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Blog Directories - Should I submit My Blog?

A common question new bloggers ask is, "Should I submit my blog to blog directories?" Some bloggers will submit to hundreds of directories, while others believe this to be useless. When starting a new blog, I think it is worthwhile to submit your blog to a few blog directories.

You will get some initial and valuable links back to your blog, which hopefully the search engines will quickly find causing them to index your blog, so that it's including in search results. Also, search engines consider links to be a "vote of confidence." Anything worth linking to must have value, they assume, so the more links to your blog the better it must be. Don't necessarily expect anyone to follow the links, to get any visitors from the directory listings.

So how many blog directories should you submit to? Hundreds of blog directories? Some people do, but I believe that's a waste of time. Maybe 5-10 blog directories maximum is enough. Although search engines love links, they are smart enough to realize that a link from a blog directory is not as important as a link from an on-topic blog post or article.

I always submit to Technorati.com and a few others, maybe 5 or perhaps a few more. Some blog directories may want you to post a backlink or make you jump though other hoops -- I generally skip those. Life is complicated enough!

Not everyone agrees with me on this. Some experienced bloggers feel submitting to blog directories is entirely worthless and conversely some believe submitting to hundreds of them is worthwhile. If you are going to submit to hundreds of directories, you might consider outsourcing that work as it's time intensive.

So how do you find blog directories? Simple, Google "blog directory." The most important blog directories, at least in the eyes of Google, will be listed first.

Submitting is usually fast, although some may make it difficult - skip those! When you first start your blog, spend a few minutes submitting to 5 or 10 blog directories, and then concentrate on producing valuable content so hopefully others will link to you.

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com

Can a Post Belong to more than one Category?

When you write a post can you add it to more than one category?

YES, of course! For example, I'm adding this post to my "Blogging 101" and "Weblogs" category.

Sometimes people wonder about the so called "duplicate content penalty from Google. Hey, there is NO duplicate content here! (besides, people in general freak out and don't understand this duplicate content thing -- most of you can entirely ignore it).

A long confusing thread full of misinformation and confusion on the Warrior Forum made me wonder if perhaps other might be confused by this?

It's simple: when writing a post, add it to all appropriate categories and just be done with it! Unless of course you are using one of the rare blogging platforms (like Blogger.com) that don't support categories)

Business Blogging Success and Passion

You should blog on something you are passionate about and will remain passionate about. People will sense your passion. Passionate bloggers tend to be successful bloggers.

What aspects of your work are you passionate about? Make a list. Not merely what you feel strongly about, or what you strongly recommend, but what you have an active long term interest in. What parts of your work or your profession never seem like "work"? These are potential areas to blog about.

As an example, a big reason why my Blogging for Business blog is successful is because I am passionate about using blogs for business purposes and it shows. People reading my blog can sense my passion, my excitement.  Those who share my passion, whether as extreme or not, tend to become regular readers.

Passion will keep you going; it's not the 4th month that may be difficult, but the 14th month, and passion keeps you writing effectively and keeps your readers engaged.

Conversely, as a security professional I talk a lot about the importance of patching software, of keeping software up to date to avoid hackers using known flaws to compromise your systems. It's extremely important. I feel strongly about it, but I am not passionate about it. I probably couldn't blog effectively on keeping software up-to-date. For starters since there is no passion, there is not much excitement and I don't really want to do it. Readers would notice this and be less likely to become and remain long term readers. There are people passionate about patching software, indeed about just about everything, and they are potential star bloggers in those areas

Passion is extremely important in blogging. You need to blog on a topic you are and will remain passionate about. It not only will keep you going, producing great content, in the 14th month and beyond, but readers will sense your passion and be more likely to engage, take action based on your blogging, and of course become regular readers. Your blog will be more successful, however you may define success., when your blogging focus and passions intersect.

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com

Blog Posts - 7 Tips For Great Ones

1) Keep your blog posts relatively short. A few hundred words maximum in general. Most blog readers expect and want concise posts. Sure, you may have the occasional real long post, but in general they should be fairly short.

2) Longer writings can be broken up into multiple parts and form a blog series. Readers tend to like those. If they read the first part they will come back and read the second part and the third part and so forth.

Also something to keep in mind is on the Internet people don't read, they scan. Short blog posts are far easier to scan and get the meaning of and get value from than long blog posts.

3) Writing great post titles is important. Post titles are essentially headlines and hopefully they entice people to read further. For example, "How To" headlines and list such as "Five Ways To whatever" often work really well. Copyblogger.com's Brian Clark has some particularly good advice on writing post titles, i.e. headlines. You can learn a lot by reading what Copyblogger has written as well as by studying his.

4) You should spell-check and proofread your posts before publishing. Taking a few seconds will catch most errors. You still might very occasionally have some grammatical errors or other errors and that's ok.

5) Always site your sources and link to them. For example, if you are blogging on something you found out about due to someone else's post, give them credit.

Reasons to do this include honesty and that it makes your blog more valuable to your readers. If you found that blog valuable and got ideas, maybe your readers will as well. Also the sources you link to will frequently discover your blog and they may become readers or they may link to you in return at some point.

6) Always think before you hit publish. Almost the whole world will be able to see what you have written. As I often mentioned, "Hey, the Internet is a very public place."

If you are angry, if you are upset, use the same rules that you should use with email. Wait at least overnight.

7) Don't try to make your writing perfect, writing is never perfect.

An occasional typo or other error may be get through and it's not a problem, although certainly you don't want too many errors because that looks unprofessional. Also remember you are writing a blog post; it's not a research paper. You are putting ideas out there. You are extending the conversation. Realize your posts aren't going to be perfect. Writing never ever is.

That said, sometimes I will save blog posts that don't seem quite right and work on them later. Although many posts may be written and published in just a few minutes, some may require more time for contemplation. Some posts may require you sleep on them, wait until the next morning, before you can do them justice. Sometimes I won't be sure whether to hit publish. It just doesn't seem quite right, but I am not sure why. I can tell you sometimes I publish these post anyway and they have been some of my more popular posts.

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com

Blog Posts: 3 Successful Types

There are three types of blog posts that tend to be very successful and popular. Some of your posts are simply going to be much more successful than others, and they will almost always be one of these three types.

1) Link Posts

It's great to link to work by other sources, things other people have written, and add your own thoughts. These sources can include other bloggers, traditional websites, online newspaper articles, and basically anything.

I do this and suggest you do when linking to something adds value to your readers. You are showing them something that they are hopefully interested in and adding some of your own analysis or thoughts and comments.

You may agree with the original author and add some more thoughts or disagree. Sometimes controversy, where genuine and well thought out, can create a lot of interest!

Make sure you link to lesser known sources sometimes. If you're only linking to A-list bloggers and very popular Web sites, it's more likely your readers will have already seen what you are referencing.

2) Single Topic Posts with Original Content

Although link posts are great, you should write original content at least some of the time. Original material makes your blog even more valuable and attracts the search engines who will send you more readers, especially when a post if focused narrowly on a single topic or issue.

Some people write more original content, perhaps primarily original content, whereas others like to link more of the time and both techniques are fine. Most bloggers do and should use some mix of these two techniques.

3) List Posts

Lists are extremely popular! Often they'll have titles like "27 Ways To . . ." or "The Three Best . . ."

The items in the lists may be original thoughts, links to other resources on the Internet, things you've already blogged on, or some combination.

Notice what's not on the list: rambling posts that cover several topics. These are rarely popular or useful. Stick primarily to the three types mentioned above, and you'll find that some of your posts take off and attract lots of readers. Oh, and expect to be surprised at which ones are most popular; all bloggers, including myself, always are!

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com

Blogging: 5 Critical Questions Before You Start

Happy New Year! Since many new blogs get started in the new year, here are five questions you'd better ask yourself before you start.

Shouldn't be a surprise: some planning and familiarity with blogging is essential before jumping in.

1) What are your blog goals?

In order to be successful you must have goals. If you don't have any goals, how can you know if you're succeeding, if your blog is working?

I suggest going beyond just listing goals and choosing your primary goal. Your primary goal will probably shift over time, and that is alright.

So, why are you going to start this blog?

2) What is your blog's focus?

What are you going to write about? You can't blog effectively on several unrelated topics in the same blog and expect to have many readers. It's unlikely that many potential readers will share your mix of passions -- a blog must focus on only one topic for maximum success.

Conversely, instead of blogging on one wide topic, for example "marketing" or "fishing," you might chose a niche within that topic, for example "marketing small business in rural areas" or "fly fishing for trout in Montana." With a tighter niche, it's more likely you'll have passionate readers who devour your every post.

3) Who is your intended audience?

Who you are blogging for? Who do you expect and want to read your blog? What kind of content will they like? You need to know who you are writing for in order to do it most effectively.

Don't be surprised if you find an entirely unexpected secondary audience drawn to your blog as well, but detemine your intended primary audience and start writing for them.

4) What are your strengths how can you leverage them in your blogging?

Do you follow cutting edge current events in your topic? Are you really up-to-date on everything that happens, as soon as it happens if not before and really into that? Or maybe some sort of in depth analysis of timeless issues more your style and interest?

Well obviously that’s going to affect what you are going to be writing about. Are you going to be writing about breaking news or how to do things well that don’t change all that often or perhaps something else?

5) How familiar with the blogosphere are you?

I suggest before anyone starts blogging, they read a lot of blogs for at least two weeks. This is the bare minimum. Take notes, see what you like, what you don’t like about different people’s blogs and blogging styles.

See what you think might work well for you and then be prepared to experiment.

An easy way to find other blogs you may be interested in is to use one of the blog search engines, for example, technorati.com, and you can search for blogs in your topic area or areas you are interested in.

If you're considering starting blogging, by all means jump in and start. Doing just dive in headfirst however, do some planning and research first. Answers these five questions first, and your blog will likely be successful faster.

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com

Blogging: More Traffic through Highlighting your Greatest Hits

Highlight your most popular posts, make them easily visible to visitors, and your blog will be more valuable, and it will be more likely that visitors will return and become regular readers.

All bloggers will find that some of their blog posts more popular than the rest. These are arguably the ones that readers find most valuable, and I call these classic hits.

For example you might have a most popular post section in the sidebar as I do. I have a most popular post section and list my most popular there. Other bloggers do it slightly differently. For example, Brian Clark at copyblogger.com has a "Popular Articles" in his sidebar and under that he lists his most popular blog posts. Yaro Starak, at entrepreneurs-journey.com calls his most popular posts "Popular Articles" and lists them at the very top of his blog. You might do something as simple as create a category called most popular and include them in that category.

You will be surprised at which posts are your most popular. All bloggers are! Sometimes a post which is fantastic and incredible in your mind will receive very little interest, and a post you found almost not worth publishing will have massive interest. What your readers like is what is most important, not what you think they should like.

How do you determine which articles are most popular? Most blogger determine popularity by the number of readers. They consider their most popular posts to be the ones with the most traffic. Another metric to determine a post's popularity is the number of comments. The more comments a blog post has the more popular it is considered. Some bloggers, including myself, factor in both comments and traffic to determine popularity.

It doesn't matter how you chose your most popular posts, your "classic hits," as long as you highlight them somehow. This makes your blog more valuable to visitors, and makes it more likely that they will return and become regular readers.

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com

Comments: Why aren't I getting any?

Bloggers often ask, "Why aren't I getting comments?" or "Why aren't I getting more comments?"

First let's get a couple of things out of the way:

• Some topics simply draw more comments than others. You topic may not draw a lot.

• The number of comments don't equate to post popularity. I have some very popular posts with few if any comments, and some posts where every other reader seems to comment.

Only perhaps 1% of readers will EVER leave a comment. Of course this is a big guessimate, but overall pretty accurate.

My friend Jon at Air Quality Trends is a new blogger, and new bloggers get few if any comments.

Initially, he had TypePad configured to require a login to comment. That will drive away almost all commenters. Yes, it's useful to cut down on comment spam, but if you try to make people jump through hoops, or even take one simple extra step, most will not.

So, if you're a newish blogger, don't expect many comments, or any quickly, and make it easy to comment. remember you might be pumping out valuable blog posts that people love, yet you may be getting zero comments. Don't let that worry you!

Effective Blogging: Conversational Writing

Bloggers need to write in a conversational tone in order to be effective. They must write as though speaking to a friend. Marketese and business speak do not work in blogs. "If you ever went to business school ignore everything you learned about writing while there," is very popular advice that lots of people give and not far off the mark.

If you have trouble writing conversationally, try saying your thoughts out loud as if speaking to someone before writing them down. As silly as it may sound, some people find holding a telephone to their head helps.

One gentleman I mentored had such trouble initially, even though he is a great writer. He is a better writer than I am or will ever be, but he had such enormous trouble writing conversationally initially. He would speak into his phone to a secretary's voice mail and she'd then transcribe his words into a draft message which he would then take a quick look at, make sure she'd transcribed it right, perhaps make some minor changes and publish. In fact we found that if he didn't take just a quick look, he'd sometimes edit it back to business speak.

Most people don't have this much trouble writing conversationally, although many new bloggers find it difficult at first. Conversational writing is simply much different than the traditional business communications you may be familiar with, but most new bloggers quickly get the hang of it as it's not difficult at all. For example, after a couple of weeks this gentleman was writing conversationally and very effectively. A good way to see a lot of conversational writing is just to read some blogs because blogs of course, the popular ones, the well done ones, are all full of conversational writing.

Effective blogging requires a writing style closer to speaking to a good friend than the business writing you may be familiar with. It is fairly easy to learn although it may seem difficult to learn. Once you master the basics of conversational writing, you will find you can write faster and easier than ever before!

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com