All About Blogs

Integrating Pinterest with your blog

Pinterest is the cool kid on the block, hotter than Instagram and Twitter combined, but what the heck are you supposed to do with it?

First thing's first: what's the deal with Pinterest? I like to explain it as "Twitter, but with pictures instead of words." Pinterest is Twitter for people who don't like to read words. It's designed to share images, with a tiny bit of text at the bottom. If you like to look at pictures of food, or wedding photography, or handbags, or amazing travel photography, then Pinterest is definitely the site for you! You can lose yourself scrolling through these amazing photos for hours. (Curse that infinite scroll-down!)

The bad news is, it isn't easy to add Pinterest stuff to your blog. Unlike services like Twitter, which have a huge suite of widgets you can use to embed your Tweets right there on your blog's sidebar. Pinterest (perhaps because it's so new) acts something like a "walled garden." You can't automatically push content from your blog to Pinterest, nor can you push content from Pinterest to your blog.

The only way to integrate Pinterest into your blog is to put a hand-crafted link to your Pinterest account on your blog's sidebar. "Follow me on Pinterest!" You may also want to occasionally remind your followers that you have a Pinterest account. The Bloggess does a great job of this kind of thing, by including a link to "Stuff I pinned this week" in her weekly wrap-up posts.

Much like Twitter, Pinterest can complement your blogging. If you are a food blogger, you may not want to spend a lot of time talking about other people's cooking or food reviews. But you can use Pinterest to share those images with your followers. The same goes for shopping blogs, parenting blogs, travel blogs… basically, you can use Pinterest as a wordless, "Look at this great thing I found!"

Because Pinterest gives a lot of good exposure, you might theoretically be able to drive traffic to your blog from your Pinterest account. It's possible that people will find you on Pinterest, and click through your profile to start reading your blog. Although truthfully, my gut instinct here is that this will not happen very often.

The up side to Pinterest is that it's very easy to do. You can get a browser plug-in that lets you "pin" any image you find online. Just a few quick clicks, and you have shared an image with your followers.

Twitter And Your Blog

Two great tastes that taste great together...once you figure out how!

A lot of new bloggers are given the advice to "Use Twitter!" But why? And how? And what's the best usage of your time versus payoff?

You have no doubt heard the explanation that "Twitter is a micro-blogging platform." But consider that with regards to your real blog. You may think "I already have a blog, why would I want a micro one?" The answer is that Twitter lets you capture and share all those small thoughts that aren't really worth a full-fledged blog post.

Twitter can also prop up your blog, by supporting your main theme in smaller, more news-like chunks throughout the day. Let's say you are a food blogger: you write one food blog post per day. But you can also send 2-5 tweets related tweets throughout the day. Many bloggers use Twitter in this way: to forward news articles on their main theme, as well as making short quips and observations.

You can use Twitter in the opposite way, too. You are more than just a food blogger! Twitter is a great way to talk about your other interests and day-to-day life, without clogging up your blog.

A lot of Twitter users basically use Twitter as an RSS feed. What do I mean by this? Instead of using a separate RSS reader like Google Reader or Bloglines, they rely on people to post their blog updates to Twitter. I just polled my own stats, and eyeballing the data, it looks like I have about a 1:4 ratio of people who click through from Twitter versus subscribing to one of my RSS feeds. That's pretty significant!

I recommend doing this automatically by setting up an account with a free service like HootSuite or Twitterfeed. These "set it and forget it" services will only take a few minutes to set up. If the service gives you the option, I strongly recommend publishing "title only." This will create a tweet with your blog post title and a link. The excerpt tweets can look confusing and cluttered.

Finally, be sure to add your Twitter feed to your blog's sidebar. There are a lot of ways to do this, depending on your blog platform. Most platforms have an easy widget or plug-in that will show your N latest tweets on your sidebar. This helps draw users into your Twitter feed and lets them know how to find and follow you. (It's hard to find people on Twitter!) It also gives non-Twitter users a way to easily browse your tweets.

Should You Have an Affiliate Disclosure?

There seems to be a lot of controversy over whether or not to announce that your outgoing links are affiliate links. Some people really take offense that you could be making money off of their clicks, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you are providing them with valuable content and a value added link to something that they want, why shouldn’t you make a little bit of income?

I think the main concern people have is that they are somehow being duped, because they feel as though they should be told when you are using affiliate links. Some bloggers will use affiliate links and reviews of products they have never used, simply because the payout is high, and that is where most of the trouble comes from.

An affiliate disclosure can tell your readers that you are going to get income from their purchases, but it can be worded in such a way as to remind them that you are providing a service you do not charge for, and the only way to support your blog is by those affiliate sales. If you also make a point to tell them your linking policy, for example that you only link to products you have tried, that can help soothe any potentially ruffled feathers.

In the end, it’s a matter of personal preference whether or not to use an affiliate disclosure, but I think it can be a helpful way to inform your readers without making them feel they are somehow being taken advantage of. You can have a separate page for your disclosure, or add a small blurb at the bottom of your posts to let your readers know.

When The Enemy Hordes Descend

Batten down the hatches and don't engage. In other words, play dead.

It seems like no matter what you blog about - no matter how innocuous - somewhere out there is a community dedicated to doing the exact opposite, in as vocal and destructive a manner possible. Angry mobs, basically, who may eventually choose your blog as a target.

Start by performing triage: first, stop the bleeding. Turn off commenting on your blog to stop the main avenue of attack. DO NOT DELETE THE ANGRY COMMENTS. You want to preserve them as evidence. If there is a way to unpublish them so that they cannot be seen but are still accessible through your admin panel, excellent. Otherwise, just let them stand.

If you have a community of readers, you may want to post a bland notice that "Commenting has been temporarily disabled." No matter what, do not react to the comments, either publicly or privately!

Next, act defensively: make a backup of your blog. This will protect you in case the bad guys are able to knock your blog offline, hack the database and destroy it, or convince your hosting company to turn off your account. (I have seen all of these things happen, and more.)

Backing up your blog: Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad

How you back up your blog will depend on your software and hosting company. You may be able to export your posts into a flat file, or you may need to log into a MySQL control panel separately and create a database backup directly.

If you don't know how to back up your blog, go figure it out today! A) everyone should back up their blog regularly, and B) don't wait until the heat of the moment to try and figure it out.

Now that you are safe, take a deep breath. Go outside or do some chores, anything to take a break and get some perspective. These attacks were not your fault. There is no point trying to engage the angry mob; you won't change their opinions, and it will only make you angry.

Keep a copy of all communications, particularly death threats. There's not much point reporting it to the police, but you never know when you will need evidence.

Remember that this is a form of bullying - meaning that it's not your fault. You may have voiced an unpopular opinion, talked trash about a celebrity or TV show that has a vocal fandom, or just committed the (to some) unpardonable sin of "being female on the internet." Regardless, you have the right to say whatever you want on your blog without being attacked.

If you batten down the hatches and refuse to engage (i.e. play dead), they will soon move on to their next target. It's hard to do, but you have to sit on your hands and let it pass.

Narrow Your Focus, But Not Too Much

Blogs are more successful when they have a specific topic to draw the readers in. While you can’t guarantee that every reader will be interested in all of the things you are, you can be sure that the readers who come to your site when it is highly specific are interested in what you write. Keeping a focused topic provides continuity and keeps it interesting for the people reading it. With that being said, having too narrow a focus can make it extremely difficult to come up with fresh content on a regular basis.

It’s your blog, so you are free to write about whatever you like. That means, you make the rules, just keep in mind that a focus will keep your readers’ focus too. There are some topics that, while unrelated, can still go together well. For instance, if you write a blog about Internet marketing (don’t, everyone else is), a post about a website design software you like can be helpful and still on topic.

If you write a blog about making a living writing from home, your readers might appreciate a lead on some other type of work from home job, even if it isn’t directly related to writing.

Keeping a narrow focus helps your blog draw more targeted readers, but too tight a focus can give you headaches as you try to come up with fresh content every week. Adding complementary content that isn’t necessarily on topic can help you come up with more valuable information for your readers and more fresh ideas to write about.

Use a Kitchen Timer to Stay Focused

Writing a successful blog requires a lot of commitment. That means writing when you don’t feel like it, when you’d rather be outside on a sunny day, or when the writing just seems to come sluggishly. One of the absolute best ways I have found to keep my focus is by using an ordinary kitchen timer I picked up from Walmart for about $3.

Giving yourself clearly-defined goals helps you cement your focus and stay on track. For me, the perfect amount of time is 45 minutes of work, followed by 15 minutes of anything other than writing. I like to get up and move around during my 15 minutes off, but I still stay productive by folding laundry, doing the dishes, or running down to the mailbox.

Even though losing 15 minutes out of every hour seems like it would be counterproductive, I find that I produce more in the 45 minutes than if I were to work straight through without a break. There is something about that ticking timer by my computer that makes my fingers – and brain – fly through the work.

During the 45 minutes, I don’t care what I am doing, so long as it is productive toward my writing. It can be lining up topics for future blogs, emailing clients about prospective work, or actively writing a post, so long as it is some sort of measurable progress.

So if you find yourself lacking in focus, try using a kitchen timer, alarm clock or other timer to give yourself defined times of work and breaks. It’s really amazing how effective small goals like that can be.

What's The Best Way To Promote My Blog?

(Without paying money or looking like a jerk!)

A writer's greatest enemy is obscurity. (Well… obscurity and Facebook games.) If you search online, there are thousands of suggestions as to how to promote your blog. But if you find yourself feeling a bit queasy about some of the tactics, I suggest you follow that instinct. A lot of so-called helpful self-promotion suggestions are basically guaranteed to make you look like kind of a jerk at best, and get you blocked from someone's website at worst.

Here are some sure-fire, ethical, honest ways to raise your blog's profile, without looking at all like a jerk:

1. Comment on other blogs and forums

Find blogs similar to yours, and forums dedicated to your main topic, and take the time to leave thoughtful, well-written, well-thought-out comments. Ideally, leave one of these comments somewhere every day. Realistically, if you can leave a good comment once a week you'll be in good shape. When in doubt, it's better not to leave a comment than to leave a sub-standard or sloppy comment.

This won't get you any SEO juice, because every forum and blog platform uses "ref=nofollow" these days. But it will earn you an audience, because people are curious. If you leave a great comment, they will click through your URL to check out your blog and see what else you have to say.

It also establishes you as an awesome person who adds value to the conversation. Which is a pretty great reputation to have!

2. Push your posts to Twitter

You want to make it easy for your followers to follow you. And a surprising number of people use Twitter as their RSS reader, basically. If they see you have a Twitter feed they will follow you, and use your Twitter notifications as an alert to go read your post.

There are a lot of tools you can use to publish your posts on Twitter. (I use TwitterFeed, personally.) This should also get you focused on creating great titles for your blog posts - titles that use appropriate keywords, and which are interesting enough to entice people to click through and read.

3. Search is king

Submit your blog to the major search engines, so that they can start indexing you. DO THIS YOURSELF. DON'T PAY SOMEONE. It is free to submit your site to search engines, and only takes a few minutes. Here is where to submit your site to:

What To Do About Nasty Blog Comments

And why you should just ignore them

You're blogging away, minding your own business, when wham! Someone leaves you a nasty blog comment. These comments are almost always anonymous (or pseudonymous) and frequently come out of left field. They may be just a string of obscenities and invective, or it may be an insult about something you posted.

But whether it's criticizing your parenting skills or your parentage, these comments hurt!

It's hard to give blanket statements about why people leave nasty comments. Sometimes it's just someone in a bad mood. Sometimes you accidentally step on someone's nerve, or bring up a hot-button issue. (Like how women deserve equality - crazy stuff like that!) Sometimes it's someone who is just out to hurt someone's feelings. It's like a drive-by shooting: you can't know why, you can only deal with the aftermath.

First and foremost, understand that you will get a lot of these comments in your career as a writer, and that every single one of them is meaningless. (I'm talking about the angry jerk comments, not the comments that provide a clear and concise critique or debate.)

Have you ever seen the comments on any given newspaper article? How do you think they made the article's author feel? I assure you, everyone who writes in public gets buckets of hate mail. If you ever want to feel better, commiserate with a fellow blogger about hate mail. It's the one thing we all have in common.

As for your response, it should be: zero. Don't engage, don't mention it, just delete it, pretend it never happened, and move on.

Why should you delete nasty comments? You may want to leave it there, so that everyone else can see what a meanie that person was. But leaving it there creates an unsafe atmosphere in your comments section. It makes it look as if you condone that sort of behavior, and it makes other commenters worry that you won't intervene on their behalf if someone else says something nasty about them.

Why should you ignore it? Because like it or not, if you say anything about it, you will look like a bully. A bully is someone with more power, doing or saying something nasty to someone who has less. And as the blogger, you are the one with the platform - and therefore, you are perceived as being the one with the power. So do your image a favor, and don't say anything nasty or abusive, even if the other guy started it.

Format Your Posts to Break Up Text

Nothing makes people’s attention wander like a long, solid block of text. If you want to keep your reader’s attention, you have to do something to break up your words into bite-sized morsels of information. There are many ways to do this, but the point is that you need to create a way for them to stay focused, while giving their eyes a break from the monotony of text.

Bullet Points
Bullet points are a great way to create lists of things. You can use them to talk about the benefits of a concept, a list of supplies, or any other topic that involves a series. Bullet points are easier to read than a string of words in a paragraph, and they break up the rest of the page too.

Headers
Headers help a reader segue from one concept to the next and define what the next paragraph or section will be about. Readers in a hurry can skim the headers to see if they want to read that portion or move on to the next.

Images
For lengthy posts, adding images can help spice things up and keep readers interested. Web readers are visual readers, so emphasizing your point with a well-placed image can help hit home the point, and keep the text from getting too cumbersome.

Bullet points, headers and images are easy ways to create variety in your posts and keep readers interested. If you aren’t using these, your posts can begin to look boring and even a little daunting for some readers.

Blogs about Blogging

Sometimes, reading other people’s blogs can help you find the inspiration you need. In addition to the blogs you follow that are on the same subject as yours, you can also learn handy tips, tricks and ideas by reading blogs about blogging. Daily Blog Tips publishes a top 25 list that ranks blogging blogs according to how they rate in Google, Alexa, on Bloglines and Technorati. These ratings give an idea of how large the readership of a blog is and presumably, how good the content is. If they are that popular, there must be a good reason!

The page is supposed to be updated monthly, but the current top five are Problogger, Copyblogger, John Chow, Quick Online Tips and of course, Daily Blog Tips. Those are just the tip of the iceberg, however, and you can find all kinds of great blogs at the top 25 list.

These blogs contain a wealth of information about pretty much everything related to blogging. You can learn ways to streamline the process, such as using a template to create titles, and ways to increase revenue, such as maximizing Adsense profits.

I know your RSS reader is probably full enough as it is, but if you need inspiration and ideas, I highly recommend following a few of these blogs. The time spent reading will pay for itself quickly with improvements to your blogging process, and even seasoned pros can learn a thing or two from their peers.

What about you? Do you follow blogs about blogging? Which are your favorites?

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