomplish their amazing work through tutorials.

So, if you want to build a website and you just cannot seem to find that exact inspiration, look around and read up on new ways to take your layout and of course, your website to the next level.

Where do you find your inspiration?

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