Journalists & Bloggers Toolbox Blog

This bit of blogging advice has two parts to it but both deal with the length of blog posts.  Now, people often visit blogs looking for quick tidbits of information.  So as a blogger, you’ll attract more viewers if you give them what they want.  This is why my first part of this advice is

– try to keep your posts short.

Now I know everyone wants to hit the minimum word count that will make the search indexers happy, generally about 250 words.  And that’s fine. As long as you have at least 250 words worth of content.  Remember, there’s nothing wrong with writing a short update on something that regular blog followers might find interesting.  But even if your blog is indexed by the best searches out there, it doesn’t mean that more is better. A good rule to follow is

– if a post is over 750 words consider splitting it in two.

But that doesn’t always work.  Sometimes you have to tackle a topic or provide information that goes on for longer than 500 words or a 1000 words. But there really isn’t a good place to stop the post and leave the reader feeling like they’ve read a complete topic.  That’s where the preview option on your blog can come in handy.

– the preview option shows a small amount of text and lets the reader decide if they want to read more.

Why is this good?  Well, a reader might open your blog and see that post that goes forever and decide they need to find the information in a shorter post.  But a preview just gives them enough information to tease them and lure them end.  When the preview ends, they still won’t feel as if they’ve finished the topic, but rather than needing to follow the blog to a second post, all they have to do is click a button to read more. So use the “preview” or “read more” setting on your blog to keep your readers involved.

The past few years have been marked by an upsurge in bloggers as news sources.  For many this has signaled a positive change by taking the news out of the filter of the major media.  Some see blogs as a source of more immediate information from people on the scene or with a variety of views on any specific topic.  But others see bloggers as a source of dangerous information since there is no oversight for these sources of information and no way to verify where bloggers are obtaining their information or how accurate it is.

But there is another aspect of blogging that we need to be aware of.  Search on “How to Blog” on any major search engine and you’ll find lots of information on how to blog for money.  The “blog for money” information usually involves affiliate marketing. And, yes, you can make money from it.  It’s not a scam. The right blog for the right affiliate can earn money.  But of course it does take work.  But rather than discussing how to make money from affiliate marketing, I want to pose a question – is this process of blogging for money a danger to blogger’s objectivity.

Now affiliate bloggers often blog to direct readers to a specific product, be it books on Amazon.com or online casinos.  And often they are very upfront that they are an affiliate.  You’ll see it when they ask readers to use their link to purchase from Amazon.  The reader doesn’t incur any more cost and the blogger makes a few pennies.  Everyone is happy.  But then the question arises – would a blogger give  a product a bad review if they’re an affiliate?

Now, I don’t have an answer to this.  They might.  Certainly it could be tempting when reviewing a book to write a good review because readers are less likely to follow the link and buy a book with a bad review.  But as bloggers we have to keep in mind the long term benefit to our blogs.  Take the book example. Good reviews might seem to sell more books, but if readers are dissatisfied with the product they find following a blogger’s links, they are going to be less likely to take that blogger’s advice in the future.  So the long term benefit for the affiliate blogger is to provide useful and objective information for their readers.

Today I want to talk about a subject I don’t see addressed much on blogging sites or even journalism sites – choosing a style guide for your writing.  Now the reason you won’t see journalism sites addressing the issue in this manner is that journalism has an accepted style guide — the AP or Associated Press style guide. Journalists and reporters follow the AP style guide so that stories can be exchanged or sold to more than one newspaper or news media outlet without the work having to be rewritten to fit a particular newspapers individual style guide.  So, if you plan to work closely with the news media, the AP style guide is probably the style guide you want to follow.

But what if you want your blog to be more casual or even more academic?  Then you may want to look at other style guides.  Journalists sometimes forget (or perhaps don’t realize) that the AP style is not the only style out there.  Publishers of fiction often use the Chicago Manual of Style for their works. While some grammar rules are going to be the same between both guides, the Chicago Manual of Style is less focused on saving space in newspaper columns.  Academics often use the MLA or Modern Language Associate style guide since this guide has a strong focus on presenting quotes and academic citations in works.  It could be a bit formal for a blog, but perhaps your blog is dedicated to the study of literature. There are other style guides used by scientific journals. You can even find the National Geographic style guide online.

All of these style guides are designed to do one thing – create consistency in the works being presented.  Choosing one to follow for your blog will help you do the same thing – create a foundation for consistency.  You can then develop your own guidelines for when you want your individual style to vary from the guides.  All of this will help you present yourself in a professional manner in the blogging world.

It’s an going battle in blog land.  On one hand, having people leave comments on your blog is a great way to show that people read your work and appreciate what you have to say.  Good comments can show other readers that you are an authority to be trusted.  Negative comments can give you topics to address in future posts.  But either way comments are a great way to engage readers and keep them interested in your blog.

On the other hand, comments are being used and abused by spammers who want nothing more than to get links to their blog on your blog.  Now some of these spam message are obvious spam. They know you’ll catch them if you even glance at your comments. These spam posts are often nothing more than lists of links to other sites. Lists that don’t even try to fit the category you write about.  But other spammers have become trickier.  Some just go with a fairly generic post telling you that they like the blog or agree with the topic. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that they never actually mention what they like about a blog or topic.  But they hope you’ll leave the nice comment up so that people can follow the link to their site.

Other spammers have taken the tactic of pretending to argue or disagree with the post in order to engage the blog writer.  They’ll post a comment that says something like “I think you’re wrong” and hope that not only will you leave the comment, you’ll actually argue back to prove your point, thereby giving their post more attention.

So what can you do to fight blog comment spam?  I’ll give you some suggestions in my next blog post.

Do you have a regular period of time, perhaps a couple of hours, each week that you can devote to hosting a tweet chat?  Because I’ve seen bloggers and writers successfully turn these twitter events into a solid audience for their blog or their product.

A tweet chat is basically a chat session hosted on twitter where participants contribute by using the same hash tag.  For example, #writechat takes place on Sunday afternoons and #litchat on Wednesday evenings.  A little research on twitter will turn up chats in many different topics.  There are even more casual exchanges on a number of topics that go on throughout the week with no set time span, but the focused chats can take off faster and pull participants in more quickly.

Now a good way to get started with a Tweet Chat is to look for some chats that already take place on topics you’re interested.  Join in those. They’ll let you experience the rhythm of a tweet chat first hand and also help you build both followers and a potential audience for your own chat.  I always gain followers when I do a tweet chat.  In fact, if you don’t have the time to host a chat, just participating in existing chats can boost your readership.

But if you want to host your own chat, there are few steps to take. First, don’t be worried if there are already chats taking place that seem to be on the same topic. You can always put a different spin on it. But check the schedules for the existing chats and find a time when those aren’t taking place. People often love to chat about their favorite subject and those who aren’t able to take part in an already scheduled Sunday chat may join in your Monday night chat.  Once you’ve decided on a good time for your chat, tweet about it and let your followers know.  But don’t discount the spur of the moment joiners.  Once you get one follower tweeting with the hashtag for your chat, everyone they know will see that on twitter and they may decide to join in. For each one of those, there will be more people who see the hashtag.  As long as you can keep the topics interesting and the conversation flowing, everyone will have a great time.   And you’ll be on your way to Tweetchat success.

Want one easy tip to make your blog posts more appealing to readers?  Try adding an image. It doesn’t have to be a full photo display of images with a new one for every paragraph.  Just a single image can attract a reader and help a post seem a bit more interesting.

Now, where do you find these images? If you have some talent with a camera, you might want to take some of your own photos and use them. If you do that, the photos are yours and there is no copyright issue to worry about.  Just be careful not to use photos with people in them unless you have permission to do so. A professional blog or journalists blog is going to be held to somewhat stricter rules than the simple family blog.

But not every blogger is a photo journalist. There are websites out there that offer copyright free and royalty free photos that you can use.  One of my favorites is MorgueFiles.com.  It’s not a deadly as it sounds. The term morgue file in the newspaper business was the file (or room) where past issues were kept.  The term has been used by various creative individuals to describe a file for inactive jobs – a place for reference material. Morguefile.com is a place where anyone can upload photos that they have take and make them available for others to use.  Because morguefile.com allows anyone to create and upload their photos, I find that it holds more usual and interesting photos than some of the more commercial sites.   The feeling can be more personal, and that’s a feeling I like for my blog.