Leaning with Intent

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Most bloggers want to post new articles on their blog on a regular basis. Did a few days already pass since your last post, and you feel obliged to write something new? Do not worry, as there are a lot of things to write about, and all you have to do is stay focused. Here is some advice that may help you:

Very often writing a high quality and unique post is enough to ensure that people will read it. On the other hand, there are many marketers who say that most readers make up their mind if they want to read your post just after reading the title. That is why choosing the title of your post might be the most important thing to do in order to make people stay on your blog. Of course, writing high quality content is also necessary if you want to interest your readers so you should not neglect that.

There is no magic rule when it comes to choosing the title, and it depends what kind of visitors you have. It also depends on what you exactly want to achieve. A good way to attract readers to read your post is to simply make them believe that they will learn something valuable from reading it. If you have some kind of unique content, do not be afraid to clearly state so in your post title. Depending in what niche you are, there will be completely different post titles that will try to attract visitors that are interested in that particular niche. The knowledge of the preferences and interests of your visitors is definitely going to help in creating a great title. Will your visitors be drawn to a shocking title, a funny one, a puzzling one, an intriguing one? Your job is to try to figure that out because you need to know the preferences of your readers.

Working on your blog is not always easy, so it is important to work on it in an efficient way. This will ensure that it will take you less time to write an article, and that the quality of the article will be higher. There are a couple of things that you can do to improve blog productivity:

• Have a list of URLs that you can visit for ideas of topics to write about. Every writer needs some inspiration. Who knows, you might get inspired and write your best article after finding some interesting topic to write about.
• Research the topic you are interested in more carefully. You may want to search for related posts about it on other blogs. Write only about topics you have knowledge about. Posts that contain a lot of useful information and reflect the knowledge of the writer are going to become popular.
• Use the best browsers. For example, your browser should allow tabbing. No doubt that Firefox and Opera are currently one the best browsers, but even IE has some useful features, although probably not as many.
• Store ideas for articles that you will want to write about in the future. There is nothing worse than running out of ideas.

Remember, whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it as your readers will be able to feel your enthusiasm or lack thereof.

Those who host their own blog, such as most WordPress users, have to make some technical decisions when setting up their blog for the first time. One of such decisions is the directory to install WordPress. I would like to convince you to set up your WordPress installation in your sites root directory, as this will benefit your blog in the long term. One of the main reasons for setting up your blog in the main directory is to prevent a situation where your PageRank will be split. If your site can be accessed through www.domain.com and www.domain.com/blog/, then your PageRank will be divided, and it would be a disaster when it comes to SEO. Another reason is that your homepage will be duplicated which is not convenient at all.

Whenever you are blogging try to be as confident as possible. Perhaps a Los Angeles Cosmetic Dentist would help you gain confidence.

Another thing that I would like to advise you to remember is your homepage. Internet users who wish to access your site should be allowed to do it as easily as possible. That is why I wish to convince you to make accessing your site as easy as possible. What is mean is that many websites have a greeting page that is not the homepage, but which sole purpose is to welcome visitors. This page often contains flash animation or other graphics, which are supposed to impress Internet users, but they are often not necessary. The purpose of such a page is to redirect to the main site. I strongly believe that the smaller the number of steps required for the user to access your content, the better, so simply greet your user on your main site.

Even if you have a small niche blog, you can have the ability to influence your niche. Influencing others is one of the things that each person wants to do. We want others to respect us, and know that what we said or did, influenced their way of thinking about many different things. Naturally, if you want to influence other blogs, their authors, as well as other readers, you have to put some work into it. Here are some of my thoughts about how you can influence other people by having a blog of your own:

Apart from the points that I gave, try to get involved whenever there is something interesting happening. This includes forums, top lists, and other places.

While the biggest reward of blogging is the fact that you can share your thoughts with the rest of the world, there are also other things that some people hope to achieve. Maintaining a blog can be quite expensive, especially if you spend money on promotion and web design. That is why making some money from your blog is often necessary to keep it online. Here are my thoughts about blogs targeting a small niche, and their ability to make money:

One technique that is often used by top bloggers is linking to older posts. One might ask a question, why should I do it, and how will it benefit my blog? Will my readers want to read older posts? I think that there are a few reasons why you should be linking to your older posts:

I believe that linking to your older posts is a great way to emphasize those articles, which contain useful information and deserve to be mentioned.

Generally, those websites that have plenty of traffic and a lot of valuable content are considered to be successful. One way to increase the amount of traffic you will receive is through viral linking. Webmasters who are engaged in viral linking create a post with a list of links to various blogs and repost the link. Later, other webmasters come and after adding their website to the list, repost the post as well. Many claim that this is a great way to obtain backlinks.

Plenty can be said about the advantages of viral linking; however, what about disadvantages? Before you decide to get engaged in viral linking you should know about both sides of the coin. I am not trying to discourage you from viral marketing at all, but I simply want to provide useful information that you should analyze on your own.

1. Links might not be family friendly. The links in a viral link could end up at pornographic sites. What would your readers think if that happened? There is no easy way to control where your links will appear.
2. Links might not be relevant to your blog. If you want a good search engine ranking position, then you should take this into consideration. It is best to obtain links from relevant sources.
3. It has been stated by many bloggers that viral linking has a poor click-through rate. This might be a disadvantage if you hope to receive a lot of traffic this way.

Of course, viral linking still remains a good choice for those webmasters who want to quickly obtain many links.

Today I would like to discuss how to overcome writing problems and how to deal with them. You will know that you need some encouragement when you have problems writing articles, feel unmotivated to be creative, forget the point of your post, or even feel like abandoning your blog into which you put so much work. Here are some guidelines that should put you back on the right track:

1. Think about changing the topic of your blog. If something excites you, you will always be willing to write about it even if you feel tired or exhausted. I cannot emphasize this enough, because this is the most important point. Write about the things that you love.
2. Read other blogs that will give you inspiration. Visit only those blogs that you enjoy reading. There are many interesting blogs on the blogosphere so you should not have problems finding one.
3. Make your writing fun and experiment a lot. Try different styles of writing, use different fonts and pictures. You might learn a lot this way.
4. Do something on your blog that you have never done before. Create a poll, organize a giveaway, or get involved in a traffic exchange. All of those things will get you more exited about blogging.
5. Get some rest if you feel that you need it. After a few days you will find yourself refreshed enough to continue working. Maybe it is time to take a vacation? Being rested is very important when it comes to blogging.

I believe that ever webmaster would agree with me that search engine optimization is important. Marketing is an art that only very few can understand and master. Me and you live in times when it is necessary to know at least a little bit about online marketing in order not to stay behind the competition. Everything me and you do on the Net revolves around online marketing. Even if you are a blogger, you probably want to attract more readers. What you do to achieve your goal is a part of online marketing. There are many good articles on the Internet written by professional online marketing experts. You can also find an search engine optimization company that can help every webmaster with SEO. I came across SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization some time ago. In the beginning, I did not know much about marketing on the web. Now I know a lot more. I believe that every webmaster and online marketer can benefit from some knowledge about SEO.