MicroWebmaster Blogging Community

No…. it isn’t. Except sometimes, it is!

Blogging isn’t better or worse than a regular website. It is a different thing.

It doesn’t get traffic faster, or slower, just differently.

The power of blogging is in frequent new content, and social networking. Drop either of those, and blogging can’t hold a candle to a basic website.

The power in a regular website is in stability. Content is not considered outdated as quickly.

So which is better, depends on what your personality is like (whether you are a blog type, or a website type), and what your goals are.

Don’t think about which one is better, think about which one is better for you… or if you happen to be one of the chameleon types, do both!

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The availability of templates of all kinds for blogging, the value of a custom template is lost on many people. And while it is true that you can find a reasonably good template with a good mood for your site, there is nothing quite like a unique graphic and color scheme to send a message about your blog.

A good custom template can do what a publicly usable template cannot - it can present the perfect message about your site, and it can do it in a totally individual way. It can be as different as your blog content, and as much you as your blog content.

If you’ve found a template you really like, it can be enhanced and modified to make it unique, in many cases (check the individual terms of use or copyrights to make sure).  This is a quick way to get a special look without the expense of constructing from scratch.

The three most visible factors in a custom template are:

1. The header graphic. Photo, line drawing, or painting, this part is your mood setter.
2. The color scheme. A tightly coordinated color scheme makes a site look professional.
3. The font. A header font, whether or not it is echoed elsewhere in the blog, gives the site a distinctive personality. Funky, fun, bold, soft, elegant, professional, whatever. Getting the right header font enhances the whole design.

Create it yourself, or hire someone to make a template - either way, it can give your blog a boost.

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Most people who begin a blog, do so because they have something to say. Sometimes, they run out of things to say one week into the project - Selecting the right theme to begin with can help to keep things going more easily.

Work with your strengths, and choose something which allows you to be yourself. That will make things easier also.

A blog theme should have two factors:

1. Topical theme - choose a topic that is broad enough to leave a lot of scope for exploration, while still giving it a unique twist.
2. Personality - do you approach the topic humourously, academically, as a reporter, from a personal perspective, etc? This is where you really have a chance to make your strengths into your greatest asset.

Whatever the topic area or personality that you choose, the one essential factor, is that it have some kind of unique appeal. It isn’t something to sweat about - often the very thing you need is what comes most naturally to you. The trick is not in being something you are not, but rather, in figuring out what it is that you are, and learning to express it well.

My personal blog is called Frumpy Haus Frau. I chose that theme because I wanted to make a point about personal appearance, as well as bring business down to a simpler level.

Find what is really you, and approach it from an angle that is distinctly yours. Therein lies your greatest chance at success.

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Whatever it is that you want to do, someone will tell you that you can do it with WordPress. There is a plugin for just about everything, it seems.

Just because you CAN, does not mean you SHOULD!

When you try to make a motorcycle behave like a car, you still have a motorcycle. Adding a side-car or trailer means you can hold more, but your motorcycle now becomes clumsier, and you lose some of the benefit of riding the thing - that sense of freedom just isn’t quite as exhilarating. But usually it is worth it.

Try to make a motorcycle into an RV though, and something will go drastically wrong. Somewhere about the point where you try to add a sink and toilet, you are going to have a monster that is not even usable.

WordPress is similar. Expansion, to a point, gives you more features with an acceptable trade-off. But when you try to make it into a CMS, the whole thing becomes increasingly unstable, more cumbersome, riskier, and harder to maintain.

Consider:

• Each extension that you add gives you one more area of potential conflict.
• Each extension that you add gives you one more potential security risk.
• Each extension gives you one more thing to set up, configure, and tweak to get it to do what you want.
• Each extension means that there is a greater chance for something to break when WordPress is upgraded.

All that sounds fairly reasonable until you understand what it actually means.

With a simple WP install, you have to install an update about every two months or so. Simple to do.

If you have a plugin, it is not as friendly as the base WP install - it does NOT tell you there is an update. So you have to go looking for it, on the WP website, or the website of the publisher. It may be easy, or hard, to update.  There is no schedule on which these updates are released. One plugin, no biggie. Ten plugins, and you have a REAL chore!

When you install a WP update, or a plugin update, it can bring others down. The more you have, the higher the chance that this will happen. And it can cause problems of all sorts, from posts displaying oddly, to php error messages instead of pages, to silent failure of a critical plugin to work.

If you fail to update plugins, you run an increasing risk that security holes will be found and exploited, and your install will become more and more of a walking time-bomb.

And it won’t even work as well as a full-featured solution would - like trying to make that motorcycle into an RV. A motorcycle is perfect for what it is, and it can be made to do a few more things comfortably. But when you try to make it into something far beyond what it was ever intended to do, you end up with a solution that does less, with more trouble, than the real thing would have done.

Be careful how far you try to push WordPress. Someone may have a plugin that CAN do it, or SAYS it can, but that doesn’t mean it does it WELL. And consider how many things you are trying to make work together, which may not have been designed to work together. Don’t add anything that you don’t want to have to maintain and keep updated.

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One of the keys to being a successful blogger, is to truly be yourself. Your better self.

Not that you present yourself in a false light, not at all. Rather, you improve your ability to think of others as you write, and write from a sense of giving.

Being yourself does not mean that you do not care about grammar or spelling. It means you learn to improve those things. Again, becoming your best self when blogging.

Being yourself means sincerity without rudeness. It means exercising consideration and developing sincerity if you lack it. It also means being honest about your faults in the things you write.

People key into that. They know when you are hollow and when there is substance. They like someone who writes because they like their audience, rather than someone who writes because they want something from their audience. This is, again, part of being your best self. Putting your selfish interests aside in pursuit of the larger goal.

Now, I have to say all that other stuff about being your best self, or this might be distorted by those who feel that being themselves means they are free to be rude or exploitative. It doesn’t mean that at all. The people whom I would really like to deliver this message to are those who simply lack confidence in their writing ability.

Write like you are talking to someone. Read it over and see if it sounds like a conversation instead of a stiff and formal speech. Write what you think, and then get it into some kind of logical order. Think of your audience as a group of close friends. And then, be yourself!

When you realize that you are enough, and give yourself permission to be natural in your writing, the world opens up, and you become free to discover another part of yourself. And you find that it is enough!

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To create a new post every day, or more than once a day, requires a constant stream of words. Coherent ones! Where in the world do you find that kind of inspiration, day after day?

The first thing you have to learn, is to observe, and take note! There are potential topics swirling around you all the time.

The second thing is to find a way to keep track of what you think of. Typically, I’ll think of an idea, and then consider a title. If I can record the title, I generally remember the concept, though sometimes I add a few notes to clarify my thoughts, especially if I’ve written something similar recently but want to cover a different facet.

I use Notesbrowser (http://www.notesbrowser.com). It is a free program that lets me keep track of all kinds of info, with virtually infinite capacity for storing tidbits.  I write down ideas as they come to me, as long as I can reach my computer.

When I’m out of the office, and get an idea, I repeat it to myself several times, and key to remember it when I get back to the computer. That works well, unless I get an idea for three or four at a time, and then I tend to have a difficult time remembering them all. I’ve learned to not let that bother me though - good ideas are like deals on eBay. Though we fear there won’t be another one, there always is! And generally, whatever triggered the idea in the first place, will reoccur - or something near enough like it that the idea comes again.

It takes practice to learn to notice the things around you that are potential triggers for article topics, but after a bit, you get to where you find yourself thinking about blogging in the middle of other tasks. At that point, you know that you won’t have trouble coming up with ideas in the future!

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Sometimes we set up a blog, feeling that a certain area is our forte. Then we may find that the scope changes. Choosing a focus for the first time may be the hardest thing. As we gain experience with writing, it somehow becomes easier to define a broad enough topic for repeated writing, within a narrow enough focus to create a niche.

My first blog has evolved. It is no longer what it started out to be. In a good way, I think. The topics that I write about most often are the ones that are in front of me every day, and which give the most fodder for contemplation. If it is your first blog, you might want to leave room for evolution - a title that is catchy, but not specific.

I used to just create a new website when I needed a new topic focus. Each one wore out eventually, and I just moved on to the next one - going back to add something to the old ones when it occurred to me. I can’t do that with blogging - it requires consistency, and dedication. And long term focus within a certain area. I’m not so good at that!

With four blogs to keep up with now, the picture has changed. Each one has to have its focus. I didn’t start them all at once though - I got one going, made sure I could keep up, then started others later when I had gained more experience.

Consider carefully what you can find a constant source of inspiration for. Topics upon which there are always new evolutions (like SEO, or business), are good topics, because no matter how much you write, there is always a new angle, always new learning, and always changes within the industry. That is the kind of thing that makes a good blog topic - it takes a LOT of scope to present new and fresh content on even a weekly basis. Box yourself in, and you’ll run out in about 2 months!

Also consider what fascinates you and interests you enough to be able to regurgitate that quantity of text on a regular basis. If you have short-lived interests, go with a non-specific focus so you can indulge varied flights of fancy. The topic has to be right for you, or you won’t be able to keep up. Yes, you have to write things that interest an audience, but it starts with your interests first - we do better, that which we love.

To test your topic, sit down and brainstorm some article titles. If you can come up with a dozen or more within about 15 minutes, then you’ve hit on something you can probably sustain. If you have trouble thinking of more than a few, then you’ll be in trouble pretty quickly.

Select a topic with good scope, and within your prime interests, and you’ll be happily blogging for years to come.

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More than with websites, blog titles tend to be whimsical, abstract, catchy, and provoking. Bloggers love words, and metaphors. They love to pique your interest with a juicy tidbit, to make you wonder what the article is really about.

Search engines don’t understand the abstract too well though. They are bad at indexing metaphors, and parables hold no meaning beyond the literal. The power to people is lost on search engines, and hence lost to people SEARCHING for the very thing you are offering.

Installation of an SEO plugin can help you to separate the article title from the page title tag. The best of both worlds. Well… not exactly. But more balance, to be sure.

Blogging began for people. And it has always been about writing from the heart, and less about optimizing to the teeth. So if you have to make a choice, keep the feeling. In this instance, your target audience is bloggers, not search engines. But be aware that you’ll have to do a little more work elsewhere - more backlinks, more careful consideration of tags in your article, more thought in the anchor text that you use for backlinks, maybe a little more deep linking to specific blog posts - and perhaps a little more work on optimizing other aspects of the site.

If evocative post titles are important to your style, use them. People appeal has far more power in the long term to advance you, than search engine power, and pleased people can GIVE you search engine power.

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You can’t just blather on about anything. Especially if the blog is a business blog. It requires a point. A realization, or a concept.

The “ah-ha” moment. The bit that makes the reader glad they read it. The part that helps them understand something they did not grasp before.

This is true whether the blog is about cooking, technology, childcare, or raising tulips. The post has to have a point, a purpose, and a direction, that come together in a conclusion of some kind.  You have to say something that nobody else is saying - or at least, in a WAY nobody else is saying.

It doesn’t always mean controversy. Sometimes it means simplification, or clarification. Sometimes it means observation.

A business blog need not always be intellectual either. But it should be smart! It MUST have value. The little bit that the reader takes away with them that gives them something that they consider to be of worth.

To create value, and the “ah-ha” moment, you have to understand your readers. Consider what it is that they want, and then give it to them in a way they can understand.  Whether your purpose is to entertain, enlighten, or amuse, it is the reader who holds the real power.

The “ah-ha” moment is especially important in writing that intends to educate. That moment of understanding - of application. The thing that makes them think, “Now THAT, I can USE!” It is perhaps in instructional writing where the moment of enlightenment is most often overlooked - a pity, because that is where it is most needed!

You’ll miss the “ah-ha” moment if you talk about teaching but never really teach, or if you discuss a controversy without presenting a decided, and well-considered opinion.

Think out the purpose, and then deliver strongly. Your audience will notice the difference.

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