Some useful blogging resources I've come across lately

I know, I know - I'm not blogging as often as I used to here - my apologies! Various real-life things have got in the way of my editorial calendar - in fact I think I need to go back and read my own book to remind myself!

On the subject of the book, I've had a few enquiries lately from folks being told they had to wait a couple of months for it - obviously I'm really pleased the first print run has sold out, but it's no fun to have to wait. Anyway, the publishers tell me that new stock is on its way and may even already have arrived. (If you're trying to order it online, the Book Depository still has copies I think.) So thanks for your patience, and a huge thank you to those who have reviewed and rated the book and generally helped support sales. You are stars!

Anyway - I thought I'd share a few links to some useful resources I've come across lately that I think you'll find interesting.

If you have a Facebook page, here are '7 little known tricks to make your Facebook page stand out' - little things like repositioning photos, highlighting fan posts and sometimes scheduling in advance. Useful stuff.

Ten Top Pinterest Boards - Jeff Bullas shows us how top Pinterest-ers do it - it's a visual treat, whether or not you are concerned with 'driving sales, leads and traffic' to your blog.

Are you confused about Google+? Then take the free, online Google+ Masterclass from the Britmums blogging community and get up to speed in no time. This is just one example of the great resources available at Britmums.

And finally for now, a most relevant piece on Why you need to keep on blogging by Sam McArthur at Savvy Marketers. It's true! If you need reminding of why it's worth working through those times when you're feeling uninspired or overwhelmed with other things,  then this is for you (and me!)

Image credit: Modern Life blogs

Roundup post: Blogging tools & tips, plus a Pinterest primer

I've been on holiday these last two weeks, staying well away from the London Olympics! Although I confess I watched some of it on TV...

Now I'm trying to do the traditional post-hols catchup, and thought I'd share with you some useful stuff for bloggers that I found in my inbox and Twitter stream, in case you missed it.

Blogging Tools
First off, how could I resist 22 Top Blogging Tools Loved by the Pros - great example of a title that's bound to get click throughs! This is an article by Cindy King at Social Media Examiner, a resource worth checking out. Subscribe to their emails or follow on Twitter (@smexaminer).

As it sounds, there's a lot to take in here - the thing with this kind of post is that you're probably not going to rush out and try everything on the list, but it brings to your attention some gems you might otherwise not know about. I particularly liked the look of Google's Content Idea Generator, and IFTTT (a social media tool - worth a play with). I'm already a fan of Storify, a tool to create and curate opinions and ideas around a topic (for example live blogging and tweets at an event.) Disqus (a community based around blog comments) is also great, I talk about the usefulness of this in my book... plus lots more good ideas in this article.

A From Me to You cinemagraph created by Jamie Beck

Photo tips
In the same vein is 15 Photo Blogging Tips from the Pros from Mashable - those pros just know it all, don't they?! This is actually a sponsored post, but as a compilation of comments from several high profile photo bloggers including Jamie Beck and Tom Robinson, it's an interesting read. Questions answered include 'What makes for a good picture' and 'Tricks of the trade'.

Pinterest primer
And thirdly, this is a post from earlier in the year but recently brought to my attention - Pinterest Basics for Bloggers, by Yang of Chillisauce on ProBlogger. If you haven't yet got stuck into Pinterest and want to know how to make the most of it, this is a really comprehensive and easy to follow article with lots of tips and screenshots.

Creating a content plan will help keep your blog on track

It's a sad fact that the majority of blogs are abandoned within three months. Yikes!

The good news is that there is one small step you can take which will help keep you going even when you have a bad case of 'bloggers block' or just can't decide what to post.  The answer is to create a content plan.

Your content plan can take whatever form you like, but it must have a physical presence - it's no good having it in your head! You may be most comfortable sketching it out long hand, using a calendar template or an Excel spreadsheet, even making a collage ... whatever works for you. But it has to go on your wall somewhere you will see it.

Design Milk's editorial calendar

First up - think like a magazine editor. Perhaps your blog will have some regular features. You will see an editorial calendar on many successful blogs. For example, Design Milk has monthly features such as 'Deconstruction' and 'Where I Work.' Each post under that topic follows the same format or type of content. On her blog Bright, Bold and Beautiful, Laura Tevey has a regular 'Best of the Week' roundup. What kind of regular features might you have on your blog? They could be weekly or monthly.

Next, think about the types of blog post you plan to produce. Think about the medium (predominantly text, photos, video, or a balance of these), length, subject matter and type of post. In 'Blogging for Creatives' I suggest 12 blog post types that work, from Opinion Piece and Interview to Story, Controversy and List posts.

Then decide how frequently you are going to post. Be realistic, but also bear in mind that if you post less often than once a week you may find it takes a long time to generate an active, interested audience.

Put this information on a matrix, with (say) dates in the left hand column and days of the week across the top. Put in the names of your regular features, like 'Blog Buddy Showcase' or 'Behind the Scene Tuesday'. On other days you plan to post, put in the names of some blog post types like 'Opinion Piece' or 'List post'.

How does that look? Now, try to add some specifics to some of the plan entries. Blog Buddy Showcase - who do you have a mind for the first one? Behind the Scenes - what project have you been working on where you might share aspects of the process? Hopefully, more subjects and ideas will suggest themselves as you go along. Make a note of them all, however sketchy, even if it's in a separate column, 'ideas' or whatever.

Now you have the bones of your blog for the next two or three months. Each time you go through the process, it should get easier. Be careful not to overwrite anything, as it useful at-a-glance to see what you've already blogged about on a specific topic. Great content can also be recycled, reworked or repositioned.

With a content plan you should also find it easier to write blog posts in advance. Once the creative juices start flowing you will find it's quick and effective to do two or three posts at once, scheduling or saving them for later.

Why you need to nurture your social presence

Last month I talked a bit about complementing your blog with a Facebook page, and some of the basics of setting one up.

I'm reluctant to talk about 'promoting your blog via social media' because I think that is a somewhat limiting mindset. Social media isn't 'just another marketing channel' as we hear so often. 

It's better to think of your social presence as being a part of your 'brand', whether that brand is your blog, your business or you yourself. Social tools enable us to expand our networks of contacts, listen to and learn from others, communicate one-to-one with people and allow people to get to know what your brand stands for. And yes, build our profile and audience.

What people (and organisations) don't always understand is that this happens if, and only if, you have something to offer that people find interesting, useful or entertaining, so much so that they share it with others in their networks. By approaching social as a promotional tool, it's tempting to post nothing but promotional, one-way messages and hope that they will magically get passed around the internet. Short term promotions and offers have their place, but they are just that - short term and unlikely to build you a rich, sustainable social presence.

Vita Sackville-West knew a thing or two about gardening. This is part of
her garden at Sissingshurst Castle in Kent. Photo by kevt747.

The benefits of building an online social presence are mainly long term and slow to accumulate. It's like planting and nurturing a garden. Anyone can go buy a bunch of bedding plants in flower, plant them in any patch of ground and have a lovely display for as long as the flowers last. But a gardener would take into consideration the soil type, orientation of the land, drainage, climate, shape and size of plants, flowering period, positioning and a hundred other things. A gardener would know (or learn) about watering, weeding, pruning, pest control and so on.

Your aim is to build a sustainable social presence and become a trusted member of your social networks. Once you're in this position you will worry a lot less about short-term attention grabbing and attach less importance to stats such as likes, followers and visits. Trust me!

Finding & subscribing to other blogs

Do you regularly visit other blogs? Reading (and preferably commenting, but only when you have a genuine comment) is an important aspect of connecting your own blog with the blogosphere.

The kinds of blogs you should seek out are:

1. industry peers/competitors (if you are blogging for fun then you probably won't see others as competitors, but even if you blog for business you may still view competitors as potential collaborators or blogging buddies. And if not, you still want to keep tabs on them, don't you?)
2. related blogs (where the content complements yours - not just the obvious, think laterally here)
3. mentor blogs (for example, more experienced bloggers who are generous about sharing their learnings, acknowledged experts or just bloggers you admire)
4. anything that catches your eye or that looks interesting!

Finding blogs

Do searches on Google as well as Google blogsearch and also try some of the specialist blog communities such as FoodBlogs, Technorati, or BlogCatalog.

Once you find two or three great blogs, check out their blog rolls for ideas of blogs they follow.

Keeping up with blogs

The great thing about blogs is that (unlike a normal website) you can subscribe to them, meaning whenever they are updated you receive an alert. This is much more convenient than bookmarking, which relies on you remembering to return to a website. With website, you go to them, but with blogs, they come to you.

First of all you need an account with a feed reader or aggregator. A simple option is to add feeds to your email client, such as Outlook or Macmail. This way, any new blog posts from those blogs you subscribe to will appear alongside your email. If your email client doesn't offer this, then you'll need to use a dedicated feed reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines.

This is what my Google Reader looks like

I have a Google Reader account, although I confess I use Feedly, which is a kind of user-friendly magazine-style feed reader which is actually powered by Google Reader. Feedly provides a handy bookmarklet which you just click on when you find a blog you want to subscribe too. It also presents everything in such a way that it's easy to skim through for new posts and read the summaries.

Feedly's user-friendly format and subscription 'bookmarklet'
make it a popular tool

Once you have a neat way of subscribing to and keeping up with blogs, it's just a question of checking your feed reader once a day for anything new and exciting.

Featured blogger: Jaime Derringer

Design Milk is one of the stars of the blogosphere. Owner Jaime Derringer is an expert on design trends and contributes to a multitude of design blogs as well as running both Design Milk and its sister blog, Dog Milk. 

There are so many things I like about this blog, even aside from the cool content. The logo is understated but unpretentious (check out the subtle difference between the main logo and that of Dog Milk...) the social buttons are clear and the design overall - as you might expect - is clean and uncluttered, even though there are plenty of eyecatching things going on in the sidebar in particular. Lots of other things worth emulating - I'll be using Design Milk as an example in future 'tips' posts.

From the Design Milk blog sidebar - visual links to popular posts

When I approached Jaime about contributing to my book she was incredibly forthcoming and supportive. Among the many tips she offered, I loved this one:

"Running a successful blog is hard work. Don't let anyone tell you that it's easy or that you can make tons of money by doing practically nothing. In the early days, I spent my nights and weekends working on the blog while also working full-time. It took three years of doing that before I was able to quit my day job and feel secure. I still work more now than I did at my day job but the reward is that I'm doing something that I love."

The hard work has paid off - Design Milk has grown into a fully fledged online magazine with a team of writers and editors on the look out for the very best in design, interiors, art and style.

By the way, Dog Milk is great fun - although as a cat lover my eye was drawn to a rather nifty milk-carton shaped 'house' by Moissue - for cats or small dogs! 

Sister site to Design Milk - Dog Milk!

Featured Blogger: David Airey

Designer David Airey has top notch credentials and works with clients from all over the world. His blog is actually his website and the number of readers has grown from zero to 174,000 subscribers in under six years.

Clearly there's a lot we can all learn from David, and quick delve into his blog reveals plenty of gems, such as this post in which he gives his top ten tips for how to grow your blog readership.

The blog's look is very clean and deceptively simple looking. David has pulled out some key information and put it into the top menu bar - 'Advice for design students' and 'FAQs' - I get the feeling he's trying to filter out unwanted messages or questions, and when your blog gets really popular that's something you need to think about. To begin with, answering questions and getting new readers is fun. But when you're successful you will invariably keep getting asked the same things, it makes sense to direct people to the answers before they take up your hard-earned time.

It goes to show that you don't need gizmos, gimmicks, bright colours or a ton of 'share this' buttons to make a compelling blog with hundreds of thousands of readers.

Building connections in the blogosphere - blog rolls

This is my fourth week of this blog and I'm still setting up my stall... today I have started to create a  'blog roll' - in other words, a list of related blogs that I enjoy and that you may find useful.

A blog roll sits usually in the side bar and can be called whatever you like, and organised how you wish. At the moment, I have started listing all the lovely bloggers who contributed to my book, under the heading 'Get inspired by these blogs!' They're not in any order, nor have I categorised them in any way. That will be my next step, and then after that I would like to say a few words about each - why I like them, or what they offer in terms of ideas and inspiration for the newbie blogger. That way you will have more of an inkling what you will find if you click on each link.

The standard format for a blog roll is a list of links, but it could also be a feed of latest posts from other blogs. There are widgets that will do this for you - do a search to find one compatible with the blog platform you are using and that you like the look of.

An extract from the blog roll
at A Perfect Gray, which is actually
a widget displaying the latest posts
from each in a feed. Neat!

Look at how other bloggers organise their blog rolls to get ideas what would work for you. Some list hundreds of sites, other stick to a handful of favourites and keep it more focused. Some show screenshots of the blogs, some have specially designed buttons to introduce the list. The choice is yours.

But the main point of the blog roll, other than to tell your visitors about other web content they may love, is to connect with others. Let bloggers know when you put them on your blog roll - don't be offended if they don't reciprocate, some large, successful blogs are inundated by requests for links! When you're starting out, it's a good idea to find other bloggers who are at a similar stage, and link to each other to get the ball rolling.

Part of Dianne Jacob's blogroll at Will Write for Food,
where she lists Blogs and Resources

Over time, aim to deepen the connections by commenting on those blogs, subscribing to their feeds, sharing their content on your own blog or via social media or inviting them to contribute a guest blog post. The blogosphere wants you - join me in starting to get connected!

A great example of why blog post titles matter

Today my eye was caught on Twitter by a blog post entitled "6 reasons why you should quit blogging" by Daniel Tynski on the Blue Grass blog and retweeted by We Grow Media.

I'm telling you about this for two reasons - number one, the blog post title is a great example of how to get people's attention. Everyone's time and attention is limited, and on media like Twitter, when tweets pass in the blinking of an eye, your blog post title may be your one chance to be noticed. 

This isn't as easy as it sounds - you could make your title something outrageous, or that promises something that it then fails to deliver. I don't advocate that - who wants to be let down or feel they've been hoodwinked into reading an article, only to find it wasn't at all what it claimed to be about? This tactic is sometimes referred to as 'linkbait'. Not great for building your audience long term.

No, the beauty of this title was that it set out to be controversial (reasons why you should quit blogging?? Aren't we usually being told the opposite?) and thereby attracted several groups of readers - those who really are doubtful about the value of blogging and may even be looking for reassurance that they needn't do it, those who believe in blogging but seeing this title puts a little doubt in their mind which they need to address (is there some new research?), and those who feel indignant at the suggestion of blogging being a waste of time and are keen to refute the suggestion. By attracting people with diverse opinions and interests, there's a good chance the post will generate comments and maybe even discussion. Brilliant - achieve this and you're on your way to building your blog community.

The second reason I enjoyed this post is that instead of the usual 'why you should blog' arguments, we get a list of perverse reasons why you should not blog - so that of course if you 'don't want improved rankings' or if you 'want to be limited by someone else's rules', then you should certainly not blog. The post title isn't misleading, but does turn out to be ironic. The blogger makes his points very clearly, but in an original way that gets people thinking.

What do you think about 'controversial' blog post titles? Do they catch your eye? Do you know what kinds of blog post titles will work for the readers you want to attract to your blog?

Featured Blogger: Ricky Salsberry

Running a blog on your own can be tough. And sometimes, the urge to blog comes from a collaborative endeavour, and what you actually end up starting is a group blog.

This week's featured blog is The Donut Project which is a joint venture under the editorship of Ricky Salsberry, and began in 2009. He describes it as a design blog "created by a group of young designers who aspire to inspire." Ricky is one of the experts to share a tip in Blogging for Creatives.

Design inspiration blog The Donut Project http://www.thedonutproject.com/

Although all the contributors are designers, they don't only share design-themed material on the blog. The idea is to present all the stuff that inspires them (or annoys them!) The result is an eclectic mix of visual material ranging from calligraphy to automotive, from branding to fashion.

Blogging with others has many advantages - when creatives get together the results can be amazing, and on a practical note it does mean less pressure on you when you can share the various tasks involved in running a blog and keeping it fresh.

Ricky has some strong advice for new bloggers, such as 'don't post unless you have something awesome to post' (even if it means not posting regularly) and 'don't start a blog to make list posts - you're ruining the internet' which I love, because it's controversial and it's a genuine other viewpoint.

Although it can be great to be given a set of hard and fast guidelines ('this is the right way to do it') your blogging journey is your own, and you'll find what works for you. One of the things that really struck me when I was researching the book was that bloggers all have very distinctive tales to tell - there are no standard routes to growing a successful blog, but you can certainly look at how others have done it and learn from their experience.

My new baby!

It's here! I've just picked up a preview copy of the book. Here's a little intro...