How To Make My Blog

A humorous day in the life of a new blogger

Marko Saric — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:02:32 +0000

The first blog known to man was published in the seventh century by a wild hunter who went by the name of Elvis Beowulf. Beowulf ’s blog gives us a great insight into seventh century Britain.

From Dan Brown’s illuminating translation published in 2004 and the movie based on it (New Wolves on the Blog starring Tom Hanks, Sharon Stone and Madonna) we are able to learn a lot about early Anglican blogging.

His entry for February 29th 694 is especially enlightening:

I woke early this morning. For breakfast I killed an owl and washed it down with two tankers of home made ale. I woke up in the afternoon feeling lucky. I walked outside, ignoring the bodies that had piled up by the river and treated myself to the remains of the wild boar I had been saving since Christmas. I washed it down with two tankers of ale.

I woke up in the morning. It was raining again. The whether man had promised sun. I hit him over the head with my iron and went back to my ale. I kept the man’s carcass for a rainy day, thus inventing irony…

The first blog to receive national acclaim was of course the Canterbury Blogue

The first blog to receive national acclaim was of course the Canterbury Blogue, now known as the Canterbury Tales, first published in the late 14th century. In a collection of 279 separate writings, Geoffrey Chaucer related what went on during a road trip to the massage parlors of Bathe, taken by himself and fellow members of the London Fornographic Society.

Since then millions upon millions of blogs have been published by men, women, children and Siamese cats around the globe.

Eight months ago I came to the conclusion that it was about time that I too started a blog. “I will publish all my satire poetry and songs on-line and millions of readers will fall in love with me”, I said to myself in my most convincing voice. “I will be famous – the new Elvis (or Cliff or Paul or Michael – your choice.)”.

And I waited and waited and waited

So I sat myself down for a fortnight of long nights and wrote a dozen of the wittiest blog articles I could come up with and waited (I was reading Godot at the time so it seemed fitting). And I waited and waited and waited.

After a couple of weeks I found Google Analytics. Great news I now had 8 readers a day (nine on Sundays) and that included all of my children, a couple of my friends who owed me favors, an illiterate Aborigine and Mini my Pekingese wonderdog who will do anything for a treat.

After eight days of immersing myself into what Google had to offer, I discovered that Analytics allows you to compare your site to a benchmark. Hurray, according to Google I was already 450,374% better than my benchmark. Within weeks I should be a millionaire. I was going to be famous. I was already calculating how much to ask for the movie rights.

I now had between 12 to 14 people a day, and 3 of them weren’t even relatives

Three months passed and my blog had really taken off. I now had between 12 to 14 people a day, and 3 of them weren’t even relatives. Success was on its way. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.

I read everything there was to read about creating a successful blog. I took a post graduate course in SEO, I posted my blog on every forum, blog list and index I could find. I facebooked and twittered till my fingers were numb. I signed up for AdSense and Amazon Associates and earned the incredible sum of $0.13.

One night I found Alexa.com, the site that gives you your site ranking, and that really made my day. My site was ranked 15,457,341. That, translated into layman’s terms means that when all the people out there, with nothing better to do with their lives than read idiotic blogs like this one, finally finish reading the 15,457,340 sites ranking above mine, they will give me a call.

According to the calculations of my excel spreadsheet, taking into account the current growth on my blog and the amount of people who click on the ads hidden around my site I should be making at least $1.75 a month by the year 2032.

I’m going out now to get myself well and truly drunk at the local Bloggers Bar

I don’t know about you, but I’m going out now to get myself well and truly drunk at the local Bloggers Bar. If the millions of readers check into my site before I get back please tell them I’m on my way.

Steve Taite is an IT project manager who’s body hides a frustrated writer. His blog is his outlet for what he sees happening around. Sometimes he is serious but more often than not he tends to look at life in a satirical humorous fashion. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.

Image by AZ Rain Man.

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Reader comment: counting keyword density and worrying about SERP’s

Marko Saric — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:02:55 +0000

After my WordPress SEO post earlier this week, loyal reader Brian Prows sent in some great points via email and I wanted to share them with you guys:

I’ve been using Scribe now for a few weeks and it has helped somewhat with SEO.

You’re going to find it challenging, however, writing posts with titles like “101 ways to Capture your Reader’s Interest.” Scribe wants prime keywords at the beginning of the title. So I’ve been cheating a bit by doing it that way in Thesis’ Title section for SEO and making the actual title different.

It’s curious that Brian Clark of Copyblogger pushes writing interesting titles first, then writing your content. The titles may not score high with Scribe.

I still use Traffic Travis from Affilorama and Google’s keyword tool to find highly-searched keyword phrases, which I sprinkle throughout a post while trying to SEO each post for one keyword phrase.

Sometimes, it’s quite challenging. Yesterday, I was cleaning up an older post trying to SEO for “health information.” The first Scribe analysis concluded I inserted “health information” too many times. After I removed and/or changed a lot of “health information” phrases (“medical information, “health tools,” etc. , Scribe reported I word-stuffed “health” as a keyword.

Scribe is helpful to some extent, but writing interesting, compelling posts, as you’ve always pointed out, will increase readership over counting keyword density and worrying about SERP’s.

All definitely true. This is why it is important for me to stress that the blog SEO post is just an experiment that I will focus a bit on in the following weeks. Hopefully I will collect some useful data and tips that I can then share with you, so everyone learns something.

Forget SEO, focus on readers

But Brian Prows is completely correct that it is not SEO that should be the primary focus. My post “forget SEO, focus on readers” is still very valid and is the recommended way of building a readership.

If you focus completely on SEO, you will not be able to make the connection with your visitors. Writing great content, scannable articles with magnetic headlines is what will create the connection and turn your visitors into loyal readers.

And as Brian mentions, some of the Scribe SEO rules go against the valuable content and relationship building. The plugin is very mechanic and mathematically built and you basically have to follow its formula to score 100% SEO optimized blog post. And we all know that authenticity grows readers and not generically optimized work.

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WordPress SEO: How to 100% optimize your blog SEO

Marko Saric — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:02:09 +0000

Doing Wordpress SEO is not difficult, even Google says that WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms for search engines optimization. There is so much competition though so it is important to optimize your blog SEO to attract organic traffic from search engines.

WordPress SEO

I got an email about the new Scribe blog SEO software because I am user of the Thesis Theme. Scribe SEO was created by the same team as Thesis and I just had to check it out.

Scribe is basically a WordPress SEO plugin that helps work with the blog on-page search engine optimisation. Scribe sits in your blog post writing screen and allows you to analyse the blog SEO of the post by clicking the “Analyze” button.

Clicking Analyze brings up a pop-up screen which looks something like the screenshot above (analysis above is for the “What diet is your blog on” post):

I got a low grade of 51% for that post. Scribe looked at following things to decide the grade. The first tab is SEO Score:

Title

how many characters
how many words
does it contain primary keyword
does it contain primary key word at the beginning

Description

how many characters
does it contain primary keyword
does it contain primary key word towards the beginning

Body

how many words does the body contains
what is the keyword density of the primary keyword
how many hyperlinks are there in the post
how many hyperlinks at the beginning
what is the flesch reading score and level

Out of all these, it tells me which ones I am doing fine and which ones I have to fix. In this post the title doesn’t contain the keyword at the beginning, neither does the description, the keyword “blog” exceeds the maximum of keyword density, and there are no links at the beginning of the post. That is why I only got score 51%.

SEO Keyword Analysis

Second tab is Keyword Analysis which basically analyses primary and secondary keywords and phrases in your copy. It also lets you know what is the keyword density of each of the keywords.

Third tab is Change Keywords which tells you to use more of the keyword throughout the text if you want to make that keyword a primary one or use less of it if you want to make it a secondary keyword.

The Tag tab tells me the list of semantically relevant key phrases that I should use in the article.

SERP tab shows me how my listing will look in Google or in another search engine result page.

Blog SEO Best Practices

Last Tab is called SEO Best Practices. This is a text that gives me FAQ and a definition of terms used in the other tabs. It tells what the optimal length of the title, optimal length of the description and the body is, best practices around how many links per how many words, why the Flesch reading ease is important and so on. It tells how the score is calculated.

I analysed some of my best ranking articles and how to install WordPress post has a score of 65% and my best WordPress plugins post has a score of 87%! There is no “analyse all” button so I do not know which of my posts has the best score.

Scribe WordPress SEO plugin has been updated several times since I’ve been using it so it is good to know that it will be kept as current as the Thesis theme is.

All in all an interesting product that can help you take care of the generic on-page WordPress SEO and in the long run hopefully increase your search engine traffic.

It is important to note that on-page factors are only a small factor of the whole blog SEO so getting a lot of social media mentions, getting great links and having a keyword rich domain name are still the factors that will give you the most search engine success.

This post has been optimized to 100% for WordPress SEO and blog SEO according to Scribe so will be interesting to see how Google takes it.

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London Blog Club – Blogging goals and to-dos

Marko Saric — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:02:11 +0000

Image by Toni Duarte.

Meeting with, getting to know and discussing different subjects with other bloggers is a nice way to get motivated to improve your blog and take it to another level. I am one of the organizers of one of the blog meetup events for London bloggers, the London Blog Club.

Our first ever London Blog Club meetup was on February 2nd and 12 London bloggers showed up. It was a very informal meeting where London bloggers were able to get to know each other and where everyone got a chance to speak a bit about their experience and dreams.

London Blog Club – blogging goals and tasks

We ended up agreeing that in case that you want to improve your blog, you must set some short-term blogging goals, some task that you will do and you must follow them consistently. A task was given that everyone must make some blogging goals and work on them during the time until the next London Blog Club meetup, which is on 10th March.

Some of the blogging goals were to write a certain amount of posts per week consistently for 4 weeks, one of the other goals was to write a certain amount of guest posts to promote your own blog, and another blogging goal was to get in touch with 10 or more new people from your target group daily and that way increase your influence and readership.

The deal for our next London Blog Club meetup is to check up on the progress of people and their blogging goals, see what has been done since the last meetup, what results have been achieved and what lessons have been learned. Will be interesting to hear…

“I cannot wait for the next meetup”

Some of the London bloggers comments about the first meetup:

Mark Waterfield “ Very informative. I took away some great ideas which I now need to action”

Elzette “It was everything I was hoping for, for a first blog meetup of this group. Great discussion about all the different kind of blogs. Great advice and insight was given. I can not wait for the next meetup!”

The next London Blog Club meetup is on 10th March, same place – Pitcher & Piano in Holborn, London. See all details and sign-up for this free event on London Blog Club page. If you are a London blogger, this is a perfect opportunity for you.

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Ebuzzing – sponsored posts for bloggers – UK launch

Marko Saric — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:10:04 +0000

Last week I was made aware of the launch of ebuzzing in the UK. EBuzzing is a simple way to monetize a blog by creating content for different brands and featuring videos and other content of different brands.

Basically the deal is that you register on ebuzzing.com, it is simple and free and you get your blog approved. When your blog is approved, you will then get offers from brands that want to be featured on your blog. There are no obligations so you get to pick and choose if you want to feature something or not and you also get to set your own price.

There are different kinds of offers that you can get. These can be:

A video campaign with dedicated players and banners where you basically embed a video from the company into your post or into your blog sidebar.

A content creation campaign where you have to create branded content for companies like Coca-Cola, Intel and Electronic Arts. The post you are reading now is a content creation campaign.

Every campaign you do requires the presence of the disclaimer link, and all links are no-follow so Google is satisfied. And you are allowed to talk and write whatever you want. This is how the article submission process looks like:

As I don't have any banner ads or Adsense ads, this is a nice and alternative way of Monetisation of my blog.

As explained above, the disclaimer is always placed at the end of your post so that your visitors know that it is a Sponsored Post.

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What diet is your blog on?

Marko Saric — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:02:46 +0000

Is it the Atkins Diet – loaded with protein and fat; or is it the Jenny Craig diet –processed and prepared for you; or is it the Weight Watchers diet—counting points and tracking; or is it the New Year’s diet—gung ho for a short while and then loses its momentum?

Blogging, just like dieting, takes dedication, diligence, planning, and follow-through. It takes an open mind to change habits and give a new perspective on the same old thing. It takes time, a lot of time, to build an audience and keep them coming back for more. It can be frustrating and a huge let down if you watch the numbers daily. Just like weight loss, it is not all about the scale and blogging can’t be all about the numbers either.

Atkins Diet – A blog full of protein and low carbs can leave you craving something sweet. Is your content full of facts and no personality? Does it leave the reader craving something more?

Jenny Craig – Restricted and only their processed and boxed food. Is your blog strictly about your own niche? Does it leave your audience with just specific lists of someone else’s ideas or do you interject your own personality and choices into your posts?

Weight Watchers – Lots of Counting and Tracking. Do you spend a huge amount of time counting and tracking your stats? Does your writing shoot more for the numbers than the quality of your content.

New Year’s Diet – Does your blog and your content start out with a bang and then lose momentum, leaving you scrambling for motivation? Build your blog, with your unique writing style and quality content will win the readership and grow your blog more successfully than going all out and losing its stamina too soon.

A blog needs nurturing and self-care just like a plan to lose weight. Sticking within your niche can be just like some diets. Restrictive! Yes, write content geared toward your niche, your passion but explore other “niches” to truly make your blog grow.

A healthy diet is a balanced diet. Choices from all the different food groups, stepping out of your comfort zone, building relationships-including a few with some not-so-like-minded people who push you to view things differently and determining what you like, what you don’t, what works and what doesn’t, for you.

A healthy blog is a balanced blog

Choices from all the different niches, stepping out of your comfort zone of expertise, building relationships with bloggers who know about things you never experienced, taking that lesser known niche and putting it into your own perspective and own style will give your readers a treat, a new experience, a whole new way of looking at things and spice it up a little.

Do you judge a blog by its niche or its platform? Choosing a passionate topic for your writing is a key element to blogging. That said, exploring, following, and learning from a different niche can change your blogging lifestyle. It’s like eating from all the food groups. Filling up on the fruit and vegetables, but allowing for the meat and potatoes once in awhile.

Make your blog a special treat for your readers

Make it the icing on the cake once in awhile. Step outside your niche for a couple of days and come back to your balanced diet of your own niche. It will give you a new perspective and a new motivation for your blog. It will give you an open mind and give your readers something other than the same old topics that they can read from any other blog in your niche.

Diets, just like blogs, come in many forms . Let your blog be the one that gives them their cake and they can eat it too.

A well balanced blog, with a little cake thrown in as a treat, will reward you. You will reach an audience that may not have come to your regular meal plan but certainly will come for dessert! In the end, the numbers will reward you.

A guest post by Julie Hubert. Read more from Julie at Big Girl Bombshell and We’re Not in Oz Any More. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.

Image by Mr. Kris.

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Marketing 101 – Lessons Learned from a Product Launch

Marko Saric — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:02:33 +0000

On December 28, 2009, my partner Mike Cliffe-Jones and I launched a book called Beyond Blogging. You might have heard of it.

We spent a lot of time developing this book, and poured our blood, sweat, and tears into making what we thought was an awesome product…and much of the world agreed.

We had positive reviews from heavy hitters like Marko, Chris Brogan, David Risley, Naomi Dunford (Ittybiz), Shama Kabani, Michael Martine (Remarkablogger), Jonathan Fields, Chris Guillebeau, and many others. By most standards, the launch was a huge success. I mean, who wouldn’t want their E-Book plastered all over the internet?

When Dreams Meet Reality

The truth is that Mike and I weren’t sure how many copies we’d sell during the launch, but we knew that we had something good. We expected success. What we didn’t expect though, was a surge of backlash that appeared midway through the launch and continued until it was over.

Our dream was the book, and what happened when our dream met reality was an interesting story. This post is an attempt to share that story with you, and in the process, show you what we learned.

Know Your Audience

Initially, we thought the naysayers were just jealous or terminally negative personalities. Yeah, some were the type that is never happy and always finds something to complain about, but the majority of the dissent came from an audience we weren’t marketing to.

We created the book in order to help people overcome the stumbling blocks that they’ll encounter while building a blog. We also wanted to help people see their blog as a business, so that they wouldn’t get trapped in a business model that doesn’t scale.

We reached that audience very well by creating a launch funnel that gave people hints about the content, while still building interest by not giving everything away. It worked, and we sold a lot of books and received a lot of positive reviews. However, in the process of reaching our target audience, we also reached another audience that we weren’t used to engaging, which was the authority bloggers that already knew much of what was in the book because they’ve already climbed that mountain. They saw people like Chris Brogan promoting it, and were confused whether to buy or not. They thought paying $47 for an E-Book was ridiculous, because they don’t buy E-Books.

So, the backlash began and the debate ensued for a week or so.

Don’t Cater to Everyone

At first, we tried to respond in a way that was intended to persuade them that they were wrong. But, over time, we realized that no matter what we said to them, they weren’t going to buy the book. Why? Because they weren’t the audience the book was intended for.

And that is an important lesson for anyone. If you try to cater to everyone, you won’t sell anything. You’ll be debating on both sides. Instead, pick an audience and cater to them. Dig in, and really focus on meeting their needs and answering their questions. Instead of trying to sell a guitar to a painter, sell it to a guitarist.

Taking Heat

Of course, knowing your audience doesn’t shield you from criticism and backlash. Since it was our first time in such a public spotlight, we hadn’t experienced anything like it. At first, we were hurt by the criticism, but eventually we realized that if people aren’t beating you up, then you aren’t doing a good enough job. It goes with the territory, and it’s something that comes with success. So, instead of trying to hush the critics, embrace them and enjoy the fact that you are in the spotlight.

Price point

As I mentioned earlier, part of the debate was over the price point. Although we struggled with our decision to price the E-Book at $47, I believe the book wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if we priced it lower.

One of the most important parts of selling anything is having a team of affiliates or promoters on your side. Had we relied purely on our own audiences to launch to, the buzz wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful as it became. Simply put…you need affiliates to promote your products.The problem though, is that it’s hard to get anyone excited about a $10 commission. If I’m a pro blogger and my own stuff pays me thousands per month, why would I want to work hard for a few hundred dollars? I wouldn’t.But a $23 commission…that’s not nearly as bad, which is why, when you price your products, you need to consider affiliates into the equation. Make it worth their while to promote for you.
We spent 5 months writing the book, including several hours of interviews. An hour of our time is worth more than $47, and an hour of consulting with any of the bloggers featured in the book is worth far more than $47. Most charge a minimum of $300…some over 4 figures. The book was cheap in comparison.
The people that buy products for $10-$20 don’t take the process as seriously as someone that’s invested $47 into something. When I buy something for that price, I’m going to make sure I get my money’s worth.

Still, it’s a good idea to split test pricing before you launch, so that you can tweak the number for maximum conversions. We didn’t do this, and probably should have.

Design and Copy

While we’re on the topic of split testing, another test you should run is on your sales page design, format, and copy. We decided to go with a long form sales letter (short compared to many in the industry), but we waited until now to split test other formats. It’s quite possible that a different design and sales page could’ve converted better. Now, we’ll never know.

No Regrets

Did we make mistakes along the way? Sure, but we don’t have any regrets. Everything in this business is a learning process, and if you wait to achieve perfection before you act, then you’ll never get anything done. There will always be room for improvement, and I think that’s exciting.

Every launch is a stepping stone. If you want to cross the river, then you’ll need a bunch of them. Once you’ve made a decision…once you’ve started to make a run at it, don’t look back. That’s the biggest mistake you can make.

Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, and co-authored the book Beyond Blogging. You can follow him on Twitter @nhangen. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.

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Win the hearts of your readers in your next blog post

Marko Saric — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:02:27 +0000

I‘m not very good at writing opening lines. It’s like when I see a cute brunette sitting by herself at the bar. I want desperately to get her attention, but can’t wrangle up enough courage to go over there and give it a shot. I’ve always considered myself to be an outgoing person, though, but I’m just terrified of opening lines.

I’m sure everyone has had a similar experience at some point in their lives. You see someone you want to connect with, then when you finally get a chance to introduce yourself, it seems as if nothing you do comes out exactly as planned. You trip over your words. You ramble on incessantly. You accidently headbutt them. That’s how I feel when I write blog posts. Like headbutting people.

“I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by two guys.” - Woody Allen

Self-deprecating humor has been heavily used by stand-up comics as a weapon in their toolbox for decades. Taking the stage in front of a group puts them in a position of power over communication, yet their job requires them to identify with the audience. This is why it’s of high importance that the illusion of power be broken so that he or she can been seen as just “one of us”.

Self-deprecating humor involves making observations of something negative about one’s self or to speak about things others are afraid to admit they do. Such as what I have done in the beginning of this blog post. By displaying your own faults, it creates a more personal connection with your audience as you become the spokesperson of a similarly shared experience. In fact, if you put your ears close enough to the wall, you may be able to hear many of your readers exclaim “I’m just like that!”

But doesn’t putting myself down diminish my authority in the eyes of my readers?

On the contrary, Mister h3 tag. You can demonstrate more authority by being modest and light-hearted about your own being. The fact that you’re open and willing to poke fun at yourself shows a great deal of confidence on your part. It appeals to your moral character as readers will think “if he’s willing to say that about himself, then I know he’s being honest.” And isn’t trust the essential element of winning over someone’s heart and mind?

So, are you saying I should always make myself the butt of the joke?

Well, it’s not just about making fun of yourself at all costs. There needs to be context so your flaw addresses a shared view with your audience. Simply saying “I’m ugly!” or “I’m bad at math!” doesn’t paint a picture in reader’s minds of an experience in their lives that elicited the same opinion of themselves. Express your fault by example. Tell a story. A story that could have easily happened to anyone reading.

“I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, “I’m going to mop the floor with your face.” I said, “You’ll be sorry.” He said, “Oh, yeah? Why?” I said, “Well, you won’t be able to get into the corners very well.”" - Emo Philips

But Jordan, what happens if I don’t have any flaws?

Then you’d be lying to yourself. If you were perfect, you’d be an h1 tag.

Everyone has a chink in their armor. I’m positive you can find at least one. Realize self deprecating humor works best when the faults are easily seen by your audience – this is why physical traits are often used as the basis of these jokes. Look at yourself objectively through someone else’s eyes. What do you see?

Now, before you go off writing a ton of posts highlighting the worst about yourself, there’s a limit to the extent you can do this. Self-deprecation can turn self-fulfilling prophecy if overdone. By continually put yourself down, at some point your readers will no longer see it as a joke and start to actually believe you. The balance is important to get right – occasional light-hearted jabs at yourself are quite effective, but a series of brutal hay makers will just make people feel sorry for you or worse, they’ll join in on the assault.

Why is self deprecating humor so effective and what are the benefits of using it?

It’s non-offensive. The target of the joke is on you, so how could anyone get offended by it?
It’s non-threatening. You become more approachable when readers know you’re not looking to attack them, only yourself.
It encourages rebuttal. Your readers will naturally want to defend you and show that your flaws aren’t as readily apparent.
It inspires sharing. Now that they’ve seen you let the cat out of the bag, your readers will be more willing to express their own flaws.

The hearts of your readers are much more fragile than you think. Letting down your guard and allowing them to see the authentic you, the flaws and all, will establish a much deeper level of trust in your work. Put yourself down and be the butt of the joke in your next blog post. You’ll share a few laughs in the process and your readers will love you for it.

Was that a good closing line? I’m not good at writing them, either.

Jordan Cooper is a 13-year veteran professional stand-up comedian who showcases his sarcastic humor with videos and written rants about blogging, social media & marketing at Not A Pro Blog. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.

Image by Q Thomas Bower.

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Increase blog reader interest with parody

Marko Saric — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:02:17 +0000

If you’re like me, most of your blog posts are serious—that’s s-e-r-i-o-u-s. For some reason, known only by the Gods and Google, blog writers believe their writing styles must be as solemn as a funeral dirge.

But what if you could write in an entertaining, purposeful way while still achieving your goals, whether it’s convincing readers to take your advice, subscribe to your RSS feed or learn something from you? You can with parody.

What is parody?

The dictionary defines parody as humorous exaggeration for comic effect. The word comes from the late 16th century Latin/Greek meaning “burlesque poem.” A few synonyms are satire, lampoon, caricature, imitation, mockery and spoof. I tend to like the first definition with a slight twist: “humorous exaggeration to make a point.”

Parody is writing about subjects, people and ideas imaginatively, doused with a cup of humor and at least three ounces of the absurd, to persuade or influence readers to take action.

Effective parody should lower people’s guard, make them chuckle and prepare their minds for your message. Parody is not just being funny. It’s making your point by engaging peoples’ minds. Effective parody causes people to identify with you and your ideas, products or services.

Parody examples

Let me give two examples: the first using a “news release” technique, the second a “list with comments” style. Both are excellent ways to use parody in a way that catches your readers off-guard. They don’t know what hit them until they’re well into your post.

The News Release Style

The first blog post example is called “American Niche Association Announces Formation & New Online Service,” written for MarketingBeyond in April of 2009.

At the time I was reading about affiliate marketing and blogging from experts who kept reminding everyone to “find your niche”—that’s “nish” if you live in the U.S. and “neesh” if you dwell elsewhere in the world. I finally tired of the constant badgering by the “experts” that having a marketing niche was next to cleanliness.

As you’ll see from reading the post, it’s written like a news release. In fact, it says “news release” at the top of the post with a contact name—“Mary DaNiche.”

I chose Bob Parson’s of GoDaddy fame as the head of the newly-formed “American Niche Association” (ANA) because he’s well known for his advertising and promotional antics in the ecommerce field. If anyone might start the strange organization I proposed, it was Parsons.

Readers probably find the first couple of paragraphs plausible. When they learn about the new organization and its website—“Get-Your-Niche.com”—some readers might start figuring out what I’m doing, but I quickly take care of skeptics in the fourth paragraph with references to eBay, Amazon, etc.

By the fifth paragraph where I write about what “Mary DaNiche” said, all readers with IQ’s above 50 “get it.” The examples of niches and related products then become the fun part of the piece while driving home my message about going overboard on niche marketing.

Tongue-and-cheek continues to the bitter end. When readers click on “Get-Your Niche.com”, voila, they end up on the home page of MobileBeyond, my mobile blog.

The List with Comments Parody Style

Last year when mobile phone makers were releasing a lot of new phones, I became interested in the names of the handsets. For years, handset manufacturers mostly used model numbers (LG-XXXX) for their phones. With the emergence of smart phones, however, marketers started getting creative.

So I wrote: “Personalizing Mobile Phone Brands: Barrage, Droid, Entice or Escapade?”

After mentioning how handset manufacturers had changed their branding and quoting Shakespeare in the first few paragraphs, I listed dozens of new mobile phones by carrier, then made a humorous comment about each in parentheses. As readers become engaged by my comments, they get the point.

One of my favorites is T-Mobile’s “HTC Dash” with its customized Twitter app restricted to 10 characters—the “Twit-10.”

Be careful with parody

Use parody when you want to persuade or convince your readers to do something, change their minds or just have fun. But be careful, especially if you’re writing about religious, health or political issues. Your parody post could backfire on you.

For example, I would never use parody in posts about the dangers of smoking or your opinion about someone’s religious or political beliefs. While they’re exceptions–such as former V.P. contender Sara Palin who ran with Senator John McCain in the last U.S. Presidential election—in most cases you’ll want to avoid the possibility of offending your audience.

Otherwise, parody writing can be a powerful tool in your arsenal of writing styles.

A guest post by Brian Prows, a blogger and podcaster in California, who writes several blogs, including MobileBeyond and IM-Mobile, which focus on mobile technology and mobile marketing. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.

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How to get mainstream media interest in your blog

Marko Saric — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:02:38 +0000

Most bloggers dream about having features in newspapers, magazines, radio or TV about you and your blog. Being featured in the mainstream media is seen as the haunt of the exclusive few, but it need not be. Getting the press to cover your blog isn’t too tricky, however you need to work for it.

The Ideal Way – What Happened To Me & Why It Isn’t The Best

I have been featured a number of times in a number of places. The Guardian, BBC Radio Wales & The North Wales Weekly News have all done a feature on me, or done stories that involve me as a blogger giving my opinion. This is great, as it has put me over as an authoritative member of the blogosphere. But how did I get this?

By doing nothing.

Well that’s not strictly true. My title tag for my blog at the time was “Rhys Wynne | Technology Blogger from Colwyn Bay, North Wales”. This isn’t optimized greatly for general blogging, but it did say:

Who I was
What I blog about
Where I was living

The researcher for the story (this was for BBC Wales) did Google “blogger North Wales” or “North Wales Blog”, found my name, read a few posts & then telephoned every person with the surname Wynne, living in Colwyn Bay, located within the phone book. Although I wasn’t listed, my mum was & she rang me about it.

It was a bit lucky yes, but you can make your own luck. If you want media attention, start small, target keywords both geographically & niche, and include the word “Blog”. You only need one break, but once you get it & you conduct yourself professionally & knowledgably, you will probably get asked back again & again (I’ve appeared on the radio a few times now).

That’s a great way to start, but it isn’t always the best. The amount of traffic obtained from the BBC isn’t the best, and very few people who did visit became regular readers, but it’s nice just for you to use on your press page.

The Less Than Ideal Way, But Still Cool & Ultimately More Profitable

The second way is a little more work to do, but ultimately more profitable. Again target local media, but go hyper local (newspapers for your area for example). Most local newspapers have a circulation of around 40,000 in the UK at least – who wouldn’t want 40,000 eyeballs looking at your site (well, technically 80,000)?

To do this, you need to get media attention, and offer something that benefits local people. Release a product that’s aimed at local people, give your old computer to a local charity, or offer a free seminar to businesses on how to do something. My personal favourite is a tweetup – organise a night in a local bar or conference centre for your twitter followers.

If this all sounds expensive, well it’s only as expensive for as much as you make it. Venue hire varies for facilities & size, but you can probably get something quite cheap for under $100. Bars are usually cheaper if you can get numbers there who will have drinks. Getting local businesses to sponsor the event as well is a great way to lower costs.

Make sure the event has a focus – that way you’ll get more people to attend, and write a press release. Simply state where, what for & when in the release, as well as information on yourself (list your blog here, put yourself as a “blogging guru” or something similar), and contact local papers. Most struggle for news, so you are likely to get coverage, as long as you make it clear that it benefits local people (also good to say how).

If you are targetting local businesses, not only will the media attention be greater, but it’ll also be more profitable. You’ll immediately be seen as the go to guy for that subject, which could land you some great contracts. You can make it a one off, but it could be great to build from there, with a monthly or annual event.

If It Gets Serious

If you do get a lot of interest in your blog, the best way to go forward then is with a press page on your blog. This will be hidden away within your blog, often leading off your about me page. List your experience, what you do & what you are comfortable talking about. Furthermore, this would be a great place to optimize for the title tags talked about earlier on the page. Finally, list your contact details (an email address will suffice).

Tips

In conclusion, if you are after media attention for your blog, here’s some tips for getting it:

Present yourself as authoritative – the go-to guy for your niche.
Have something that the media will cover. Events & Seminars work better than products.
Write a press release, and ring your local papers to talk about it asking to send it over.
Use your full name.
Create a press page explaining what you do, how you can be contacted & previous experience.
Optimize your blog or press page to hit local searches.

This does take time, it took me about 5 years before I started getting interest, but it can be a nice diversion, maybe even profitable in the long run. Best of luck!

This guest post is written by Rhys Wynne, an 8 year blogger at The Gospel According To Rhys – a look at social media, SEO & blogging. Grab his free e-book – Value Added Retweets – today! Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.

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My name is Marko Saric and I help bloggers succeed. Subscribe to the RSS feed to join thousands of bloggers and get all my blogging tips for FREE!