Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Help me subscribe and share your work

I've deliberately not positioned Deadly Bloggers in the "how to blog" market. There are lots of those websites and it's not my intention to become one of them. As a result, I haven't written posts on hints & tips, how to market, grow your audience stuff etc. That said, I feel the need, this lazy Easter Sunday, after just spending twenty minutes attempting to find the URL of one Deadly Blogger, to offer some advice on how to help your audience share your posts.

Let's assume: Your audience wants to share your post. Your audience may love or loathe you, but either way, they want to tell others about your post.

Here are some of the basics -

1. Enable sharing buttons

These are the buttons at the bottom of each post. This lets your audience share individual posts. Why not just give them the URL of your blog? Because the post they may wish to share may have been published months (even years) ago, so the URL of the post will be www.myblogtitle.blogspot.com/thispost-is-amazing-you-should-read-it and not www.myblogtitle.blogspot.com. As you keep blogging, you will find that you have posts in your archive that are popular and as your audience grows, this is the one that they may want to share.

2. Tweet

You don't have to become a mad-keen tweeter with tens of thousands of tweets, but do us a favour and at least have a Twitter account that you check at least once-a-week.

Why? Think about it. Where do we "share" your posts? On social media platforms. I would like to be able to simply RT your post rather than wait until I get to my desk, then copy the URL and paste into Twitter (and Facebook and G+). Even if your Twitter presence is a broadcast presence, it's better than nothing. Oh. And make sure you write in your Twitter profile, the URL of your blog*.

3. Have a Facebook Page for your blog

See above. But remember, have a Page and not a PROFILE. I don't really want to be your "Friend", I just want to subscribe to your posts.

4. Have a G+ page for your blog

See Twitter and Facebook above.

5. Enable the subscription widgets/gadgets that are available

You don't know how people will wish to subscribe to your blog. I subscribe using lots of different methods - Facebook Pages, Twitter Accounts, Google+, Google Friend Connect, G+ Follows.

I don't use one method because each blogger has different subscription methods. So, the very least you can do, is to offer up a couple, even if it's just the default ones available on your platform. You don't even have to put them in the sidebar (and fill up all your real-estate), you can often put them in the footer.

6. Start an Email Newsletter

When you're really deadly, offer a weekly or monthly email to your audience. For a lot of the professional bloggers, an email newsletter is one of their key marketing tools. If that's the space you're going to play in, you should give it some consideration. You can sign up to a freemium (free for the basic membership) newsletter service like MailChimp, and see how it works for you.

Behind the scenes, I do get asked for advice, and seem to have a bit of an "advice" column that lives "off-the-wall". If you have any questions, ask away and I'll see if I can help.

Any other subscription methods I should include in this post? Let me know and I'll add them to the list.

* As silly as it sounds, I wouldn't have written this, if it didn't happen.


Wednesday, February 27, 2013

New website - New Information

As I've mentioned before, I'm getting ready to create a new website for The Deadly Bloggers. We'll be moving to WordPress soon. However there is one big difference between what we have now and what I'd like to have in the future.

The "directory" is actually (on this website) a LinkList. Whenever I find a new blogger to add, I go into the list, edit and add new URL.

What I want for the new site is to have individual bloggers list their blogs by completing a form. Each blogger would have their own listing (in an individual post). And I'd like to feature more information than simply the link, with a thumbnail of their latest post.

The type of information I'm thinking about including -

  • Name of Blog
  • URL of Blog
  • Blog logo (if relevant)
  • Category: Education, Personal, Literature, Art, Professional, Sport, Fashion, Health, Technology, Politics, Adult, Craft, Entertainment, Organisation, Business ... (more)
  • Summary of blog (146 characters perhaps)
  • Social Media links - G+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc
  • Blogging platform: Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Posterous, other
  • Contact name
I know that I may end up losing a few blogs from the list - getting everyone to complete their information will be time-consuming. We will also lose a few of the bloggers who frequent the "bottom" of the list (ie. those folks who start a blog but don't really keep it up-to-date). However I think it will be okay. I think that it will make the directory more relevant and accurate. I'm hoping that we will gain a few more listings that we haven't seen before too.

Remember: the goal of the Directory is about increasing your audience, capturing a new audience, and supporting each other and inspiring other folks to get into the online media sphere.

With that in mind:

1) Can you think of any other information that should be included? I want to try to catch as much information as possible at the outset, rather than try to go back and add it in.

2) What category or categories does your blog fit into? What is missing from my list?