Blogging Efficiently

Blogging isn’t simple, there are millions of blogs that are registered, and millions that no one reads besides the author. After blogging for a few months and having my ups and downs I want to share the experiences I have had to help you make your blogging more efficient.

By now I expect you to know the basics. You ought to be into blogging and might have even posted an article or two that got a little attention. If you aren’t there and are still a n00b, I recommend you check out Paul Stamatiou’s entry on how to blog.

Open Mind

It isn’t always easy to be a blogger, finding content that you think is worthy to be blogged is tough at times. But in writing your content keep an open mind and look for things that have interest to a wide audience.

In my successful posts I wrote articles on content that appealed to a wide amount of people, though focusing on one topic in a blog is not a bad idea, thinking about the whole community of internet users is a must to publish something worthwhile.

Just think about what you would like to read, something interesting, not over your head, and not published on every other blog.

Being You

One of my favorite quotes as a kid was from Aladlin, when genie said, “BEE yourself.” This quote still is true when blogging. Keeping an open mind is important, but blogging about content that you do not know much about would be useless.

I am a big sports fan, but to be honest I could care less about the NBA. If I decided that I should cover the NBA, just to keep an open mind, my content would be poor; Firstly because the NBA doesn’t appeal to me and researching it would not be worth my while, and secondly because I would not know what was going on in the league.

Being yourself is huge in blogging, blog what you think is interesting and what you think others might read. For example, this entry…I am always looking for ways to improve zamwi, and there are millions of bloggers who are looking to improve their blogs also, so it balances an open mind with being myself.

Setting your self up for success…

A lot of times I’ll write an article and say, “Ok thats it…go for world.” But this will not work unless you have a hugely popular blog.

In looking at some of my favorite blogs I’ve noticed that they draw people in through a number of good reads, then readers may subscribe to their content via RSS and read and comment all the time. I see that bloggers often have similar posts, and sometimes a smaller bloggers entry is even better than the bigger named writer, but because they are bigger they recieve more comments and their content is read the most.

Getting subscribers is something that every blogger struggles with all the time. I am always trying to draw new people into zamwi. Thankfully for us there are a few websites to help us out.

If you write about tech, Digg.com is obviously a place to submit your work. Don’t get down because people criticize your work. I woke up this morning with a comment that said I was an idiot from a digg user…they are rough.

The same is true for newsvine, on a broader scale, writing an original article on virtually any subject and submitting it to newsvine helps draw a lot of traffic to your site.

Technorati is a blogger’s heaven, you can watch your rank against the millions of other blogs, see who is linking to you and have others add your blog as their favorite. There are a few other blog popularization methods, such as BlogTopSites.

Just look around and don’t be afraid to get your name out there.

Design

Great content is a huge part of blogging, but it is useless without a decent design.

If you are a Wordpresser like me I recommend you use the K2 community of designers who are willing to help you, who have lots of tutorials to do so… theme, it seems to be the best known to man and there is a great

Aside from throwing it out to K2, blog design is a must, you really have to set your self apart from these others blogs, be original, add color and change the defaults. Make a design that you think would be appealing. I am no designer, but I know what kinds of websites I like and dislike.

When writing posts make them neat, try to throw in images to break posts up a bit (I should do that a little more for this one) but try not to be too flashy.

Sticking to it…

Once you feel like you have got the structure of your blog down, including your content, don’t ever stop. It is always tough to post an article after that really popular article and try to keep it going, but the most important thing about blogging is that you learn along the way what people want and what they could care less about reading.

These tips aren’t the definate ways to making you the next TechCrunch or Engadget, but they have been ways I have been able to increase blog traffic and have learned to add readers to zamwi.

Good luck in your blogging adventures!