MicroWebmaster Blogging Community

There is a good deal written across the web on just how long a blog article should be. The average counsel seems to be “between 500 and 750 words”. But the fact is, there really IS no rule, unless you want to develop your own rule.

I don’t write by rules. I write by what feels right. Sometimes I can say it in a sentence (I rarely do for a blog post - but I do for class rules!). Sometimes it takes more. Sometimes it takes a lot more.

It is more important to make a point than it is to focus on length of article. So the ideal length is as long as it takes to convey the central message.

Rather than length, focus delivering a message with a conclusion. Do that in the most efficient manner possible. If the article is interesting and informative, people don’t mind that it is long. They just need to feel that they are not wasting your time, and that you simplified the complex, rather than complicating the simple!

It is important to remember that some audiences tend to be more impatient than others. Bloggers tend to be more on the impatient side as a whole. But even then, some blog audiences will have even shorter attention spans, some will have longer. Your audience is particular to your blog, and you must figure out for yourself which end of the scale they fall into, and write for them.

Even considering that, it is still an issue of interest, and ease of reading, more than one of length. 500 words that say nothing in one big long rambling sentence is too long. 1000 words of well segmented, informative, informational or entertaining text, formatted for easy understanding, will be too short in the estimation of the reader if they truly enjoyed it.

Deliver value, without wasting the time of the reader. When you do that, word count is unimportant.

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This article is a companion article to one written on Frumpy Haus Frau on the topic of getting ideas for blogging.

I find that ideas occur to me at the strangest times. Now it seems that every business conversation, every new problem or solution is a fit topic for blogging. Ideas usually occur to me in batches, and I’ll think of topics at the oddest times!

So how do you keep track of them? I use Notesbrowser.  It is a great little free program that helps me keep track of a whole lot more than blogging ideas - I’ve used it for keeping track of article ideas for over a year (along with marketing tasks, project outlines, reference information, and more). I can categorize lists, and sub-categorize them. I like hierarchal thinking, so this program works perfectly for me.

When I’m in the middle of something and cannot be distracted, if an idea occurs to me, I can jot it down, and then go back to my work. I can let it go, because I no longer have to remember it.

The only time it really isn’t helpful to jot it down, is when I’m in the bathtub… no computer there! And an amazing number of ideas occur to me in the tub!  I have learned to repeat them to myself a few times, then to recall them as soon as I do get back to the computer.

As many blog posts, articles, and instructional materials as what I have to produce, I have no choice but to get organized about how I come up with ideas, and how I record those ideas until I have time to write them. I spend an average of 2-3 hours a day just writing some kind of article or instruction. Ideas are gold - they have to be recorded for use when I need them!

Nothing is more frustrating to me than having a good idea in the morning, and then failing to remember it when I am ready to write for the day! Recording those ideas has helped me to be able to reference back, and use well, the inspiration for writing that seems to sleet down throughout the day. I’m less likely to get distracted by an idea that intrudes at an inappropriate time, and I’m more likely to have a good idea to refer back to when I need one.

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I tend to get ideas in bursts, they never seem to come one at a time. And they tend to all land on one focus - so I end up getting a lot of ideas for one blog, none for the others. Sometimes it is easier to write a series of articles at one time, or to just go with the inspiration when it hits. I’ve taken to scheduling ahead when I get a flood all at once.

Most blogging platforms allow you to schedule posts in advance, and to specify the date and time that they will appear. In WordPress, this is called “Post Timestamp”. Change that, and it changes the time your post will appear.

This feature is usually promoted as a way to compensate for vacation time, or other events. But it is also a great way to just start getting ahead, with a pre-archive of articles, allowing you to write when you feel like it, relax when you don’t, without having to build a separate archive of stuff on your local computer.

I like to write once, and be done with it. I have some sites in Joomla which require that I write the article in a separate document, then paste it in and remove the formatting that came in from the program I wrote it in, then reformat. The system times out otherwise and I lose my work. I like that WordPress does not time out. I can do everything within a single environment. So writing ahead, and scheduling, saves me a little time too, because I don’t have to copy and paste.

With four blogs to manage, keeping up with posts takes a little time each day. By spending about an hour a day, I can keep up with all four, and get ahead a little for those days when I cannot post. This is something I intend to run with!

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One key to good search engine traffic to a website, is more backlinks, from high quality content. This strategy also brings more direct referrals to your primary website also. There are many tactics for achieving this, but three commonly mentioned ones are, blogging, article marketing, and either adding additional pages to your existing site, OR, creating a separate website.

I’ll cover each of these topics briefly, because the one you choose will place demands on you, which you must be able to meet, and while each will achieve approximately the same thing, some methods have additional benefits, or will work better for specific needs.

1. Blogging. Blogging is fast. Your blog can get indexed and get traffic within days. But it is also demanding. Search engines seem to give equal weight to pages, whether they are in a regular website or not, according to some experts. Others say that blog pages get demoted faster with age. Either way, if you need a boost fast, blogging gets it quickly, but ONLY if you use the blog well, and only if you do the networking that you need to in order to get good traffic to the blog. You must blog no less than once a week to have any traffic at all, and at least twice a week to have steady traffic.

2. Article Marketing. It is a nice way to do things in your own time. You can create the articles from anywhere, at any time, and nobody cares if you publish late. You really only need to publish to a few directories, but if you want to benefit from the viral effects of article marketing, you MUST create highly interesting articles. Keyword stuffed same old same old just doesn’t cut it!  You should still produce about 2-4 articles a month for it to work, but it is a little bit less pressured than blogging.

3. Additional pages in your own website. This gets additional content, and can get you some very good long tail keyword search traffic. As such, it can be very powerful. But too many pages in your site will become a mire for visitors to navigate, so make sure what you put in is of value to the PRIMARY purpose of the website. More isn’t always better!

4. Additional websites. The theory here is two-fold - additional linking power, and long tail keyword traffic. Choose a topic related to your primary site topic, but approach it from an objective perspective. If you sell exercise equipment, then you might produce websites on the topics of weight loss and heart disease, exercise and osteoporosis, or exercise and diabetes. You would not produce a site about choosing weight loss equipment - that is obvious self-promotion, and there just is not enough scope for a whole site. With the other topics, some of the pages may not, in fact, relate directly to your main website, but enough will to bring in long tail searches. Placing your equipment site as a resource link in the sidebar of every page (along with other good resources, such as nutritional supplements, diet information, or the ADA, AHA, or other organization websites, gives balance and helps it be more helpful. The advantage is that you can explore as many peripheral topics as you choose, and each website takes on a life of its own and grows to continue bringing in traffic. You can do it on your own time, without a demanding schedule. The down side is that you do have to create a new site for each one - but many articles of this type (if good… like article marketing, they must be INTERESTING!), will get backlinks and take you places you could not plan.

It doesn’t really matter which strategy you choose in building additional content and backlinks. The point is that you choose what works for you, and what meets your marketing goals.

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I always know that if my clients can write, that they have a better chance of succeeding on a shoestring budget. Writing well is a tremendous asset to any business owner, but especially to a sole proprietor who is starting out with minimal resources.

What we were taught in English usually isn’t enough to produce good quality marketing or instructional materials. A few other skills are necessary to learn how to optimize writing for marketing and web audiences. But those skills are mere polish. When the core of good writing is there, teaching the finer points is fairly quick.

I’ve had many clients who deplored their poor writing skills, yet when they sent me information that they had written for their site, it was quite good. I needed only to lightly edit. We tend to be hard on ourselves where writing is concerned. We tend to think that if we get writer’s block each time we sit down to write, that we must be bad at it, even when the results aren’t bad at all!

I find that most of my clients overlook one key factor in writing success:

Practice

They often come into their business from an average life where they’d write emails now and again, or a letter to a friend, but where they’ve not practiced at writing on specific topics, to a specific audience. They assume that because it is hard at first, that it will always be hard.

I’ve always found it fairly easy to write, but not necessarily easy to write WELL. My ability to channel my thoughts into “writing mode” has improved steadily. I can now sit down to write, and my brain sort of shifts gears so that the quality of what was produced is 90% good on the first go ’round.  I can whip out an article just about as fast as I can type (and correct my typos!), edit it once, and publish. I still have the occasional error, and my writing is by no means perfect, but it is professional enough to accomplish the purpose.

Writer’s block has been less of a problem also, partly because I’ve developed strategies to overcome it. One of those is that I’ve learned to look at life as fodder for my writing. When I deal with a client situation that has applications beyond that particular client, I make a note to write about it. I often use spare moments of quiet time to brainstorm writing topics, or ways to present a topic that I’m stuck on. I have a good notes system (Notesbrowser is a free download at http://www.notesbrowser.com), so that I can make lists of potential future topics for blog posts, site articles, newsletter articles, and other purposes. I write down the title, then a few notes about key points that I want to include.  This gives me a powerful reference list when I come up dry when I need a topic for my blogs or for fresh content on a website.  I use the same system for client marketing articles.

Most business owners are better at writing than they feel they are. Practice can help them to hone a skill that will provide a measurable asset to their business. Just dive in and give it a shot, and keep trying, because it truly DOES get easier with practice.

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Well, we aren’t completely finished tinkering with this - customizing the template, adding instructional resources, and all those things that seem to be an ongoing thing. But the setup, and essentials are done.

It has been a busy week. But a very productive one. C’mon in and take advantage of our effort - if you aren’t a MicroWebmasters Alliance Gold member, then mosey on over to the MicroWebmasters Alliance website and get an account! We’ll still be here when you get back!

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I’ve found WordPress to be simple enough for blogging, but easily expandable. Now, I’m not a rabid WordPress fan - I don’t believe in warping it into something it was never meant to be. I like real Content Management Systems instead of a blog pushed out of shape to try to make it one.

But for blogging, I’m happy with it.

I tried B2Evolution for our MicroWebmaster Blogs. I found it confusing, and limited in ways that I just cannot deal with. I don’t want to have to create php pages and hack files just to put in a static page! And the backend is not at all intuitive - it is never quite clear whether you are setting global settings or individual blog settings, and spam control is quite limited. I WANTED to make it work! I’m not opposed to learning new things, but this one just could not stretch to provide the simplicity and flexibility that I needed for this system.

We are going with WordPress MU. It was my first choice, but some of the documentation is out of date, which makes it appear to be much harder to set up than it really is. Newer forum posts cleared up the issue though, after I went back to research a second time. The entire install took just the upload time, and about 3 minutes to set up the database and run a quick installer.

I’m liking this… familiar, and choices are clearly labeled. The volume of experience and direction behind this is clearly evident.

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