Posted by on Jan 21, 2009 in
Blogging Since I started freelancing full-time, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to top bloggers - those withhundreds of thousands of page views per month and tens of thousands of subscribers. It’s not so surprising that they all have a few things in common. If you’re trying to become a top blogger - or something remotely resembling it - these are some habits you might want to put into use.
They make daily or multi-daily blog posts.
You can count on a minimum of one post per day from the top bloggers. It used to be that blogging once a day was all that you needed to become a top blogger. Not anymore. Now the highest subscribed blogs have several blogs during the course of a day.
The have very meaty posts.
And even though they’re posting several times in a single day, the posts all contain very good information. I don’t think I ever see a one or two paragraph, “take a look at this article” type of post from a top blog.
They have guest posts.
The abundance of guest posts surprised me at first. I was under the impression that guest bloggers were a turnoff for readers, but obviously not. To be a top blogger, you don’t have to know it all yourself and maybe it turns readers off if you try to pretend that you do. Now, I think guest posts are quite refreshing and an awesome way to get new ideas and content on your blog.
They have a personable tone.
To me, there’s nothing worse than reading a blog that has a drab tone. Write like you’re talking to your best friend, not to your refrigerator.
They’re well read.
The blogs that I see performing the best always have links to other blog posts, news articles, and books.
They’re well connected.
Top bloggers also know the who’s who of their niche. I notice a lot of them mentioning, “I talked to Mr. Top Niche yesterday…” I’ve never been a fan of interviews, but I’m not a top blogger so who am I to say that it’s the wrong thing to do.
It didn’t happen overnight.
Every once in awhile, top bloggers look back and talk about the journey to where they are today. Not once has any of them said, “I started blogging three months ago and now my blog is a huge success.” In fact, they often warn against that type of mentality, letting readers know it’s often the 3rd or 4th blog attempt that hits it big.
Posted by on Dec 17, 2008 in
Blogging Dear Template Designer-
I’m really appreciate your free templates. I do have a slight problem though. Many of your templates have wonky issues with lists - the bullets and numbers don’t show up. I understand the template looks better when there are no bullets in the sidebars and headers. But, my readers miss the point if I title a blog post 101 ways to write better and there are no numbers to indicate that there are actually 101 items in the list. Not only that, a list without bullets simply becomes a series of badly formatted sentences and my readers think I’m the one who’s messing up my posts, not you.
I have some background in programming, so ordinarily it’s not hard for me to Google “CSS list bullets won’t show” to figure out how to format my stylesheet to force bullets to show up. However, I have to spend time getting acquainted with your coding style and figure out where exactly you put the settings for lists that show up in posts (vs. sidebar lists, menu lists, footer lists, other lists). Less technical template users will end up frustrated and switch to a template that actually includes bullets and numbers for lists.
Finally, it seems that there’s always some weird global setting that keeps bullets from showing up. For example, in one template, there was global margin setting that had to be removed before bullets would show up in posts. A nice little “remove this for bullets to show up” comment would be very helpful.
It’s not that I can’t figure out how to get bullets to show up. It’s just that spending 2-3 hours doing it is not a good use of my time and makes me less inclined to use your template. So the point, dear template designer, is that lists inside blog posts needs bullets and numbers to make sense. Please stop forcing them out.
Best Regards,
Your Friendly WordPress Template User
Posted by on Dec 12, 2008 in
Blogging As you can probably tell, I’ve switched to a different theme. I loved the other theme because I love colors, but it didn’t have much to do with writing. It was more like something for an artist’s blog. This one looks more like a writer’s desk. I had to have it! What do you think about the new theme?
Posted by on Dec 4, 2008 in
Blogging,
Networking RSS feeds are great for lazy and (sometimes) unorganized people like me who can’t possibly remember to visit all the sites I like. I’ve tried signing up for feeds a few ways - adding to my Internet feeds lists, signing up for emails, and adding them to Outlook. I must say having Outlook manage my feeds was one of the best things I’ve never done. Neither solution is a win-win, so I don’t sign up for email RSS.
Sorry, Email RSSers
I’ve tried, for the sake of the blogs I love and their email subscriber stats, to like RSS via email, but it’s not going to happen. I just don’t like getting emails that aren’t specifically addressed to me. Even though I signed up for the subscription, I still get that spammed feeling when an RSS email shows up in my inbox. I could sign up using my spam-only email address, but then I wouldn’t get the updates.
I Love Outlook’s RSS Integration
These days, I’m using Outlook to improve my productivity on several fronts. I use ‘Notes’ to manage my ideas. ‘Tasks’ to manage my work. I have several different ‘Rules’ set up for routing email going to different email addresses. And I use Outlook to manage my RSS Feeds. It’s one of the best things I’ve done.
No more spending minutes or more visiting separate blogs to get the latest posts - or to feel that I’ve wasted precious time when there is no latest. Instead, I can easily tell whether there are any new posts because the feed name is bold with the number of posts in parenthesis like Writer’s Brew(1). I love it. Thankfully all the feeds I’m subscribed to have their full posts in the RSS rather than just the first paragraph. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be subscribed.
Are RSS Subscribers Deadbeats?
I used to wonder if blogs benefited from RSS subscribers, since there was no real page view gain, and quite possibly a loss. A recent post on Problogger.net solved that conundrum with 6 reasons that’s it’s nothing to worry about, if it’s done right. My favorite: “A subscriber that never visits is better than a one off visitor who never returns.”
This isn’t a sales pitch for Outlook at all - though I encourage Outlook users to try out their feeds integration. It’s more of a way to encourage you to find a way to manage your RSS feeds in a way that isn’t cumbersome or time-consuming for you.
Are you subscribed to any RSS feeds? How do you get your updates?
Posted by on Sep 19, 2008 in
Blogging I’ve wanted to move my blog to Wordpress for awhile, but I kept waiting on a domain to open up. The owners aren’t doing anything with the site, so I figured they would let it expire and I’d be able to grab it. Not so. So I registered an alternative.
I’m so glad to have finally made the move to Wordpress.
I blog in spurts. Using Blogger with that kind of blogging pattern, meant I would have several posts showing up on a single day. I didn’t like that so I wouldn’t blog at all. Wordpress allows you to set posts to show up on different dates in the future - it’s a “spurt blogger’s” dream come true.
By far, I’ve seen the best templates on Wordpress. I actually found this template a few months ago and saved it immediately because I absolutely loved it. It doesn’t have much to do with “writing,” but it does spark creativity. With blogger, I could never find a template that I just loved.
Do you have a Wordpress blog? What do you like most about it?
