Emergency posting of blog articles
I try to post at least one new article on each of my three blogs every day. In this I’m not always successful but most of time I keep up this schedule.
When I know I’m going to be away from my computer for a time or very busy I write articles ahead of time and queue them up to appear during the busy time. I can do this as most of my articles are not time sensitive.
I don’t regard this strategy as emergency posting but rather a case of planning ahead. But when an emergency does occur it’s great to know you’ve got several posts ready to go. Writing a series of articles in another excellent strategy in this regard.
For another perspective on this concept check out the idea written by Daniel in Brazil on his blog called Daily Blog Tips. The comments section of this article is also worth reading as other bloggers have shared their ideas.
How to be a successful blogger or writer – or whatever
I think I’ve said it before on this blog, the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. Success in any endeavour is always the end result of work, hard work, sometimes incredibly hard work in overcoming difficulties and many set backs. People compliment me when I chair a meeting or I am MC* of a function or I speak in public saying how relaxed and confident I seem. This has not come easy for someone who was as shy and retiring as I was as a child. It has come through much effort, thought, planning and rehearsal.
A lifetime of effort
Blogging and writing is no different. It takes time and effort to be successful, long hours of seemingly fruitless, unrewarded effort. After a lifetime of writing endeavour I guess only a small fraction, perhaps as little as ten per cent of my writing has been published. Do I regret all that unpublished work? No way – it was my apprenticeship in the craft. And I’m still learning.
Sporting Success
Like so many other Australians, I enjoy watching all kinds of sports, especially those featuring Australians. The Aussies are fanatical about their sport and our success in sporting endeavour far exceeds normal expectations for a country of barely 21 million people. Many of my readers would be aware of the amazing achievements of Australian Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe, one of the greatest of all time. He makes breaking world records look easy and effortless. When he retired recently he admitted that he could no longer face endless hours of training. To get to the standard of performance he displayed took a lifetime of effort, lap after lap, day after day, year after year. There is no such thing as overnight success – in any field.
Steven Bradbury and Blogging
In the recently announced honours list here on Australia Day, Winter Olympic Ice Skater Steven Bradbury received an award. What has this got to do with blogging? Plenty. Steven was the first Australian Gold Medallist in the Winter Olympics. The realisation of his dream seemed accidental, but it was no accident. I didn’t realise all the hard work, the difficulties, the setbacks and the injuries that Steven had endured in order to have crack at success. And in the end it all paid off. Writing and blogging, like speed skating, can be a lonely pursuit with many long hours of effort. That’s what it takes.
Links:
For a more comprehensive article about Steven Bradbury and how his story can help your blogging, writing or whatever read this inspiring article by Darren Rowse. It even includes a video of Bradbury winning the gold medal.
How Steven Bradbury can make you a better blogger by Darren Rowse.
*Master of Ceremonies
Strategies for Blog Growth
There are many different strategies for growing your blog, its readership and your traffic. These strategies are endlessly debated on a large range of blogs. Many bloggers come to blogging expecting quick monetary returns. It doesn’t work that way.
Chris Cree on his blog Success CREEations has an excellent article about using the steady growth strategy he uses for growing his blog. He encourages the following sensible strategies:
A Winning Strategy
Personally I’m a fan of slow but steady natural blog growth. Here’s what I mean by that:
- Consistently write quality posts
- Read other blogs in your niche (have them in your feed reader)
- Comment those blogs in a way that adds value to the conversation
- Link to all the good stuff you find out there (with trackbacks)
- Be patient
You can read the whole article here. I recommend it.
Turning a blog into a book
When I started out blogging some eighteen months ago it was just a bit of fun. I just wanted a web presence and to be able to share my love of birds (see my birding blog here).
After some time I realised, with heaps of encouragement from my son, that blogging can be a serious writing activity, not to mention income generating. Since that realisation dawned on me, I have treated blogging far more seriously. The income is still modest, but the trend is encouraging and the potential enormous.
In the early days I did not associate blogging with traditional book publication. I could see the potential of selling an e-book as an offshoot from one’s blog, but not a printed book. More recently, however, there have been enough examples of this happening with other writers that it becomes yet another potential income generating avenue.
At this stage this process is not for me but may well be sometime down the track. I am more interested in producing an e-book at some stage. There may be some of my readers who are interested in taking this road. If so, someone has already successfully gone down that track.
Gina Trapani on her blog Lifehacker has explained the process she went through to write, develop and convert her blog into a printed book through a traditional print publisher. Read how she did it: part 1 and part 2.
Thanks to Darren on ProBlogger for drawing these articles to his readers’ attention.
How to write great content on your blog
One of the things that annoys me about many blogs is that the authors don’t bother to write their own articles. They just quote or link to others who have written articles that interest them.
Write original content
Yes, I’ve also done this from time to time, but usually when I consider that the author has said something really significant, or they have said it better than I possibly could. Sometimes it is purely a matter of time restraints. As much as possible I try to write original content on my blogs.
An example of original content
Writing original content is relatively easy for me. Firstly, I have the time to devote to researching and writing articles that appear on my blogs. It could also reflect the unique nature of my blogs. For example, my Birding Blog mainly features bird observations that I have made, illustrated by photos I have taken. Sometimes I will link to other blogs or web sites that I think my readers would be interested in looking at.
Unique content
On my Travel Blog I relate my experiences travelling in Australia and overseas. Again, the content is unique to me and this also features photos I have taken. I aim to not only make this blog read like a travel journal, which it sometimes is, but to also give my unique slant on the places I visit. I aim to give personal impressions of the places, the people, the culture and my reactions to these places.
Some sources for original content
On this, my writing blog, I frequently post snippets of my vast body of writing, including poetry and short stories. Many of my articles about writing and blogging (like this one) are quite original. I will admit that quite a few articles are prompted by what I have read in magazines, books, web sites or other blogs. I’ve even used ideas from radio and television programmes. I usually try to give my opinions or unique slant on these articles. This article, for example, was prompted by an article I read on ProBlogger. (More about that later.)
How to write great content
There are many different ways of doing this. How you do this will depend to some extent on the particular topic or theme of your blog. There are some general principles all bloggers can follow. This is by no means an exclusive list:
- Always write original content: Always relying on others for your content is a somewhat lazy way of building your blog. It can eventually turn off your readers because you rarely have anything new to say. Sure, writing original material is hard, time consuming and takes effort. If you are consistent and persevere with this approach, you will develop a loyal community of readers.
- Always write unique content: Write content that only you can write. Find a unique slant or unique responses to what you are writing about. In this way you will be bringing new thoughts and ideas to the conversation.
- Always be yourself: Print publishers, editors and writing mentors and writing instructors frequently talk or write about finding your own voice. Develop your unique style or voice in your writing, whatever its target audience. This takes time, effort and persistence. It will not happen overnight. The opposite, however, trying to copy the style of a famous writer or blogger, is a short cut to disaster. It just doesn’t work in the long term.
- Always add value if using content from others: If you do wish to refer to or link to the content of other bloggers, try to add value to what others have written. Give your own slant, your own opinions and unique response to what others have written about. A good example of this is this article; at the end there is a link to the source of the idea for this article. I just didn’t comment that the article is a good one, or that it makes good points on the topic. Instead, I gave my unique slant on the topic and in doing so, I hope that I have added value to the discussion.
Rules for writing great content:
Tony Hung, as a guest blogger on ProBlogger has written about what he calls the 1 / 9 / 90 rule of writing content. He explains it this way:
- 1% of bloggers create new content (what I called original or unique)
- 9% of bloggers enrich content (what I called adding value)
- 90% of bloggers consume content
Of course, Tony’s article says far more than just that. Read the whole article here.