I’m in San Francisco right now at the Web2.0 Expo. Just attended a great session on how to improve blogs. (Oh, no. Now you’ll expect the quality of this blog to improve!)
Here are my notes:
Passion
The most important thing about blogging is passion. If you don’t have passion about your subject, you won’t be engaging enough to keep people coming back nor will you have the stamina to keep it up. (60-80% of blogs are abandoned in the first month.)
Content
Pick a topic that is uniquely you. Focus on your area of expertise. What are you passionate about? Keep it narrow enough so that you are the best there is on your subject. You may want to create your own category so you are the creator of that topic.
Write newsworthy content. Blogs are of the moment; they are event-driven. If it isn’t current, it belongs in a book. Provide exclusive information.
Headlines: Find the most interesting part of the post and put it in the headline. Be plausible sensational, but don’t over promise.
Focused content: Why is your content important? Pick one point about the topic and make your point. It had better be interesting. Respect people’s time by writing what is relevant, timely, and useful.
Linking
Linking causes trackbacks. Trackbacks show up on posts. Posts are crawled by search engines and people click links, especially blog owners.
Moderation
Getting comments is harder than moderating them. Err on the side of openness. Use Akismet to take care of spam. You must read the comments, and comment back. It will build community.
Give back/Add value
Facilitate community. Be a focal point. Participate in existing communities. Give away something for free. Promote your fans.
Promoting Your Blog
Invite people to link to it. Blog regularly so there is something interesting for everyone. Create community wherever you go. Become friends with the friends of your friends. Guest write for other sites.
Distribution: Feedburner is the quintessential distribution channel for blogs. Others: Digg, StumbleUpon, other blogs, AIDE RSS, FriendFeed, Delicious, Facebook. E-mail newsletters.
Great summary! I agree the content has to be the key reason to visit a blog. The hardest part is coming up with new meaningful content.
I really enjoyed Scott Berkun’s workshop on how to innovate on time. This was a typical project management presentation with one key variation. Scott added that time should be included in the project lifecycle to allow for innovation and experimentation. He mentioned that allowing innovation would allow for better projects. Scott acknowledged that getting management to buy off on this concept would be hard but he cited similar programs running at Google and Yahoo and outlined their successes.