Making Your Blog Successful By Having Fun

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gerald Hornsby on December 26, 2009 at 17:32

That's so true, Harvey. But perhaps instead of "post often", you should say "post regularly"? I think it's more important to generate regular content, beit daily, two-daily or weekly. Over-frequent posting can turn off visitors too. There are those on Twitter who use it well, and those you 'tweet' 5 or 6 times in a row, often re-tweeting other tweets, rather than creating their own posts.

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on December 27, 2009 at 12:52

Hi Gerald

Merry Christmas.

Thank you for your comment, yes I agree with you posting regularly is extremely important. I think this is actually as crucial as the blog content as your readers will know when to check your blog/rss feed again for new content. If a blogger is able to just write once a week, that is fine but as long as they do. If the aim of the blog is to build a readership, posting 4 blogs in one day and then nothing for a month, will stop people visiting the blog very quickly, as they will think the blog has stopped. So, like you, I agree consistency is the key.

To be honest, I really dislike tweeters that just send out endless amounts of tweets, one after the other. They get defollowed very quickly. The whole point about social media, is engagement, building relationships, fans, friends and followers. One of the major ways to do this is to listen and converse with people, rather than just broadcast message after message, which are obviously automated. They are just as annoying as unwanted adverts and spam emails, in my opinion.

Thank you very much for all of the help you are giving our members of the website review group. I am sure that everyone has found them very useful and informative.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Gerald Hornsby on December 28, 2009 at 1:13

Hi Harvey

Thanks for the thanks!

Once-a-week blog posts are great if they're substantial, well-written and relevant. It's a bit like reading your local weekly newspaper, and readers will look forward to that day. I was looking at a Wordpress plugin called Editorial Calendar, which allows you to schedule your blog posts. A good idea for infrequent posters, or for lining up blog posts so you can release them gradually, and not all at once.

Twitter can be a very valuable tool, but you're so right - I do get fed up of people retweeting stuff they've picked up.

It's the same when bloggers just post a "Here's something I saw over on ....." with a link. If you're blogging, you can get away with that sort of thing if and when you've built relationships with your readers, as you said. If someone knows your content is interesting and relevant to their niche interest, they will follow your reblogging. However, we really do need to create our own content to be able to create that relationship in the first place.

With Twitter, it's just so easy to retweet something, and what happens is you then feel that the person is being lazy. Also as bad are the Twitter users who tweet 5 or 10 times a day to tell you what they're eating, what they're watching on TV, and who's coming round for dinner. I have a group called "High Volume", and all those Tweeters get stuck into that group. I sometimes check it for anything of interest, just in case.

Gerald

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on December 28, 2009 at 8:06

Hi Gerald,

I think you and I both went to the same school!! It is good for people to share information that is not written by themselves, one of the principles of Web 2.0, but if that is the only thing they are going to do, I cannot see much long term benefit. Writing your own unique content, is 100% the way forward, yes it can take alot of time and effort but the results are totally worth it in the long run.

If you write a great article, blog post, ebook etc they are on the Internet forever, so potentially years and years of new readers or customers.

Using blogs and other social media, is relatively new for businesses. I am just a little concerned that instead of people getting blasted with unwanted email or adverts, they are now getting blasted with articles/information/news that they may or may not be interested in. So ultimately what is the difference?

I think this may be the subject of my next blog post to be honest, so thank you for the inspiration.

Take care

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Gerald Hornsby on January 2, 2010 at 23:59

Harvey said "Using blogs and other social media, is relatively new for businesses. I am just a little concerned that instead of people getting blasted with unwanted email or adverts, they are now getting blasted with articles/information/news that they may or may not be interested in. So ultimately what is the difference?"
More and more, working on the internet is about building a relationship with other people. If you're a blog writer, looking for inspiration, it's easy to get overwhelmed by interesting things from other bloggers. I use Bloglines as a blog feed aggregator, but it's easy to sign up to so many feeds, reading a post, and saving it for later because it could be useful. I spent so much time reading and bookmarking information, I had little or no time to write.

It's far better to concentrate on one niche (preferably not a "Blog Your Way to be a Millionaire"-type blog, because there's hundreds of those out there already), and build a relationship with a few bloggers in that niche whose content you trust. In the same way, you need to create your own content that can be trusted to be useful, relevant and interesting, and on a calendar that too can be trusted.

Incidentally, 2010 is, for me, going to be the year of the blog. I'm going all out on a couple of blogs to create original content, build traffic, and hopefully generate some income. Wish me luck!

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on January 3, 2010 at 6:40

Hi Gerald,

Absolutely, statisitcs have shown the time we are all spending online is increasing, so using readers such as Bloglines or Google Reader, to syndicate news into one place, is hugely beneficial.

Good luck with your blogs. I am sure with your knowledge and determination they will become a great success for you.

Regards

Harvey