I decided to do a little bit of researh just to see how people tick.
What I decided to ask is the big question WHY do people blog?so if you don't mind just filling out my little survey, I will publish the results at the end of the survey and if you have anything else to add just leave a comment and I will mix it in with the polls findings.
Thanks very much, O.D.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
WRITERS BLOCK
If your like me, a complete beginner at blogging and unless you have something your passionate about to write about ,you may experience writers block.
Writers block can be a hair tearing, nail biting experience for some, it is a very frustrating feeling to have. The way I deal with it is just to step back from the problem and do something else, something different and relaxing.
While I was cuising through the web the other day, I came across a delightful article on how to have constant content for your blog. So with no further ad-do read on further.
How to have a Constant Stream of Blogging Ideas
Writing Content 44 comments
This post on generating blogging ideas was contributed by Graham Jones from grahamjones.co.uk.
Most bloggers give up after a short while; even though there are millions of blogs online, few are updated regularly and most have been abandoned. The difference between success and failure in blogging is often down to persistence. But, when I speak at meetings about blogging, people often come up to me afterwards and say “Ah, yes, that’s all very well, but I run out of ideas after a while, so I can’t blog regularly”. So, how can you be sure of coming up with a constant stream of blogging ideas? How can you be certain that when you open your blogging software you will always have something to write?
If you think about your daily newspaper it does not have a choice. The number of pages is set by the amount of advertising space they sell. Each day, though, has varying amounts of news - some days, very little happens. But it would be no good the journalists filling up the first few pages and then printing a notice on all the others saying “if we’d been able to think of anything to write we would have put it here”. No matter how little is going on around them and no matter how much space they have to fill, newspapers simply have to fill the space allocated to them - plus they simply MUST do it before a specified time. The only way they can achieve this is to have a system.
Develop a blogging planning system
The first step in a journalistic system for blogging is having a plan for each month. Set up a spreadsheet, a table in a word processor, or a calendar on your desk - it doesn’t matter how you do this, but you need a monthly plan. On that plan you need to mark out the days you will definitely blog. This might be every day, just the weekdays, the weekends, every Wednesday - whatever works for you and your audience. Now you have a visual plan of what’s needed you can start filling in the blanks.
Journalists have two kinds of stories - diary stories and “off-diary” stories. Diary stories are those things you know will definitely happen - such as events, meetings, press conferences and so on. There are endless directories of events online and you will know of specific events on particular days in your industry. Mark your diary with these events as “diary items” you know you can write about. Also, look for anniversaries and specific days that could trigger a blog - this might be Thanksgiving Day, or Mother’s Day, or whatever can provide you with something to write about.
Diary stories should give you a reasonable number of days with topics already allocated to them over the coming weeks and months. Now you need to fill in the gaps. The way journalists do this is to have regular “slots”. So Monday might be health stories, Tuesdays could be business, Wednesdays are for politics -and so on. For your specialism, you need to come up with several general topic headings that you could write about. All you then do is slot these into the gaps between the diary stories.
Filling in your blogging plan
Once you have allocated particular diary stories to specific days and topic ideas to the other days, now you have to start being more specific about those “off diary” stories. All you have in your planning diary for these at the moment is the title of a topic. You could still be facing a blank screen if you don’t do any more planning. Here’s what to do.
Get a folder that has as many sections in it as you have topics. Now, subscribe to RSS feeds on those topics, or printed magazines, newsletters - anything that has info on those subjects. When you see something interesting - at any time - simply print it out, or tear it from the magazine and slot it into the appropriate section of your folder. Then forget it.
Writing your blog without having to think
You will now be in a position to always be able to write something for your blog. Simply look at your planning calendar and see the topic or diary item you need to write about. If it’s a diary item, you will already have a good idea as to what you are going to be saying or commenting on. If it’s an “off diary” topic, simply open your folder at the appropriate section, pull out all the papers in there and you will have a load of ideas that will trigger what you want to say.
Using a system like this enables newspapers and magazines to guarantee they will fill all their pages. You can adopt a similar system so that you will always have something to write about and will never face a blank screen wondering what on earth to say.
Read more of Graham’s work at grahamjones.co.uk
I know this may have been cheeky using this as the guts for my post. but I was suffering from writers block myself, plus the fact my step-daughter has just sold her place and had to moveout in a hurry, so there has been no time really to think about anything to write. So when I read this article I thought that this could be a good way to organise myself , so no matter what is going on around me I will always be able to write something.
O.D.
Writers block can be a hair tearing, nail biting experience for some, it is a very frustrating feeling to have. The way I deal with it is just to step back from the problem and do something else, something different and relaxing.
While I was cuising through the web the other day, I came across a delightful article on how to have constant content for your blog. So with no further ad-do read on further.
How to have a Constant Stream of Blogging Ideas
Writing Content 44 comments
This post on generating blogging ideas was contributed by Graham Jones from grahamjones.co.uk.
Most bloggers give up after a short while; even though there are millions of blogs online, few are updated regularly and most have been abandoned. The difference between success and failure in blogging is often down to persistence. But, when I speak at meetings about blogging, people often come up to me afterwards and say “Ah, yes, that’s all very well, but I run out of ideas after a while, so I can’t blog regularly”. So, how can you be sure of coming up with a constant stream of blogging ideas? How can you be certain that when you open your blogging software you will always have something to write?
If you think about your daily newspaper it does not have a choice. The number of pages is set by the amount of advertising space they sell. Each day, though, has varying amounts of news - some days, very little happens. But it would be no good the journalists filling up the first few pages and then printing a notice on all the others saying “if we’d been able to think of anything to write we would have put it here”. No matter how little is going on around them and no matter how much space they have to fill, newspapers simply have to fill the space allocated to them - plus they simply MUST do it before a specified time. The only way they can achieve this is to have a system.
Develop a blogging planning system
The first step in a journalistic system for blogging is having a plan for each month. Set up a spreadsheet, a table in a word processor, or a calendar on your desk - it doesn’t matter how you do this, but you need a monthly plan. On that plan you need to mark out the days you will definitely blog. This might be every day, just the weekdays, the weekends, every Wednesday - whatever works for you and your audience. Now you have a visual plan of what’s needed you can start filling in the blanks.
Journalists have two kinds of stories - diary stories and “off-diary” stories. Diary stories are those things you know will definitely happen - such as events, meetings, press conferences and so on. There are endless directories of events online and you will know of specific events on particular days in your industry. Mark your diary with these events as “diary items” you know you can write about. Also, look for anniversaries and specific days that could trigger a blog - this might be Thanksgiving Day, or Mother’s Day, or whatever can provide you with something to write about.
Diary stories should give you a reasonable number of days with topics already allocated to them over the coming weeks and months. Now you need to fill in the gaps. The way journalists do this is to have regular “slots”. So Monday might be health stories, Tuesdays could be business, Wednesdays are for politics -and so on. For your specialism, you need to come up with several general topic headings that you could write about. All you then do is slot these into the gaps between the diary stories.
Filling in your blogging plan
Once you have allocated particular diary stories to specific days and topic ideas to the other days, now you have to start being more specific about those “off diary” stories. All you have in your planning diary for these at the moment is the title of a topic. You could still be facing a blank screen if you don’t do any more planning. Here’s what to do.
Get a folder that has as many sections in it as you have topics. Now, subscribe to RSS feeds on those topics, or printed magazines, newsletters - anything that has info on those subjects. When you see something interesting - at any time - simply print it out, or tear it from the magazine and slot it into the appropriate section of your folder. Then forget it.
Writing your blog without having to think
You will now be in a position to always be able to write something for your blog. Simply look at your planning calendar and see the topic or diary item you need to write about. If it’s a diary item, you will already have a good idea as to what you are going to be saying or commenting on. If it’s an “off diary” topic, simply open your folder at the appropriate section, pull out all the papers in there and you will have a load of ideas that will trigger what you want to say.
Using a system like this enables newspapers and magazines to guarantee they will fill all their pages. You can adopt a similar system so that you will always have something to write about and will never face a blank screen wondering what on earth to say.
Read more of Graham’s work at grahamjones.co.uk
I know this may have been cheeky using this as the guts for my post. but I was suffering from writers block myself, plus the fact my step-daughter has just sold her place and had to moveout in a hurry, so there has been no time really to think about anything to write. So when I read this article I thought that this could be a good way to organise myself , so no matter what is going on around me I will always be able to write something.
O.D.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
BLOG CONTENT
If your like me and have trouble thinking of what to write, you have my commiserations. Unless you know a lot about a subject or are passionate about something[a hobby, sport, etc] it can be pretty hard.
So just ask yourself this, What to you makes good content?
It can be anything at all. It could be something your really good at or just a couple of paragraphs on an obscure subject that you think people might find interesting.
I read somewhere that the goal of good writing is to get someone to read your first sentence and once they have done that to get them to read the next one,etc, etc. Once you have caught their attention don't slacken off or they will slip away from you.
You can't expect to write good articles all the time, what you should try for is one or two good articles a month and use the rest as fillers. But you have to keep those fillers interesting enough so you don't lose your traffic.
Also remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you may write whjat you think is a killer of an article, but of the first 100 visitors to your site only 15 may agree with you, then of the next 100 60-70 might agree. So don't forget that as humans we are a fickle animal.
So throw those creative dice and see how they fall, if what you come up with dosen't work , just put your digits to work on the keyboard and try something else.
I remember reading a theory once about how if you had a whole lot of monkeys tapping away randomly at a keyboard long enough, one of them would come up with the complete works of shakespeare, so there is hope for us yet.
O,D.
So just ask yourself this, What to you makes good content?
It can be anything at all. It could be something your really good at or just a couple of paragraphs on an obscure subject that you think people might find interesting.
I read somewhere that the goal of good writing is to get someone to read your first sentence and once they have done that to get them to read the next one,etc, etc. Once you have caught their attention don't slacken off or they will slip away from you.
You can't expect to write good articles all the time, what you should try for is one or two good articles a month and use the rest as fillers. But you have to keep those fillers interesting enough so you don't lose your traffic.
Also remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you may write whjat you think is a killer of an article, but of the first 100 visitors to your site only 15 may agree with you, then of the next 100 60-70 might agree. So don't forget that as humans we are a fickle animal.
So throw those creative dice and see how they fall, if what you come up with dosen't work , just put your digits to work on the keyboard and try something else.
I remember reading a theory once about how if you had a whole lot of monkeys tapping away randomly at a keyboard long enough, one of them would come up with the complete works of shakespeare, so there is hope for us yet.
O,D.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
BLOG TRAFFIC
There is one main ingredient you need to make your blog successful and that is TRAFFIC, how do you drive more traffic to your site you ask.
You can use social marketing as a tool to gain that traffic,i.e. getting out there and posting comments on other blogs or forums.
But that can be hard yakka sometimes trolling through the internet[ suffering from information overload is a hazard from this process] looking for sites relevant to your subject. Neil Shearing recently released a programme that lets you do thus with ease and creates a link back to you site at the same time.
A lot of sites have the nofollow tag in them, but this programme looks for those sites that don't .
I was recommended this programme by another professional blogger[more on him in a later post] who has been a big influence in my getting started in blogging. So I've just finished downloading this tool and spent a very interesting hour putting it through it's paces.
I was very pleased with the ease with which you download and activate using a key sent to you via email. Once you have activated it I suggest you increase the number of sites to search to 100, you also just have to enter your subject of interest, then enter your name[it pays to varie it abit now and then], email address and then your web address.
Once you have done all that just press the find button, sit back, relax and enjoy yourself.
You can download this programme from, www.reallinkfinder.com/ or go to Neils website at www.neilshearing.com
HAPPY BLOGGING - O,D.
You can use social marketing as a tool to gain that traffic,i.e. getting out there and posting comments on other blogs or forums.
But that can be hard yakka sometimes trolling through the internet[ suffering from information overload is a hazard from this process] looking for sites relevant to your subject. Neil Shearing recently released a programme that lets you do thus with ease and creates a link back to you site at the same time.
A lot of sites have the nofollow tag in them, but this programme looks for those sites that don't .
I was recommended this programme by another professional blogger[more on him in a later post] who has been a big influence in my getting started in blogging. So I've just finished downloading this tool and spent a very interesting hour putting it through it's paces.
I was very pleased with the ease with which you download and activate using a key sent to you via email. Once you have activated it I suggest you increase the number of sites to search to 100, you also just have to enter your subject of interest, then enter your name[it pays to varie it abit now and then], email address and then your web address.
Once you have done all that just press the find button, sit back, relax and enjoy yourself.
You can download this programme from, www.reallinkfinder.com/ or go to Neils website at www.neilshearing.com
HAPPY BLOGGING - O,D.
Monday, February 11, 2008
HINTS AND TIPS
HI this is the old dog barking again.
In this post I would like to pass on some hints and tips that I found useful to me as I got started to explore the web, but first a little bit of history. When I was in high school only the bright kids got to play with the computors as there was'nt many to go around. So I finished school computor illiterate, but that didn't matter as all my jobs that I have held didn't require computors.
Now that i'm older I found my interest in computing growing and finally we aquired a decent computor that we were able to do something with, so we hooked up the internet and started to surf. When you haven't grown up with the terminology and lingo it can be a bit confusing at times, as it is my wife lets me do most of the computing work as she gets frustrated with it and is likely to throw it out the window [as has happened to a few saucepans and afew odds and ends].
This is where I come to my first tip on how to get to meet people and surf the web at the same time.
I looked at Facebook and Myspace and one or two others, but at the time they didn't appeal to me. You may find that your the opposite, but I found Stumbleupon suited me better. It's a site where you get to learn to blog, join groups for discussions on a myriad of topics, it is also where I taught myself html to use in my blogs.Stumble is also a amazing site to utilizing in a social marketing strategy but more on that in a later post.
The one thing I found is how easy it is to use, Once you have joined and installed the toolbar, you log in to your own site, click on the preferences tab and there you can click what sort of things on the web interest you most, also fill out your profile so other stumblers get to know a bit about you.
Then all have to do is select on the toolbar what sort of thing you want to look at be it hobbies or geography, or you can select everything from your preferences and once you have done that just press the stumble button and away you go ,your surfing. Heres a hint to get you started to meet people on stumble, join a few groups, leave some comments, let people know you are out there.
You can also stumble other stumblers sites, see their blog pages and their profiles. Stumble also provides you with the abilitie to download articles,photos to your site useing the thumbs up or down buttons, also you can reveiw sites and leave comments on what you thought of that site.
As you will probaly guess I am quite new to the game, so I tend to ramble a bit now and then so I apologise in advance, but I wish to share some of my experiences in coming to grips with the dreaded bogeyman called the internet.
P.S. I just tryed to download a picture to this site but all I got was a , sorry unable to complete this action due to a fault message,so now I will sign off and chase down why I couldn't download my picture, till next time SEE YA.
In this post I would like to pass on some hints and tips that I found useful to me as I got started to explore the web, but first a little bit of history. When I was in high school only the bright kids got to play with the computors as there was'nt many to go around. So I finished school computor illiterate, but that didn't matter as all my jobs that I have held didn't require computors.
Now that i'm older I found my interest in computing growing and finally we aquired a decent computor that we were able to do something with, so we hooked up the internet and started to surf. When you haven't grown up with the terminology and lingo it can be a bit confusing at times, as it is my wife lets me do most of the computing work as she gets frustrated with it and is likely to throw it out the window [as has happened to a few saucepans and afew odds and ends].
This is where I come to my first tip on how to get to meet people and surf the web at the same time.
I looked at Facebook and Myspace and one or two others, but at the time they didn't appeal to me. You may find that your the opposite, but I found Stumbleupon suited me better. It's a site where you get to learn to blog, join groups for discussions on a myriad of topics, it is also where I taught myself html to use in my blogs.Stumble is also a amazing site to utilizing in a social marketing strategy but more on that in a later post.
The one thing I found is how easy it is to use, Once you have joined and installed the toolbar, you log in to your own site, click on the preferences tab and there you can click what sort of things on the web interest you most, also fill out your profile so other stumblers get to know a bit about you.
Then all have to do is select on the toolbar what sort of thing you want to look at be it hobbies or geography, or you can select everything from your preferences and once you have done that just press the stumble button and away you go ,your surfing. Heres a hint to get you started to meet people on stumble, join a few groups, leave some comments, let people know you are out there.
You can also stumble other stumblers sites, see their blog pages and their profiles. Stumble also provides you with the abilitie to download articles,photos to your site useing the thumbs up or down buttons, also you can reveiw sites and leave comments on what you thought of that site.
As you will probaly guess I am quite new to the game, so I tend to ramble a bit now and then so I apologise in advance, but I wish to share some of my experiences in coming to grips with the dreaded bogeyman called the internet.
P.S. I just tryed to download a picture to this site but all I got was a , sorry unable to complete this action due to a fault message,so now I will sign off and chase down why I couldn't download my picture, till next time SEE YA.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
