Plus Waffle Luv. To die for.

Below I’m going to leave a brief summary of the workshops I attended. (When the recordings of the other sessions are released, I’ll add summaries to those as well.)  This is about brevity, so no great detail, but perhaps you can still glean some important facts.

10 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Site

Jill Nystul of One Good Thing by Jillee

My expectations were pretty low going in. I didn’t know anything about Jill except that she was a TV host turned blogger. I knew she was good at marketing herself, but she hires out her blog tech. Having personally studied this stuff for 20+ years, I didn’t think I’d learn anything new.

I was pleasantly surprised. OK, so I didn’t learn anything completely new, but Jill did throw in specific insights and ideas on some of the topics that were helpful. Here are my chicken scratchings from her talk: 

#10 – Giveaways

We’ve all seen blog giveaways and see the amazing traffic spike they cause. But that’s the problem. Hits spike…and then generally fall back just about where they always were. (Even viral content posts can do that, in case you’re wondering.)

New Info: Rather than just write up a giveaway post, she suggested writing a regular, on-topic post that fits your blog, and find a segue that makes a giveaway within the post make sense.

That way you add real quality content for the new visitors to see. This makes return visits much more likely.

#9 – Email Subscribers

I hope you’ve been collecting readers emails (opt-in, of course) all along. If not, this is a personal business funnel that can be a consistent source of income in the future.

See the email newsletter sign up in the sidebar? That’s how we do it. That link sends the data right to my subscription service. (I use Direct Mail, which is an easy to use, inexpensive piece of software that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg by charging per email address like most services.)

New Info: Publishers and sponsors look not only at your subscriber rate, but your open rate (the percentage of subscribers that actually open the newsletters). Keep this number handy. (Your service should provide it.)

#8 – Design and User Friendliness

Have you ever gone to a website only to be baffled about how to find anything? Web tech folks call this “mystery meat navigation.” Like the ingredients in a hot dog or a school lunch, your guess about how to find your way around is as good as mine. And they usually include flash.

Jill’s advice was to make websites easy to navigate and find what you need. She is particularly peeved when she has to “search for the search bar” and when music plays automatically. I get peeved when sites have light text on dark background and/or tiny text.

#7 – Consistency

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve heard about writing consistently. And I read other blogs (what?), so I know that it’s beyond frustrating to find a blog you really, really like only to discover that they add a new post only once-in-a-while-when-the-author-is-in-the-mood.

For some reason, though,  I never applied this to my own blogs. Why? Most of my posts are based on current events. Not necessarily news-events, but things that are happening at the time. For example, on this blog I tend to write up either tech things that happen or tech questions that I get in multiples from clients that are more efficiently addressed at one time. On another blog I write about current political issues, timely offers, seasonal issues, etc. So I’ve always let the situation dictate when I write, not some random calendaring.

But — as I know myself — if I can’t depend on new posts going up, I tend to forget about blogs, even blogs I really like.

New info: Jill said that she blogs every single day. (I did this for a 100 Day Challenge early last year and it was brutal, I tell you.) And when she missed one day, readers freaked out, sure she had died. But it’s not that we need to blog daily, rather that we need to blog consistently and (read below in the YouTube class notes) predictably.

This helps establish the writer/reader relationship and forms a sense of accountability in your work.

#6 – SEO

This is where the content gets a bit dicey. When a blogger is using hired guns to run the tech and work SEO like Jill is, they don’t (in me experience) tend to know that much about it. They do what they are told, but the whys and wherefores — and most importantly, the updates to the whys are wherefores — are off their radar. That happened.

Jill talked about the usual stuff:

• keywords
• tags
• headlines (with keywords
• alt name for photos
• good content

Then she mentioned guest blogging as a way to get traffic and backlinks. That’s when I wanted to distract all the newbie bloggers to keep them from writing it down on their notepads.

I’ve written my share of guest blog posts in the past. A couple of examples:

1. 6 Steps to Startup with WordPress
2. Dealing with Negative Blog Comments

But that might not be such a good idea anymore. There’s been blog buzz for months now about how Google has smashed down on guest blogging. But if you don’t believe the industry gossip, take it directly from Matt Cutts: The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO. There are dissenting opinions — and some make very cogent caveats — but make an informed decision.

New info: Coming from her broadcast journalism background, Jill has learned how to use a catchy headline and incorporate that along with a keyword rich headline. As bloggers we tend to go for one or the other. Smart to use both.

#5 – Photography

Ugh. Hate.

I love blogs with great photos as much as the next gal, but I’m just horrid at taking pictures. Not just because I’m inept at taking them, but because I just don’t care about taking them. I do not want to be a photographer. I like blog tech. I like writing. I like speaking and singing and organizing and ballroom dancing and all sorts of other things. But I’ve just never, ever dreamed of being a photographer. And I’m kind of annoyed that the web has morphed from an entirely text-based universe to one full of pictures and images that I can’t possibly create.

So, here I am, stuck in an industry that is forcing me to do something unsavory. Gah. The injustice of it all.

No new info here, Jill did point out that photos are now in the blog domain. Plus Pinterest. So there.

Use a slower shutter speed to keep action shots from being blurry.

#4 – Collaborations • Sponsorship • Networking

I’m very interested in collaborating and working with other bloggers, but often have a hard time finding others with the same target audience.

One of my blogs, for example is about lifestyle design with a family emphasis . Now “lifestyle bloggers” are a dime a dozen (no offense intended, there are just lots of them!). But lifestyle design (see 4-Hour Workweek) is a completely different animal from “lifestyle blogs” (which, from what I can tell are an undefined, blog-about-whatever-I-feel-like-as-long-as-it-is-“authentic” genre)

Most lifestyle design bloggers are young and either single or married with no kids. So wedging lifestyle design into a home-owning, married with six kids, lifestyle is kind of unusual. Thus, much of my angle doesn’t fit with the others in my little corner of the blogosphere.

New info: Jill talked specifically about how seeing other blogs — even within your niche — as allies instead of competitors will tend to help all those involved. I suppose it’s a bit like gas stations on opposite corners where both do better, because everyone starts to think of that area as “gas station corner” or “the place to go for gas.”

I’m hoping to work on collaboration in the coming year for a couple of my blogs.

#3 – Influencers

New info: Don’t be afraid to reach out to the influencers in your niche. Don’t be intimidated by their status, you never know what good things might result.

#2 – Social Media

This segment of the presentation was pretty much a love affair with Pinterest. Barely mentioned in passing were Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. (Her advice on Googe+ was, in its entirety, “It’s Google. Just do it.”)

My biggest problem with social media right now is being overwhelmed. When Pinterest became yet another must do social media site, I despaired. Just how much time can I devote to this stuff? And when you multiply each service by the number of blogs I have, the sheer number of presences to manage becomes overwhelming.

While at the conference — and because of this session — I decided that I simply can’t keep up the many, scattered spaces I manage. My intent is to select one presences on each “essential” social media site, rebrand it under my name, and do my best to manage and distinguish content there.

New info: Jill gave me an idea for managing them all under one account on Pinterest. She suggested having a board for each blog, so that all the pins that come from a particular blog go on that board, and readers will know they aren’t missing any.

On Google+ (where I’m just getting started), I’m creating circles for each blog where pertinent info will be disseminated.

If you have ideas for implementing this strategy on Facebook (where I want to manage only one “fan page,” Twitter (where I want to reduce to one account), and/or Instagram (that I just signed up for at the convention (under pressure!)), please add them to the comments!

#1 – Content

As they say, content is king. No matter what else you are doing, you need to have information that is interesting, entertaining, practical, or otherwise useful to your readers.

New info: “Don’t just Google it, do it!”

Object Photography

Taught by Kristen Duke from Capturing Joy with Kristen Duke

Per my photography hate fest (see above), I broke down and took this class on how to take pictures of things that have something to do with your blog post to make people want to read and pin and hang out and be your friend.

To be honest, this was totally out of my league. When she flashed a list of lenses on the screen, I hung my head in shame. You see, I “only” have a Panasonic Lumix 20x — and I haven’t even figured out how to work that — so obviously I’m not a real photographer.

So I’m going to skip all the ISO and F-stop jargon (that I learned in my Introduction to Photography class I took my freshman year in college (1982, if you must know) and promptly forgot), and tell you the things I actually understood and believe might be helpful to me in my remedial blog-photo efforts.

Photo Shoot Tips

1. Use a slower shutter speed so action shots won’t be blurry.
2. Natural light is best, but not direct light. Shooting next to a window or open door inside works great. Open garage door works, too. Use a sheet to diffuse harsh light.
3. Use a tri-pod and slow shutter speed for low light conditions (1/125 lowest recommended).
4. Try different and unusual angles (birds-eye, worms-eye, etc.).
5. Put focused object in front with blurred background; put focused object in back with foreground blurred.
6. Use actions shots, with people doing something or interacting.
7. Sneak peak looking shooting through a cracked door.
8. Use ladder, chair, table, stool, person to display an item.
9. Avoid too much ceiling in a room shot (or put text there when posting)
10. Declutter the surrounding areas.
11. Add text and watermark to photos.
12. Make collages for interest.
13. Show step-by-step processes.
14. Show before and after projects.
15. Try shooting raw or using raw plus JPEG

Most Common Photoshop Usage

• color pop
• dodge
• burn
• patch tool
• healing brush

Favorite Photography Tools

• tri-fold foam board (behind objects)
• flat form board (under objects)
• craft paper (especially neutrals — avoiding looking overly seasonal)
• frog clips
• clamps
• wood boards
• scissors
• linens
• dishes
• stacked books
• elements of project being described (nails, hammer, pot, spatula, etc.)
• Canon or Nikon, top choices

The Ins and Outs of YouTube for Bloggers

Taught by Mindy and Shaun McKnight from Cute Girl Hairstyles

Overall, this was my favorite class of the weekend. While it’s true that I’m a YouTube novice, having only posted a handful of videos — most of which are recordings of my children performing (amazingly, I might add…) — I see great potential.

I have no idea how I would use YouTube in my blogging, and I have no desire to be in a video myself, but this class gave me a lot to think about.

Things You Need to Be a YouTuber

• good idea
• HD camera
• YouTube account (included with free Gmail account)
• internet connection
• simple editing software

Top 5 YouTube Tips

1. Read the YouTube Creator Playbook.
2. Create quality content that people want to watch (generally in the 3–5 minute range).
3. Optimize your video with: keywords tags, title, thumbnail, annotations, call to action.
4. Maintain a consistent schedule.
5. Engage with your subscribers, focusing on the 20% who are super-fans (you can get this info from Google).

Cross Platform Engagement

Mindy and Shaun have become masters at generating traffic and income from varied social media sites and in interlinking them in the most profitable way. I wish I had taken a picture of their traffic funnel. My notes are pretty scratchy. They had figured out the optimal way to link back and forth. A few notes:

• YouTube description can link to blog post.
• Annotate videos with link to blog.
• Add a call to action at the end of the video (ask viewers to follow, share, tweet, comment, go to site, and/or subscribe)
• Add a YouTube subscribe button on the top of your blog.
• Add still images and embed video on blog.
• Add an Instagram bio link that goes to your blog
• Embed the video on Pinterest.
• Add video to Twitter, Google+, and Facebook feeds (like most of us, they are hating on Facebook right now)

If you attended this session and remember more details, please add them in the comments. This was very practical info!

Addendum: My roomie saw this post and texted me her photo of the McKnight’s traffic funnel. It was skewed due to the angle (and included the top of someone’s head), so I recreated it. As I look at it closely, I realize it needs to be refined. For example, traffic also flows from the blog to Google+ and Twitter and traffic also flows back from Google+ and Twitter to YouTube (otherwise, there’s not point in the update, right?). But here is the funnel mostly as they presented it, with just a bit of cleanup.

Other Notable Information

• Advertisers covet the mommy blog demographic.
• Video ads pay substantially more than CPC or CPM on blogs.
• Embed your vids on a blog post that either describes the content or is related to the content.
• The McKnights stressed consistency in posting. They post every single Sunday  at 7:00 pm. Always. If they want to blog during the week, it’s a “bonus video” and does not interfere with the regular weekly post. This info took the idea of consistency and predictability to a new level for me.
• In order to encourage subscribers, followers, etc., reward them! They send a private link to all new videos to Twitter followers one hour before the video goes public, so followers get a sneak preview.
• They have a Power Hour for one hour after their weekly posting where they comment live on the new video YouTube thread to interact with their die-hard fans. You could also use a Google hangout or other venue for this personal interaction.

Blogger Open Discussion

This was a Q&A panel discussion with some apparently really amazing blogging women. The rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it but, well, I had a screaming headache and put my head on the table and slept through most of it.

My favorite part of the session that occurred during my wakefulness would have to be when Shelley Smith (from The House of Smiths) read a text her husband had just sent. I didn’t write it down, but here’s my best effort at a reasonably accurate quote:

The dog got in the mud. Needed a bath anyway. Are you done with that blogger thing? Do you still have on your fancy clothes? What color sweats do you want when you get home?

Shelley, I apologize if I butchered that, but the version in my head made me laugh.

Plus More!

Stay tuned for the recap of the other great sessions when they are made available.

Do you have other valuable information you gleaned from these sessions? If so, please leave it in the comments! If you’ve written a post with your conference impressions, send me an email and I’ll link to your post below!

Other Bloggers  Chime In

Please check out what some other bloggers have to say about their experience at BYBC 2014!

• My Weekend at the Build Your Blog Conference by Lori Hart
• My First Blog Conference – Lessons Learned by Melanie
• how to network after a conference by Briton

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Below, please find a sampling of the best/worst comment spam I’ve gotten on my own blogs recently. (And in case you’re wondering, no, none were remotely relevant to the actual post.)

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Walk, run, bike, hike, dance, swim, play a game of tag with your kids, borrow the neighbor’s dog- whatever you have to do to Move It. Flossing is another security measure that can help teeth and gums stay in good shape for a long time. Twice a day (along with flossing and using mouthwash twice also) is possibly what you want to aim for at the least. She also offers 24 hour email counselling which is also helpful with these kind of afflictions.

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Bloggers are not necessarily novelists, but they are all storytellers. In light of that, I wanted to shre these great tips for you writers out there, because many of these tips apply to all of us.

Thes are from Pixar’s visual presentation, but I had so much trouble accessing the presentation that I’m posting the core thoughts here. Please click over to see the full information. Great ideas! 

1. You admire a character for trying more than their success.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about till you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was __________. Every day __________. One day __________. Because of that, __________. Because of that, __________. Until finally __________.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th — get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell this story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your charter, in this situation, how would you feel? Honestly lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on — it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best and fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How’d you rearranged them into what you do like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write “cool.” What would make you act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build from there.

Network sites are a different animal from stand-alone sites Those small differences meant that our network customers didn’t have the same FTP and file access and couldn’t upload their own themes and plugins.

All our clients who responded have had their sites converted to standalone WordPress sites. They can manipulate their site any way they choose at a phenomenal annual fee.

To complete the change, we moved Win-with-1.com to PopCred.net and merged the content. Why? We just like the name PopCred better!

If you’d like to get a site up and running in just a few days, join the blogging revolution with a PopCred.net standalone WordPress site today!

Facebook = stay connected (too connected)

LinkedIn = business attire

YouTube = sucked into wasting inordinate amounts of time

Google + = didn’t they learn from Orkut, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Wave, or Buzz?

Twitter = don’t get it

Pinterest = do we really need more social media?

The first time I heard about Pinterest, I full on slapped myself in the head. Why? Do we need a public bulletin board? Do we need to share every image we find interesting with the entire world? Is the world waiting with bated collective breath waiting to see what craft project we are dying to do or what grumpy cat saying we thought was best?

Under duress I finally joined the Pinterest fray in March. I’m still a babe in the woods, but used as a business tool — as opposed to using it to while away the hours ogling crafty projects without actually doing any of them — it can be very powerful. How? It can put clickable images from your blog posts in front of millions of eyes.

Follow my Pinterest boards!

Here are some resources (from experts) to help you get started, too.

• Heavyweight Help: The Complete Guide to Getting Started on Pinterest
  This very detailed post was the first one I read about Pinterest. It intrigued me enough to get started and had enough clear information to make it easy to get started and wade through yet another social media interface. In other words, Jamie Swanson made sense of it all.
• 5 Ways to Create Highly Shareable Pinterest Pictures for Your Business
  This incredibly informative, detailed post was one of the top search results when I was looking for Pinterest info. It was only when I got to the author box that I realized it was written by a long-time client who has become a good friend of mine! Kelly Lester is the owner of Easy Lunchboxes (the top selling lunchbox on Amazon) and an absolute online marketing guru. A self-professed “traffic whore,” she linked to a post I wrote about car seat safety on her business Facebook page and my traffic that day quadrupled. Trust me, she knows her stuff. (Could I possibly have squeezed more links into that paragraph?)
• How to Make Images Stand Out on Pinterest
  If you don’t know Mashable, please let me introduce you to one of the largest sources of social media information in the world. This info graphic gives you a quick, visual overview for how to make great graphics that will encourage pinning. (And the infographic itself is an awesome example.)
• Learnings from My Pinterest Experiment
  Although he isn’t so omnipresent on his blog anymore (I guess that happens when your blog is über successful and you start traveling the world or hanging out on the hammock or whatever), but whenever Darren Rowse actually writes a post, I sit up and take notice. He uses great strategies to test results and always provides a solid example of blogging theory.
• Everything You Need to Know about the New Pinterest
  The day I signed on to Pinterest for the first time, I got a message asking if I wanted a sneak peak at the new version. Always wanting to be on the cutting edge, I clicked Yes. So “new” has always been the Pinterest status quo for me. If you’ve used Pinterest in the past, check out this post and infographic (another good example!) discussing the changes.

Addendum: I don’t usually create an image for the mashups — just as a time management issue — but it’s kind of a no brainer that a Pinterest post should have one no matter what past practice has been. So, my dear friend mentioned above — marketing guru Kelly Lester — saw this poor, imageless post, made one up just for this post, and emailed it to me! Seriously? Thank you!

Then reality hits and they realize that they actually have to work. They have to write — a lot — and read and research. And the enthusiasm wanes.

It kills me to see this pattern over and over again. Especially when the people tell me really need the income. But they can’t motivate themselves to follow through with what needs to be done. It’s not brain surgery, but it is consistent work. And when you do the work, it works.

One of my clients has been blogging for a couple of  years and has nearly a thousand blog posts. And she now gets over a thousand hits per day and has tens of thousands of comments. She gets it. People come to a blog because there is something to see there. And she’s making a name for herself.

Another client sells a product and the blog is a means to promote the product. She is creative and consistent and her products have become best sellers on Amazon.

I’ve been blogging for ten years this New Year’s Day. My oldest blog is something of a service. Some blogs, like this one, are tied to a particular business activity. But my lifestyle design blog is my “money blog” and and requires the most work.

Currently I’m trying to keep up a decent amount of fresh posts, at the same time I’m working on a series of daily posts that will start January 1, 2013, and continue for 100 days. It’s a monumental effort, but will be worth the effort in the long run.

Are you writing regularly on your blog? Are you creating something readers will like? Are you willing to put in the time and effort, consistently, over a period of time?

The level of effort is tied to the outcome, but there is room for variation depending on how long you want the process to take. Can you write every day? Or maybe three times a week? Once per week is about the minimum I would recommend to get and keep an audience.

Decide what you can do, create a blog schedule, and stick to it. The rewards will be there if you put in the effort.

When I see a logical fallacy come up in the media or discussion, I like to use it as an example of real fallacious reasoning. And in a political season, this is far too easy. I have a lineup of fallacy posts just waiting to be completed.

Yesterday I set about to complete my post about the ad hominem fallacy. I had written a post about the tragedy of the presidential election — in response to another post that employed the relative privation fallacy. I only had to wait for comment number two for the ad hominem attacks to kick in. So I decided to finish the ad hominem post with this very timely example.

I wanted to link to the ad hominem comment in the political post from the new post, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to go about it. I know there are plugins that add a comment permalink button — which would give me the needed info. But I didn’t want to add a plugin. I know that if you have been to a post with comments and read the comments, your next page load will jump to the last comment you read — assuming your cookies are in place and all that — and the URL will include the last comment number. But I had read past that comment and there were other new comments elsewhere on the site, so I was unsure how to find the correct number for the comment I wanted to link to.

After that, I looked in the comments section in the dashboard and couldn’t see anything. I searched the web for some time. Without inserting php into the site — which I thought was overkill — I couldn’t see an easy way to grab this needed number.

Finally I gave up the quest and, instead, decided just copied the text from the comment and refer to it. Here are the steps: 

1. Copy everything in the comment from the commenters name, date, and through to the bottom of the comment.
2. Paste the information into the Visual post editor.
3. Save as draft.
4. Switch to the HTML post editor.
5. Find the comment permalink and copy it.

As an example, what I viewed the pasted material, it looked something like this: 

<ul id=”comments”>
<li id=”comment-245498″><a href=”http://popcred.net/” rel=”external nofollow”>Alison Moore Smith</a> <a title=”permalink to this comment” href=”http://pix2brix.com/happiness-advantage-5-easy-steps-happier-life/#comment-245498” rel=”nofollow”>August 9, 2012 at 5:04 pm</a>
<div id=”comment-body-245498″>

DiNaRa, so glad this was helpful to you. There is so much good info, I ordered his book,<em><a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307591549/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307591549&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=pix2brix-20″ target=”_blank”>The Happiness Advantage</a></em>. Reading it now. Will report! (It comes in a <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F3PMYI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B003F3PMYI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=pix2brix-20″ target=”_blank”>Kindle version</a>, too, which is what I ordered.)

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If you look right after the words “permalink to this comment,” you will see a URL. This URL (I have highlighted it in blue in this example) is the permalink to your comment.

Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t work in all configurations. I can’t see a pattern for when it does and does not work, but it’s worth a try to see if your installation allows the permalink to come through.

The two keys to successful blog monetization happen to be the same two keys to successful blogging without monetization. If you don’t want to be a lost site in the blogosphere, you need to have quality content and a steady flow of targeted traffic.

Quality Content

In the blogging world they say “content is king.” It’s true. If you listen to any blogging adage, listen to that one. You can follow tips and perform tricks, you can stand on your head and sing, but if you don’t have anything worth reading, none of it matters. 

Original

Don’t be a copycat. It’s annoying and illegal. Of course you can write about things others have already written about (is there anything truly original left to write about?), but you need to add something new. Your experience, your perspective, your insights, or an angle specific to your audience. Make sure your posts add to the conversation or bring something to specifically benefit your readers.

Brief

Brevity is the soul of wit. It’s also the soul of a quality blog post. If you want to write the next great novel, don’t do it on your blog. Instead, make your point clearly and as quickly as reasonably possible.

In the same vein, keep sentences relatively short and paragraphs manageable. Remember the feeling you got in college when you opened a text to see pages and pages of dense text? Remember how you wanted to run away from your dorm and eat twinkies? White space keeps your posts from seeming overwhelming. Images help break up the text. Heading and subheading make sense of the information.

There are some notable exceptions to this length philosophy, but until you’re more experienced and confident, this is the way to go.

Accessible

When Sam and I were dating, he tried to impress me with his extensive vocabulary. More accurately, he tried to test me with it. If I was able to comprehend the onslaught of obstreperous technobabble (see what I mean?), then he would know I was smart enough to take seriously.

Apparently I passed — we’ve not been married over 27 years. But trust me, blog posts are not the place to dazzle others with big words. As much as possible, use terminology that your readers already understand. And if unknown words are necessary, explain them clearly.

Interesting

When I was in sixth grade, I was kept in from recess, as my parents were told, for “visiting with her neighbor too much.” Again.

I sat at my desk as the clock slowly ticked on, trying to focus on my maize colored  social studies book — undoubtedly the most boring book ever written (with the most boring crayon color ever created). It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how fascinating history really is.

Don’t be a textbook blogger, even if you offer textbook content. Add some humor, some images, some compelling stories.

Emotional

Now I don’t necessarily want you to blubber all over your blog. Nor do I suggest that you reveal every deep, dark, personal secret from your closet of skeletons. But the best way to get traction on a blog post, is to get people to feel something.

Whether they  laugh or cry or scream or just think really hard, you’ll be more likely to get comments and linkbacks and social sharing if your readers have a strong reaction. Challenge your readers and they’ll challenge you back.

Targeted Traffic

Traffic fits with content like the chicken and the egg quandary. You can write your living brains out, but if no one comes to your site, you would have better spent your time watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island.

You need great writing, but you also need people to read it. To hone in on your target audience, ask yourself these questions:

1. What is your ideal reader googling for?
2. What are the top ten questions your prospective readers are asking?
3. What problems are they trying to solve?

If you are writing about the topics, answering the questions, and solving the problems of our readers — and make sure you can be found on those topics — you are on your way to pulling in the readers who will be with you for the long haul.

Structure Your Day

Working from home is a dream come true for many. Just saving the commute time can be a life saver. But avoiding office politics and time wasters put you way ahead of the game.

But there is a downside. Without someone looking over your shoulder, the temptation to fiddle the day away can be strong. Too many snacks, too many bathroom breaks, power naps, office futzing, television, and even social networking can take a huge bite out of productivity.

While working with your moods can be a huge advantage of the autonomy working at home provides, most people still find having some sense of structure gives a push to actually get things done.

Take some time to make out a work schedule for each day. First add in any regularly scheduled meetings or events. Then add a lunch or break time to eat, stretch, and rejuvenate. Last, add in the big blocks of time to work on your projects. 

Depending on your personality, you might write in specific tasks or you might just leave an open-ended designation. I use “projects” on my schedule for these work times. That leaves me the flexibility to choose a project I’m motivated to do at the time, while reminding me it’s not time to read a novel or paint my nails.

Take Advantage of Technology

Working from home can be particularly efficient, because you can make use of your time however fits your lifestyle.

If you have a cell phone (who doesn’t these days?), you can make calls while running errands or waiting to pick up your kids from class. If you have an iPad (my current favorite gadget of all time), you can easily (and without squinting at your tiny phone screen) do research, answer emails, write blog posts, etc. If you have wireless internet, you can work wherever you are most comfortable: on the couch, sitting on the porch, at the dining table assisting with homework.

Act Like a Boss

While working in slippers is one of the most touted benefits of working at home — and I do work in my slippers almost every day — there are some things about this slacker lifestyle that don’t necessarily promote productivity.

Like it or not, our environment impacts our work. Hang onto the slippers, but get up, shower, and dress. Comb your hair. Clean up your work area and organize it to function well.

Working from home is one of the best lifestyle choices coming into popularity. As you become a pro blogger or do other work from home, make it work by being productive.