Tag Archives: Blogging

Blogging, Social Media

The Difference Between Moderating Your Space And Censorship

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Something that many businesses seem to struggle with is whether or not to moderate comments on their websites, blogs or social media pages and spaces. There are some people who believe that no matter what a person says, businesses should leave the comment there because it’s honest, whether or not the company agrees with it. On the other side, there are companies who believe they deserve the right to control the message, even if that means killing what someone else says so that only positive things show up on their site.

es la veritat ?
Art Crimes via Compfight

My take is that there’s no one specific answer to this, but there are circumstances that drive everything. With certain policies in place, whether everyone else knows it or not, companies and individuals can navigate the minefield that someone is going to call censorship.

First, always remember that if you’re paying for it that you get to decide the decorum in your space. If you want to allow bad language, it’s your prerogative. If you want to allow insults and spam messages and sales messages and the like, go for it.

However, most people don’t want that stuff in their space because, if it’s for business, you want to be represented in a positive light, and unless you’re selling bikes to drill sergeants, you might want to keep conversations civil and clean because you never really know who’s reading and how they’ll react. Anything that can drive business away like that is a bad thing.

Second, if you put a product out or provide services or you’re giving an opinion about something, you need to remember that everyone isn’t going to agree with you and that you can’t please everyone, no matter what you do. As long as the conversation is civil, if people disagree with you or don’t like your product for some reason, you should allow those things to stay in your space. These are opportunities in more ways than one.

It gives you a chance to hear what your potential customers want and what they might not like. It also gives you the opportunity to address your potential customer where others can see the type of person or business you are.

If you get your message correct, no matter what the issue is, other potential customers could be impressed enough to either try the product or service themselves or at least give you a chance because they see that your company takes the issues of its customers seriously.

Figuring out the difference between common courtesy and honest critiques can be challenging at times, and you might have a tendency to overreact; after all, no one likes criticism against what they do. If what you do is for the betterment of the community, do it. I think it’s always best to post your commenting policies so that if you do end up having to delete something, that person and everyone else can’t gripe because you followed a policy they didn’t. And if they do complain, it’s on them; the customer may always be the customer, but the customer isn’t always right, despite what some might say.
 

Blogging

Inspiration From Other Blogs Or Websites

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Blogging isn’t all about you. Yeah, I know, most of it is, but the truth is that blogging is really about community. And if you know how to use the community, it can bring great benefits. What do I mean?

His Hand
Hartwig HKD via Compfight

It’s rare that I don’t have anything to write about. My imagination is pretty good. But it does happen here and there. What I do when that happens is I go and check out other blogs. I’m one of those people that actually enjoys commenting on other people’s blogs, but in this case it’s not all I’m doing.

Something people don’t think to take advantage of is writing a long piece on their own blog based on inspiration from someone else’s blog. I do that often, and it works really well, even if I comment on someone else’s blog. But the extra step I take is that I’ll link to the article that I’m commenting on.

What that does is brings to my readers attention another blog and gives them a boost, whether they’re ranked higher than I am or not. It gives them a one way link which of course benefits their blog, and it gives me a topic to write on. We both benefit, and I show that it’s not all about me.

And here’s the thing. You don’t have to agree with whatever you’re writing that’s addressing the other person’s blog. I go both ways equally and both serves the same purpose, which is giving me something to write about and the other person a free link, even if they might not see the benefits of my disagreeing with them. It’s a win-win; search engines will love it.

This is a little tip but an important one for many reasons. Give it a try; it’s probably one of the easiest things you could ever do to give your blog more character.
 

Blogging

Blogging Bad Habits You Should Try To Break

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Can you change your habits? All experts believe you can if you want to change them. I’m one of those people; I hate calling myself an expert most of the time but hey, if I don’t every once in awhile then why would anyone want to work with me?

Oh no, here come the Bloggers
Brett L. via Compfight

There’s a phrase where the number changes all the time saying that it takes “this many” times to consciously do something to change a habit. I’ve tested that one multiple times and have learned that it’s not always true. When it comes to working out, eating better, or generally enjoying yourself, it’s hard to sustain those habits; trust me on this one, unless your life is in danger, it’s not easy to do.

Having said that, you’re probably wondering what I’m leading to. I’m talking about blogging and coming up with content for your blog. I’ve seen a lot of bad habits, some that border on being unethical, some that border on lazy. What are they? In a nutshell, let’s look at these three.

The first, stealing content from other people. What happens is that a person sees an article someone else wrote, copies it, changing a word or two here and there, and sends it out as their own. Sometimes they don’t even go that far; they just copy and paste it, put their names on it, and go about their business.

Bad idea folks. One, it’s smarmy. Two, it could be illegal. Three, it’s definitely unethical. Look at my posts, near the bottom of each one. You see that copyright logo? That means it’s my work; don’t steal my work. And don’t steal anyone else’s work.

There is one time when this might not be so bad, and that’s if you’re stealing from yourself. In that actuality, you’re not stealing, just sharing with a different audience. Online newspapers do that all the time; you’ll notice that they write their own local stories, but other stories are written by national and international outlets. If you wrote something for someone else, ask them if they’d mind if you put it in your own space some months later. They probably wouldn’t care, but only do it if you’re not a prolific writer.

The second, writing sloppily. No one is perfect, but consistently misspelling words you should know how to spell that spell check is telling you is wrong each and every time, not using punctuation properly, and generally writing content that makes no sense… very bad idea.

Finally, the third, which is not being consistent in any way with your content. I hate visiting blogs where I see a post every 4 to 6 months; ouch! I’m not following any blog like that, and I’m not even going to waste my time leaving a comment on it, even if it’s written well. If you don’t care enough about your audience to even try to be regular, why should I? Maybe you’re not prolific enough to write a post daily, but writing at least one post of at least 300 words.. that’s too much of an effort?

That’s all I have for now. I could write a lot more but this one’s already over 500 words. See how easy this can be? If you’re doing any of those 3 things I mentioned above, break those bad habits. Trust me, your business will thank you for it.
 

Blogging

Blog Writing 101

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I’ve written a lot of posts about blogging on my other blog, including some tutorial stuff, so if you want more than what I’m going to talk about in this post you can check those things out here. I find it incredible how many people I run into that, when I start talking about blogging, they start having palpitations. Did almost everyone really have that much trouble writing papers in school?

Catbert and the company blogger
Niall Kennedy
via Compfight

Writing is as easy or as hard as one decides it should be. Earlier this evening I was reading someone else’s blog post where the guy said he spends 6 to 8 hours writing each blog post. Most of mine takes between 10 & 15 minutes, depending on how much I write and how much internal linking or image adding I do. Most people I talk to say it takes them between 30 minutes to 2 hours to write blog posts.

Remember story writing when you were in school? The teacher told you that every story has to have a beginning, middle and end. Any time you start thinking about writing a blog post, the beginning and the end should write themselves for you most of the time. If you start with a certain point, that’s going to be one paragraph. Unless you write a list post your closing paragraph will be kind of a reiteration of what your opening premise for your post was, with a few things thrown in from the middle.

That should take care of anywhere from 50 to 100 words for you, maybe more. Since the recommendation is to try to write at least 250 words (300 or more is better) you’re already 20 – 40% of the way there.

What should your middle be? It can obviously be almost anything but what are you prepared to do? If you don’t consider yourself all that prolific then let me help you.

Let’s use baseball for this exercise. Let’s say you wanted to write something about the Boston Red Sox and their chances for winning their division in 2014. You don’t know everything about the team but you know enough to be dangerous.

In your opening paragraph you indicated you were going to talk about the Red Sox in 2014, so in your second paragraph you could start by mentioning how the team did in 2013, which included winning the World Series (yes, I’m a Red Sox fan). You could mention the immediate offseason hopes and dreams and how it all collapsed quickly (oh yeah, that’s how this season is ending; sigh…).

Then you could talk about players the team still has, how David Ortiz might fare in his final season, and so on. You could mention any new players coming into the fold and how good or bad they played the previous season.

Finally you could talk about whether you believe they improved, went backwards, or stayed the same. You could mention how you they didn’t so enough to catch the Yankees, or how management seemed to have given up on the team early by sending off its two best pitchers.

With your first paragraph pretty much done and your middle complete, your last paragraph could be a quick summary, something like “The 2014 Red Sox lost their momentum from last year’s World Series victories but looks like a contender heading into the next season. With unbridled enthusiasm and some great young players coming up it should be an exciting season next year.” That was 41 quick words, and I could have said more.

Blogging doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s not necessary to hit a home run, if you will, with every single post. Blogging isn’t meant to be a series of white papers; it’s meant to be a series of thoughts that not only help you show whatever expertise you have, but to help your main website, if your blog is attached to it, with its SEO properties. You can do this; trust me.
 

Blogging

Why Your Business Needs A Blog

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I’ve always said that I created my first blog to help highlight my business. Before I go any further, if you’re interested in learning more about blogging in general I’m going to recommend you check out this post on Better Blogging, the second half of that post, then check out my blogging tips. If you’re not a better blogger after all of that then you’ll never learn the game. 🙂

Oklahoma Blogger
Wesley Fryer via Compfight

Plain and simple, for almost every business a blog will help enhance visibility and show people what you know. Sure, there are some services like snow plowing where having a blog might be a waste of time, but even landscape businesses could benefit greatly from having a blog.

Here are some facts about business blogging.

Statistics have shown that businesses with blogs get anywhere from 85% to 100% more leads than businesses without blogs. Those same statistics show that they’ll get nearly 50% more leads from other businesses than sites without blogs.

You have two stats. Now let’s look at the reasons.

One, the more new content the more opportunities you have to increase your website’s presence, hence the higher you’ll rank on search engines.

Two, when people can learn what you do from you, they’re more likely to work with you.

Three, when people like what you have to say and how you say it, they’re more comfortable with you and people like working with someone they’re comfortable with.

Four, you can branch out into many areas which gives you a lot to talk about. For instance, I know someone who wrote for a website that installed artificial grass. What she did was highlight famous places around the world that used artificial grass, and every once in awhile threw in something about the different types.

Five, as I mentioned above, you can hire someone else to write for you if you’re not a great writer. Of course this isn’t preferable for most of us but since I write for a couple other blogs it’s fair to point it out.

Six, it keeps you visible with your clientele.

I think that’s enough, though there are other reasons. At least consider it, but also consider this. Don’t start a blog that you don’t think you can maintain for at least a few years. Nothing looks worse than a blog that’s never updated, and that could hurt you as much as having the blog could have helped you.