Authentic Blogger: December 2009

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Blogging Tips 101: Maximizing copy

So, fellow bloggers, Marty and I are slowly getting things pulled together now that the holidays are drawing to a close. Both of us have discussed, many times in the past 10 days, what in the world possessed us to decide to launch Authentic Blogger prior to Christmas. As Marty recently commented, [paraphrased]

"We knew it would take off, but we weren't expecting it to fly!"

Don't get me wrong, we're thrilled with the level of success, we just weren't quite prepared to keep up with all the demands on our time, imagination and skills. We're finding balance. One of the list of points we discussed as part of our Mission Statement right from the get-go was to produce helpful tips, share insights, and just be available in general to the blogging community. After all, we were all novice bloggers at one time, and it can be overwhelming and confusing if you're starting the whole process alone.

My focus for this blog is one that I have known for quite some time about maximizing copy in blog format, but I had forgotten it in the midst of holiday and birthing of AB insanity. The concept of which I speak is to format your content in such a manner that makes it easily scannable for key, "hot" or tag words. This makes SEO, or Search Engine Optimization much easier and creates a document that is more easily categorized out there in cyberland.

The process is easy. As you read this blog post, notice the words I have highlighted. They are the ones that will be considered as "hot" or key words to any search engine. In addition to this valuable formatting, highlighting key words also gives more movement and visual appeal, balance and excitement to your content. Imagine this blog post without the highlighted key words. It would read the same and have the same content value. However, with key words highlighted, there is more visual recognition and the reader's eye will take in the copy in smaller "bites" ensuring less visual exhaustion, per se.

I'm sure you've started out reading a blog that went on for what felt like centuries, to the point that eventually, you grew so tired of waiting for the author to make their point and come to final conclusion that you just deleted the page and moved on. Right? I know I have done that. Heck, let's be honest - I'm personally guilty of writing that very type of endless blog. Sometimes it takes reading endless, involved blogs to remind us, as writers, that brevity is valuable in blogging format. This isn't written in stone, of course, but it is an important rule of thumb to keep in mind.

From a reader's perspective, keeping each paragraph succinct, clear in message and visually appealing guarantees that you will hold people's attention. Breaking text, or content up with highlighting key words, keeping each paragraph relatively short and staying withing a reasonable length will guarantee that your readers will enjoy their time on your blog page. They'll be more inclined to keep pulling up your blog to read new posts and will be more likely to suggest your blog to other people to read and follow. That is your ultimate goal, to gain a solid readership.

Now, in the theme of brevity, I will close and hope that this new series of Blogging Tips 101 proves to be of value to you, our readers. Please feel free to write comments and suggest future topics for our Blogging Tips series. We're always open to working on anything that provides encouragement and education to the blogging community at large.

Dawn S.
Author, Healing Morning blog
Author, The Authentic Blogger blog
Co-Creator, Authentic Blogger group

Blogging Tips 101

You haven’t heard much from me yet. I’m a co-creator of Authentic Blogger with Dawn, and I’ve been handling the IT end of this site. But today, I’d like to discuss one of the main purposes of Authentic Blogger and give a few geeky details.

To gain more readers to your specific blog content, we encourage you to post your link to the Authentic Blogger facebook wall. I know to some of you, this will be far too many details, but please bear with me. I'll get to more intense things on my next post. These are the instructions to copy and paste:

1.    Go to your personal blog address (www.myblogexample.blogspot.com.)

2.    Select the specific post you want to share on AB wall. Do this by clicking on the Title of your specific post. (Otherwise, you'll wind up posting to the full page of your blog that shows every post you've published.)

3.    On the top of your screen, you will find an address starting with "http://" or “www” and very likely ending in “.html” if you are using blogger. Highlight the entire address. (An optional way is hitting “Ctrl + A” on windows, or “Command + A on Mac)

4.    After highlighting, press “Ctrl + C” on windows, or “Command + C” on Mac. This copies the address.

5.    In a new window, go to the Authentic Blogger wall.

6.    In the box where it says, “Write Something,” tell us a little bit about that particular blog post. Explain in just a few words what inspired you to write it or what it is about.

7.    Next, look directly below the "Write Something" text window where you put your personal comments and find where it says Attach. Next to Attach, you will see a series of icons, with the first being a piece of paper with a push pin. This is the icon for posting Links. Click on it and this will produce a new text box window with "http://" showing. Put your cursor here, right click and "http://" will disappear. Now, insert your blog link by hitting “Ctrl + V” on windows, or “Command + V” on Mac.

8.    After you see your blog link appear, click the blue “Share” button.

9.    If it didn’t work, you can practice on this website.

10.    If it did work, Congratulations!

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to comment on this post. I promise to answer! Or if you prefer, you can send an email to authenticblogger@live.com. Thanks for listening and for making Authentic Blogger a success. I look forward to seeing your latest post on the wall!

We will also post these helpful How To Hints on the Discussion Board on the AB wall. That Discussion Board topic, entitled Blogging Tips 101 will be a “living document” that we pledge to continue adding tips and suggestions to and will always be accessible for you to pull up, copy and download to your personal files.

Finally, a very important request!!! Please remember to take a moment while you’re here to follow our The Authentic Blogger blog page! We sometimes forget to sufficiently bring attention to our sister (to the AB group page on FB) blog, and we do want to grow our readership and followers here. Please also take a moment to tell your friends about The Authentic Blogger blog page so they can visit!

Marty Duane
Author, Coffee With Marty blog
Author, Authentic Blogger blog
Co-Creator, Authentic Blogger Group

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The power of comments

want to talk for a minute about posting comments on the blogs you follow. Do you take time to do this very important action? If you're like many, you follow a whole slew of blogs and you might not take time to read any of them. That was one of the basic reasons that the Authentic Blogger Facebook group was created - to form a community of bloggers who actually DO want to connect to one another in a sincere, authentic manner. The next logical part of that premise, beyond connecting and following other blogs is to read the content. Okay, yes, sometimes you can't read every single, individual blog post that pops up on your FB wall, or pops into your Inbox. I realize that the hours are filled with endless responsibilities for all of us and that it takes time and commitment to read more than a handful of various blog posts each day.

That being said, I still want to emphasize that just following and just reading isn't enough! For a blog author, and from my personal perspective, the most valuable aspect of the blogging world is getting feedback from my readers. Let me digress a moment and say that there are some nifty tracking websites out there that you can sign up for free service to give you daily and weekly reports on the traffic your blog receives. The one that I use is called StatCounter.com. Take a moment to pull up their page, register and get this tool for your blog - it shows you, daily, how many hits you get on your blog, how many new, repeat and unique visitors you receive. It will give you charts and graphs to delight the heart of any analytical or graphic arts inclined blogger out there! There is even a navigation button to click on that produces a map of the world, with push pins indicating the location of each visitor to your site. Until I got this set up for my blog, I had no way of knowing if people ever visited unless they posted a comment. Now, I have StatCounter set up to send me a weekly report and it's a very valuable tool that I highly recommend.

Important plug for Authentic Blogger (AB) group on Facebook - until Marty and I created AB, I was building a slow, steady following of my personal blog, Healing Morning. That is the way I prefer it, as it indicates people following (I hope!) who truly enjoy my posts. My StatCounter weekly reports, however, exploded exponentially with this first week of AB being live on Facebook - this means that the AB group is succeeding in its mission goal, to provide exposure to all the talented blog authors out there!

That being said...let's get back to posting comments. Feedback matters, people! You, as a blog author author, know the devotion, care, time and effort that you put into each of your blog posts. I'm sure that you're pleased and gratified when someone takes a minute to post a comment about a given blog entry of yours, right? I would also be willing to bet that you look forward to those comments and hope for more of the same with each new entry posted. Why then, would you deny another blog author that same simple courtesy? It takes mere minutes to scroll down to the bottom of their blog post, click on Post Comments and write something genuine and thoughtful. I realize that there are trials and tribulations with Posting Comments for us all - I have days that it seems every blog I attempt to post a comment on is holding a personal grudge against me and refuses to accept my comment. I don't claim to have IT answers for why it is sometimes difficult or impossible to get your comment to successfully post. I know it's aggravating and annoying, but you CAN keep trying.

I find that with my own attempts, and my blog is with Blogspot, sometimes I have to click as many as three times on Post Comment for it to succeed. It will tell me my attempt was not successful, please try another time. I ignore that and click on Post Comment again, and again, and usually by the third click, it works and attaches my Healing Morning blog stamp to the comment. Other times, it will be really aggravating and "poof" my comment out of existence. I've learned to take the precaution of copying my comment prior to clicking to post so that if it poofs, I can go back in and try one more time.

My point here is that Posting Comments is a vital, important part of the blogging process. It gives us all important feedback. It lets us know that yes, we were successful in communicating our message and thought, or it lets us know that no, we weren't quite on the mark as sharply as we had intended. Comments are the only way we're going to know these things, and they help us all to grow as writers, hone our skills and stretch our personal boundaries and horizons. Plus, let's all be honest, it is just plain fun to know people liked your blog post enough to write a comment!!! It tickles that secret place inside that we have that really, truly wants recognition for our writing efforts.

So, in closing, I encourage you all to embrace the practice of always, 100% of the time, posting a comment when you read someone's blog. If you fail to post on their actual blog page after multiple tries, then go the next step of posting on their Facebook page where most of the time, you can access a link to their most recent blog post. It is a small action, but huge in the impact it plays out for the blog author.

Dawn S.
Author, Healing Morning blog
Author, Authentic Blogger blog
Co-Creator, Authentic Blogger Group

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Personal touch

"I really appreciate how much you and Marty have been reaching out to your blogging community with such a personal touch." ~ Jenn Boyer, author, See My Heart Soul and Mind blog

The above quote was copied, verbatim, from a post made to the Facebook Authentic Blogger group page today. Authentic Blogger (aka AB) was born last night, December 21st around 9 pm, EST, the brainchild of myself and my partner in crime, Marty. We are fellow bloggers who met when we both started our respective blogs back in September 2009. Over the course of the past several months, we have visited via FB posts, emails, blog comment posts and phone calls, sharing our enjoyment and frustrations with the blogging world. I think everyone sits back and has those "I'd do it this way instead" type of thoughts about any given activity in which they've become involved. Marty and I were no different and we began discussing more and more, our wishes and wants for the blogging world. This culminated in an impromptu suggestion from one of us...not sure who suggested it first....to create our own community on Facebook.

Somehow, we've stumbled upon this unique and ideal partnership where the two of us are very complementary in our respective skillsets. Marty is much more IT savvy and I'm strong with marketing copy, taglines, design, etc. To be fair, we're both pretty good at several of those, and we're both strong writers. Everything has meshed into this beautiful partnership and we've created Authentic Blogger for all the other bloggers out there in the world who have been looking for such a community. I think I can speak for Marty as well when I say that we're both very happy we've struck such a strong, common chord for everyone. We're looking forward to the growth of our group and seeing how it will impact our group members and friends.

Jenn Boyer is the group member who wrote the above very kind, encouraging comment, so thanks Jenn! We appreciate the positive feedback and hope other members will take a moment here and there to post ideas, suggestions, tips and more encouragement. Marty and I knew we had a solid concept with this group page idea, but I must admit, neither of us were quite prepared for the enthusiastic response we've been getting. We LOVE it and hope it continues and compounds daily! Our immediate goal is to reach 100 members before we hit the 12 hour mark of existence, which is 9 pm, EST today, December 22, 2009. As I write this post, we are currently 69 group members strong! Absolutely, incredibly wonderful! We cordially invite you all to tell your blogging friends about Authentic Blogger. Don't forget to post your most recent blog entries on our wall each time you visit - this will guarantee that you get more exposure to your specific blog site and the upshot is, you'll gain followers and increase traffic and readership to your site. We want everyone to benefit from being a part of the Authentic Blogger community. Keep the posts coming!!!

**Note: in my rush and whirl of activity today dealing with AB issues, I overlooked creating a hyperlink to Jenn Boyer's blog. Jenn kindly pointed out this oversight, so I am re-posting both here and on the AB group page. Jenn, my apologies for the oversight and my thanks for your gracious understanding!

Dawn S.
Author, Healing Morning blog
Author, Authentic Blogger blog
Co-Creator, Authentic Blogger Group

Monday, December 21, 2009

Authentic Blogger - birth of an idea

I am happy to report that a close friend and I have just created a new Facebook group called Authentic Blogger. This is a community we have established for all bloggers, worldwide, to have an open forum for discussion, sharing information and tips on promotion, marketing and building awareness of each individul blog site.

In order to create continuity and duplicate our concept in the blogging world, we have created this blog site by the same name. We will stay true to the personality of our Facebook group by creating blog posts that offer helpful blogging tips, promotional ideas, expound on topics that we both embrace, with the goal of creating a complementary loop of information.

Our Mission Statement is simple - we want our name, Authentic Blogger, to say it all. Write, create and promote topics in your blog that resonate strongly with you. Follow blogs that speak to you personally and interest you. Do not cave in to the mindless "if you follow me, I'll follow you" concept that is rampant in the blogging world. Support your fellow bloggers/writers/artists by posting sincere, thoughtful comments on their blog site when a specific post truly captures your attention and imagination.

We hope to grow our community to a global level with lively, exciting interaction taking place on our Facebook wall and discussion boards. We anticipate that we will grow and change over time, and we look forward to that growth process. We welcome suggestions from all our future readers and hope that our group will provide you with hours of enjoyment. Please take a moment to visit our group page. If you're a blogger, please join our group and then post your site's URL on our wall. We hope you will also take time to tell all your blogger friends about us. Helping us to grow awareness and membership with our group will also help every member to garner attention and interest for their unique blog site.

This is an exciting new venture for us and we believe that there are no boundaries or limits with this concept. Both Marty (my partner and fellow officer) and I will work hard to make this a unique, worthwhile group for all bloggers, writers, artists and creative people in general to participate in. We hope to see you there!