Best Tips: How to make a successful blog

If you want to make a successful blog - say one that has hundreds or even thousands of regular readers/subscribers - you've got to solve a limited number of problems:

*starting a blog

*topics to blog about

*building a readership

*keeping motivated to blog


STARTING A BLOG:

• Figure out what is the purpose of your blog.
  

You'll see the most ease of keeping a blog if its purpose fits with your passion in life. The purpose of mine is to educate people about psychology, science and animal behavior — which is convenient because it's also my passion.

• Know your passion - not what merely interests you. You'll need to write about what you're passionate about to stay motivated to keep a blog. Choose a name/URL for your blog that reflects that passion.

Field Notes of an Evolutionary Psychologist works for me and I chose to add Field Notes to allow me to write about a wider variety of subjects. Field notes could be written on anything! Newfoundlandnews came about because really, it was the addition of Big K that made me think a blog would be fun and would get me excited about writing a dissertation. The real purpose of my blog only unfolded later.

• Get signed up with a blog host site that fits with your needs and HTML skill level.

I chose blogger.com because it's free and requires no familiarity whatsoever with HTML which is perfect for me since although I like learning new languages I really have no interest in talking to computers in their language.

• Install a free stat counter.

Ones like statcounter.com and sitemeter.com allow you to spy on who visits your blog and what they do. You're not going to be interested so much in who visits your blog but in how many visit and what they do. It allows you to observe their behavior which is useful information. You can use it as a barometer of your blog's success and your effectiveness in 'marketing' your blog. Those free stat counters will tell you everything you need to know - how many people each day visit, how they get to your blog, how long they stay and what they click on when they're there. You want a lot of readers who stay a long time and if you're trying to use your blog to drum up business or to further educate, you want them to click on links.

TOPICS TO BLOG ABOUT:

• Your passion.

You may be passionate about primates, like I am, and know enough about them to write something everyday about them, but figuring out WHAT exactly to choose on any given day is a whole other matter. I usually just pick the first thing rattling around in my head that excites me - or I pick the first thing that has been thrust there. It could be some quirky thing I saw one of the dogs do, some interesting science news I read, or even something idiotic I see on TV. There are lots of ways science and psychology gets used inaccurately in mainstream media and that is perfect ignition for a post.

• Develop many interests. You can use those varied interests for quick posts when you're pressed for time.
  

I resort to dog posts and other piffle when I don't have time to develop an educational post. I still try to make the dog ones educational though! You can see an example of that here.

• Observe the world around you.
  

By paying attention to what's going on in the world, your house, your neighborhood, your city, school, park, alley etc., you will find things to blog about.

Expand your view. Browse. Look at lots of different things briefly.

Rifle through a newspaper, magazine, click and surf around other blogs and websites.
Flip through a book. Channel surf. Go on a walk - down alleys, in new places.

Seek the new - it's novelty that inspires and excites. Ideas are never just going to pop into your head. You've got to actively put them there.

• Choose one story to tell.
  

For your blog to be worth reading, you have to tell a story. To find the story, the important thing is to notice something interesting, which is a lot easier if you make a habit of observing the world around. Picking which one to actually run with and make a story out of is a challenge. I usually just pick the first one. After you've chosen a topic — think about it — then write your perspective on it. If you don't think first, you'll have to do it while you write and it will take 10 times as long. And you want to avoid that if you want to build a readership.

HOW TO BUILD A READERSHIP: # 1 - Create great content.

• Post often.
  

You will lose readers fast if you don't regularly post new, fresh content. Before I took a break two months ago, I had easily 200-300 people a day stop by. That plummeted to 50-60 when I stopped blogging altogether.

If you're just starting out, aim for every 2-3 days. Once you get rolling, ratchet that up to once a day, 6 days a week. Later you can add more, maybe post twice a day or several times. You're only limit is time.

• Tell a story.

You've got to have great content to get people coming back. A story has a beginning, middle and end. Good ones start strong and fast and suck you in. The middle provides depth and detail. The end let's readers know what they've learned.

The best stories are told with good, basic writing. This means correct spelling and grammar, tight sentences that are to the point, transitions between ideas, and descriptive adjectives to create imagery.

Even better blog stories are illustrated with photos.

• Embed images.
  

Choose photos that are relevant, clear, crisp, colorful and sized so that there is enough text visible around them to fit at least 3-4 words on each line. That helps readers move through a story and get to the end of your post. Obviously I've screwed the pooch royally on this post! Longer posts may need several pictures or graphic elements. Space them a few inches apart so readers don't scroll to far without running into another image. Alternate where you place the photos - sometimes flush left, sometimes flush right, rarely center.

HOW TO BUILD A READERSHIP: # 2 - Promote and market.
Once you've got the content part nailed down, you've got to help people find it.

• Comment on other blogs.

I spend time commenting on blogs nearly every day. Why? It's fun to share opinions. But also because when a comment is left, the blog owner or other readers may click on the comment to see the blog that made it.

You'll get people to click back to your blog more often if you leave comments on blogs that get a lot of comments. It means they have more readers who could potentially click back to yours. Leave insightful comments, even questions — and if you're feeling bold — pointed ones, aka the snarky comment. That will get people to click back faster than anything. Just don't be a jerk, and whatever you do, don't leave spam comments.

You'll also generate more back clicks if you leave comments on blogs that write about similar topics. Soon, you'll be reading & commenting on a network of similar blogs. After a while, you get to know a blogging community this way. My network, and readership, is mostly academics and artists. I could expand that by searching for other like-minded people, such as gardeners.

• Put links to your blog in your emails, other websites and online communities you participate in.

You'll be able to tell how effective these various methods are at generating traffic to your blog if you use the statcounters. Commenting on other blogs has been the most effective for me.

HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED

You will have days you don't have anything you think is worthy of a post. You'll have days you think you don't have time to. Although it's true that those are the only 2 legitimate reasons not to post, they aren't good enough reasons to file a story. If you want to have a successful blog, you have to be productive and keep the quality high.

Readers, loyal ones especially, will forgive you if you have crappy content days. But they will not forgive you if you don't even publish.

Can you imagine if your town's newspaper just didn't put out the paper one day because none of the stories were 'good enough' or the reporters didn't feel they had 'time to write a good enough story' that day? It never happens.

Now think of all the stories that are in the paper. They aren't all universally interesting or well-written, and most aren't even illustrated with photos. But they're there. All the news that's fit to print. Rubbish! It's all the news that fits, prints.

You should adopt the same attitude with your blog. Decide how often you publish (your readers will figure it out and adjust their visits). Decide the minimum length of a story you'll write each day (space your posts will fill). Then — fill it. Even if it is just a photo. At least put a caption in that explains what the photo is. I'd bet before you know it, you have a post.

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That's basically all you need to know to make a successful blog. Just remember to blog about your passion. Tell a story well and with photos. Do so regularly, and save some time to read and comment on other blogs. If you set aside just enough time each day, and turn these tips into habits, you will have a very successful blog indeed.

Walla Walla Rocked by Wild Winds, Paper Barely Gets Out

Although the winds were howling when my day began, as I walked to the coffee shop where I have been creating my primate portraits, there was nothing exceptional about the day at all - not even the noticeably strong wind. It does get windy here from time to time - kicking up dust and making a mess of the town as branches and power lines fall.


Little did I know that in about 4 hours, my little corner of heaven on earth would be rocked with winds that uprooted huge trees, took down entire power poles, smashed a well-known statue on the campus of my alma mater, and caused the local newspaper (the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin) to be printed by a press located in another city - for the very first time in at least 28 years.


The newspaper had talked about what to do in case their press couldn't actually print the paper, but they never had to execute those plans - until today.

As luck would have it, I was right there on the front lines, observing as the publisher whipped out his own personal credit card to buy the generator that powered up the server and three computers that would put together a skeletal paper for the day. Someone had to get gas to get it going and an extra long extension cord to power up the equipment that had been temporarily moved into the conference room. It was not by any means, a sure thing, that the newspaper would come out at all today.

That would have been unfortunate given that it was a fantastic day for local and national news.

I watched as the experts put together pages in a flash - snagging news stories and photos off the wire, formatting them, writing headlines and sub-headlines, and making sure it was all accurate. Mr. Field Notes demonstrated why he is the go-to guy for getting things done in a crisis. He is calm, cool, collected. I have to say I was impressed and proud.

I even got to play a role; I spotted an error in the headline of the story about the results of the Iowa caucus - Hillary's name was spelled with one "el." It's not that big of a deal, but when errors like that are front and center in headlines and sub-headlines, it really weakens the credibility of the paper. I also caught some minor grammatical errors on the front page.

The pages even came out on time. That is an achievement given that they had to rebuild entire pages from scratch and get them out the door and on the road to Pendleton, Oregon in less than 45 minutes.

That wasn't the only excitement in my neighborhood.

The walk back to my house got increasingly more exciting as I approached home. Away from downtown, old trees line every street and many grow well within the range to do major damage to structures.

The house around the corner from me is completely smashed by the huge tree that fell on it. The root ball of the tree blocks our alley.

Power lines are down everywhere, including the pole that brings power to our house. We will not have power for a good long time, I would imagine. The line that delivers power to, I mean delivered, swings in the breeze right over our front porch.

On campus, old trees are uprooted everywhere. They are mostly pines, but a few others of substantial size are also uprooted. The path over the campus creek to my old building is blocked by a huge tree. That pales in comparison to the damage leveled by the huge tree of heaven that stands, at half mast, behind "Mem." It fell over and crushed the most loathed piece of art on campus - the statue of the "paper clip."

Unless I go somewhere else, which I plan to do, blog posts and all etsy business will be on hiatus until power is restored to my house.

Dinner should be fun...

Disruptive Innovation

Will the Internet put newspapers out of business?

That's a question that's been at the top of mind for me these last few days. My husband has worked in the newspaper industry for roughly ten years and I have made moves very recently to get into the business too (I even had an interview yesterday). But, given that newspaper circulation and readership have been reliably declining and even the best papers with the most name recognition have been losing money, it hardly seems like a intelligent career move.

Why? The Internet can be considered a disruptive innovation - a new way of getting a job done that renders the previous way obsolete. Consider what effect it's had on the travel industry. Now, you can search online for cruises, airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, and even villas to rent for a week in Tuscany. You no longer need a travel agent.

Craigslist is a perfect example of a disruptive innovation, and, it's one that spells demise for the classified advertising wing of newspapers, a major source of revenue. Why pay for an ad in the newspaper when craigslist will do it for free?

When it came time to collect data for my dissertation, I set my study up online. What's more, I could have hired the newspaper to help me recruit participants but elected not to. I recognized that people would not go online after seeing my ad, but they might participate if they were already online. So, I placed ads in a different city each week for a year through craigslist. I paid nothing and have 4,000 participants to show for the small investment of time. If my local newspaper had a newsletter it emailed to subscribers, I would have considered placing an ad.

Unfortunately for the local paper, craigslist arrived in the nearest city within the last month and should be in Walla Walla very soon. Then what?

As much as a might consider myself a depressive realist, I am at my core an optimist. I think newspapers can turn things around.

The most exciting ideas for how to do this come from Newspaper Next, a product of the marriage of the American Press Institute with Innosight, a consulting firm.

One of the recommendations that comes out of this report (and I unabashedly admit I am a biased reader here) suggests that hiring bright, creative outsiders will keep newspapers from becoming dinosaurs. It will be interesting to see what develops!