Every blogger should read this eBook by Hunter Nuttall, The Zen of Blogging (PDF). Whether you’re just getting started or you are an experienced blogger looking for a new perspective to kick-start your motivation, I think you’ll enjoy this thoroughly.
Via: ProBlogger
Chris Brogan shares some tips on building community around your blog. As we all know, it takes a lot of time, focus, and energy. Chris has some great tips in here. If you’re not familiar with his blog, I highly recommend it for regular inspirational blogging/community tips. He’s also one of the more prolific Twitterers I’ve met yet!
Read: Free Tips For Your Blog
Though I haven’t been blogging here as often as I should be, I’ve been more active lately on some other sites I contribute to. As any of you who blog surely know, it can take a lot of energy and creativity to consistently come up with new content to post. But, as you also know, frequent blogging is critical to maintain a healthy level of readership.
Mining for Content with Online Services
I also get a lot of tips and ideas from my readers. Not only does this make my job easier, but it also gives me an opportunity to thank one of our community members with a public nod on the main newsfeed:
So those are some of my tips for finding ideas to blog about. What other techniques do you use? Do you know of any other great news tools I should be using?
Lots of great content out there around building successful community sites lately! I thought I’d share a quick list I’ve scanned but haven’t read thoroughly yet. Be sure to let me know if you’ve seen anything else lately you think our readers would find useful!
Happy weekend!
Here’s a great tool for the busy blogger! When you come across a website or blog post you want to make sure you digest later, you can either add it to your favorites and then ignore it (like I tend to do), or you can add a quick button to your browser toolbar to save the page for reading later.
Note, adding a link to the toolbar in IE7 proved challenging for me. I ended up creating a new link to a random page, then right-clicking on it and editing its properties to paste in the javascript code for Instapaper’s “read later” button. I then added a second link to my Instapaper.com account so I can always quickly go see what I have to read.
Try it! Instapaper.com (via WordPress Planet)
HigherTrustMarketing asks, “How much selling should you do from your blog?”. As with everything, I think the answer varies quite a bit on the type of community you have. They offer some good tips, such as making sure the type of thing or service you’re pushing is actually of interest to your readers. Otherwise, you run the significant risk of upsetting your members and driving them away from your site. The best approach in many cases is to make your users feel like they are gaining something by reading your blog full of product links. For example, through in depth product reviews, links to coupons/discounts, new product announcements, etc. are all great ways to serve your community without making them feel like you’re shoving product down their throats.
On all my communities, I take a “passive” approach and try not to force-feed products on my users. I’ll provide thoughts, comments, and the occasional link to specific products here and there, but I’ve found that engaging in a conversation with my members as opposed to simply broadcasting deals to them generates many more return visitors, and buyers!
Link: Selling On Your Blog - Should You Do It? (HigherTrustMarketing.com)
Duct Tape Marketing asked, so here’s my take…
When building out your website, it’s important to give your community the features it needs to thrive. Throwing too many features at your users, especially while you’re just starting out, can be more distracting to your community than helpful.
The most common community features found on the web today are blogs and forums. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that every community site needs to have a blog or a forum, or both. Other sites have more innovative custom features designed specifically for their communities. For example, GreenHybrid.com’s “real mileage database” lets members log and compare the fuel efficiency of their hybrid cars. Features like this can really help set apart one community from other similar ones.
So, how do you know which tools are right for your community?
When creating a new site, I typically start out with a blog. Every community needs a seed from which it can grow, and a blog is a great tool to get some content out on the web and start driving traffic to your site. With so many free blog engines available today, it’s very easy to get started. Some communities never really progress beyond blogs and yet are very successful (see Music Thing, for example). One might argue that a blog alone does not make a community, but you have to look past the traditional ideas of what a “community” is. In the blog-only case, the community members provide a lot of comments to the posts and seed the blogger with countless ideas for new content. They help each other through the blogger as opposed to helping each other directly. This type of community requires more ongoing work on the community manager’s part (in this case, the blogger), but it can be very successful (i.e. Engadget).
Next, as the user base grows and I see discussions starting to take place in the comment threads (as opposed to one-off comments), I consider adding forums to the site. Forums give your users an easy way to help themselves, which can be extremely valuable if your time is limited. Once you have a few “experts” established in your forums, they can usually handle answering questions from new members. Often, they thrive on it!
Finally, once you have some idea of what your users are looking for in terms of site feature, you can start to add in some customizations. If you’re not comfortable developing the code yourself, consider asking your community members to help! You might be surprised to learn that at least some of your members are probably web programming experts too!
What I love about the web is no matter how well established you think a site is, and how well you think it has filled a particular need, there’s always something new and innovative just around the corner.
In the world of blogging, we all know the heavyweights: Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, Community Server, etc. Enter Blogonize - the brainchild of a brainy 16 year old with something to prove. At first glance, Blogonize may appear like Yet Another Blogging Site, but with even a quick peak into its features, this new contender definitely seems ready to put up a serious fight in the blogging market.
Blogonize, currently in "beta 0.7" bills itself as "Finally - an easy to use innovative blog host!" The statement rings true. Signing up is free and took all of 30 seconds (no e-mail validation required!). Like the other engines, Blogonize features multiple templates for quick and dirty site design. Of course, you can roll your own by editing the CSS templates to your heart’s desire.
Going beyond the conventional features, Blogonize has a cool "text to podcast" feature that turns your posts into audio podcasts for your readers to listen to. This is similar to Talkr, which is available for other blogging engines, but the integration into the Blogonize control panel is very convenient. Next up, Blogonize gives you reports of daily, weekly, or monthly traffic to your blog. Again, this is available with tools like Feedburner, but the integration is very nice. For larger blogs, you can have multiple editors and writers who have permission to create and modify content on the site.
Blogonize helps its members promote their site by featuring a page with the latest "hot posts" across the site. So, if you come up with a particularly popular post on your blog, it might rise to the top of this page and be seen by thousands of other readers looking for interesting stories.
Finally, the slick WYSIWYG HTML editor shows you exactly what your post will look like online before you push it. It uses AJAX to make the experience even slicker by eliminating page reloads. Every little bit helps!
I’ve created a Communiteer blog on Blogonize to further test it out. As I explore, I’ll keep you all updated with any interesting news bits, tips, or tricks to help you make your Blogonize community site as great as it can be. I’m not planning to switch away from WordPress just yet, but if Blogonize keeps the features coming, I’ll definitely consider it!
Link: Blogonize - Finally, an easy to use innovative blog host!
Towards the end of the year, there’s one sure-fire way to kick-start conversations on your blog comments or forums. Ask your users to post their favorite moments of the past year. Depending on what your site is about, you could leave this wide open or offer up a short list of specific events for members to comment or vote on.
If you want to go a step further in seeding conversations, use the “random drawing from post respondents” formula. Offer up some SWAG such as logo gear from CafePress.com or some freebie from one of your advertisers. A little recognition and reward can go a long way towards building long-term loyalty in your readers!
Good luck!
A nice article from ProBlogger.net on Blogging with Voice. The idea is to give your blog postings a little personality to help your readers associate better with you. The author gives a few examples and tips to explain his points.
It is interesting to note that the author’s own blog, LifeDev.net, had over 300,000 page views in the blog’s first month online! Clearly he’s doing something right, and he shares his tips in an article entitled The Best Blogging Advice Ever. Period.
So do you blog with voice? Have you tried blogging with and without voice? Which works better for you?
Have you set goals for your community?
Total Votes: 1
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