how to blog Tag

27 Oct

Posted at 07:20h in Uncategorized by
When you are incorporating news stories into your blog content, your approach truly matters. You are never going to successfully compete with the large media sites, so re-stating industry-relevant stories will never captivate your readers. You can use the news information in a number of different ways and your approach really depends not only on  your industry, but also how you’ve positioned your blog. You have to ensure that your blog posts contain news in a way that makes sense to your readers, not just for search or backlink reasons. Here are a few ways to incorporate news into your blog posts: 

18 Oct

Posted at 12:41h in Uncategorized by
As a small business owner it’s easy to find yourself pulled in six (or six thousand) different directions. As a result, when you decide to start blogging it’s hard to know how much time you really need to invest.  Problogger Beth Hodgson hails from Canada, aka the Shizzle north of Hizzle.  We always worry about how often to post and sticking to a consistent schedule.  But consistency and frequency are not the only issues when you're managing your time as a mompreneur, small business owner, author or any combination of the three. There's another  problem – everyone does things at his or her own pace. It's hard to pinpoint the right number of "hours"  blogging should take. There's no set recipe. Instead, it's important to make sure you're maximizing the time you do have, no matter how large or small the bucket. Here are six ways you can make the most of your time for the smallest investment possible.

21 Sep

Posted at 08:00h in Uncategorized by
By Beth Graddon-Hodgson, who is from Canada.  Which may make her opinions rather suspect, if not subversive.  With constantly evolving demands in social media, it is interesting how there is such a high frequency of social media conferences when techniques almost can’t be taught.  Why do so many people feel the need to share their expertise on something when there are no real rules? The question is on my mind because there are a number of social media conferences popping up around the Toronto Area. The 140 Characters Conference is on a North American tour and just happened here.  Blissdom Canada is another conference coming up this fall. Here are a few thoughts of mine about why these conferences are important and also some words of caution for those trying to learn from them. 

15 Sep

Posted at 07:29h in Integrated Marketing by
By Beth Graddon-Hodgson Last week's post was all about techniques for pushing your blog articles on social media. This week, we'll keep going on a similar direction and talk about how hard you  should have to work to market your blog. It's a question I'm asked all the time - people hire me for the writing but don't have a budget for  social media, guest posts, sourcing etc. However, they also aren't interested in trying these things themselves,  believing that the blog content will do all of the work. If you're only going to invest your money and time in one marketing arena and you've got a lower budget, a blog is your best step. However, it is part of a bigger puzzle - you can't always expect to have 10,000 hits per month if  you just focus on great blog content. When determining your priorities for marketing time, consider the following:

31 Aug

Posted at 09:02h in Uncategorized by
Looking at many of the job postings for writers, I see a lot of people saying that they don’t want ‘spun’ articles. Obviously, the term is being used in a negative context, which I find interesting, because I’ve always looked at it in a more positive way.  Once again, with the evolution of web content we’re seeing one term being used in a variety of ways, which can lead to serious confusion.

23 Aug

Posted at 14:22h in Small Business, Social Media by
In my last post, we looked at some of the different ways of defining original content that you may not have considered when writing your blogs. I introduced the idea of using Copyscape to ensure that there is no duplication within your posts, and this week we’ll look exactly at how you can use that tool to your advantage. Copyscape is designed primarily to prevent plagiarism.  Often, websites use it to ensure that no one else has stolen their original content.  It is also a great tool to use as a writer. When I’ve discussed this with other writers in the past,  I’ve received looks like I’m crazy using Copyscape on my own writing – because it should be pretty clear to me whether or not I’ve plagiarized the content. That may be true, but as we covered last time, there are other definitions of ‘original content’ and if I want to ensure that I meet the criteria for one of those – ensuring there is  ZERO duplication within the content - Copyscape is the best option. Want to know more about using Copyscape to ensure your content is original ?

12 Jul

Posted at 06:24h in Small Business by
By Beth Graddon-Hodgson Although the Google Panda update has been responsible for the decline in ranking success for many sites – in some cases,  for justified reasons – it has helped reinforce a number of important concepts that apply to blogging. What Google has been so kind to reinforce is  a number of concepts that we’ve discussed before on this blog. But considering there’s now more demand to put the related strategies for use, it is worth revisiting. Whether you’re just starting a blog or already have one setup, there are some things you should implement now.  Panda reminds us of the power of these simple strategies:

21 Jun

Posted at 12:31h in Uncategorized by
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve explored the cons (and pros) of Google Panda as well as some tips to make sure your blog meets the new criteria. This week, I want to look a little bit more generally at the things that you need to do if your website has already been hurt by Google Panda.

31 May

Posted at 06:17h in Uncategorized by
By Beth Graddon-Hodgson It doesn’t matter how you are or what you are writing about, at some point, you are going to fall under scrutiny for something that you did or didn’t say, or about the style of your writing. Sometimes  when you’re a writer, it may be your client that questions your choices. But, more often than not, the scrutiny comes from your readers. We’ve talked about dealing with criticism before on a larger scale; this time, we’ll focus on exactly what you should ask yourself before you decide how to deal with that criticism.

19 Apr

Posted at 08:18h in Uncategorized by
In past posts we’ve talked about using the language of your readers and the semantics of choosing between using your “local” language  (Canadian or British English, for example) or the universal language of the internet (US English). That discussion brought up other questions – like whether or not you should be making appeals to your local readers with your content. This week I started thinking about the issue again after a client made a comment. After posting an article on an NYC business’ site, the client commented on a line that said the following, “People who have been coping with a cold winter climate....” His comment was “we’re a business in New York, isn’t that kind of redundant? All of our clients just experienced winter.” Inarguably, if you’re writing strictly for a local audience, that kind of statement is redundant. But, when writing client blogs I very rarely include a local perspective when it’s a general interest topic where location is irrelevant. After further discussion with my client, it came out that his perspective was “only local readers are going to turn into clients”.  It is a fair point – but I think you know that I just don’t agree that it’s everything, and here’s why: