Blogging Tips

As you can probably tell from my last post I've been doing loads of research into blogs (see? I didn't say "the blogosphere") lately. And while I've found some good/average/bad/awful blogs a few common mistakes have really come to light, so I thought I'd publish a few tips here on ways to enhance your blog. 1. Tell your readers who you are! When I find a new blog, one of the first things I do is look for an "about" page so I can find out a little bit more about the author. Surprisingly many bloggers prefer to either remain anonymous of they just assume their readers already know who they are. Take Michelle's promising new blog for example, the "about" page simply says:

This is the blog of Michelle Penny, an internet marketer. Here you will find hints, tips, mumblings and grumblings from an affiliate who runs a number of sites in a number of different areas which has lead to her being rather good at juggling.

At least this is a start but it doesn't really tell us anything about you Michelle. I would much prefer maybe a short paragraph about you on the sidebar which then links to a full "about" page that tells us a bit more detail about you. For instance whats your background? What are your sites? What are your interests? Maybe include a photo too. This type of information really helps to put a human face to a blog and enable your users to connect with you. This in turn builds up a kind of trust from your readers as they know that they are connecting with a real person and not just a faceless entity who occasionally spews out stuff on the Internet. Another example is the new blog from Searchworks, the about page actually tells us quite a lot about what the blog is all about and what its aims and purposes are. But who is the writer? Who is behind this? I don't know if its just me but I much prefer to know who is talking to me. Here's another example. Who are you? Take a look at the "about" page from Self Made Minds as a great example of how it should be done. 2. Link to your homepage Given that a lot of users will find your blog through individual blog posts that are syndicated from the likes of the A4U blog pages or maybe the BlogRush widget to the right then wouldn't it be a good idea to let them see your whole blog? Case in point, I saw a link to the Jackpot Joy blog the other day, tbh I didn't even know they had one. Anyway, I tried to click on the logo so I could go to the homepage and start reading from the beginning, I couldn't. So I looked for a "home" link, there wasn't one. Sure I could have looked through all the archive pages but by this time my attention span had expired and I moved onto another blog. BTW there was no "about" page either. 3. Be specific! This is quite possibly my biggest bugbear when it comes to reading affiliate/internet marketing blogs. Here's what I mean: Take a look at this post from Monetise This. Now I like his blog, he seems a nice guy and I always read his posts. So when I saw the title "Fly a Kite/Progress Update" I thought cool, lets see how much macaroni he is making. Imagine my disappointment when all he tells us about his site is that "it has started to generate some very decent sales" and "have somehow ranked well within Google and Yahoo!" Can we have the juice please? Imagine how much more motivated your readers would be if you told us you have made £500 in commissions in a week, or that you were number 1 in Google for "toys". Doesn't that make for much more engaging reading? You don't need to give away trade secrets here, just share some juicy numbers to make us salivate. Take a look at this blog for example, the author posts regularly but never gives any details away. He talks about site 1, site 2, and all sorts of stuff but we never get anything real from him. I find this very frustrating, I used to read his blog weekly and now I just gave up. Here's a great example of blogging done well, and how to show some detail from Befuddled. And here's a great example of how to really go into detail from Dfinitive. Then there's this from John, loads of juicy info here. It doesn't always have to be about how much money/how well you are ranking to be a good read. As you can see from the above 3 examples, blogs make for much better reading if you actually share some detail with your users. If you don't its almost as if you don't trust us and it kinds of puts walls up between the reader and author. There are loads more tips which I'll share at a later date but was keen to get these basics off my chest first :) What I'm listening to right now: Keyshia Cole Ft Anthony Hamilton – "Losing You"