Too many “one block” articles

I see too many “one block” articles around the bloggosphere and I don’t think it is a good practice. What is a “one block article”? It is basically an article that is not spitted in different paragraphs, so it is a one paragraph 1200 words article. What’s wrong with that approach? I can tell you this will turn down a lot of readers because let’s admit it: there’s no way you’re going to catch the reader’s attention with such a post. As a reader, when you land on a post, you like to have a feeling of what the post is about and you might also want to read only certain sections of the article. This is perfectly normal because before spending 10 minutes reading an article, it is nice to have an overview of what the post is about and if you only have 2 minutes ahead of you, you might just want to read what interest you.

Structuring is branding

Structuring your posts the same way every time is part of your branding strategy. Branding doesn’t always mean to do awesome/out of the ordinary stuff, it can be as simple as being consistent. You know, people will get used to your writing style and will get used to the way you structure your posts. There has to be no doubt that it’s you who wrote the article and the only way to achieve this is by being consistent with your writing style. When I say having a t-shirt or business cards is important to brand your business I really mean it, but as bloggers the only thing we have is our content so why not brand it?

My approach

If you are a daily/weekly reader you’ve probably noticed how I structure my posts. I like to write short paragraphs with a very simple writing style. You know, I don’t blog to win a Nobel prize, I blog to share my knowledge and whatever is on my mind. I strongly believe that to share information in this fast Internet Business, that information has to be straight to the point and ready for immediate consumption. But you know, that’s my way of doing things: “Cut the crap”. Your way might be to go with very long and complex sentences and if it works for you then that’s perfect! But if you’re wondering why nobody leaves comments, it might be because nobody understands your articles!

Your approach

What’s your approach when it comes to structuring your posts? Do you always use the same format or are you constantly changing? Do you have a style? Tell me.

Passion/Reputation

Before I explain what I mean by “most people are watchers, ideas gatherer or simply don’t really care”, let’s talk about reputation. The first answer I give to the questions above is “passion”, “reputation” and “authority”. That is a pretty simple concept: I share my experiences because I’m passionate about what I do, I help other people, learn at the same time and if I do this all good, I will gain reputation/respect/authority or whatever success metric you want to use. That’s the whole goal of blogging, right? Sharing what you know and at the same time trying to stand out so that your blogging can open new doors to you. By the way, share with us the reason why you blog, I’m really curious about that!

Most people simply watch…or it doesn’t apply to them!

I will just throw random numbers here, but I feel pretty confident to say that maybe 90-95% of people are watchers, 5% are considering taking action and 1-2% will really take action. This simply mean that for every tip, advice, step-by-step guide you provide, most people will simply think “it’s a very good method, thanks for sharing!” and go back to what they were doing without even thinking how what you provided could really help them. Then, you have that other 5 or 10%  that really want to take action, but for a lot of different reasons will not do so. These reasons can be a lack of time, motivation, money or skills, but whatever that reason is, we end up with the same result. Then comes the 1-2% that will really take action and this is not what will kill your business! It’s not like 95% of the population will jump into your business sector, so if you are already well established, it is absolutely no problems for a couple of other person to join. You might even build new relationships and and bring your business to the next level.

Other thing that will is that your advices won’t apply to everyone and some persons will just gather ideas. From these ideas they’ll eventually build something and that’s great because it involves creativity and innovation. You can’t take action on every tip and trick you read and you might not want to because they don’t necessarily apply very well to what you do. So that’s another good reason: from the people you give advices to, some are gathering information to eventually unleash their creativity and this is really not a problem to your business!

Last point is that some people really don’t care about what you have to say! They might end up reading your blog for whatever reason, but don’t really care and will move to something else. You know, can’t please everyone!

Overall, because most people won’t go forward, giving away or selling your knowledge probably won’t bring you a lot more competition. Surprisingly, what you think is competition can turn into something a lot more interesting than that: partnership. Also, not everybody will see what you talk about as useful to them or are simply gathering ideas to eventually wrap them up and do something.

This is as simple as that

I won’t try to make this a 1,000 words article just for the sake of it. This really is what I had to say and I don’t want to go over the subject of “take action”, because It has been covered a lot before and you all know guys how I feel it is important to take action instead of watching things happening.

Are you a watcher, ideas gatherer, action taker…?

I’d like you to be very honest with yourself. You don’t have to comment and go public by saying: “I’m watching things happening without doing anything”, but be honest with yourself. Also, you don’t have to comment and say: “I take BOOOOLLLDDD ACCCTIIOONS all the time buddy” if that’s not true. It is OK because you might be an idea gatherer and eventually do things your own way or you might simply don’t care about what I say for whatever reason!

So, what’s your approach?

]]> http://bentremblay.com/en/why-sharing-your-knowledge-is-not-a-problem/feed 39 http://bentremblay.com/en/fear-the-publish-button http://bentremblay.com/en/fear-the-publish-button#comments Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:16:49 +0000 Ben Tremblay http://www.frogstr.com/?p=251 I obviously want each and everyone of you to be better bloggers by reading this blog and for that I want you to think twice before pressing that evil publish button. Too many bloggers just press the publish button without even reading the post they just wrote and I think this is a mistake. If you’re the best writer out there this doesn’t apply to you, but if you’re like most bloggers you’re not in the business because you won the Nobel prize in literature. So, this applies to you.

Review until it flows

It is important to reach a certain level of quality for all your posts if you want to attract subscribers and eventually be an authority in your niche. Nobody writes a perfect post without a review, nobody. How many times do you read your posts and notice there could be some improvements but don’t bother? If you feel like there could be some improvements, then imagine what your readers think. For that reason, read your posts before publishing them and read them as if you were the reader, not the author. Always keep in mind what would make you stop reading and what would make you continue reading a post. Is your post catchy enough? Is the post too boring? Could there be some humor in it to keep the reader hooked? Are some sentences too long? Could there be some crap you could cut?

I think you get the big picture and you understand where I’m going. You know your readers and you know what they like, so offer that.

Stop until it’s too late

Sometimes I write an article and halfway through I realize how the post sucks. I’m sure this happened to you also and I hope you didn’t publish that crap. It’s probably the worst thing to do because if you’re not convinced about what’s you’re writing, your readers will feel it and if you think your post sucks, there are good chances your readers too! In a situation like that, save the post for later, and it might turn into a gem eventually, who knows.

Not every post is worth a Nobel Prize

We’re all writing bad, OK and awesome articles. The key is really just to minimize the bad posts and maximize the good posts as you probably already know. It’s something we have to accept as bloggers: we’re not always going to write the best post out there. Now, imagine if we can cut the “bad posts” part simply by reviewing every single article we write to make sure it’s at least an average post. You know, sometimes it’s not the content, it’s really the way we say things that just makes a post boring. With a little review time, most bad posts can become OK posts and that’s really what we want because nobody wants to write crappy content.

Preview on your blog

It’s important to preview your articles on your blog directly, not in the admin editor. Why? Because you will truly feel like a reader and trust me it works. Sometimes I make a first review in the editor and then read it on the blog to find out there are a lot of improvements to be made. It just feels different when it’s out there on your blog, so use the preview tool!

I don’t have time to review

If you know you just wrote a gem and it doesn’t need a review, fine. Otherwise, wait until you have some time.

Do you review?

I will end this post by asking you the obvious question: Do you review your posts before pressing the publish button?

I started to get a little more involved in the community recently by increasing my amount of comments on blogs and I’m shocked by the amount of bloggers who don’t answer comments. What’s the point of commenting if there’s no feedback at all? I’m not asking every blog owners out there to answer every single comment and I personally don’t even care if these bloggers answer my comments personally or not, I just want them to act like they are a little interested in their readers!

Answering every comment

I answer most of the comments personally on here. I’m surprised when I go to other blogs with like 1,000 rss subscribers and I see things like 1 or 2 comments on each post. You know why? Because the blogger doesn’t care about his readers. Some people will comment for sure, but they’ll get bored eventually. A blog is much more than writing content, it’s about interacting with the community. It’s no surprise if I get at least 10 comments on every post even if the blog is kind of new: I answer comments. That’s my vision as a blogger, but I’m also a reader: don’t expect me to comment on your blog every day if you don’t answer a single comment.

Drop a comment on your readers’ blogs

So you have people commenting on every single post of yours and you’re not even dropping a comment once in a while on their blog? Blogging is a two way business and you have to share a little bit if you want people to stick around.

The big guys don’t answer

Of course the big guys like ShoeMoney or JohnChow don’t answer every single comment. First of all, they have way too many comments to handle and people go completely crazy when they jump in the discussion. Shoe once explained how it feels when he posts on DigitalPoint forums with the name ShoeMoney: people actually start to argue about whether or not it’s the real ShoeMoney instead of talking about what’s important. I can understand how this can get really annoying.

Please answer some comments…

I’m just asking every blogger out there to answer some of their comments. Your readers don’t expect to be answered personally on every comment, but it’s nice for them to see you actually care about what’s going on. So, even if you answer someone else’s comment, it’s good!

The mad blogger

The mad blogger post 5-10 articles a day and while the website looks to be filled with content, that content is usually “filler posts” (Not so unique posts just to fill some space). Why is it bad to do that? Well, I’m not saying it’s totally bad because I guess it might work for some websites. Again, it’s a case of “it depends what your website is about”: if you have a news website, of course you should post 5,10,15 articles a day, it’s your job! But let’s say you own a ‘regular’ blog about a particular subject you have some good knowledge of and that your goal is to spread that knowledge and make some money while you’re doing it. If you write five articles a day about your subject, not only you will run out of ideas eventually, but you are not going to market any article. It’s good to spend 5 hours a day writing tons and tons of articles, but what’s the point if no one’s reading them? You have to spend some of that time marketing these articles. By publishing too much content and not having much traffic, you are killing your ideas.

What’s great about writing a blog is to know people read you and also comment on your blog because they like what you do. When you end up on a blog you don’t know, I’m sure you check the average number of comments on the blog just to estimate the website’s popularity. Popularity is extremely important to a lot of users, they like to be part of something, a community. Posting 5 to 10 articles per day on a website not getting a huge amount of traffic will split your comments into these 5-10 posts, making maybe 10 articles with one comment on each. While you have some readers commenting, it’s not that impressive for a new user.

The lazy blogger

The lazy blogger is the complete opposite. I won’t go into details as I’m sure you get the idea. The main thing to understand is that being lazy and not updating the content is not a better idea. While you may end up with a lot more comments on each of your posts, new users will see you don’t update your website too often and this is usually a turn off. We like fresh content don’t we?

The balance is hard to get

I try to stay on a one post a day routine to keep fresh content coming in but also to maximize the number of comments I get per article. I know sometimes it tends toward a 1 post every two days routine, but that’s simply because I don’t want to write crap: if I don’t have time or ideas to write, I simply don’t write and so far it’s never been a major problem in my blogging experience. I try to write quality, not quantity and I’ve talked about it in a previous post: Don’t write just to write something. I also try to let people know about my new blog posts and I give my them the time to live. This way, the articles get some exposure, you haven’t spent your precious time writing for nothing and you maximize your comments possibility.

I guess the way to go is to write the amount you are able to write every day without feeling like you don’t know what to write about. You also have to keep some time to market your new articles, otherwise you are writing for nothing! If you are filled with ideas and could write 20 articles, spare some ideas and you get yourself almost a month worth of ideas on a one post a day routine.

Bottom line is that the balance is extremely hard to get. The best way is to go with what feels natural for you.

1. Technorati introduction

First of all, to understand how to increase your Technorati authority, you have to understand how the Technorati authority is calculated, right?

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

It is important to note that we measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if a blog links to your blog many times, it still only count as +1 toward your authority. Of course, new links mean the +1 will last another 180 days.

All right, so it’s all about getting backlinks again. Damn backlinks. The good news is that it’s easier to get real backlinks with Technorati than with Google. The reason is that technorati don’t care about a link being ‘no follow’ or ‘do follow’: a link is a link! The problem though is that Technorati only takes in consideration backlinks coming from blogs registered with Technorati, but most blogs are so it’s usually not a problem.

2. Comment

Commenting is the easiest way to get backlinks from Technorati, but not by commenting the usual way. A regular comment on a blog won’t give you a backlink from Technorati because when the owner of the blog actually “ping” Technorati to say “Hey, here’s my new post”, there are no comments on the article. So it doesn’t matter if you comment because Technorati won’t go back and check for new links. The question is, how can you get an increase in authority by commenting?

That is fairly simple and it’s called “Top commentator” or “Recent commentator” plugins. You will find these plugins on a lot of blogs and they simply are plugins showing the top commentators for the blog and also the 5-10 most recent comments. I use them on my blog and you can see the “Top commentators” in the footer. How to exploit these plugins? Well, by becoming a top commentator on a blog, you will appear on every single page of the blog. What does that mean? It means that everytime Technorati will visit a blog you are a top commentator on, it will see your link on the blog and that makes a +1 blog reaction for you!

3. Real life examples

Here are some real life examples:

We see that what was picked up by Technorati is the top commentators part of the blog and I was actually a top commentator at the time!

Now, we see that what Technorati picked up was the Recent Comments part of the blog and luckily, my comment was a recent comment at the time!

These two examples actually gave me an increase in authority just by commenting, which is something I do anyway!

Being a top commentator is dead easy

I know you are thinking you don’t have 15 hours a day to become a top commentator on all these blogs! The thing you have to know is that the top commentator plugin usually resets every month. That means everything starts fresh on the first of every month and you can be a top commentator with a single comment! On the first of each month, visit a couple of new blogs and comment as you would normally do. On the next blog post, if you are still a top commentator it means a +1 authority for you!

That’s it, it’s as simple as that. You guys might have other strategies to increase your Technorati authority and feel free to share that with us!

Why no backup?

You know you have to, but still you don’t do it! I could go and tell you: “I learned it the hard way, you know. My website got hacked, then I lost everything, blah blah blah”, but you know all that don’t you? It seems like there’s no argument to convince people to backup their website, only a bad experience can convince them. I’ve warned many persons and told them they should do a full backup of their websites just in case something goes wrong but it’s really a low priority until something bad happens. Then at least I can say “I told you”, but it doesn’t help much. Designing a new theme, writing a post or coding a new little tool for your website is always more attracting than making a backup and that’s why most people don’t backup. There’s always something better to do!

It takes 5 mins, once a week

I backup all my stuff once a week, but I must admit I haven’t done it for the past three weeks because I’ve been so busy. What? Too busy? It only takes five minutes, and I wrote a new article everyday in the past three weeks as well as commenting on other blogs and doing some link building. OK, time wasn’t an issue, there was just so many better things to do! You see how we always come to that.

Anyway, the point is that I usually backup once a week and it takes a little 5 minutes. Five minutes per week isn’t that much compared to the time you’ll lose if something goes wrong. I like a new backup every week and I feel it’s the perfect timing. A week of work is the maximum amount of information I feel comfortable loosing without feeling the need to kill myself. How much information is your life worth?

What to backup?

A full backup for me is a backup of the files on my server with a dump of the database as well as an export of my posts via WordPress. If you’re not running a blog, you simply need to backup the files on your server and your database. There are a lot of ways to do that kind of backup. If you use CPanel with your host, CPanel offers a backup function so you can backup the combination of your database and files (I know I have the old CPanel version, I have to ask for an upgrade…):

And then:

Then, the process will start and you’ll receive a notification via email when the backup is complete. It shouldn’t take too long if you have a relatively small account. Then, when the backup is complete, a single .zip file will be generated with all the information on you host!

Have a blog? At least export your posts!

Let’s say you’re too lazy to backup your stuff and you have a WordPress blog, please export your posts into XML! WordPress has a nice little feature that let you export all your posts and comments into a single XML file that can then be imported back into WordPress. How great is that? It doesn’t backup your theme or anything like that, but a blog is all about content, isn’t it?

Now backup

We spend so many time on our websites, so having a backup is a must! You don’t want to loose everything and start all over again, so take that five minutes now and backup that little gem of yours!

Don’t feel guilty

Don’t feel guilty everytime you write a short post. Why would we always have to write a 2,000 words article? I don’t know, I guess we feel that short = lack of content. While this can be the case, if what you have to say fits in a couple of lines, then don’t feel bad for that. Look at the well know ShoeMoney blog for instance, the guy posted a single line article last week:

A single line! He just wanted to link to an interesting article, does he have to go through a thousand words article just for that? I must admit it could have been at least 3 or 5 lines, but the outcome is the same. Going straight to the point is good and you don’t have to create content where there’s no possibility to do so.

Don’t make it an habit

Again, it’s like everything in life: don’t abuse the concept. It’s OK to write some short posts once in a while if you can easily fit all your ideas in it, but make sure it’s not lacking of content.

I’m going to make it short

I’m not going to make a long article about short article writing. That’s really what I wanted to point out: writing short posts is ok as long as you don’t make it an habit and as you’ve seen, even the big guys do it!

Just take notes

I usually have my ipod touch with me all the time, so that’s what I use to take notes. Because it also act as a PDA and not only an iPod, I’m sure I always have it on me. I even have it with me at the gym because I listen to music so I really carry it everywhere. I usually avoid to have it with me in the pool, but that’s another story. When I think about something I think is a genius idea, I simply make note of it and when I look at the same idea a week later, it might not be a genius idea anymore, but at least I can re-evaluate the idea. On the opposite, when I look at it a week later and feel like it’s the best thing in the world, I’m glad I wrote it down.

Create an ideas backlog

You know these days when you simply don’t know what to write about? Well, it won’t happen anymore if you write down every idea you have. When I don’t know what to write about, I simply read my notes and pick a little something I feel would be good to talk about. This way, I don’t waste two hours just wondering what I should write about and I can take that extra two hours to do some useful stuff for my websites.

Ideas filtering

Have you ever written posts just because you felt you had to write? Have you written posts you weren’t proud of? Well, with an ideas backlog, it also act as an ideas filter. You might write down a hundred of ideas, but only pick five of them in the end because the other 95 weren’t that good after all. This way, you make sure you always write quality content and don’t write impulsive posts. By impulsive posts I’m talking about articles you think are awesome, but when you read them a week later, they aren’t that great anymore.

Bottom line, wether it’s your cell phone, iPod, laptop or a simple piece of paper, always carry a little something with you to write down your ideas.

Getting a domain name is hard

First of all, getting a domain name is hard. A couple of years ago, it used to be very easy as the number of available domain names was still under control. Now, it seems like every possible domain name is already taken and you can’t even consider getting one like internetmarketing.com. But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t want internetmarketing.com and you don’t want it either (well, I don’t know in fact). I don’t want onlinecasino.com, poker.com or whatever premium domain name. These are the type of domains you want if you’re making 20,000K a month and want to buy an established business. I personally prefer to start new projects and start things from scratch, but it’s really not the purpose of this post so we’ll get back on track: getting a domain name is hard. It’s hard, but not that much if you’re using a bit of creativity.

Don’t confuse website name and subject

One of the first mistake you can make is to confuse ‘website name’ with the subject/category of your website. Let’s say your website is about cats, your first reflex will be to get a domain like: cats.com, onlinecats.com, cutecats.com or something similar. Why? Why would you want your domain name to be the subject of your website? You can have a blog about cats and still have a domain name like ‘catzy.com’. It’s true we still have cat in ‘catzy’ but it’s not a problem, we now have a catchy name and you have better chances for ‘catzy.com’ to be available than ‘catsonline.com’. I personally find it easier to remind ‘catzy’ and it really sounds great to me, which would ensure people would go back to your website if they ever need information about cats.

Think about the big names

Let’s make a little comparison with some of the biggest websites out there. I will list a couple of .com domain names and what could have been their domain names if they used their niche instead of an original name.

• google.com: searchengine.com
• youtube.com: submitvideos.com
• facebook.com: socialnetwork.com
• twitter.com: microblogging.com
• shoemoney.com: makemoneyonline.com
• John Chow: makemoneyonline.com also
• techcrunch: blogabouttechnology.com
• digg: votewebsites.com
• delicious: socialbookmarking.com

You see how boring these names are? I mean, Google is much more appealing than searchengine.com and the same goes for all websites listed above. Take Facebook for instance, I’m pretty sure that at the time of registration, socialnetwork.com was probably taken, but what about facebook.com? facebook.com was probably available and it cost a little 9$ to register the domain name like any other domain.

You see how important being creative in your domain name is? Not only it ensure you can pick an available domain name, but it also ensure your domain name is a catchy one.

Establish a brand

When picking a domain name, you want a name that will be great to establish as a brand. I would personally enjoy putting seohorror.com on a t-shirt, but I don’t think something like onlineseo.com would look as good on the same t-shirt. This is one thing I consider when picking a domain: would my name look great on a t-shirt or mug?

You also want people to remember your name so they can talk to their friends about it. If you have something too generic, people won’t remember it. If your name is something really unique, then it’s easy to remember. What’s also important for people to remember your domain name? Make it short! You don’t want a 100 words domain name: below 15 characters and two words is good. Again, it’s not an exact science as there are always special situations where a longer domain would be suitable, but in most cases, 15 characters and two words is OK.

Get that domain name!

It’s now time to get that domain name. Start your search on websites like Go Daddy for available domain names and remember not to confuse category/subject with name!