A while ago, I attended a small panel at the Orem library. The panelists were accomplished bloggers who gave some nice advice on blogs. The following are the notes I’ve taken from the panel. Some of my personal thoughts and observations will be at the end of my notes. Enjoy.
Presenters were Courtney Kendrick and Sandra Taylor.
– Blogging can be a marketing tool.
– The book Paula by Isabella ? Was an inspiration to Sarah to start writing.
– Techniques to draw people to your blog: 1. The post that bring the most traffic or those that are unique. One blog on how to milk a goat and that is still getting a lot of hits. Another popular blog was sea tics and how to combat them. One blog got a lot of hits because it had a very popular photograph of a man facing a tidal wave. Determine what you want the content of your blog to be.
– Self-promotion: twitter, right from the heart.
– One blogger will create a separate Facebook page for each of her books.
– How to find the balance between gimmicks and writing from the heart? No, that you are a blogger, first. One good example of writing from the heart is titled oh happy day. Just write about her business and parenting. Write about relevant topics. One of the reasons for blog is popular is because she writes about serious topics such as depression and other emotions.
– How can one began blogging: try the following avenues blogger, Word Press. Live Journal used to be popular but is going away.
– How do bloggers respond to talking about family and keeping their kids safe? One of the bloggers didn’t feel it was a concern. The other blogger gives pseudonyms for her children and does not post photos.
– One blogger when she writes about her kids, tries not to not present them in a negative light. That will better prevent them from being teased at school.
– How do you prepare the content for your blogs? One blogger tries to have a lot of various adventures. She tries to read a lot. And she does law self-reflection.
– Elizabeth Gilbert did a speech that was posted on Ted was she gave advice about her writing. She gave the advice which his seat in the chair and Wight.
– Your creativity can be trained. So that when you sit each day at the computer, you can write.
– Book: For one more day by Rick ? One of the bloggers felt sad that she couldn’t write as well as this author. Then as she began to study his writing. She sought that he simply did some the same technique she did in a more effective way. But the book is given her an opportunity to improve her own writing.
– How do you respond to criticisms? One blogger has websites dedicated to how much they hate her blog. She doesn’t read them too often, but occasionally she will. It gives her the chance to widen her perspective. And she is sometimes found ways to improve our self from the content of those sites. If some the criticism hurts than some of it may be true. When you encounter this analyze why it hurts and listen to the voice inside to determine how to respond.
– How much of other bloggers do you read in comparison to how much time you spend on your blog? Some bloggers will read and post to blogs that share the same subject matter. Other bloggers will read blogs that are on other topics/subjects that are different from their own.
– What advice you have for blogger to increase their readership? Sanders blog became popular because she described her experiences of taking care of six children from her sister who died in an airplane crash. It suggested to find a style of your blogging. For Sarah. She writes on topics that uncomfortable and awkward. But these subjects interest a lot of readers. Another way for readership, is to talk on a hot topic. For example, Sarah expressed opinions about a hot topic several months ago of LDS women wearing pants to church. Because that is such a controversial topic, her comments got a lot of readers.
– SEO: means search engine optimization. This is where you can modify and put keywords in your text, but other searches of the web can find.
– Another way to expand publicity is to write in other markets. Some bloggers will post in other people’s blogs. One of these bloggers publishes in the Deseret news. And readers will often click on the link to her site and read more material on her site. Anyone can write the Deseret news.
– Write something you really love.
– If you have a high-traffic blog businesses will contact you and offer to pay you to post advertising.
– Book leaping by Brian Doyle.
– Controversy is the first thing that draws people to a blog.
Now for some of my personal ideas that I came up with while attending this presentation. As I mentally. Brainstorm on how I can improve my own blogs in my own site I came up with the following ideas. I don’t know how many of them are good ideas but brainstorming is the first step. For exposure. I would like to try the idea of titling some of my blog posts to have part of a phrase that is shared by a hot news topic of the day. For example, since there is so much attention on the national debt, maybe I would try a title: managing my home budget is not quite like the national debt. That may be a silly title, but it might be something like that. If you get my drift.
I remember another piece of advice that my nephew gave to me as he was configuring my website. He recommended that I populate my blogs and website with buzzwords that would be frequently used by my intended audience. Since I have a blog dedicated to object lessons that teach Christian values, I will often lead my Monday blogs with. ‘I hope these object lessons will interest youth ministries, family counselors, and be of use for family devotionals and home evenings.”
As I look at my weekly stats. I average about a range between 90-130 visitors a week at the moment. Mondays and Tuesdays seem to be days that are not as popular as the other days of the week. I don’t know. That’s because of the subject matter or even silly because Mondays and Tuesdays are busy days of the week. I may have to ask other people that have analytics run on their sites to see this is a common trait. If Monday and Tuesday blogs are not of interest that I may want to find a different topic.
For different topic, I remember some of blogging advice I heard in a former presentation. Some authors will put up blogs representing the characters of their books. This may be something I will do once I have for my books publishes hardback.
Another important principle that was emphasizes evening was to write from your heart. Maybe my previous blogs are intended to provide information. But I think us or flavoring my articles with some of my personal comments. I have to admit I don’t love anyone would be interested what my opinion is. So usually I do share the opinions of others in the knowledge of others. But to see if I would get more response from readers. I might start adding my personal comments at the bottom of the notes I share.
I was told tonight how I could submit material to the LDS market. And Deseret news. The site is called Deseret connect. So, I’ll try that avenue for my writing.
