Blogging Advice

The EzineArticles blog has a great post about a method of “writing” multiple blog posts in a short amount of time. I put “writing” in quotes because you don’t actually write anything.

Instead, you use your voice. Basically, you record yourself and pretend that you’re giving a seminar to a live audience. Next, you take your recording and send it to a transcription service. After they send you the transcription, you separate and edit the text into multiple blog posts and publish it online.

The reason this method works so well is because most of us speak faster than we can write. Also, it forces us to split up the writing and editing process. Too often bloggers get bogged down with editing while writing the first draft. It’s much more time efficient to write a crappy first draft and then edit it.

The post states that you can expect to pay the transcription services about $60-$100 USD/per hour of audio. However, I’ve had good results using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for less than $20/hour.

Voice recognition software is also an option. I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking software and use it to create my longer posts (500+ words). I would use it for my shorter posts but I think I’ve gained enough blogging experience to create a short post quickly without having to use audio.

Have you ever come up with a blog post idea when the farthest thing from your mind at the moment was blogging?

If you haven’t started blogging, you’ll find that once you start, you’ll get ideas when you least expect them.

You could be in a restaurant hanging out with friends when you randomly think of a post topic your blog audience would enjoy. Or you could be driving around town doing some errands when inspiration strikes. For some business bloggers, they get their best ideas while exercising. For me, the moments right after I wake up seem to be when my subconscious works in overdrive and gives me multiple blog post ideas.

The subconscious is a weird animal. It likes to give us good ideas at the weirdest moments. It’s almost like if you’re not focusing on blogging, you get the best ideas.

Ever heard of writer’s block? I’ll often turn on my laptop and prepare to write, but my mind is blank. I can’t think of anything to write. However, just a couple minutes ago while watching TV or reading a magazine, I had some good ideas. It’s too bad I can’t remember any of them.

Take Advantage of Those Moments of Inspiration

To prevent the above event from happening, I started carrying 3×5 index cards and a pen with me wherever I go. Whenever I unexpectedly get an idea, I immediately write it down so I don’t forget it. While driving, I bring a small voice recorder because it’s hard (and unsafe) to write while driving.

You don’t have to be low tech like me. Use your favorite PDA if you have one. PDAs make great idea capturing tools.

This idea capturing process has helped me overcome writer’s block. By the time I sit down to write my next blog post, I already have some ideas to work with.

By harnessing my fickle yet creative subconscious, blogging has been much easier for me. I think this is because much of the difficultly in blogging is coming up with enough blog post topics.

Over to You

How do you capture your ideas? When does your subconscious give you ideas unexpectedly?

One of the first things I get asked from new business bloggers is how often they should post. Here are a couple principles to consider when determining your post frequency.

1. Consistency matters.

The most profitable blog audience is filled with many repeat visitors. Repeat visitors are more likely to be your loyal customers since they are exposed over and over to your brand. If the vast majority of your audience is one-time visitors, it can be hard to generate a consistent stream of revenue from your blog.

One effective way to attract repeat visitors to post consistently. This means having a regular publishing schedule like a magazine. It would be bad if a magazine published four issues one month, one issue the next month, and then eight issues the third month. In the same way, it’s not a good idea to publish six posts one week, one post the next week, two posts on the third week, and then five posts the fourth week.

Your readers want to know what to expect. Once you get a regular posting schedule going, you’ll find that many readers will start checking your blog for new content on the days you regularly publish.

2. Your word count per post affects your posting schedule.

The longer your posts are, the less posts per week you can afford to write.

What’s the bare minimum posting schedule? Here are my rough guidelines.

If you write less than 250 words per post, you should be posting at least 3-4 times a week. If your posts are in the 250 to 500 word range, you should post at least twice a week. If you write longer posts (500 or more words), you should post at least once a week.

3. Don’t set the bar too high.

New business bloggers often set unrealistic expectations. They’ll start with a high post frequency that is unsustainable in the long run. When they can’t keep up the posting schedule, they get frustrated and disappointed with themselves.

If you’re new to blogging, it can be easy to underestimate the time and effort it takes to write consistently. Therefore, don’t set your expectations too high.

4. Write posts ahead of time.

Emergencies will happen on posting days and you won’t be able to write your scheduled post. That’s why it’s important to write posts ahead of time.

You should have one or two days a week where you write a post but don’t publish it. Those days should be on your publishing schedule. By writing these “backup posts”, you’ll have something to publish on the days when you’re supposed to be writing but you get too busy or an emergency comes up. (By the way, I like using WordPress as my blogging software, because it allows you to publish posts on a later date.)

This principle works really well if you haven’t launched your blog. You can write a couple posts before your blog goes live. This backlog of “backup posts” ensures that you will be publishing regularly at the start of your blog.

5. It’s okay to take (infrequent) breaks.

Vacations are good for the soul. Just make sure to tell your audience that you will be gone. Tell them when you’ll be back so they know when to start reading again.

Feedback

How do you deal with posting frequency on your blog?

One of the best ways to sell on your blog is targeting different parts of your audience. This strategy works well because the people you target will feel like you’re talking to them personally. This personal touch is crucial in internet business because buying things online can often be a impersonal, cold activity. Anything you do to make your sales process more personal can only increase sales.

By being specific with who you’re writing for, you’ll find that people will react positively and your sales will increase.

To explain my point, let’s look at a couple specific examples.

Examples of Specific Content for Subgroups

Pretend you have a online retail shop that sells mp3 players. You can do a little brainstorming and come up with subgroups in your prospective customer base. Here are two that I thought of, audiobook listeners and exercise buffs.

For audiobook listeners, I would write content like the following:

Top 10 Mp3 Players for Audiobook Fans
Top Places Online to Buy Audiobooks
How to Connect Your Mp3 Player to Your Car Stereo

For exercise buffs, I thought the following content might work:

10 Lightweight Mp3 Players for Fitness Freaks
Hitting the Gym? Here are 50 Energetic Tracks to Work Out To

Let’s look at an example of someone who doesn’t sell as many products as a retailer. For example, consider a first-time author of a health cookbook. How can she segment her audience?

To segment her audience, I thought about reasons why someone would want to buy a health cookbook. These two came to mind, increase energy and avoid sickness.

For the individuals that want more energy, she could write content like this:

Feeling Lethargic? Then Eat These 10 Healthy Energy Boosting Snacks
7 Meals That Will Increase Your Energy (Includes Recipes)

For health conscious people that want to avoid sickness, she could write blog posts entitled:

It’s Flu Season, Fight Back With These 7 Organic Meals
Starting to Feel Sick? Eat These Foods to Push Back the Sickness Monster

The previous examples were for product based businesses. What if you have a service based business?

Here are two content suggestions I would give to a wedding consultant in Dallas, Texas, USA.

How to Plan Your Dallas Outdoor Wedding Without Going Crazy
12 Affordable Yet Classy Places to Have Your Dallas Wedding

Over to You

What different subgroups are in your target audience? What kind of content can you create to reach those subgroups?

Also, if you’d like some suggestions of content topics for your blog, feel free to tell us about your business. I’ll give some suggestions and hopefully, other commenters will too.

Photo by ioillusion

A simple but effective way to improve your blog posts is to add images. This tactic will add a couple minutes to your publishing time but the rewards are definitely worth it.

Images do several beneficial things.

They invite the reader to keep reading. This is very important because internet visitors have short attention spans. Your images will capture their attention quickly and arouse curiosity (“Why did they use that image?”).

They differentiate your blog since most blogs don’t have images. By inserting relevant pictures, your blog will be more memorable than the other blogs in your industry.

They fit the wants of a visual generation. With TV and internet video, our generation is the most visual generation ever. We’re used to interpreting the world through video and images. I’ve already talked about adding video to your blog, but if you don’t have time to produce videos, images are the next best thing.

They add to the reading experience. Think about your favorite magazine. What would happen if all the pictures in the magazine were removed? It would make reading the magazine less enjoyable. Even books today have more pictures than earlier books.

Where to Get Images

Here are my favorite places to find images.

Flickr
Find free images at Flickr.com with the Creative Commons license. Now you can’t legally use the images with the Noncommercial license but the other licenses are fair game. Just make sure not to modify the photos with the No Derivative Works license. You can resize them but don’t crop them. And finally, satisfy the requirements of the Attribution license my linking back to the Flickr username.

stock.xchng
This site is one of the most popular free stock photo sites. It has many pictures to choose from. I’ve found that most of the images are under the site’s standard restrictions. Fortunately, these restrictions are not stringent. They allow you to use the image on commercial sites. You do have to comment on the image and let the photographer know where you used their image.

Changing My Ways

If you’ve been following this blog, you may have realized that I don’t have images on most of the posts. That’s going to change. I’ve started adding images on blogs I write for. I just forgot about this one!

Myron has an interesting comment on a previous blog post. He asks:

Is it better to have the blog living as the front end of your business (index page) or as a separate section?

To answer this question, I think you have to consider your primary business model. Do you have actual products and services that you sell? Or are you trying to make money by selling advertising?

If you sell products and services, I would make your home page be a static page that highlights your products and services. Check out Aaron Wall’s SEO Book home page for a great example. He devotes the first couple paragraphs to talk about his product, an SEO training program.

On the other hand, Search Engine Land has a blog as its home page. They make money by selling ad space, which you can see on their right sidebar.

Why This Principle?

My reasoning for my thoughts is as follows.

Sites which sell products and services should highlight their products and services on their home page to increase their sales conversion rate.

However, sites which sell ad space are like magazines. What would a magazine show prospective advertisers to try to get a sale? Probably their most current issues. Prospective advertisers want to know what the magazine is currently writing about to see if the content fits their business.