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How Can Google Determine QUALITY Blog Content?

February 28, 2011 By Erik Deckers 13 Comments

Google’s latest changes, thanks to the JCPenney/Searchdex debacle, has a lot of search engine optimization people scratching their heads, worrying about what it will do to their search rankings. Google has also declared war on content farms, going after the black hat backlink builders that build crappy sites who try to game search engines by filling websites and blogs with lots and lots of useless, poorly written content. Black Cowboy Hat

Don’t ask me how they’re doing it. Google’s remaining mum on the situation, saying only:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on [emphasis added — Erik].

It’s this last statement that has me intrigued about how Google is going to recognize some of this. How will they know whether sites have original content, do their own research, or provide thoughtful analysis?

I think the answer lies in the foundation of semantic search.

Semantic search, says Wikipedia, “…seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results.”

In other words, semantic search tries to figure out what you mean, not what you said.

For example, if you’re doing a search for “bark” and “dog,” a regular search engine may give you results not only about dogs, but about the bark of a dogwood tree. But semantic search will know that you’re inquiring about a dog, and return only those results that meet your requirements.

Right now, Google is looking at content farms as a group and dropping them — as a group — from their search index. And that’s fine. For the most part, it shouldn’t hurt anyone who is writing original, thoughtful content.

But what happens when Google decides to take a look at some previously ignored places where people are writing bad content trying to game the system? What happens when they look at WordPress.com and Blogger.com, two favorite targets of the search spammers, who dump crappy article after crappy article into throwaway blogs? Google isn’t going to dump their own blog platform (Blogger) from their index, and they won’t do it to WordPress.com without hundreds of thousands of people crying foul. So how will they do it?

My prediction is that Google will be able to figure out what’s good and what’s bad by using the semantic search technology. They’ll determine what’s well-written and what sucks, what’s original and what was barfed out of an article spinner.

We’ve seen some examples of this technology already. Anyone who has ever run the grammar checker on Microsoft Word (which was apparently written by my 7th grade English teacher) has seen how this works. It checks the grammar and usage in your documents to see if there are any serious errors. It’s not great, and often delivers inaccurate or outdated grammar errors, but it can at least find some problems.

So why can’t Google do this? By using semantics, a good grammar checker, and a thesaurus, Google could determine what is original content and what is crap. By examining the language used, Google may be able to determine the intent of the content writer, and whether they’re truly creating original, thoughtful content, or just trying to game the system again. They could raise up some content while flagging or penalizing others.

The best part is this strategy would encourage people to create valuable content, rather than just trying to stand on the shoulders of others and steal theirs or spin it as a way to game the system. It means your stuff has to be well-written. You need a decent grasp of the English language, and the ability to string more than two sentences together.

(Of course, this could have a detrimental effect on people who just can’t write, don’t speak English as a first language, and teenagers who insist on writing in text speak, but that’s a post for another day.)

What do you think? Will a semantic indexing system help bloggers who are trying to do the right thing, or will it hurt the industry as a whole? Do you think people will mistakenly be caught up in a new semantic system? How would you avoid it, either from Google’s view or the writer’s?

Photo credit: arbyreed (Flickr)

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Social Media, Writing Tagged With: blog writing, blog writing techniques, blogging, Google, semantic search

315 Million Reasons Why Writers Shouldn’t Write For Free

February 23, 2011 By Erik Deckers 3 Comments

The online newsies of the world all pointed and shouted with excitement, “See?! SEE?!” when AOL bought the Huffington Post new blog for $315 million. Newspapers and journalists all hunched over and typed a little faster when they heard the news, hoping they too could be the next major acquisition by the online giant-emeritus.

But it’s only recently that people began realizing that Huffington Post built its success on the backs of unpaid writers — writers who want to be compensated, even just a little, by the news source they built. (Simon Dumenco has a good wrapup of how Huffington Post is screwing their writers.)

I understand the appeal. The writers were promised the one thing every startup publication offers plenty of (but usually has none): exposure.

“We can’t pay you, but we’ll put you in front of all of our readers,” they promise. “Once we start to get money from ad revenues, then we’ll start paying you for future articles.”

But Huffington Post aside, those 9 million other magazines and newspaper startups never see enough revenue to pay for the celebratory kickoff party, let alone paying the bankruptcy attorney when they fold three months later. Besides, it doesn’t sound like HuffPo ever offered money. Ever.

It’s real simple, writers shouldn’t write for free. In that link, scifi writer Harlan Ellison rants about how writers are constantly getting the short end of the payment stick, thanks to the mistaken idea that what we do is somehow easy.

What we do is not easy. We’ve only done it for so long, we make it look easy. It still takes work to string together 500+ words, make sure they’re spelled correctly, are coherent thoughts, and are assembled into something that’s both easy and enjoyable to consume. (If you think it’s easy, take a whack at 500 words on any topic, and send it to me for an “honest but thorough” critique. I dare you.)

Look, if you want exposure for your writing, and you want to write for free for Huffington Post. Go ahead. But don’t do it in the hopes that they’re going to come up with a little thank you gift for all your hard work. You knew it was free going in, and that was the deal you made with them.

I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, because I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been screwed by an editor or potential client. I fervently believe that Huffington Post should do the nice thing and show a little love and gratitude to the people who made them worth $315 million, but I don’t think it’s something they have to do. Not because it’s their party, and they made the rules, but because the writers never had the expectation of getting paid, and went into the relationship fully expecting to never receive money.

(Update: One friend who runs a very popular community blog said if he gets a front page placement on Huffington Post, his site get 10,000 – 50,000 extra visits from the story. Otherwise, he runs around 2,000 extra visits. For a site that makes money from selling advertising, writing for free for Huffington Post is worth it, because it helps him serve up more ads, which makes him more money.)

If you want fame and exposure, write your own blog. Work your ass off in that niche, become famous, and work on your personal branding to find new readers. Then leverage that into paid bylines in real print publications, public speaking gigs, and even a book, like say, one on personal branding (affiliate link).

While that strategy is much, much harder than knocking out a few blog posts for Huffington Post, it also protects you from being totally screwed when the website is sold to a giant conglomerate and you don’t get anything. At least when you’re writing your own little blog, you’re getting nothing anyway, but without the painful screwing that the Huffington Post writers just experienced.

There’s no reason you have to write for someone else, especially when all you get is a byline. Thanks to all the different free blogging platforms that are available — Blogger, WordPress, Posterous — you can have your own blog and write for free to your heart’s content. And when someone makes an overture to buy you for $315 million, you don’t have to share it with anyone at all.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: Daniel Borman (Flickr)

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Social Media Tagged With: freelance writing, ghost blogging, Huffington Post, writing

Five Reasons Why Attorneys Should Blog

November 10, 2010 By Erik Deckers 3 Comments

I’m surprised at the number of attorneys who aren’t blogging.

If there was any form of communication made for attorneys, it’s blogging. It’s not a website, not TV, and certainly not the Yellow Pages. Here are five reasons why private practice attorneys should be blogging. Law books

You show up higher on local search engine results. Many people are forgoing their Yellow Pages in favor of Google. And Google will automatically give results from your current location, not where they think you live. So if someone looks for an intellectual property attorney in Indianapolis (like my friend Matt Schantz), Matt may or may not appear at the top of Google’s results.
You demonstrate your knowledge and experience in your particular field. If you specialize in corporate law for green companies, you should be writing about green issues. For example, if you wanted to specialize in working with alternative energy, you should be writing about alternative energy law, alternative energy news, and even Congressional bills that may affect alt. energy companies. The net result is that you’ll be seen as one of the leading voices for the industry, and more likely to be called whenever a company needs your advice.
It’s a way to build your personal and professional brand without spending a lot of money advertising. It’s also a way to market yourself while staying within your state bar association’s rules. For example, we have a Kentucky law firm as a client, and we know that as long as we’re offering information (see point #2), and not providing legal advice, we’re within their guidelines. And our client still gets the benefit, because they’re beginning to win local searches for their specialty, and being seen as an expert in their particular field.
It’s a way to learn new information. The old “see one, do one, teach one” model comes to mind here. If you read something, you may know it, but if you have to explain it to someone else, you’ll truly understand it. This also forces you to find something new to write about on a regular basis. It keeps you up to date on your chosen specialty, by reading different news articles, law journals, case law, and court decisions.
You can improve your writing. Your blog should not be written for other attorneys, it should be written for clients. And your clients don’t talk or read like attorneys, so they don’t do “wherefore, whereas, and heretofore.” They do “if, except, and until now.” The best way to create tight, easy-to-understand plain English is to be forced to do it every couple of days

Photo credit: umjanedoan (Flickr)

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Lead Generation, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: attorneys, blogging, lawyers, legal marketing, Social Media

Social Media is Flat for Small Business Adoption

October 20, 2010 By Erik Deckers 5 Comments

The recent survey from Marketing Profs (Small Biz Report: Social Media Adoption Levels Off) makes me wonder if corporations are starting to catch up to small businesses in the area of social media, or if small businesses are slacking off. (Disclosure: Marketing Profs’ Ann Handley is writing the forward to Kyle Lacy’s and my book, Branding Yourself).

The wave of social media adoption has tapered off: 24% of small businesses now use social media, the same level recorded six months earlier. Among them, 82% use Facebook, 38% use LinkedIn, and 30% use Twitter.

Among small business owners who use social media, 73% have a company page (down from 75% six months earlier), 65% post status updates (down from 69%), and 51% monitor comments made about their businesses on social sites (down from 54%).

While news like this is usually the cue for the link bait vultures to start shrieking, “Small business social media is dying!!” or something like “nobody’s doing social media anymore,” the less hysterical of us choose to see this as a the beginning of an interesting trend. And it poses a couple of interesting questions for those of us in social media:

What’s causing the drop in things like monitoring comments (3% drop), posting status updates (4%), or having a company page (2%)?
Can this drop be attributed to social media fatigue, or is it an indicator that people are willing to try the shiny new object, but will abandon it if it’s not producing any results?
Or are small businesses trying social media, but then get distracted by their regular work, and lose interest in the system?
Could this even be attributed to companies that hire interns and entry-level employees, hand them the keys to the social media car, but lose all their efforts when the interns and entry-level people move on?

And most importantly, does this drop represent new opportunities or lost ones for social media professionals? Can they revive the interest in the businesses that abandoned their efforts? Or are these cases where the professionals could have helped, but the businesses are soured on social media?

What have you been seeing in your own work? Are clients giving up social media or embracing it? Are they easily distracted by the latest social tool, or do they focus on the ones they’re using?

——
My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, who I also helped write Twitter Marketing For Dummies (another affiliate link).

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Lead Generation, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: Marketing Profs, small business, Social Media, social media marketing, social networking, surveys

Really? We’re STILL Talking About Ghost Blogging?

September 7, 2010 By Erik Deckers 10 Comments

Avinash Kaushik makes a misinformed tweet about ghost blogging

What is it with these social media purists and ghost blogging? What exactly do they not understand?

Ghost blogging is a service that is provided by ghost writers. We transcribe interviews from our clients, get their approval for what we’ve written, and we post it to their blogs.

This is no more inauthentic than hiring a social media agency to run your social media campaign, or an ad agency to create your TV commercials. It’s no more inauthentic than private labeling/white labeling a product made by someone else — food companies do it all the time, and no one complains.

My friend, Doug Karr, recently wrote a post about Avinash Kaushik’s rather misinformed statement about “ghost blogging being the antithesis of everything social.”

Doug said:

It’s always interesting when someone with as much authority as Avinash throws out a rule like this. Not only do I disagree with Avinash, I know many, many companies who would disagree as well. Ghostblogging is not the antithesis of everything social… inauthenticity, dishonesty, and insincerity are the antithesis of everything social.

As a professional ghost blogger, I’m sick to death of people who paint ghost bloggers as some sort of moral leper, the used car salesmen of the social media industry. (Oops. There, now you’ve made me offend used car salesmen. Happy now?) These social media purists decry ghost blogging as being less than honest because CEOs of large corporations and small businesses don’t spend 1 – 2 hours a day crafting a single blog post.

“Oh, but if you were serious about it, you’d make the time,” they lilt, wagging their fingers at the slacker CEOs who whine that they’re “tired” after a 14 hour day. “Because social media is all about the conversation and community and the inherent good in other people.”

No it isn’t. Social media in the business world is all about making money. Businesses can’t pay their workers with conversations. You don’t appease shareholders with community. And their vendors don’t want to hear about all the good you’re finding in other people when they ask why you’re 60 days overdue.

If we followed the social media purists’ logic to its logical conclusion, we would not be allowed to use these other ghost-type services:

Businesses would have to produce their own ads, commercials, and graphics in-house. They could not hire an outside agency to do it. Or if they did, there would be a big disclaimer on it saying it was produced by that agency.
Software companies could not outsource their programming to freelance coders. They should do it all themselves.
Celebrities should not hire ghost writers to help with their books. They should be allowed to suck on their own.
Politicians would not be allowed to use ghost writers to write their speeches. They would have to mumble and fumble their way through every speech, no matter who they were. Or if they used a ghostwriter, they would have to interrupt their speech every 10 minutes with, “This speech was written by my ghost writer, Jeff Shesol.”

Ghost blogging is the last bastion of any kind of ghosting, where some purist thinks that we shouldn’t be allowed to do it because it’s “inauthentic.”

Do you know what’s inauthentic? Inauthentic is following fewer than 100 people while 25,000 people follow you on Twitter. f you’re in “the conversation” business, don’t you think you should have a conversation? Otherwise, you’re just holding a one-way broadcast with 25,000 people, and are showing that you’re not willing to listen to anyone else. That’s not authentic in the least bit.

Whether the purists like it or not, ghost blogging is going to only get more popular. As companies want to enter the social media marketing realm and realize they can’t, because they just laid off their best writers, they will look for other ways to gain that competitive edge. If they’re going to outsource their web design, their ad creation, and their strategy, why shouldn’t they outsource their writing too?

There are freelance writers in all other parts of business — marketing copy, TV scripts, radio scripts, ad copy, web copy, annual reports, press releases, white papers, grant proposals — so why is blog writing so different from all those other forms of ghost writing?

It isn’t. If you hire someone to write something for you, and you don’t stick their name on it, they’re a ghost writer. I don’t care if it’s marketing, advertising, or grants. They’re a ghost writer. No one is complaining about their inauthenticity or their non-transparency.

So the purists need to get off their high horse, learn how the world works, and accept the fact that ghost writers are skilled writers who are paid to provide a service for other people. And we’re going to be here for a while.

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Ghost Writing, Social Media, Writing Tagged With: blog writing, bloggers, Doug Karr, ethics, ghost blogging, Ghost Writing, ghostblogging, Lindsay Manfredi, Social Media

What Does Google Caffeine Mean for Bloggers?

August 25, 2010 By Paul Lorinczi 2 Comments

Like a refreshing jolt to the system, Google released Google Caffeine back in June of 2010. Apart from its cool name, its purpose is to help find and index fresh content. Black and white photo of steaming cup of coffee This is a big change from Google “unleaded,” which sometimes seemed more concerned with just finding content. And making SEO consultants crazy by always changing their algorithms.

The primary motivation is to help users to we can get the most current content that is relevant.

Google said in their recent blog post about Google Caffeine

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

For several years now, Google has been preaching the virtues of Fresh Hot Content. They have been talking about “recency” and “frequency” as their two biggest buzzwords when it came to search. That’s why blogging has become so important in recent years (and why Pro Blog Service exists at all).

It appears that Google Caffeine was developed specifically to track the freshest, hottest content, to deliver to their users. Does your website contain content from two years ago? Or are you developing new content on a regular basis to engage your prospects in conversation?

If not, you need to consider rethinking your content strategies. It’s no longer enough to just to optimize a page, create a bunch of backlinks, and then leave everything alone. Google wants new stuff, fresh stuff. Otherwise, they believe you’re not committed to providing the best content to their users. And they’ll spit you out like 6-hour coffee.

Google Caffeine is redefining the definition of fresh hot content to mean, what have you done today?

Photo credit: Andreas Solberg (Flickr)

Paul Lorinczi

Paul Lorinczi is the President of Professional Blog Service. The goal of the company is the help clients use Blogging and Social Media to expand their business online through planning, execution, and measurement.

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: content creation, Google, Google Caffeine, search engine optimization

5 Types of Presentations You’ll Find at Blog Indiana 2010

August 21, 2010 By Erik Deckers 4 Comments

I’ve been Blog Indiana 2010 and attended several of the presentations here. Our sessions tend to be the same kind of presentation, although they cover a wide variety of topics. Whether it’s at a conference, a seminar, or a corporate presentation, presentations tend to follow the same formula.

Erik Deckers at his presentation at Blog Indiana 2010

Me at my presentation at Blog Indiana

If you’re interested in becoming a public speaker, there are five basic types of presentations you could give.

How to: Basic tips, how-to, suggestions, and strategies. These are great for sharing information, and to establish your expertise. Title your talk something 7 NEW Secrets To Promoting Your Blog Through Social Media. People who are interested in sessions like this are looking for concrete, nuts-and-bolts ideas. This is the kind of talk I gave this year.
Case Study: These historic talks show how you got from point A to point B, and the lessons you learned on the way. They can be inspirational or a cautionary tale, and if they’re done well, people can get both types of information from them. If you’re a great story teller, then I suggest you give this a try. Do a case study of a single client, or tell a part of your story (Note: We didn’t ask for your life story), or even 3 -4 short stories that are all centered around a single point. This is also a good place to ask for discussion from the audience. Paul Poteet gave this as a keynote presentation this year.
Futurecasting: This is where the futurists and 30,000-foot-view thinkers can really shine. You can talk about what you think the future of your industry will be. If you make enough accurate predictions, you’ll be one of the hot properties on your industry’s speaking circuit. This presentation may look back historically to make its point, but a futurecasting talk is going to discuss what they believe will be happening over the next few years.
Educational: Educate your listeners about a topic, idea, or tool. It may not be as in-depth as the how-to, but it’s great for teaching beginners about a particular concept. An informative session will teach people about Twitter — why use it, how it works, who uses it — while a how to session will cover the specifics of using it — signing up, following people, sending tweets. Doug Karr told listeners why their site sucks, with his Why Your Site Sucks educational session.

Jason Falls, Jay Baer, and Chris Baggott participate in a panel discussion at Blog Indiana 2010.

Jason Falls, Jay Baer, Chris Baggott (standing)

Issues: Every industry has its issues and controversies, and these are a great place to address them. This can be a panel discussion, a single person facilitating an audience discussion, or even one person presenting one or both sides of the issue. Fellow ghost blogger Lindsay Manfredi talked about ghost blogging this year, which has been a big hot button issue for our industry for a few years. Chris Baggott, Jason Falls, and Jay Baer participated in a panel discussion to “dispel the myth of the blog reader.”

Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Social Media, Tools Tagged With: Blog Indiana, blogging, conference, Douglas Karr, Indianapolis, Lindsay Manfredi, speaking

Blogging for Posterity, not Search or Readership

August 4, 2010 By Erik Deckers 1 Comment

We’ve been debating around the office whether it’s better to write for search or to write for readers.

I think it’s actually a little of both.

On the one hand, there are people who will never optimize a single blog post for search engines. They just write awesome stuff and people flock to them through word of mouth.

On the other, there are people who believe that it’s okay to churn out crap, just so long as you win search engine results. Their thought is if you win more search, you get more traffic.

The problem with the latter is that while you may get more traffic, you also get more people who see your writing is crap, and so you get more people who ignore you. The problem with the former is that you can’t rely on word of mouth. That’s why it’s important that you do both.

I call it writing for posterity.

Writing for posterity means you want to win search, but you also want people to read it. It means you optimize for search while you write as well as you can. This shouldn’t be an either/or proposition.

I had a great example of writing for posterity on my Laughing Stalk humor blog last week. For no reason that I can determine, I got a big spike of readers — 600 over 3 days — showing up at a column I wrote nearly a year ago.

My blog post/humor column, “Honey, It’s Over. Burma Shave!“, started ranking high on my Google Analytics, nearly 10 months after I first wrote it.

The source? Google.se, or Google Sweden.

The reason? I don’t even know. I don’t know if I got featured on a front page somehow. I don’t know if a news story mentioned the incident. I don’t know if there was an auditorium filled with Swedes who were all visiting my site.

What I know is that I had nearly 606 Swedes visit my site over a 3 day period, and spend some time on my site. They came because they found me on Google (Google Sweden, which I guess just makes me Swedish famous), and they stayed for an average of 40 seconds. Not huge time, but all the RSS bots seem to be screwing with my Time On Page stats.

Had I tried to just focus on search for this post, my readability would have most likely suffered. But had I just focused on readership, I may never have been found.

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Writing Tagged With: blog analytics, blog writing, blogging, readability, search engines, writing

Corporate Blogging’s Chief Purpose from Google’s Chief Blogger

August 3, 2010 By Erik Deckers 2 Comments

A couple weeks ago, Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s blog manager, talked to Google’s chief blogger, Karen Wickre about corporate blogging, and the important things companies need to do when taking the plunge into blogging.

Wickre says the most important thing a company new to blogging should do is to get a feel for what’s out there, and consider what they would want their blog to say. A blog could be personal, could be about thought leadership, or could focus on customer service. But find the blog’s voice, and stick with it, she says.

While that’s important, I don’t think it’s the most important thing. In some ways, that issue is going to resolve itself as time goes by.

I believe the most important thing about corporate blogging is that a blog will “establish ground for the company.” Wickre said a good company blog should do all these things:

Do most posts offer useful or unique information?
Do they reflect the company’s values and interests?
Do they demonstrate the people behind the company/products?

Wickre had other good points for corporate bloggers to consider, but for me, this was the biggest. We try to get our clients to see that their blog needs to be more than just a commercial, or a catalog. Yes, you can have those kinds of posts, but you also need to tell your customers about your company. You need to show what you stand for, how you work, why you work. You need to answer questions about your company, your products, and your values. You need to introduce your staff to your customers, and let them develop relationships. (Remember, people buy from people they like. If they like your staff, they’ll like your company, and they’ll buy from you.)

Your corporate blog is more than just a marketing mouthpiece. It’s not a cheap form of sales literature. It’s the window into your company and possibly one of the best ways to communicate with your customers. So find the voice, jump in, and you’ll answer all Wickre’s questions as time goes by.

Photo credit: DannySullivan (Flickr)

Filed Under: Blog ROI, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Marketing Tagged With: blogging, business blogging, corporate blogging, Google

Four Blogging Tips for Travel and Tourism Destinations

July 26, 2010 By Erik Deckers 4 Comments

One of the best things travel and tourism destinations can use for social media marketing is blogging. It’s a way to share content that:

is easy to update. Writing a blog post is as easy as writing an email.
helps with search engine ranking. Search engines love blog content.
will last for years. Your content can be found years later by interested visitors.

So here are the four things you can do with your blog to help market your tourism destination to your visitors.

1. Tell stories about the stuff your guests are doing.

Rather than just describe the activities that are available at your destination, talk about the things your guests have been doing. Write it more like one of the old weekly newspaper columns that used to tell us when the town’s citizens had visited each other.

The stories should talk about some of the stuff the guests are doing. Do a quick interview with them, find out the favorite part of their activity, and write a brief synopsis of what they did. Include some photos if possible (see #2).

We just heard from David and Sharon A. about the round of golf they played this morning. Sharon is a fair golfer and scored a 91, although David (89) is still recovering from a back injury. David said that while the course was a little challenging, he still couldn’t make it out of the water trap on the 13th hole.

Meanwhile, the Robins just returned from their horseback ride, on Morgan and Shadow. Morgan is always a gentle horse, which is good, because David Robins has never ridden before. They spent the morning out on the trail and stopped for a picnic lunch out on Oak Lookout.

It’s just a short post, and people may not really care about what the families are doing (more on that in a minute), but the people who have gotten caught in the 13th hole water trap, ridden Morgan, or had a picnic lunch on Oak Lookout are going to have their own memories of the place, and will remember the great times they had. (However, the families who are mentioned in your post may also tell their friends about your blog entry, and they’ll get to read about your place as well.

2. Post your photos and videos.

We talked in a previous post about why travel and tourism destinations should use photo and video sharing sites. The only issue is that you can’t always get people to go to those photo and video sites, especially if you’re uploading hundreds and thousands of photos.

But your blog is also an easy place to share those photos and videos. Choose the embed code for your album or video, and paste it into a blog post. You can use this content to reinforce the text you’re writing about, and increase the impact of your posts. Plus, videos and photos embedded on your blog will help your search engine rankings

3. Talk about behind-the-scenes stuff.

Think about your good friends, the ones you really like. How much do you know about their lives, the stuff they don’t tell just everyone? Probably quite a bit. And it’s that non-public knowledge that probably makes you feel closer. You can do the same thing on your blog.

Inn-Bedded Resorter Martin Earley is spending two months at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel as their social media guy. He’s been enjoying all the amenities the guests get to use, but he’s also giving people a behind-the-scenes look at The Balsams. You can see a video of the kitchen during a dinner rush, but he has also spent time with the cleaning staff, and will also spend one night working security.

He’s showing regular and potential guests how things work around the place, so people will understand a little better how their favorite New England resort works, but also so they feel a little closer to it, and will want to return again and again.

4. Write it as a letter.

The biggest mistake beginning bloggers make is writing for posterity. They imagine thousands of readers, book editors, and critics, all poring over their blog. As a result, the posts sound stilted and forced, the language is wooden, and the whole thing sounds like it was written by a marketing committee.

Don’t write it for those people, write it for one person. Pick your favorite guest, your best friend from high school, or your mom. Write it in the same friendly tone as if this was only being read by that one person. In fact, start your post out with “Dear Sharon” or “Dear Mom.” Then, write the post to Sharon or your mom. When you’re finished, go back and delete the salutation. The tone of the post will come across as casual, friendly, and personal. The net result is more people will enjoy reading it, and they’ll want to come back every time you publish a new post.

Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Disclosure: I am a travel writer for the Indiana Tourism Department’s Blog, Indiana Insider.)

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