Successful Blog

Here is a good place for a call to action.

10 + 1 Qualities of Bloggers and Our Readers

by

First there were bulletin boards. Over time they became forums and then chat rooms. Web sites were born and were gathered into portals. Each of them uses the magic of the Internet in a slightly different way. None of them quite captures the personality and creativity of so many individuals as blogging.

What is it about blogging that makes it so addictive both to bloggers and our readers? What am I talking about? Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek explains it in his ClickZ article Ten Simple Rules for Dating a Blogger. I’ve used his rules to derive ten blogger descriptions. Do you see yourself in them?

  • Bloggers are always clicking. We see and report everything with amazing clarity.
  • Bloggers are never one. We are part of a social network. We love sharing information.
  • Bloggers are almost chameleons. The world of blogging is flexible and agile. Great bloggers are too. That’s how we’re creeping into all kinds of online publishing.
  • Bloggers love to disrupt the status quo. We live by doing things better, faster, cheaper. We have WAY MORE personality than our webmaster counterparts. It shows up in how we write and in what we like to read.
  • Not all bloggers are on the up and up. In fact spam and advertorial content is what some slimy bloggers are really about. Successful bloggers don’t need them.
  • Bloggers have their addictions and temptations. We are involved with Search Engine Optimization. We can’t quit checking ad program words. We are crazy copy generators. We are constantly checking links and statistics. . . . Excuse me for a minute. (If you don’t know what those things are, that’s why we’re putting together a Blogger’s Survival Kit.)
  • Bloggers live for our bloggy “big breaks.” It might take time, but our position changes. The first notice by a big search engine, the first trend search that shows up on Blog Pulse, the first page ranking at Google–these are our academy awards. We know not to expect our nonblogging friends to understand it.
  • Bloggers don’t tolerate imposters. If someone we trust has steered us wrong, you can bet we’re long gone. . . . and possibly blogging about it.
  • Bloggers think in lists. We list early and often. We know that lists are key to keeping information moving fast and furiously.
  • Bloggers like to have our say or we wouldn’t be blogging.

and I added this one

  • Successful bloggers know what we’re blogging about and who we’re blogging for.

So there they are 10+1 Qualities of Bloggers and Our Readers. Know any others I should add to the list? How do we use this information to make our blogs more enticing to our blogger-readers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 1 SOBs

by

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

My personal thanks to the blogger-readers who thought my Blog Review Checklist was working or playing with. I’ve been by your blogs and seen what you’ve done. I’ve left comments where I could. Mostly I thank for the push start to making this blog a real community. So in appreciation I feature your links.

How these links work.

    1. Read everything on Successful Blog and leave lots of comments.
    2. Return to these links and click on the button you wish to go to. 🙂

Joshuaink logo

Blog Blog Logo

simplenomics logo

Mayvelous Things logo

Acemiblogcu blog

Weblog Ku

www.ctbizblog.com logo

Thanks again!
deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Think Before You Link

by

Good friends come to town. You want to show them around. There are so many options, but they have limited time. You consider your choices before making them. Only the best sights for your friends.

That’s the approach you should take to linking your posts. Only the best for your readers. Before you add any link, stop to think about it:

  • Does this link clarify what I’m saying here? If the answer is yes, link. If it’s not, don’t. (Drop it, or put it at the end of the post.)
  • Have my readers seen this link 10 times already? If so then drop it or find another. You’ll gain credibility as a leader.
  • Is this information they will care about? Would you want to go there, if you were the reader? If not, don’t link. Readers are counting on you to value their time.
  • If the link does belong, label the link and credit the writer. Don’t just put a nebulous click here. Readers want to know where they’re going before they go there.
  • Will this link take my readers away forever? You wrote a post filled with good information. Check the link to make sure that readers can get back. If it’s near a key point, maybe you shouldn’t interrupt things. The link might work better at the post’s end.

Keep in mind that too many links make us lose concentration. We literally stop reading completely.

Think before you link. Readers might not know you’re performing this service. But they’ll know they get more for their time when they read you.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Checklist for Linking to Quality Blogs
Think Before You Intra-link
Intra-Linking as Promotion

Audience is Your Destination

by

An airplane traveling from New York to Chicago is off course 98% of the time. Still it gets there. Why? The pilot is always adjusting with his destination in mind.

The audience is your destination. If you’re writing for yourself, you’ll head in a different direction than if you’re writing for people learning what you already know. It may sound obvious, but it’s still worth stating–if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to get there.

Too often bloggers don’t think through who their readers will be. As a result their blogs are all over the place. Ever loved a blog one day and didn’t know why you went there the next? That’s a blogger who hasn’t picked an audience.

Have you really thought through who your audience is? Here are some questions to help you do that. Take a shot at answering them all in one sentence.

  • Who am I writing for?
  • How are they like me and how are they not?
  • Why do they read blogs like mine?

Write down your audience profile. Revisit it every now and then. Adjust it as your readership grows and you get to know them better. Use it to guide what you choose to write about.

Now that you’ve got a clear destination. Other decisions get a whole lot easier. In my next post we’ll put this theory in practice.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Review Checklist

by

How to Blog Series

When was the last time you looked at your blog the way your readers do? If you write only for yourself, you look at it that way every day. . . . You are your audience. You’re done.

The rest of us are looking for an audience a little bit larger than one.

Humans have unconscious tendencies. We do lots of the things we like to do and ignore the things we don’t. This makes for a blog that looks great from our point of view, but can leave gaping holes–holes that our readers see, holes they probably won’t tell us about.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s okay to leave things out, as long as we know that we’re doing it. Not every blog has to do everything. In fact, most really shouldn’t. But walking around with a hole in your blog could be embarrassing, especially if you don’t know about it.

Here’s a checklist to make sure your blog’s (ahem) vital parts are covered.

Blog Review Checklist

  • Audience: What words would your readers use to describe your blog? What do they like best about your site?
  • Purpose: What is the purpose of your blog? Why does it exist? Is the purpose stated plainly where your readers can see it? How well does your blog meet that purpose?
  • Content: How well does the content support the purpose? Is the content readable, interesting, accurate, entertaining, and appropriate for your audience?
  • Design: How well does the look of the blog communicate the kind of blog it is? Is navigation easy and intuitive? Do items flow naturally from the first to the next? Do the color palette, image, and type choices support the content or call attention away from it?
  • Posts: Do you post on a consistent schedule the information readers came to find? Do your posts reflect the unique purpose and style of your blog? Do they offer variety and interest within your blog’s purpose and theme?
  • Comments: Do you read and respond to comments to form a sense of community? Consider which posts get most comments and which get none. How does that effect the topics that you’re posting on?
  • Technical Issues: Have you checked lately to see whether and how fast your blog loads in other browsers? Have you overdone the use of plug-ins and gadgets, making the experience more confusing than fun?
  • Writing: Is your writing clear and respectful of your readers? Have you established a writing voice that lets readers know who you really are? Is the blog essentially free of errors in grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation?
  • Organization: Have you set up your categories to draw readers into your backlist? Do you feature “Golden Oldies” that new readers would have interest in? Do you name your Categories things that readers can understand?
  • Marketing and Social Networks: What are you doing to let readers know that you are here? Are you listed in the right directories? Do you read and comment on other blogs within your readership? Have you included linked to the social networks where your ideal readers spend their time?

Sure it takes time to review your blog. It takes even more to make tweaks and changes. But you invest so much time blogging. Doesn’t it seem worth it?

A rule of good publishing says, Spare the reader not yourself. In the end, you won’t be sorry.

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Clean Message, Clean Blog

by

From the Archives:

There’s gold in them there hills . . .In addition to adding current links within posts, I’ll be searching the net archives of great sites for interesting articles that extend the conversation or add a new voice, new information, or a new point of view. These will be carried in separate posts like this one. So that you can identify them immediately as non-date dependent information.

From the Blog Herald

While putting together the Blog Review Checklist, I remembered a post Duncan Riley wrote about Spring Cleaning your blog. It was posted early last September.

Speaking of clean . . . notice the clean, clear message. The herald states their purpose there in the logo where readers can’t miss it. The audience knows immediately what they can expect to find on this blog.

Click the logo to access Duncan’s tips. Be sure to share any that Duncan or I might have missed.

From Joshuaink

This one isn’t from the Archives, it’s from today. But it’s lots of fun. After reading the checklist above. Joshuaink.com answered it. The answer is such a fun read. I thought I should share it with you.

Note again. The purpose of the site is part of the logo. Same drill, click on the logo to go to the site.

 

 

–ME “Liz” Strauss