Top 5 Most Annoying Blogging Clichés
The niche of blogging tips is a crowded one and no wonder it’s that way. Blogging is so “the new black”. It gives you freedom, the perspective of making a few (or more) bucks and why not, for some might be just a way to vent. So, what better way to reach a constantly growing and renewing audience than by providing tips on how they should blog. The problem is that sometimes bloggers in this niche forget to be original and get stuck in the same circle of clichés.
Let me take you through my personal top 5 list of the most annoying blogging clichés.
5. Content is king
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that reads this almost daily on some blog or Twitter. It gives me the feeling that people keep on discovering the wheel over and over again. We all know that content is king, but there’s so much more beyond that. How many or the articles you read on this topic go further into exploring the ways to give your content the deserved spotlight? My take is that without due promotion, aesthetics and a good network, your content is nothing but a king without a kingdom!
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5 ways to set your unique blogging voice apart
Nothing helps set a blog and its author apart and give them the visibility they need more effectively than a unique blogging voice, one that’s easily recognizable in each post you publish. Both general and niche blogs need their style to help them stand out. It’s an easy way to gain loyal fans, authority and reputation.
How exactly can you find your blogging voice and make sure it is recognizable in everything you publish? Here are a few tips:
1. Identify your blogging voice
Each person has their preferences for certain phrases, expressions, ways of building phrases or of presenting arguments. This personal style needs to be inserted into your blog writing and maintained throughout each post. You need to experiment to first come to understand which is your blogging voice, otherwise you’ll just stumble around blindly, picking up influences from who ever you might think is hot and popular at a certain point. It has to be your inner voice, not a fabricated one, as its being genuine will make it easier to maintain. It will be something that comes naturally when you write, not a forced tactic meant at setting you apart that you might overlook when getting into a topic you’re passionate about.
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4 Great Ways to Get More Interaction on Your Blog
There are a lot of bloggers out there that write great content and even if they get a decent amount of traffic, some of them don’t seem to have a lot of interaction with their readers. On top of that, some of them might discover your site from the search engines and never come back again, even if they liked it. Seriously, they could have forgotten your URL or website name.
Your goal is to grow as much as possible with your current traffic. There are many different ways to get more traffic to your blog or website, but why not establish a better connection with your current readers from the start. Master this and then you can work on getting more unique visitors later on. So listed below are some ways to accomplish this and brand your website or blog
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Blog Writing Tips from the World’s Most Famous Authors
You know me, I always encourage you to experiment, to learn new things, to reinvent yourself, but sometime the wheel doesn’t not need to be reinvented. Sometimes the best thing to do is to learn from the experience and wisdom of our “elders”. Such is the case of today’s blog post. Instead of sharing some of my own tips with you, I’ll leave you in the company of some of the world’s most famous authors and only interpret their teachings in the art of writing.
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
Matthew Arnold
It’s easy to get lost in words and ideas. It’s harder to keep your writing concise and to the point, to make it clear and easy to read. Focus on getting your ideas across, to your readers, in their most natural form. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Matthew Arnold both agree on this.
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Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive
As promised a while back, I’ve finished editing the Corporate Blogging Guide in PDF eBook format. So, today I give you the chapters you’ve had the chance to read online plus a whole new chapter (8. Technical aspects) and some bonus tips to guide you in your corporate blogging adventures!
How to download the eBook?
In order to download the ebook, all you have to do is to subscribe for free to Blogsessive’s RSS feed (if you haven’t done so until now) and you’ll find the download link at the end of each article in the feed.
eBook preview and contents
Here are two screenshots of the book’s cover and the contents page:
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Corporate Blogging Guide (7): Blog Performance Tracking Tools
A blog’s success is measured through both its number of active readers or of RSS subscribers and its performance in traffic: number of page views, of unique visitors, popularity, page rank and many others.
There are a few methods to obtain the needed statistics to track and measure such indicators.
1. Access and traffic statistics
Google, the most powerful and popular search engine in the world, provides bloggers with traffic statistics though its free Google Analytics service.
By choosing a free Google Analytics account, you can view stats regarding your blog’s page views, number of unique or returning visitors, keywords used to reach your blog, the most visited pages you have posted, geographical tracking of your visitors and much more.
Google Analytics is currently considered to be a very accurate and relevant tool. Other services you might consider are StatCounter or Woopra with its live tracking and analytics features.
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Halloween Special: Don’t be afraid to blog!
Happy Halloween folks! As you might have noticed, Blogsessive has changed its “clothes” on this special occasion. Don’t worry, the nerd will be back tomorrow, when Dracula “leaves the building”.
Now, since this is a special occasion, the topic for today’s article has been inspired by a comment I received on part 6 of the Corporate Blogging Guide:
I think we all start our blogs worried people might not like us and when they do, we don’t want to change for fear of losing readers. I’ll take experiments to stagnation any day.
David Walker
The moment I read David’s comment I knew he made a really good remark. It is fear that keeps us in place. It is fear that keeps us from “spreading our wings”. We abide all the rules and all things that we know for sure will work and hope to be the next blogging “rockstar”. But, do you really believe those “rockstars” we all follow are there because they are copycats? Because they follow rules? Or might it be possible that they are the ones creating new rules? Might they be the ones revolutionizing the concepts?
Do you want to be a better blogger? Then…
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Corporate Blogging Guide (6): Blogging Tips to Get You Started
Regardless of the blog type you choose, be it personal or corporate, the following pieces of advice are meant to guide your steps in your future blogging activity. These are the most important blog tips you’ll need to follow when starting a new blogging adventure!
1. Look for ideas at any time and in any place
A conversation in the subway, a debate or piece of news heard on the car radio, anything can turn into a new topic for your blog. Keep your mind open and tune your hearing, combine them with good analysis skills and you will have some killer weapons in your arsenal.
2. Raise and maintain interest
An attractive first paragraph is not enough to maintain the reader’s interest throughout your blog post. “Start big, finish bigger”. Provide new hooks in small doses to keep your readers interest throughout the article.
3. Generate the conversation and take part in it
Often times, bloggers are compared to journalists, and their blogs to newspapers (usually tabloids, not broadsheets). Yet blogs and online newspapers differ exactly where they are also alike – the comments section. Newspapers use the comments section to allow users to express their frustrations and almost never moderate them. The classic journalistic style rarely requires an answer or any feedback, usually being limited to presenting the facts or expressing an opinion.
The main ace bloggers play is their power to start conversations and to keep them going by being part of them.
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Corporate Blogging Guide (5): Blog Editors & Editorial Policy
Depending on the type of corporate blog you’re targeting, you can then put together an editorial team. To make sure you correctly appoint those in charge of content generation and blog management, you need to consider the following criteria:
1. Criteria to help build the editorial team
The future bloggers needs to be/have:
- Experts in the filed they are going to cover;
- A good communicator, able to manage potential communication crises arising from dialogues and feedback generated by the blog;
- Concise, clear and explicit when they express themselves, as they will not target only those who are in their turn experts and are acquainted to the field’s jargon;
- Believable and genuine in what the provided information is concerned;
- A human touch and a pleasant manner of writing;
- Ready to face a reduced level of privacy in their lives, at least in what the online world is concerned.
2. PR department involvement
Most communications through the corporate blog usually abide by the general public relations policies within the company, thus it is strongly recommended that your blogger(s) work together with your PR department. Their collaboration helps:
- abide by the general communication tone imposed by company standards;
- prevent or, if needed, manage possible communication crises;
- develop the bloggers’ communication skills and ability to generate valuable content.
Corporate Blogging Guide (4): Types of Corporate Blogs
So, you think you are ready to launch a corporate blog for your company? Based on previously set goals for your blog and the available resources, the most common types of corporate blogs from which you can choose are:
CEO blog
The CEO blog is the blog authored by someone from the company’s top management. The general trend for such blogs is to publish analyses of the main events in a certain filed, forecasts and statistics, this content pattern thus positioning the author as a thought leader.
Often times this type of blog will be strongly related to the company brand, its products and services.
A few famous examples of CEO blogs:
- Jonathan Schwartz (President & CEO, Sun Microsystems)
- Craig Newmark (CEO, Craig’s List)
- Jason Calacanis (CEO, Weblogs)
Entrepreneur blog
Similar to the CEO blog in what the editorial style is concerned, the entrepreneur blog is set apart by a significantly larger volume of information relevant to the author’s field of expertise and by diary-type entries describing the ongoing projects the entrepreneur is focusing on at the time.
A couple of examples of entrepreneur blogs:
Multi-author company blog
Several authors – company employees from different departments – publish content on this type of blog, each of them writing articles that cover their area of expertise. Often times these types of blogs turn into blog communities aggregating content published by individual, single-author blogs.
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