Blogging 101Tips for Christian Mom Bloggers
Do Your Blog Visitors Really Read Your Blog?
Bloggers Lab says the answer is no! People aren’t interested in reading web writing; the most they do is scan it? only few % of your blog reader will read your post word to word, rest will just scan the page (read headers) and make their conclusion about the post. People want to gather what they need and move on. It is very likely that they will browse your site while working on project, chatting with some friends on Yahoo or MSN, as a result they need to be able to filter and scan specific information on your site easily; else they will hit that nasty back button. It becomes essential to stop your reader from hitting that back button by making your content scannable.
How to write Scannable Content? Well read on to know.
- Agent Blogs
- Challenges/Creativity
- General Resources
- Genre/Niche
- Jobs
- Just for fun
- Protect Yourself
- Publishing Resources
- Writing Communities
Cartoon from BLaugh.com
The Blog Herald posted an interesting answer to “What do I blog about?”
Also see post How do you Stay Motivated as a Blogger? from ProBlogger Blog Tips.
Darren Rowse has been blogging for 1053 days for an average of 11.6 posts per day. He is in a posting frenzy.
Read some of his post about Quality vs Quantity:
Finding New, Freshly Squeezed Content For Your Blog
Posted by admin and filed under Blog ContentFor most of us blogging is a labor of love, personally, it’s one of my few productive activities in which I take pleasure in. Most of all I love the fact that I can make my voice felt and known in the world, I actually help make a difference in the world; something that wouldn’t be possible in normal conditions. Blogging is very rewarding from so many points of view, even financially for some lucky few of us, however, at times it can be a very frustrating task, especially when you’ve ran out of things to say.
Read the full post with 12 great blogging suggestions for blog content written byTibi Puiu at The Lost Art of Blogging
My favorite suggestion was this one:
RSS is your friend. Take advantage of the marvel that is RSS and subscribe to the leading, most authoritative blogs in your niche. Look for blogs that produce constant original and unique content and religiously follow them. Don’t just read their most recent work, but confidently scour through their whole archive, if possible from the very first post. I did this with Problogger a year ago and most recently with Skelliewag, when I read all their archives from day one. The amount of knowledge and insight, that I’ve been able to gain, was truly immense and not only helped me develop a great deal as a blogger, but also provided inspiration.
Related: What is RSS and Will it Make M y Life Easier
Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works
Posted by admin and filed under Blog Content
Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site.
Excerpts
- Chapter 1 Content! Content! Content!
(PDF, 1.3MB) - Chapter 5 Writing Information, Not Documents
(PDF, 2.5MB)
Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master − Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use.
This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better.
Features
* Clearly-explained guidelines with full-color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book.
* Written in easy-to-read style with many “befores” and “afters.”
* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.
* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.
Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards.
Book Reviews
“the book meets a major, previously unmet need of a very large audience: almost everyone who works on a web site. As Ginny points out, good writing is a critical success factor for every web site, and the really good book about how to write for the web just doesn’t exist. Personally, I’ve been waiting for it for years, because I didn’t want to write it myself.”–Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think!
“Redish has done her homework and created a thorough overview of the issues in writing for the Web. Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won’t read very many words on your website — and what to do about it.”–Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group
Four Easy Ways to Create Innovative Content With Interactivity
Posted by admin and filed under Blog Content
When it comes to innovative content, we’re usually trying to come up with compelling things to say that will bring us attention and enhanced credibility, maybe much like we would if we were writing a serialized book. But this is definitely not a book.
10 Universities Offering Free Writing Courses Online
Posted by admin and filed under Blog ContentWhether you are a current writer or looking to break into the craft, formal writing courses can help you hone your skills. If you don’t have the money or the time for a campus-based course, there are plenty of universities that offer free writing courses online.
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit.edu)
No registration is required.
2. Utah State University (usu.edu)
No registration is required.
3. Open University (open.ac.uk)
No registration is required.
4. University of Utah (utah.edu)
No registration is required.
5. Western Governors University (wgu.edu)
No registration is required.
6. Purdue University (owl.english.purdue.edu)
No registration is required.
7. Steven Barnes’s UCLA Writing Course (lifewrite.com)
No registration is required.
8. News University (newsu.org)
Registration is required, but it is free.
9. E-Zine University (ezineuniversity.com)
No registration is required.
10. Wikiversity (wikiversity.org)
No registration is required.
Related Articles
Top Schools for Technical and Business Writing
Blogger or Mind-Reader? Six Ways to Give Your Audience Exactly What It Wants
Posted by admin and filed under Blog ContentKeep coming back here (it is best to subscribe) to find the best of the best blogging tips.
Skellie is a regular writer for ProBlogger. Get more unique blogging tips at her blog, Skelliewag, or subscribe to her feed.
ProBlogger readers are absolutely spoiled when it comes to great articles about coming up with post ideas. But what about thinking up the post topics your audience has been craving?
In this Problogger post you will find six strategies you can use to determine exactly what kind of posts your audience wants to see on your blog. Read Six Ways to Give Your Audience Exactly What It Wants
Hundreds of Resources for Finding Content for Your Blog
Posted by admin and filed under Blog Content
Check out this post by Lorelle:
Blogging is great fun. It’s exciting. You start out with great ideas, full of motivation and inspiration. After a while, though, you run out of steam. The muse isn’t so amused any more and you start hunting for content, things to write about.There are two aspects of finding content for your blog. First, it is to find the inspiration that generates original content on your blog. This can come from a variety of sources. Basically, it can be a news story, fellow blogger’s post, an interesting web page you stumbled across, something a friend said, or anything that interests you enough to research and write about it.
The second aspect is to find links. Click here to read full article.
Ann Kroeker recently wrote 10 Way to Deal With Bloggers Block:
Sometimes ideas are rumbling around in my brain’s gray matter, but I can’t seem to capture them and put them into words. When I try but can’t seem to compose a meaningful post for my readers, here are some productive ways to keep mentally, creatively, and spiritually “active”–and often, quite often, as soon as I employ one of the ideas on this list, I’m able to generate a satisfying and perfectly usable post:
- Read Scripture. I’ve already shared my Psalter/Proverbs devotional method, but there are many ways to dig into the Bible and let it inspire you. There’s nothing like a good dose of Truth to get some ideas flowing.
From ProBlogger Blog Tips: Six Tips for More Creative Blogging
Creative lapses are one of the biggest blog killers out there. Every blogger spends time staring at a blank screen searching for inspiration at some point, and few niches provide a steady stream of juicy news on which a blogger can instantly provide outpourings of captivating opinion.
Over time I’ve managed to develop a routine and a set of habits which seem to reliably spark my limited creative abilities and help me avoid those desperate moments of inspirational emptiness as I imagine my page hits plummeting as my blog dries up. Read the full post
Don’t Miss These Posts:
- Are You Prepared for Self Control? (Have You Ever Had One of Those Days?)
- Did You Lose It With Your Children Again?
If you’re thinking about becoming a part-time web worker, these posts from AnyWired should help introduce you to this way of working (and living)
Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb
Posted by admin and filed under Blog ContentCheck out this post from Copyblogger:
Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb
One thing that blogging and good copywriting share is a conversational style, and that means it’s fine to fracture the occasional rule of proper grammar in order to communicate effectively. Both bloggers and copywriters routinely end sentences with prepositions, dangle a modifier in a purely technical sense, or make liberal use of the ellipsis when an EM dash is the correct choice—all in order to write in the way people actually speak.
But there are other mistakes that can detract from your credibility. Read the full article.
(from: Five Grammatic Errors that Make You Look Dumb)
Be Extraordinary: How To Tap Into Your Amazing Creative Power
Posted by admin and filed under Blog ContentCheck out this post from Blogging Bits:
Unlike what you may think, creative thinking is not solely for other people.
You can also be creative. The only requirement is that you make an effort to be creative.
(from: Be Extraordinary: How To Tap Into Your Amazing Creative Power)
There is not a lot of blog aimed specifically at Christian bloggers. Writer Interrupted created this Carnival of Christian writers to introduce you to you posts from editors, authors, and readers all focusing on writing. Enjoy the rides!
Carnival of Christian Writers #1
Carnival #2 November 2006
Carnival #3 December 2006
Carnival #4 January 2007
Carnival #5 February 2007
Carnival #6 March 2007
Carnival #7 April 2007
Carnival #8 May 2007
Carnival #9 June 2007
Carnival #10 July 2007
Carnival #11 August 2007
Carnival #12 September 2007
Carnival #13 October 2007
Carnival #14 November 2007
Carnival #15 December 2007
Submit to the Carnival of Christian Writers.
Check out this post from Copyblogger:
It’s time for the ubiquitous “best of 2007″ lists, so why not one for Copyblogger? I’ll go ahead and do a round-up of the year’s best-received posts, with a bit of commentary on what was notable from each month.
January
- Introducing the A*I*D*A Formula for Blogging
- Permission Marketing 2.0
- The P.T. Barnum Guide to Online Publicity
- The David Ogilvy Playbook for Business Blogging
February
- Differentiate Your Blog or Die
- Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?
- Are You Leaving Your Readers Out of the Conversation?
- Let Cicero Build You a Sticky Blog
- Five Steps to a Truly Unique Blog That Attracts Readers and Revenue
March
- Headline Remix Madness – Part One and Part Two
- Why the A-List Doesn’t Matter
- Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging
April
- A Simple Four-Step Strategy for Developing Content That Connects
- The Benjamin Franklin Guide to Marketing Your Business Online
- Five Common Headline Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
May
- Become a Master of Metaphor and Multiply Your Blogging Effectiveness
- Metaphor, Simile and Analogy: What’s the Difference?
- Magnetic Blogging: How to Use Metaphors to Create Irresistible Content
- Do Your Metaphors Rock?
June
- Is Beer the Key to Remarkable Blogging?
- Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media
- Blueprint for a Brilliant Blog Launch
- Go Big or Go Home: Why Being Bold is Critical to Getting Noticed
July
- Blogging is Dead (Long Live Value Blogging)
- IKEA Content: How to Lose Your Readers in Two Minutes or Less
- Two Techniques That Help You Embrace Brevity
- Are You a Courageous Blogger?
August
- The David Lee Roth Guide to Legendary Marketing
- Do People Really Want Transparency and Authenticity?
- How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day
September
- Warning: Use These 5 Surefire Headline Formulas at Your Own Risk
- How to Write Remarkably Creative Content
- Writing for StumbleUpon: High Impact Content “Above the Scroll” in Four Easy Steps
- Does Telling Someone to “Click Here” Actually Matter?
- Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?
- Are You Using the Five Types of Links Properly?
- Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques
October
- How to Create Ebooks That Sell
- Here’s How to Stop Worrying About Google Once and for All
- The Butterfly Effect and the Environment: How Tiny Actions Can Save the World
- Six Common Punctuation Errors that Bedevil Bloggers
November
- Jazz and the Art of Improvisational Blogging
- 7 Warning Signs That You’re Drunk on Your Own Words
- The Nasty Four-Letter Word That Keeps You From Writing
December
- The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration
- 58 of the World’s Greatest Offers
- Why Writing Like a College Student Will Kill You Online
- How to Use the “Rule of Three” to Create Engaging Content
(The above is an excerpt. Read the full post at The Best of Copyblogger in 2007)
In How to Get Me to Read Your Blog, Thord Daniel Hedengren tells us how to convince him, and others, to read your blog.
Chances are I’m not reading your blog. That’s not because I don’t like you, most likely I don’t even know you exist, and that’s your fault.
Yes, you heard me. Your fault. It’s something you can remedy though.
There are a gazillion blogs out there, and most of them suck, to be honest. Yours might not, though, so I’m willing to have a look. But how am I to find it? And why should I stay along at all?
Check out this post from blog tips:
As a web consultant and educator, I’m often hired to review and critique a lot of websites and blogs, making recommendations on what works and doesn’t work, then working together to make it work better. …
(from: Improving Your Blog: Clarity)
copywriters.
How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly, and Learn Complex Material More Easily
This is a very interesting presentation, Not only does it communicate ways to learn and write, it talks about logic, and how to evaluate an argument. Highly recommended…