2011 February

Stage 1: The Start-up blog

February 4, 2011 By Paul Leave a Comment

Let's climb over and start the blog

At this stage the blogger is learning how to write posts and how to use a blogging system.

This is often the fun stage. Using a free service, such as Blogger or WordPress, you can be set up and typing up your first post in minutes. alternatively you may have a domain and again using a quick install be ready to publish your work in a short time.

The new blogger will often play around with the theme, (the layout), trying out one free theme after another. They will play around with writing styles and the use of images and video.

They may belt out many posts in a day and for a few days, few weeks or for a couple of months be quite excited as their work is displayed to the entire worldwide audience of Internet users.

Sadly it is in this period that well over 90% of blogs die. The writer gets disappointed as they get few visitors and the effort of producing post after post begins to get tedious

What is a blog?

My definition is: a blog is an online journal that displays entries, (posts), usually in reverse chronological order. The blog has the facility to allow the visitor to access its archives and add comments to each post.
Modern day blogs usually combine text and images in their posts. Many include video. Most blogging systems today have a wide range of add-ins, such as a plug-in to display recent, all popular, post titles in the blog’s sidebar.

Links

our First Decision

Are you going to use a free blogging service or are you going to setup up your own domain and install a blogging management system, such as WordPress.

Free blogging services

The two leading free blogging services are: Blogger and WordPress. The biggest, Blogger, is owned by Google. However, I recommend you use the free WordPress as you will probably move to a WordPress system when you decide that you want your own domain.

Links

Problogger: What is a blog?

Better Business Blogging: Good introduction to blogging

Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g

Chris Abraham Youtube video: How to start Blogger

Deborah Aldridge, Suite 101: How to make your Blogger site look professional

Over To You

Please suggest any useful links to a beginner or in fact any good links to do with blo

Are you start out blogging? Introduce yourself. Tell us about your blog.

Filed Under: Blogging

Using online PR to build your posts

February 3, 2011 By Paul Leave a Comment

Your PR Goodies on Halloween

The whole point of public relations and marketing is to make the public aware of the particular company, product, service or person that the marketeers are paid to promote. Increasingly these consultants are using the web as a tool to increase their clients business.

As a blogger you can take advantage of all the online, publicity material that is on offer from these people. Until you become a well-known and successful blogger few publicists are going to mind if you use their work within your blog.

The book market

Part of my role on a website I was working on was to write book reviews. I then had no problem with going to the publisher’s website or the publisher’s blurb on Amazon and cutting and pasting the text and images onto the site. After all the purpose of the site I was working on was to sell their books.

By playing around with the text I could very quickly produce around 80% of the required review. I could then quickly look through the book and then add my own personalised comments.

I would occasionally take a clip from someone’s personal review on Amazon. In this case I would always give the name, (their Amazon nickname), next to the quote, pointed out that this was an Amazon review and give a link to the Amazon page.

No sensible company will be unhappy if you are providing them with free publicity. Although I have heard some bizarre, heavy-handed behaviour from some companies. I can’t track down details but one publisher forced an eight-year-old girl to close her fan site to a popular series of children’s books, because she was using some of their copyrighted images.

But talking to a number of publishers at a book fair I find that they are more than happy for the average blogger to use their material provided, of course, that they don’t totally pan their books.

Linking up with the PR people

There are many PR sites and you should feel free to grab and use these materials. If you visit a company’s website there is usually a link to media or press and there you will find a list of their recent PR releases.

You can use this material any way you want. It’s out there for the press to use.

In the press section you will also see contact details, either we in within the company, or it will provide a link to a PR agency. Feel free to can contact them to request further details or images.

If your blog is likely to frequently mention their products then I would advise asking their PR people to put you on a mailing list. In the long-term this could be beneficial to you. A friend of mine, Faisal, who runs a motoring website, is frequently given free tickets plus a press pass to the leading UK motor shows.

It is useful if your blog is business or product orientated to be known in the business world. You can build your links, be aware of new developments, be granted perks and when your blog grows you may be on for direct advertising, one of the goals of a professional blogger.

Discussing products

In most cases downloading a few images, the technical specification, the features and the sales blurb are acceptable if you want to discuss their product. They are probably going to be OK with you doing a fair review of their products, where you show both the good points and bad points.

You are however taking a risk when you do an all out attack on the company. As a small blogger you will probably be safe, but some large corporations do overreact. Though not bloggers there was a ridiculous case where McDonald’s sued two protesters for libel . I believe this case was the longest in British legal history. A large corporation fighting two very poor people– made the company look very small.

A word of warning

When a business puts images and text on a screen they own the copyright and in many cases trademark rights of words and images. They have the right to protect these images and text and can in certain circumstances will sue the person who breaches these rights.

However, unless you do something to harm the company’s interest it is unlikely that they will really worry about you.

Legally though I am to warn you that if you use copyright material you do so at your own risk and I should not be held responsible for any problems that you may have.

What is important is that if a big company decides that they do not like you using their material on your site then I would advise removing it very quickly, as the hassle in most cases it’s not worth it. You could easily end up in an expensive legal case fighting someone with a lot more cash than you.

Links

Social Realist: Great list of PR sites

Avangate: List of 50 PR release sites

Over to you

Have you used PR materials on your website? Can you recommend any good sources of public relations materials? What are you thoughts?

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: postaday2011, pr, writing

Be Inspired to Write by Free Articles Directories

February 2, 2011 By Paul Leave a Comment

In need of inspiration

Free article directories are a good place to do research and should inspire and encourage you to write good posts. take ideas and adapt them to your own writing style. Also being encouraged by the poor writing of some of the authors, who are more interested in trying to thrust their marketing messages down your throat.

Free article directories

Free article directories are, as their name suggests, large websites with a large number of articles that you can download and put on your site. The rules are that you cannot change the article and that you must keep the links at the bottom of the article, which are used to promote the author, or the author’s business.

Mostly the writers placing their work on a free article directory fall into three main categories: those who like to write and see their work online, similar in some ways to bloggers; there are others who want to see an idea on the web; however, the vast majority of writers are promoting something or another and using the directory to build links to their website, (as a blogger you should be doing this. I will be writing about this later this month).

Using the free directory for research

Look through any free article directory and you will see thousands and thousands of articles. These directories can be, should be, a great source of inspiration for any blogger. Click on the directory’s search system and put in your search.

Usually, you will find hundreds of articles on the topic that you have chosen. Now examine those articles — you’ll find that around a third are well written, a third are okay and the last third are obviously a sales blurb for a website that has been quickly, and badly, written. You can easily do a lot better than the majority.

I am not suggesting that you steal the articles, by cutting and pasting. I am suggesting that you first look at the longer, better written articles and on a notepad write down the main ideas. Then look at other articles and write down their main points. On your notepad you then have a lot of useful points which you can use to produce your own, well written post.

Write in your own style

from your notes list a number of headings. You now have the structure of what is going to be a great post. Warm up the computer, start hitting the keyboard and in a reasonably short time you have got that great post.

Do not be influenced by the writing style of the free articles, but please retain your own individual style. Where appropriate give a little of yourself in your post to personalise with your personal experience or your personal opinion. This is what your visitors want and this is the reason they keep coming back.

Recycle back to the free article directories

once you have finished your article, added your images, and posted to the net you deserve a break. When you come back you can then rewrite the article, possibly making it a little shorter. It is then ready to be published on the free article directories with a strong back link to your site, which will help boost your search engine ratings.

Links

Ezine Articles: The market leader

Articlebase: One of the best – has a lot of good writers

Free Articles: a good select of ‘how to’ articles

Ezine list of articles on what to write: What to write

Over to you

Have you used the free article directories for research? Which directories can you recommend? What other techniques you use to get writing inspiration?

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: free directories, inspiration, postaday2011, writing

I want to write a blog – but I don’t know what to write

February 1, 2011 By Paul 12 Comments

What shall we write

There are five types of new blogger:

those who know what they want to write
those that are writing to promote their business
those that are writing to promote a cause or raise an issue.
those that want to write a blog, but don’t know what to write
and people like me who like to write, but are unfocused.

This article looks at the problem of many bloggers – I want to write – but I’ve no idea what to write. Help me?

As some famous person once said the worse type of businessman is someone that aims low and still misses. Worst still is the blogger who vaguely knows the target is over there someone and then makes a half hearted attempt at hitting it – if they knew what it is or what it looks like.

Categorise your thoughts

If you haven’t got a clue what to write on you blog then the first stage is decide on a category, or two, or many.

Techniques you can use to find a category:

Go and surf: You need a pen and pad. Spend a couple of hours surfing and just note down the areas that you are interested in. These are likely topics you be interested in.
Think about the people you’d like to network with: then decide which categories they’d be interested in

When you socialise: note what subjects interest you and which ones bore you.

Sunday supplements: what you end up reading are likely to be good topics.
Sex, drugs and rock and roll: read the tabloids and try and get an idea or to – to write about – not do.
Want to make money: business, technology and high value products are all worthwhile areas for you
All else fails: then write about the internet.

Generate post ideas

Mind Mapping: This time you need a large piece of paper. Turn it so that it is landscape. Write you category name in the centre.

Use lines to generate sub-categories and related topics. Then break down the sub-categories further. This should give you a good number of potential post subjects.

Mind Map (wikipedia)

If you must be technical then here’s a link to free mind-mapping software. I personally reckon a pad and a few coloured, fine line pens works best.

Category profile listing

List all the characteristics of the category.

Look up definitions of the category and the terms making up the characteristics of category.

Look up words at random and trip and link them with some of the terms. This should then generate some post headings.

Start write

‘We were talking about kippers’ (smoked fish). This was a writing technique taught to me by my father. When going into an English exam and you know that you’re going to write a strange first line – you know you’re going to get a good grade.

So if you have a write on ‘My summer holiday’ or ‘My best day ever’ then starting with the line ‘We were talking about kippers…’ gives you a great advantage over the other kids who will mostly start – ‘My summer holiday was…’

Generate your own unusual phrases and see if that will link into a post.

Alternatively get an old book of famous saying – pick a saying at random and see if you can generate a post from the saying.

With some practice this will work.

Links

Watchout 4 snakes: Creativity tools

Chris Brogan: 100 ideas for posts

Smart Boy: 93 ways to beat writer’s block

How to Make My Blog: Inspirational Blogging – what should I write about

Beginning to Blog: Unfocused Writers

Beginning to Blog: Using Comments to generate posts