But oh, there’s more.

The truly successful blogs don’t just create great content based around a niche, tweet it out, and wait for the readers to come in. They create blog evangelists – readers that are actively passionate about the brand, spread it by word of mouth, and happily sit by the “buy” button when a new product is released.

Every great blog has these evangelists – of course, though, the question then is – how do I find and/or create these for my blog? It’s not as hard as you think. Blog evangelists require more than just making one great piece of content, though. They require a nurturing, long process, much like taking care of a plant and ensuring it has proper exposure to sunlight and water. Blog readers are no different – they want to be cared for, and when they are, they reward you with great air and beauty (their evangelism).

How to Create Blog Evangelists

1. Make a Great Second Impression

Hopefully you’ve already written a great post. If you’ve done this, then you’ve already converted your reader in some way. They might have tweeted it out, commented, or added you to their RSS feed. Although this is a great thing to see, it doesn’t mean much. For most blogs, so few of these actions will result in follow-up movements like continued retweets, comments, or the like.

Much of this has to do with blog writers doing a poor job of the follow-up. This second impression is arguably the most important one – because it is a strong, powerful step towards both branding your blog and creating future evangelists.

So how do you do this? When people comment, the standard act is just to reply. Believe it or not, this is not enough. Many of these people won’t ever return to look at your follow-up, or subscribe to the comment thread. So, really, all your follow-up comment does – most of the time – is create the illusion of blog activity. What you need to do – and what is so infrequently done – is send an e-mail to every first time commenter on your website.

This creates a real, personal connection with the person who comments. Do a little research on the person, look at their website, and compliment them genuinely on something they do well. Let them know you’ll help them with anything they might need – and don’t lie if you can’t!

2. Create Social Engagement with Readers

If you can’t find an e-mail and the connection point is through a retweet, first, thank the person. Do this individually to increase personalization (rather than the five person mass “Thanks for the RT!” message). Follow them, even if they haven’t followed you. Given their retweet, the odds that they follow back is significantly higher.

Once they’ve retweeted you and/or commented, create a list for them. You can be straightforward and say “readers”, but I suggest you do something a little more obscure, like “people I find interesting” or “people I engage with”. After all, you don’t want to seem too commercial or automated when doing this. Use this list to track their tweet stream and find the best links or commentary they send out.

After that’s done, make a dedicated effort to make a follow-up engagement with this person. Look for something to reply to, or a tweet to funnel back to your followers. This follow-up will go a long way towards evangelism. And it must be within a week or so of their first engagement – as to ensure that you still have a familiar place in their mind.

Once that’s been done, you’ve made some strong steps towards creating brand evangelists. Now, you return back to the first impression – your blog post.

3. Follow up With More Great Content

Once you’ve planted the seed, it’s now your job to follow up on the initial great content that drew their attention. People love great posts, but they aren’t going to go out of their way to fall in love – not unless you nudge them to. By creating social engagement or putting yourself front-facing in their mind, you improve the likelihood they’ll return. Once that happens, you must continue creating things that stick, that they want to spread, and that they want to speak highly of.

The engagement is the easy (but also necessary) part – it’s the great content that’s going to make people run to their mothers to spread the word.

4. Maintain, Maintain, Maintain

Some people, based on personality type, schedules and other things, will take more nudges before turning in to full time readers of your blog. For these people, it will take more than that initial “poke” to start the ball in motion.

And admittedly, some of the smarter people will be very aware of exactly what you’re doing – trying to create evangelists. The more you connect, the more of a “friend” you’ll become – and less of a snake oil salesman. Of course, these kinds of relationships are more rewarding and fun anyways – and it should be your goal to establish this with as many of your readers as possible.

Every Plant Needs Water

The more I think about it, the more I realize blog readers are like plants. They take a long time to grow, but once you get them to their full height, they stay around for a long time, as long as you put them in the sunlight and water on occasion. But they can – and will – die if you don’t pay attention.

Good luck creating your blog evangelists. Do you have any more tips on creating loyal readership? Leave them in the comments!

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How to Create Blog Evangelists

The Narrative Template

1. Title
2. Opening Thought
3. Multiple Paragraphs of a Single, Flowing Thought

The Well-Structured Template

1. Title
2. Proposition / Thesis
3. Introduction / Hook
4. Transitional Statement
5. Major Points with Elaborations
6. Conclusion and Wrap-up
7. Call to Action

The Seth Godin Template

1. Title
2. Deeply Profound Insight in one to three hundred words.

Seth's Genius

The Money-Making Template

1. Title
2. Advertisement
3. Halfway Relevant but Keyword-Stuffed Opening
4. Advertisement
5. A List With Affiliate Links
6. Pitch a Product
7. Another Advertisement
8. A Plug for Your Email Newsletter
9. Advertisement
10. Another Halfway-Relevant Paragraph
11. Call to Action
12. Call to More Action
13. A pop-up When the Reader Tries to Leave

Oh come on folks, lighten up…

The Copyblogger Template

1. Title
2. Deeply Profound Insight in one to three thousand words.

Simple enough? What’s your template?

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Five Possible Blog Post Templates to Follow

1. Refusing to repeat ideas means you have to constantly have new ones, which can be exhausting.
2. The web is more and more a real-time content engine. Yesterday’s great idea is buried under today’s inspiration.
3. People forget what you’re about if you don’t remind them.

One leadership expert often reminds his people that “vision leaks.” You can share it, but you’ll need to share it again in six weeks or everyone will forget it. That can be true of a blog’s audience as well. Our attention spans are shorter than ever, so if you want to be memorable, you have to update your readers’ memory often.

Your best ideas are certainly worth repeating, and if it’s not worth repeating, it’s probably not your best idea. I’ve been a public speaker for thirteen years and have spoken to the exact same crowd, three times per week for half a decade. That means I’ve spoken to one group of people close to 1,000 times. During that time, I learned that originality isn’t always possible. The alternative is the same basic ideas re-packaged and re-published in a new and fresh way.

Here’s the question for you… how do you re-package ideas in a fresh way? How should a blogger utilize repetition and how can she do it without becoming lazy in the process?

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Hey Blogger, Could You Repeat That?

A community is a place where people connect with each other in personal relationships. An online community can be thought of, not so much as a tightly defined circle, but rather a loose collection of smaller, overlapping circles. A blogger who wants to manage an online community should be finding ways to connect those circles to each other more effectively.

How do you reach into your online community to strengthen the relationships that exist there? Here are five suggestions…

1. Personally contact individual members. When people leave comments or sign up for your mailing list, they’re giving you permission to contact them. In our ultra-spammy age, this requires a great deal of trust. Never abuse this by sending obviously unsolicited pitches, but I think you can feel free to make an initial “thank you” contact.
2. Highlight great comments in a future post. Occasionally someone leaves a comment that is worthy of being its own post. They’ve taken the time to contribute to the community discussion in a way that might need more attention than being buried in a long, threaded discussion.
3. Turn a question back to the community. There are two big advantages of this: 1.) You get to pass the buck temporarily on a tough question, and 2.) People are generally rather opinionated and love weighing in.
4. Connect community members to each other. This is really the power of the social web. Bob asks a question about building widgets. Sandy mentions that James is an awesome widget-maker. A new connection is formed which only serves to strengthen the community.
5. Highlight the accomplishments of community members. In other words, when you notice someone in your community doing something great off your site, report about it on your site.

What else? How do you reach into your community?

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5 Creative Ways to Reach Into Your Online Community

“Community” is admittedly a buzz word, but it’s one we can’t avoid using in connection with building great blogs. It’s one of the essential elements of a total web presence for any person or organization.

The word community has to do with “sharing in common.” It’s a principle much older than the internet and dates back to the dawn of human civilization. Our work as bloggers and community managers isn’t to invent the concept of community, but to understand the social principles of community and apply them to our online villages.

Community isn’t as easy to understand as we might think. Human relationships are complex and often fragile, and building a successful online community requires more effort that many bloggers are willing to invest.

Here are seven myths about building online communities, and some correct alternative conclusions…

If You Build It, They Will Come

At one time, we operated under the assumption that an online community was built out of a good domain, hosting, and a sweet design. But there are plenty of well designed websites collecting dust because no one knows they exist. For a community to grow, it needs publicity, which comes in various forms. Our community can be found in organic search results. We can advertise and promote it. We can paste the url on billboards across the land, but as far as community is concerned, we need to realize the power of the invitation.

Inviting someone into a community is powerful. Facebook knows this and it’s why they want you to share everything you like with your friends. People long to belong and have an insatiable need for acceptance. Churches know this. So do gangs. And the sooner bloggers figure it out, the better. Invite people.

Great Content Is All You Need

I’ve said before that content is the currency of social media, and I stand by that truth. Content is the core of a great blog. It can be wrapped in a slick design and marketed via multiple channels, but if the content stinks, all incentive is lost for potential community members.

However, great content does not create community. Word on a page, no matter how eloquent, do not foster interpersonal connections between people. People do. Beyond content, a community demands and thrives on interaction. While interaction can be fostered by multiple mediums, it must be nurtured by a community manager. If you’re a blogger, that’s you. You’re not just a writer if you’re a blogger – you’re a people connector.

Offer Every Possible Feature

I grew up in a small community. We had a store, a fire station with a ballpark attached, and some churches. We didn’t have a mall or large supermarket. People who needed clothes and other essentials for life “went to town” to find them, but community happened there. That fire station became the location of an annual fair and everyone showed up. People stopped at the store to chat on their way home from work. It was a community without the bells and whistles.

Your blog or online community doesn’t need every possible feature. It may be that you add a discussion forum only to realize that your community would rather just comment on your posts. You might create a full-fledged social network only to realize your members would rather discuss your content on Twitter.

Just because features are possible doesn’t mean they are essential. Watch out for “feature creep.” Keep it simple. Think “relationships” instead of tools.

Comments Equal Community

Blogger Dave Lucas brought out an excellent point in his comment on the previous post about community:

Your post is dated June 8th… I’ve seen it displayed on other blogs and seen tweets about it… but you have two Lame comments (make that 3 with mine ;))… exactly what i come up against when I write “hit” posts!

Your “Community Theory” in real life on the net:

Yet I’ll see total BS crappily written posts get hundreds of comments! I won’t name any names, but after reading one of these I asked myself “what are these people smoking?” There were comments, links, kudos, tweets about a post written about getting blog traffic, a post so poorly-written that it bordered on idiocy! Yet it was tweeted and re-tweeted and blogged about by people who should know better! SOMETHING is wrong with this picture!

Your post here is well thought out and constructed. But it’s not attracting comments. I don’t understand why.

Dave highlights what I think is a growing trend of separation between comments and conversation. Blogs often reward commenters with backlinks, link love, and sometimes even “do follow” link juice. What inevitably happens is that people game the system for personal benefit. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. These features can be nice and it can create some reciprocal benefits. The side effect, however, is that real conversation gives way to quick bursts like “nice post.” That isn’t really community.

Should you drop commenting from your blog? Absolutely not. Comments allow a platform for conversation whether it genuinely happens or not. Comments extend the content and offer a chance for critical thinking and response. But don’t assume that the number of comments received equals the real size of a community.

Community Only Happens On Your Site

Our understanding of this concept is rapidly changing as social networking continues to explode in popularity. Essentially, a blogger needs to understand that the conversation surrounding a piece of content takes place all over the web. Backtype, along with other similar tools, will take a url and trace its impact around the web, even showing top influencers who spread the content to begin with.

This principle has enormous advantages. Your community is now a band of evangelists helping to spread your brand around on the web.

You’re In Control At All Times

We are, by nature, control addicts, but control and community are not such good friends. Communities have a tendency to take on lives of their own. As a blogger, you have the advantage of framing discussions with your content and facilitating connections as an administrator, but your readers will still determine your success or failure in reaction to what you say and do. You can’t control people, and when you try, you destroy community.

Everyone Will Be As Devoted As You

The inevitable result of assuming every member of your community will be as devoted as you is frustration. I’ve witnessed plenty of melt downs and rants by bloggers who attempt to guilt their community members into being more faithful adherents and promoters. It never works.

Your blog is your baby, and you should have an attitude of gratefulness for every contribution to it. I’d rather have someone’s casual readership than to not have them at all, even if they never speak up. There are exceptions. There are communities that need greater accountability, but specific to blogging is the principle that the blogger is chief brand evangelist, communicator, facilitator, and community manager.

Your passion will drive the success of your online community. Your face will be the strand that connects others in relationship with each other. Your words will set the tone for discussion. It’s your community, make the very best of it.

The bottom line is that community never happens on accident. You need to define the nature of the community you want to build and then implement strategies to see its success.

Comments, Fuel community?

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7 Myths About Building a Successful Online Community

If feed readers and email lists aren’t your thing, perhaps these ten sites will be worthy of your bookmark for browsing. What I like about them is that I can glance at them and there is no “mark as read” button necessary. When I click away, I’m done.

TweetTabs.com

TweetTabs.com offers a sweet multi-column real-time tracker for trending topics and customized searches on Twitter.

Sency Real Time Search

Sency is a real-time search engine that offers much more, including the hottest trending topics in major cities, tying together the power of real-time search and geo-location.

Collecta

Collecta is another real-time search engine with a nice home page design offering the latest story on five popular topics along with some discussion surrounding that story.

Regator

Regator is kind of an aggregator for what’s being blogged about across a variety of topics, but you can create an account to personalize your results.

Guzzle.It

Want to roll your own Alltop or Popurls type interface? Guzzle.It lets you do just that with your own account.

RSSmeme

RSSmeme is an aggregator of what’s hot among rss feeds across the web. I like the quick ability to switch between “now,” “today,” and “this week.”

These are six, among so many! What’s your favorite way to consume news (other than email and a feed reader)?

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Six Cool Sites for Keeping Up With the Blogosphere

You can add widgets, bells, and whistles, but the absolute best addition to any blog is people who return for the value of the content and connections you provide. A community is made up of people who stay in tune with your content, with you as the blogger, and even with each other in one way or another.

What A Blog’s Community Looks Like

Even before the advent of the internet, a community was more than a mere geographical area within a set of prescribed boundaries. The word “community” has far more to do with the relationships between people inside it and how they interact with one another.

A blog’s community is enthusiastically tied to that blog’s brand and content. Members discuss content with one another, discover new connections within the circle, and contribute to the value of your blog. A community actually begins to shape the nature and personality of a blog over time and therefore, a community can be grown, but rarely controlled.

Why a Community is So Vital

If your blog is going to thrive, you need people to make contributions in the form of internal content (especially comments and discussion) but also to share your content with connections outside your community. One fact that Facebook understands well is that human relationships are far more important than directory listings and organic search results. Showing up in search results represents the infancy of the web while showing up in resources shared by people in relationships with one another is the future.

Without a community, your blog’s success is always on its last leg. Its survival is dependent upon a returning, faithful audience who grow to trust that you’ll continue to contribute value to their lives even when you miss a beat here and there.

How to Start Building Your Blog’s Community

I’m going to be writing about this issue more in depth in a multi-part series on building your blog’s community, but for now know this one dominating principle – be social. Connect with people. Speak their language, respond to their needs, and forge bridges of ongoing communication. Being social is far more important than joining social networks or using social tools.

Before I proceed with my series, what are your thoughts about online communities? How important are they? How do you start building them?

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The Best Addition to Your Blog Is a Great Community

Your blogging success isn’t about your next post. It’s about all of your posts. It isn’t about a great headline, a huge list, or sweet graphics. It’s about the total package. Whether your blog is personal, corporate, or one of those that’s supposed to make you a millionaire tomorrow, your blog is really all about you.

Managing a blog requires keeping up with posting schedules, comment replies, topic assortment, and external sources. It’s the management of ideas, words, and peak traffic hours. Managing the blogger (yourself) is so much more vital. This is what I mean…

• Managing your body (diet, rest, exercise) prepares you for longevity.
• Managing your time and prioritizing correctly preserves your sanity.
• Managing your mind (reading, learning) empowers your words with greater impact.
• Managing your vision keeps you determined to grow your blog and your brand.
• Managing relationships is the essence of great community-building.

Anybody can manage a blog for a season. But are you managing yourself? It’s highly important! It’s vital.

What are you doing to prepare for the long haul?

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Managing a Blog Is Great. Managing the Blogger is Even Better.

Quantifying successful blogging is challenging. Some blogs that are highly successful in terms of influence can’t boast of large direct revenue while others that make a killing off of pay-per-click ads offer little real value to the world. And traffic alone isn’t always a great qualifier of successful blogging either. Analyzing traffic is tricky because the real story sometimes gets hidden beneath the numbers.

The real goal is readership. One devoted reader can be a more powerful ally than 100 random visitors. So the goal isn’t just to grab attention, but to stimulate real devotion. Great blogs rely on a great community of devoted, supportive fans.

How does a blogger build a community of truly devoted readers? The answer is simple, the execution is challenging – reach the heart. The reason you are loyal to certain brands has a lot more to do with your emotions than your mind. Daily, we make the choice to spend extra money on the things we value rather than going cheap because we’re emotionally devoted. So if you want to build a loyal, devoted readership, aim for the heart.

How do you engage the emotions to win the hearts of devoted readers?

1. Make people think… about themselves. Facts can be interesting, but facts that hit home are compelling. Human beings, by nature, are uncomfortable with change, but change we will when our emotions are involved. People don’t buckle up because they see a road sign – they do so because they’re in a fender bender that jolts them or they see a horrific accident.
2. Be a face and a name, not just a blog. What do Chris Brogan, Michael Hyatt, and Brian Solis all have in common? In addition to being successful bloggers who impact their respective industries, they each have an online persona that can be known in a unique way.
3. Push buttons. I heard a Christian minister say once that his role was to “comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” In many cases, our role as bloggers is to push buttons – to make people mad… or sad… or uncomfortable in some way.
4. Tell stories. Or at least make sure a story is told about you, your blog, or your brand. In fact, branding is often misunderstood as symbols, designs, and logos. But a brand is really the story associated with a person, product, or organization. It represents the emotional connection people associate with a name.
5. Do it all again. Making people laugh, or cry, or think just once is great, but we’re aiming for devoted readers, which can only be done when we communicate with the heart consistently and repetitively.

This is a partial list. I’ve gotten you started. Now help me out. How else do you gather a devoted community?

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How to Aim for Devoted Readers

1. Attention Grabbing Headlines: if you don’t have an attention grabbing headline your article is dead in the water. How are people supposed to know how great your article is when they don’t notice it? The key to great headlines is in the interest of your readers. No interest no click through. So you have to ask yourself “what does my reader want?” In business blogging it is never about you. Focus on your readers and attract them with their interest. Your headlines have only a few seconds to grab them. Use action words to entice them. But make sure your vocabulary fits your niches interest.
2. Deliver in the body what your headline states: don’t you hate it when you click on a headline only to discover it didn’t deliver in the body of the article? You have to deliver in the body if you want people to take you seriously. After all you are blogging to convert your readers i.e. visitors into customers. I doubt they will buy anything from you if they can’t even trust you to deliver FREE information.
3. Your articles overall tone should be in alignment with the theme of your blog: That means that if your blogging about say email marketing because thats your focus. If your a humorous person then keep that same tone in your blog. As a marketer for 15 years I can attest to one key fact. And that is that some of the most powerful people in entertainment established their authority with humor. And their key to success was doing that consistently.
4. Cite your information with links to other authorities in your niche: want to establish an aura of confidence and authority? Start linking to others in your niche. As long as they are actually credible you have nothing to lose. I have shared over 10,000 sources in the last year and it has paid off. Trust me your readers will respect you for this strategy.
5. Speak the unpopular truth: Don’t be afraid to get controversial in your headlines and body. Sometime ago I posted a concern I had about a internet marketers ethics. I received a lot of attention and some flack about it but I stood strong. People trust people who share the truth. Especially when it doesnt benefit them to do so.
6. Offer specifically detailed information for FREE: When others are charging offer for FREE. Not all the time of course but regarding a specific subject say copywriting course or a email marketing program.
7. Offer a conclusion that invites inclusion (comments): I must admit I don’t always do this. But this is a very effective way to gain input on your blog and feedback. You will know it is really working well when ideas are generated from the comments. products and major sites have sprouted from comments. The results of course lend credit to you.

You need to get attention and deliver. You need to write in the same consistent tone. You need to cite your information to credible sources and don’t be afraid to be controversial. Offer high quality detail and invite inclusion in your constitution.

Execute 1-4 always and add 5-7 at least 50% of the time. Do that and your blog will prosper. These are just (7) ideas. What do you do to fuel your headlines, body, and blog?

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7 Ways to Build Credibility With Every Blog Post

Every day procrastination threatens to steal my dreams and erase any hope of ever achieving my goals.

I know this, but regardless of that knowledge there are still times when I’ll sit down to work on accomplishing goals and then the next thing I know, hours have passed and so many things are still left undone. How do I still manage to let the time slip away?

When I need to write, it seems like everything else is begging for my attention. I don’t know what it is, but everything else seems so much more interesting than using my brain to write a new blog post.

Seems like that’s the only time I actually feel like emptying out my inbox after months of letting both read and unread messages accumulate to an astronomical number.  It’s terrible, I know. It makes no sense.

When mindless activities like checking my email spam folder or compulsive stat checking become more interesting than writing, I know it’s time to do something.

At this point, you’re probably thinking…”therapy” or at least some other psycho analysis to prove that I’m safe to be around children, but I assure you, it’s just the evil procrastination demon trying to steal my success.

Well, I’ve got news for him, I’m not going to surrender that easily. I refuse to let the tempting allure of the internet keep me from the most important thing I must do for my blog.  Yes, it’s time to get off of the internet, exit out of the Reader, Twitter, Facebook and yes…exit out of the internet browser entirely.

When nothing else works to curb meaningless distractions that threaten to kill my blog, I have to totally shut down Firefox, Google Chrome or whatever other browser I might be using at the moment to avoid the temptation to check my email every time I get a notification.

I have to stop myself from rushing to respond to every tweet I see. Sometimes I have to slap my own hand whenever I get the urge to start reading every new blog update that pops into my reader (they always seem urgent until you read them).

It’s strange how the very activities that help me support my blog can become the very activities that threaten its survival. Social networking is wonderful, but if  social networking and promotional activities are allowed to get out of control, they’ll devour your whole day. It’s easy lose track of time and totally forget to write something new to promote. It can become a vicious cycle.

So until I get my writing for the day done, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to shut this thing down-…! (If I could reproduce that old tube television shutdown spark, I would paste that…here!)

So what do you do to force yourself to stay productive? How do you filter out all of the distractions?

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Get Off the Internet and Write!

“Pepsi set out to dominate TV with their message, and billboards and vending machines. Newspapers, not so much. The media you chose to spread your message mattered. In fact, it could change what you made and how you made it. [Stop for a second and consider that... the media channel often drove the product and pricing and distribution].

Today, of course, everyone has access to a media channel. You can create a series of YouTube videos, or have a blog. You can be a big-time tweeter, or lead a significant tribe on Facebook.”

He went on to list a couple more “wag the dog” examples where the media channel itself defined the message, such as Tom Peters being defined by the format of public speaking engagements.

As a blogger, this caused me to reflect on a couple of different things.  First, I’ve noticed that my message is different depending on the blogging channel I plan to publish to.  Guest posts are written with a specific site in mind.  If I’m going to list something in an article directory, any post that relies on images and links is probably not going to work.  For corporate blogs I manage; a fair amount of work has to be done to make sure the copy is SEO’d and can be pasted into collateral at some point.  I view all of these things as positive influences on the content itself because they’re forcing me to adapt it to the audience.  That’s aside from the fact that every additional publishing channel directly increases exposure to my blog and all of my other work.

But there’s another set of channels that I’m not using as effectively as I should: new media.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m familiar with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  I’ve notified friends, fans, followers, and group members of new posts and occasionally even cross-published to those sites.  But there are other sites, most noticeably YouTube, iTunes, and SlideShare, which I’ve neglected almost completely.  Moreover, I haven’t really used Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn as they were designed to be used.  Linking to my blog in Facebook isn’t really using Facebook.  To use Facebook, I’d take the core message of my blog post and turn it into a Facebook Status update with maybe a poll attached.  For Twitter, I’d try to condense my message down to a 140 character statement and see what kind of conversation I could start.  LinkedIn allows me to publish my post through the news feature, but a better use of that medium might be to restructure the conclusion of my post as a “discussion”, which might result in a lot more participation from the group.

I’ve seen YouTube videos where people are literally reading their blog posts into a webcam.  Is that really compelling?  Wouldn’t it be better to use some visual aids a la Be Kind, Rewind to boost the hit count?  Even if it was just narration over play-doh sculptures or crayon drawings it would be more interesting than a talking mugshot.  But by far my biggest regret has been not doing more with SlideShare.  When you think about it, any of the posts with numbers, like this one on using LinkedIn more effectively, screams to be dropped into a 6 slide set with compelling graphics and submitted to SlideShare for the non-blog-reading world to enjoy.  It would probably take 2-3 hours to convert my average blog post into a fun slide deck that could eventually be compiled into an e-book or shared from my site as an alternate way to enjoy my writing.

Blogging makes text more shareable and mashable than ever before.  One of the most compelling things about consuming content on the web is that we’re not confined to reading, listening, or watching.  As consumers of content, there’s so much out there that we get to choose our channels.  As a publisher, I should be trying to reach more than just the “readers”.

When Kindle came out in November of 2007, it was lauded as a revolutionary way to consume content from a traditional medium.  Even though it was limited, for the most part, to black and white text.  When the iPad came out in March of 2010, it changed all that.  eBooks, newspapers, and blogs will be expected to take advantage of color screens that are capable of sound and video playback embedded within the content.

Being a blogger is great, but the web allows so much more and eventually my audience will demand more.  If any of you have started down this journey from blogger to New Media Guru already, I’d be very interested to hear how it’s going.

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You Can’t Afford to Stop at Just Blogging

With an exception of those dedicated solely to audio and video, the heart of most blogs lie within the written content therein. The blogger’s ability to captivate their readers’ interest, and engage them through their written word can make or break his or her success—so in other words, if you’re a blogger, taking steps towards improving your writing ability is an essential move that you simply cannot afford to skip.

This article will explore the things you can do to improve your writing in general, as well as specific steps you can take to improve each individual article you write. After reading, I challenge you to go through your “already published” works to see if you can improve a thing… or two.

Your Daily Writing Quota

The first step to improving your writing is to write regularly. Nobody was born an awesome writer; they had to work at it, and so do you. A great way to accomplish this is to set a daily writing quota and make sure you meet it everyday. 100 words a day is a great starting point, and can work wonders for your writing ability over time.

That doesn’t mean you have to publish a new post everyday, but at least write in a journal, work on a draft post, or participate in some creative writing exercises. Whatever you do, write everyday and over the course of a year, you’ll be a much better writer than you are today—even if you’re already awesome at it.

Mary Jaksch wrote a pretty extensive list over at Copyblogger on becoming a better writer, which may be worth your while to check out if you want some more general advice. As for now, I’ll get on with the specifics…

Simple, Effective Outlining

Next I’ll cover the little gems that’ll make up a large majority of your blog posts: your individual articles. The easiest way to start a piece of writing is to begin with a general outline of the entire piece.

The first and last paragraphs (or mini-paragraphs) will obviously make up your introduction and conclusion, so what I’m really concerned about here is the “stuff” in between. Write down anywhere from two to four things that are related to your title and these will be the sub-points your article will cover (the main point being the title which should encompass the whole thing).

Ask yourself, what individual things need to be addressed to fulfill what the title of my article promises? That should provide a good starting point to coming up with good sub-headings for your article.

Get Your Ideas Down

From there, you’ll start by writing an introduction for what they can expect from the article—but don’t give away too much. It’s best to engage your readers by adding a little suspense to your introduction. Keep them guessing.

Next, simply go through your sub-points and elaborate on each one. This is what will make up the body of your article. The point here is to not worry so much about things like spelling and grammar and just get your ideas down. The beauty of having words on a screen (or page) is that they’re not going anywhere (granted you save often!), so you can always go back and fix the spelling and grammar later (which you WILL do).

Once you’ve fully elaborated on your sub-points and feel like the problem that your title imposed has been solved, write out a conclusion to your article and engage your readers one last time by asking them a thought-provoking question to encourage comments and discussion.

Congratulations! The “hard part” is over (mostly).

The Art of Formatting

This takes me to the next aspect of your writing that might not “make” your article all on its own, but it can certainly break it—and that is the presentation of your article via formatting. Fortunately, formatting is very simple, and taking the extra time to “discombobulate” your writing can mean the difference between your visitors staying to read what you have to say, or clicking away due to an overwhelm of TEXT-IN-FACE.

The easiest way to format your work is to turn the “sub-points” you made within your outline into short, consumable headings that encompass the sentences and paragraphs below them. Break your paragraphs into 1-3 sentence “chunks” (separated by blank lines) and make good use of bold and italic text to emphasize key points in your writing.

The bottom line is, formatting makes your content more readable. It’s an art, but that doesn’t mean it has to be complicated. Think of it as art… in 2nd grade. Not so hard now is it?

Finalizing Your Work

This very last but crucial step is the icing on the cake, the tip of the iceberg, the polish on the shoe… whatever you want to call it; just know that it’s very important.

Once you’re done writing and formatting your article just the way you want it, you need to go back and proof-read it for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, sentences that just don’t make sense, etc. And then do it again until you feel like your article is perfect. If you’re really serious about producing the best quality article possible, you’ll set the whole thing aside and do this step over again later.

And that’s all there is to it! If you make a concerted effort to write everyday (100 words a day isn’t that much) and use the simple-but-effective article writing strategy I just described above, not only will your writing continuously improve on a regular basis, but you’ll be captivating your readers in a way that makes you stand out far above most bloggers—which is essential in today’s growing blogosphere.

Let’s Talk About You

What is YOUR current strategy for producing amazing content? How does it compare or contrast with what I just presented to you? There’s always room for improvement, so I encourage you to share your knowledge and opinions in the comments section below.

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The One Big Unavoidable Ingredient of Great Blogging

Ladies who blog in France have been connecting via HelloCoton for quite some time, but now the social network for bloggers has opened to the United States as well. According to the story from TechCrunch, the network for women was founded by a couple of really smart men! Nonetheless, it may be well worth checking out for our female readers.

And while you’re at it, check out BlogHer too!

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Hey Ladies, Network with Fellow Female Bloggers at HelloCotton

Every spring, my wife and I survey the junk that has been deposited around our house and we begin to collect it all. Then we sell it at a yard sale for about five percent of what we originally invested in it. The financial loss is a necessary evil that gains us the benefit of restored order and neatness.

Blogs have a tendency to collect junk too. I’m not referring to the content so much as I am all the clutter that often surrounds it. Maybe it’s time to do some spring cleaning around your own blog, just to make sure your content is nicely showcased…

The Big Question to Ask: Why Is This Blog Here Anyway?

Before deleting anything in the design of your blog, re-focus. Answer the question of why you’re blogging. What’s the essence of your content? Whom do you intend to reach? And after answering these questions, conclude with what is essential to keep?

Start Deleting Junk

Begin the process of removing anything that distracts readers, clients, or consumers from the main thrust of your blog. For example…

• Ad spaces that haven’t been purchased after six months. (Take the hint.)
• Widgets that duplicate an effect, like having 3 or 4 blogging network widgets with the same visitor faces in each.
• Share buttons that never get clicked. If nobody ever shares your stuff on Newsvine or Mixx, why do you keep the buttons around?
• Webrings and click exchanges. These have been bad mojo for a decade now.
• Out of place graphics. Be careful not to over-design your blog. Making something look cool can be a distraction.
• While you’re at it, delete drafts you’ll never finish and spam comments too.

If your blog is too far gone, it may be time for a fresh re-design, but hopefully some simple deletions will give your blog a squeaky-clean feel. Give up your compulsion to collect blog junk and focus on producing great content that compels people to discuss and share.

photo credit (and it’s not my garage)

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Is It Time for Some Spring Cleaning Around Your Blog?