If you’re not getting readers to your blog, it may not be your social media promotion, it may be because your blog sucks.
(Okay, it doesn’t really suck. I was just saying that to get your attention. You’ll see why in a minute.)
I recently spoke to the Hoosier PRSA chapter of the Public Relations Society of America about the secrets of blogging, and realized I had never actually written about the subject of the presentation.
Blogs are a lot like newspapers. In fact, a good blog is written more like a newspaper than a magazine. And since bloggers are becoming citizen journalists, I think it’s important that bloggers learn to write like newspaper writers. Here are a few ways you can improve your blog writing and have it read more like a newspaper article.
Write in Newspaper Style.
This means the most important information goes first, second most important goes next, and so on. It’s the inverted pyramid style. After a certain point, usually around the halfway mark, you start seeing more of the inside information, background story, etc., and the story gets boring.
Newspapers are written this way, because readers usually abandon a story when it gets boring. They also abandon it because it’s too long.
So with a blog post, you need to end the post before you get to the boring part. When you start writing background information, or repeating old information, stop. Don’t write a post that’s long enough for people to get bored. Instead, put a “To learn more about this issue, check out these previous posts” section with links to older stories.
Short words. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.
Despite what my 7th grade English teacher said, it’s perfectly all right to have a one word paragraph.
Nyah.
By breaking things up, and making them easier to read, we’re more likely to continue on. We glance ahead and see all the short paragraphs and think, “that’s not so hard. I can go a little longer.” Pretty soon, “a little longer” turns into “the entire story.”
Negative Space = Readability
One of the reasons newspapers are tough to read is the lack of negative space (that’s fancy graphic designer talk for “spaces between paragraphs”). All the paragraphs are crammed together, which can make for some tiring reading.
Our eyes and our brains need a break from all the text running together, so we look for that break by switching to other stories, abandoning the one we were just reading. But if you can provide some extra relief in the story, that will help propel readers forward.
Create a Powerful Lede
I got your attention when I said your blog sucked, didn’t I? Not every blog post has to have a Pulitzer-quality opening, but it doesn’t hurt to have something that’s attention getting and informative.
Remember, a newspaper article’s job is to get you to read the first sentence. The first sentence’s job is to get you to read the second sentence, and so on. So your lede better be a doozy.
(By the way, the opening sentence of a newspaper is spelled “lede,” not “lead.” Lead is the soft metal used to create the individual letters used to lay out the newspaper. Since “ledd” and “leed” are spelled the same, journos started calling the opening sentence the “lede” to avoid confusion, forcing future generations to explain that we’re not idiots, and we do know how to correctly spell that word.)
Write For a Clever 12-Year-Old
It’s a newspaper’s dirty little secret that they write for a 6th grade education and attention span. (Don’t feel too insulted; TV news is produced at a 4th grade level.) That’s why the important stuff is at the front of the story. Bloggers need to do that too.
It’s not that your readers are stupid, or can’t understand big words. It’s that we just don’t want to devote the mental resources and energy to decoding really long and complicated words. Even academic journals written by and for Ph.Ds in an academic field are considered “better” if they’re written at a high school level instead of a post-graduate level.
So skip the polysyllabic words and use short ones instead.
It’s also important that you explain new terms. Assume that your story is going to be read by someone who is experiencing this issue for the very first time. Don’t assume knowledge on their part, don’t assume they know as much about the story as you do. So be sure to explain it like you’re telling that 12-year-old for the first time. Don’t use jargon, acronyms, and abbreviations unless you explain them.
For example, newspaper style requires you spell out what a term means, followed by the acronym/abbreviation in parentheses. That tells the reader you’re going to use it from then on in the story.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) today announced a new measure banning texting by truck drivers.
Afterward, I can use FMCSA in the story wherever I want. However, when I do a new story, I have to assume a new set of readers, so I have to spell it out again.
Writing a blog can be easy, especially if you’re doing it informally, and for just a few people. But writing it newspaper style takes a little more effort, but the payoff can be worth it. You’ll get more readers, your readers will stick around longer, and you’ll earn a reputation of being a stellar writer.
Just remember to tell them where you learned it.
Photo credit (inverted pyramid at the Louvre): KeepTheByte, Flickr
Photo credit (lead type): JM3, Flickr
The Best, Easiest Way to Build Blog Readership
Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It!
, says that one of the best ways to build readership for your blog is by commenting on other people’s blogs.
For one thing, it helps with your Google search juice. But more importantly, it lets people know you’re reading their blog and are interested in what they’re saying. Vaynerchuk says that we need to spend hours per day — hours! — posting comments on other people’s blogs.
While you may not have the time or desire to spend hours doing this (of course, you won’t crush it, says Vaynerchuk), you do need to leave some intelligent comments when you do. It’s not enough to just leave “Nice post!” as a comment. If you want to show the bloggers you’re truly engaged and interested, leave comments that show you have actually read and understood what they wrote about.
This does two things for you: 1) you meet like-minded readers, and let them know about your existence. When they find you, they’ll become readers, and you’re growing your social media footprint; and, 2) it builds backlinks to your own blog, which boost your search engine ranking.
This is a tried-and-true technique for building search rankings, especially as Google is recognizing authority of websites by their backlinks. They figure if a lot of people link to a blog, site, or even a post, it must be something worthwhile. And commenting, while not as powerful as, say, another blog post, is still a way to generate those much-sought after backlinks.
There are some search engine optimization companies that offer backlinking services to their clients, and will spend a lot of time (hopefully) leaving comments on people’s blogs, in addition to their other techniques and practices.
Less scrupulous companies will leave crappy comments that are nothing but spam, hoping that they won’t be deleted or caught in spam filters. While I’m not sure if Google or other search engines will penalize URLs that spam links lead to (if anyone knows, leave us a comment), it’s our fervent hope that the search engines will penalize those parasites, and that they suffer TSA strip searches and tax audits.
(WordPress has a great spam fighting software in Akismet, and it’s done wonders for this blog. It’s blocked 11,484 spam comments to date, and I deleted 35 spam comments right before I wrote this post. So I’m not a big fan of spammers.)
Basically, if you want your comments to be accepted and appreciated by your fellow bloggers, explain why you think a post is comment-worthy, talk about your own viewpoints, and maybe a reason why you agree or disagree. Engage in an ongoing conversation with those people. And if someone leaves a comment on your blog, respond, and check out the other person’s blog.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, comments, Gary Vaynerchuk
Posted in All Posts, Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Networking, Social Media, Writing | 1 Comment »
My Talk at Blog Indiana Bloomington, January 2010
I had a chance to speak at Blog Indiana’s first regional event in Bloomington, Indiana, at the Sproutbox office. (Sproutbox is a venture capital firm that works directly with startups to help them launch. And they’ve got a killer office, complete with liquor cabinet and three in-wall beer taps from the Upland Brewing Company.)
Shawn Plew and Noah Wesley from Blog Indiana were kind enough to ask me to speak, so I talked about promoting a blog with social media. I discussed some of the tools I use to help our clients, as well as my own personal blog.
Special thanks again to Sproutbox for hosting us, and to Scotty’s Brewhouse for providing us with some great food.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, presentation, Social Media, video
Posted in Communication, Presentations, Social Media, Social Networks | No Comments »
A Year in Review
Professional Blog Service started a year ago out of Indy Associates to assist companies in generating content they need for most of their Internet marketing activity.
While at Indy Associates, we always recommended blogging as a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. With the popularity of social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook and micro-blogging service Twitter, the strategy has become even more important. The challenge for most of our customers was the blog content generation. Most companies do not have trained content writers that are able to develop conversational blog content, while writing for the search engines. Most important, many of clients have great ideas with no time to share them.
So, what have we learned in 2009?
Most companies still do not have the resources, or the time to write their own content.
2009 saw the unemployment rate hit 10% in November. It was reported that many companies laid off many in their workforce leaving those left behind with more work to do and little time to get it done. The last thing on anyone’s mind is getting blog content written, even though everyone agrees that marketing is still important in a down economy.
Blogging and Social Media continue to evolve from AOL of the 90s to Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter heading into a new decade.
“Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networking or blogging sites, accounting for almost 10% of all Internet time, according to a Nielsen report published in March of this year, “Global Faces and Networked Places.” These numbers keep rising as the year progresses. By 2012, IBM predicts that globally, a quarter of the global population will be using social media in some form.
Results still matter to most companies.
Learning how to play in social media is one thing. Getting people to interact with you is another. Your clients may or may not interact with you through social media. The challenge for all companies is finding out which ones they should engage. You may be able to sell like Dell, or respond to customer complaints like Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue Airlines have done. (Note to my former colleagues at American Airlines – take note!). Either way, Social Media and Blogging is measurable in some way depending on the strategic approach you take with it.
There are great tools like Yahoo Analytics (shameless plug as we are a Yahoo Analytics consultant). Radian6 and Scoutlabs can track who’s talking about you, and help you decide whether to act on the positive or negative media being generated.
We predict that 2010 will be the year of results with blogging and social media. In a nutshell, you are doing it to build your marketing list, or to generate interest in your products or services. To succeed, you will need:
If you can learn how to do it before your competition, you win. It will take them 12 months just to figure out what you have done.
Happy New Year from Professional Blog Service
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.
Tags: blogging, business blogging, Social Media, Social Media Analytics, social networking, social networks
Posted in Blog ROI, Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Research Desk, Social Media, Social Media Analytics | No Comments »
Rules for Being a Media Blogger
This was originally posted at the DeckersMarketing.com blog on May 28, 2009.
I was really honored to be selected as a media blogger for the Indianapolis 500 this year (I’m covering it at my Laughing Stalk humor blog). I’m sitting up here with a lot of local talent, although there are a lot of empty seats right now (I’m in Dennis Neal’s seat from WLW radio in Cincinnati).
I learned a long time ago that there are a couple of unwritten (and written) rules for media people. And if you’re interested in being a guest blogger for a sports team or major event, you need to follow these rules. They’re the same ones the big-J Journalists follow every day. (“Big-J Journalist” implies that these people are serious journalists who make their living writing and producing important work. These guys look down on bloggers, because we’re not serious or well accepted in journalistic circles.)
Bloggers are still getting a bad rap from most of the mainstream media as being an unreliable source of news. And it will be, until we change our reputation and quality of work. That, and when the newspapers all go out of business, and network news is replaced by cable news and, well, blogs.
Until that time, as you grow your reputation and reach as a quality Big-B Blogger, practice journalistic techniques. Read books on newspaper writing (it’s still the gold standard of writing quality and ability), use Associated Press writing style, and study as many newspaper writers as you can.
But most importantly, for the love of God, don’t geek out.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, journalism, media
Posted in Communication, Writing | 1 Comment »
Don’t Stress Over Keywords in Your Blog Posts
The keyword conundrum is one that plagues all bloggers. We’re supposed to use keywords, but you can’t use too many, or you’re stuffing. You can’t use them just once, or you’ll get beat by anyone who uses them properly.
Search has gotten more complicated, as more websites and blogs appear, and people are getting smarter about SEO and how they use keywords. This means that we as bloggers have to create smaller and smaller niches (which is a smart strategy to begin with).
Let’s say my hobby is old-school pens. Not just any pen, like the $.69 Bic, but old fountain pens. More specifically, refillable fountain pens — the kind where the ink comes in a little bottle, and you need to refill it with an eye dropper.
Ten or twelve years ago, I could have optimized a website to be found if you searched for “pens,” or maybe “fountain pens.” But now, as more people have pen websites, I need to be more specific and only talk about “refillable fountain pens.” I could even take it one step further, and write about “repairing refillable fountain pens.”
And therein lies the problem. If I want to win any search for “repairing refillable fountain pens,” I have to use that exact phrase over and over. It’s a clunky, 4-word phrase that defies elegant usage. I can use it a few times naturally, like in a headline — “5 trends in 2010 for repairing refillable fountain pens” or Ashton Kutcher’s celebrity secrets for repairing refillable fountain pens.” — but I’ll plumb the depths of that barrel pretty quickly. So I need to find an alternative.
The body text is also important, but using that exact phrase is going to be difficult. The prevailing wisdom is that keyword density should be 1%, or 1 out of every 100 words. That’s not that hard to do if you have a short post. It’s when you get into 500 or 1,000 word posts that it gets a little awkward.
Write for Readers, Not Spiders
Here’s where I differ from my SEO friends: I think it’s okay to keep your keyword density below 1% sometimes. Even a .25% is acceptable, or 1 time out of every 400.
That’s because you’re not going to win search with one blog post. You don’t need to swing for the fences on every pitch. You need to write several blog posts about your specialty for it to make a difference.
Here’s the key, it’s how well you write that makes the biggest difference. Do you write well enough that people want to read what you have to say? Or do you write a bunch of spider-oriented garbage that looks great to the search engines, but annoys your readers?
It’s not a matter of having more keywords than anyone else. I mean, I could write a sentence like “I love repairing refillable fountain pens, because repairing refillable fountain pens gives my life purpose and meaning, so I can continue making a living repairing refillable fountain pens.”
But who wants to read that? It’s clunky, cumbersome, and it looks like I crowbarred the keyword phrase into the post just so I could get them in there for the appropriate keyword density.
The short of it is, keyword density is not nearly as important if you don’t have readers. Yes, you can get them in there naturally, but don’t kill yourself or ruin your writing just to meet an acceptable percentage.
If you’re writing well, you’ll attract the readers (and the backlinks) needed to get your posts indexed and ranking high on search engines.
Photo: Flickr: J. Dueck
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, keywords, search engine optimization
Posted in Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Writing | No Comments »
How Often Should You Post?
This post was originally published on February 10, 2009 on the DeckersMarketing.com blog, which will soon be closed down.
Neal “Taffy” Taflinger, of Indy.com posted a blogging question on my Facebook page a few days ago:
Question for you, Mr. Blogger Man – is it better to blog frequently so people know there is something to read or only as often as you have something valuable to say?
By an incredible coincidence, my good friend Doug Karr wrote an article about the very same subject on his Compendium Blogware work blog.
Rather than saying it’s one or the other, I would say post frequently and make sure you have something valuable to say.
Business blogs should post at least once a day (once a weekday is fine, and skip the weekends). Personal blogs like Neal’s or my humor blog can be once a week. However, once a week is the bare minimum. But I wouldn’t sacrifice either or choose one over the other. You need valuable content, and you need to post it with some frequency. The more you post, the more the search engines will find you (and love you!). This makes it easier to be found in the search engines for your particular search terms.
More importantly, you need to post consistently. If you post once a week, post it on the same day. If you post it daily, post it at the same time.
Plus, if you post regularly, your readers will know when and how to find you, and your readership will build more quickly and reliably than if you were to post every 7 – 15 days, without rhyme or reason, or any regular schedule.
Bottom line is this isn’t an either/or answer. There are those who say you can sacrifice quality for quantity, but since Neal’s blog is based on readership more than it is search engines, he should focus on quality, and don’t forget the quantity.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blog, blog writing, blogging, writing
Posted in Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Writing | No Comments »
Six Social Media Predictions for 2010
If 2009 was any indication of social media’s success, 2010 is going to bring about some new changes and the way things are done. Social media growth won’t happen by your parents joining Facebook (if they haven’t already). It will happen because the business world is starting to see the light, and companies will start flocking to it in droves.
These are our social media predictions for 2010.
The same thing will happen like it did in the ’80s when the IBM PC and PC clones swamped Apple and took the high-end business market away from them. Or when Windows overpowered Apple’s Macintosh in the business world in the ’90s. Apple has the manufacturing capacity to fulfill AT&T users’ needs now, but if they offer the iPhone to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and any of the international carriers, they’re going to have problems filling orders. On the other hand, LG, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, HTC, and Hunwai (China) are all the licensed Android manufacturers. Their combined manufacturing might is more than enough to meet the demands of the Android users.
So what do you think? What are your predictions for 2010? Leave a comment and let’s see what others are thinking.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: Android, Apple, blogging, business blogging, facebook, iPhone, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Business Blogging, Communication, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | 5 Comments »
Blogging and Social Media are Forcing Professors Out of Their Ivory Towers
The unnamed folks over at Microgeist posed an interesting question in the article, Will Social Media and the Internet Kill the University System.
The answer is no. No it won’t. The University system is too firmly entrenched in our business culture, and too many businesses believe you must have a degree in the area you’re seeking a job in. Social media won’t unseat the university system any time soon. The Internet may change how we obtain knowledge, but you’ll still need a degree from an accredited university to get that job.
They did raise an interesting question however.
Will The Internet force professors out of the Ivory Tower?
We’re starting to see this somewhat. The Ivory Tower was originally the idea that professors were isolated “from practical matters” so they could work unimpeded toward “greater levels of abstraction which can then be converted via various design, engineering and business principles into something more pragmatic.”
The problem is, some professors began to see themselves as the Philosopher-Kings of society, and we unwashed masses were left to scrabble an intellectual existence out of whatever crumbs they might carelessly drop.
The Internet is starting to knock down the Ivory Tower though. Now, people are able to share knowledge with one another, without professorial filtration. Graduate students are publishing articles in blogs. Professors’ class notes and lecture videos are available online. And thousands of entrepreneurs are writing books about subjects that are making their way back to the universities, not the other way around.
It used to be that new ideas and new practices came from the university level, and were slowly absorbed into business, medicine, or the arts, as the graduates entered the field, were promoted, and the old ways of thinking died out.
Now, it’s the professionals who are writing the books and developing the ideas that are slow to catch on in higher education. Social media is a great example of this.
I’ve spoken with a few friends — social media professionals and experts — who have spoken at different college classes, and are finding that not only do students not know how to use social media (collaboration, tweetups, networking), but many of them don’t even know what tools are out there beyond Facebook. And the concept of face-to-face networking with others to form beneficial relationships? One friend said the students just stared at her blankly when she brought it up.
Basically, colleges and universities are going to have to realize that life has gone on without them, and knowledge has grown beyond them. They’re going to have to climb down from their ivory towers and catch up with the rest of us. Start spending time in the real world. Hang out. Learn from the people you were teaching 5, 10, 20 years ago. They’ve got a lot more they can teach you now.
What other information is getting shared outside of the University’s influence? What new knowledge is being spread— or have you spread — without them? And what can the universities do to keep up? Leave your ideas in the comments section.
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, higher education, Social Media, universities
Posted in Communication, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks | 1 Comment »
It’s Good to be the King
So who’s the king? Content? Frequency? Me?
When it comes to the whole “Content is King” discussion, no one can agree.
Chris Baggott, CEO of Compendium Blogware says it’s frequency: the more you post, the more searches you win.
I say content is king: the better you write, the more people will return.
Chris Brogan says it’s me, and he looks so cool in his shades, I want to believe him.
Okay, he didn’t say it was me per se, but rather anyone who was reading his blog post.
And while I like Chris Brogan’s channeling of Mr. Rogers — everyone is special, a sentiment I firmly believe — I think new online relationships are started by our content.
Whether it’s our ideas, the words we choose, or how well we string them together, people find us because of search. They stay with us because of quality. They form relationships with us because of, well, us.
But I submit that it’s still the original content that started it all. You can’t win search without good content. You can’t win fans without good content. And people won’t stick around without good content.
Content may be currency in Chris Brogan’s world, but in a culture that worships the Almighty Dollar, I think the currency of ideas is our king.
We’re just the power behind the throne.
Photo: Chris Brogan
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging for more than nine years (even before it was called blogging), and has been a published writer for more than 20 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, stage plays, radio theatre plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and frequently speaks on blogging and social media.
Tags: blogging, Business Blogging Content, Chris Baggott, Chris Brogan, Social Media
Posted in Business Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Writing | 2 Comments »
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