Since everyone is here let us begin. Regardless whether you are the one pitching or the recipient are there certain things you need to keep in mind when writing or reacting to a pitch, which leads me to ask all of you:

“How should you ideally pitch a blogger if you want something from him?”

Leave the hard-hitting hyperbole at home when marketing yourself to authority bloggers. Remember what your mom said about old-fashioned courtesy and kindness. They work especially well in the post-modern blog universe.

Roberta Rosenberg

Lead with the link. I’m a blogger. I read links. It’s what we do. I might skip the rest of your poorly-written email if there’s a URL at the top with full info about your product or service, and then if it’s interesting, I might even link to that page.

Anil Dash

Be relevant. It seems so simple and obvious, yet it is the biggest mistake made when pitching bloggers. Look at the categories of the blog and look at previous blog posts. Is your pitch REALLY relevant for the blog? With a lot of the pitches we get, you can tell there’s been no attempt to look any further than the title of the blog.

Lee Odden

Bloggers aim to provide a personal view of the news. They write in conversational style as an antidote to the canned news of traditional media. Why would you send a canned PR-speak pitch?

B.L. Ochman

Just give ‘em the facts and let the pitch stand on its own. Be proud! If you feel you’re not offering high value information, go back to the drawing board and re slant your pitch until you come up with something truly compelling.

Steve Rubel

Make it short and sweet: Generally, the shorter and more concise, the better. I don’t need your full 500 word press release. Tell me why I should be interested in 50 words or less, and then link to it. If you can’t communicate why this is worth my time in 50 words, you’re unlikely to be able to do so in 500 words.

Jeremy Wright

The goal is to build a lasting relationship with people. So reach out to them and sympathize with their problems and find ways that you can help them. Helping people is the best way to build contacts.

Nick O’Neill

Thank you for your answers. You really gave some great answers and offered a lot of insight… Yes, Lee, did you want to add something?

Don’t be offended or give up if a blogger doesn’t take your story the first time. Be courteous and smart about repeat attempts though. Watch to see if they really do pick up on your story before sending another pitch. Of course, this is not a problem if you actually read their blog.

Lee Odden

Thanks Lee, it certainly does pay to be persistent doesn’t it. Regardless of whether you are a blogger reaching out to other bloggers or a company looking for exposure for your products or your clients is there a lot you should pay attention to and take the time learning provided you want to do well. None of us appreciates being spoken to by strangers raving on about things we have little or no relation to. Ideally we want to buy and get advice or suggestions from someone who we know and respect just as we want to pass on what we know and like to them. Hence would my advice be not to speak to people, but to speak with them. It will be a whole lot more rewarding for everyone.

You can learn a whole lot more by reading the rest of the posts quoted above as well as by reading Bloggers: An invaluable communications channel, which will give you more of a background while The PR Wiki: Tips on Pitching Bloggers and The Bad Pitch Blog all are full of good advice and examples of both poor and great pitches and pitching.

The inspiration for this post came from reading Liz Strauss’ Writing Challenge: Joanna’s Thematic Link Post! I was both taken in and carried away about the circularity of it all. Seeing how my first guest post on Lorelle on WordPress Why A Link Post Should Be Like Mingling at a Party was picked up by Joanna Young in her post How to write a links post and then turned into a writing challenge, which now circulates among the readers of Successful Blog.

In addition this post can be seen as trying yet another way of writing a link post combining my usual way of writing link posts with how I normally write quotation posts as well as my idea about the virtual interview.

Speaking about well worth reading is the following my picks from the submitted articles. They are ordered according to my appreciation, but I highly recommend that you read all of them. I am sure I could have added more if I had expanded the focus, but I must admit to being picky both what the quality and the subject is concerned. There are just some subjects, which I am not drawn to regardless of how well the articles may be written. Hence are the articles that I picked similar to those that I feature my regular link posts.

L’Amour De Blog: 3 reasons why blogging is like being in love
“You unfortunate masses who’ve never experienced a deep, meaningful relationship with a blog have missed out on an achingly poignant truth: blogging is a lot like being in love. In fact, for thousands of dateless programming junkies across the globe (don’t look at me!), the blogosphere is the closest they’ve ever actually gotten to going steady.”

Three essential steps to great blog posts
“You’ve heard the mantra: content is king. If there’s one thing you must do to have a profitable, high-traffic blog, it’s provide excellent content. How do you ensure that you’re doing that?”

3 Surefire Ways to Advertise Your Blog on a Shoe String
“One of the greatest lies told in the blogosphere is “write better content to get more readers and more traffic.” Great content without promotion will always fail to reach wide audience. Some form of promotion is always necessarily, usually by getting links from a more popular site, or by having a reader base that promotes your content for you.”

3 Must Do Things For A New Blogger
“Few people have a misconception that they can earn good amount of money from first month. And we know this is one of the main reasons why most blogger’s fail. Though I’m not a Pro blogger or even an intermediate blogger, I can still give a few tips for the new bloggers.”

How To Sell Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps
“Selling a blog may seem a daunting task, but it doesn’t need to be so difficult or stressing. Perhaps what you need is the right system to assist you in selling your blog.”

Finally would I like to congratulate Daniel for coming up with a way to decide this competition that I have never seen before. What you see above are my votes in the competition. Everyone participating are to vote this way and when the deadline have passed all votes are counted and the posts that have received the most votes win. That way the participants themselves decide who wins in contrast to most blog competitions where the hosting blog choose the winner. I am sure this is at least the same amount of work for the hosting site, but it seems so much more fair and rewarding than simply having a winner drawn randomly or picked by one or two people. Unless they are real authorities on the subject of course. I am still not sure if it will actually work as intended, but we will learn that soon enough. If one or more of those I have linked to above wins (this project have three equal winners) then I will consider it a success. Otherwise is there something which need to be changed for me to use it at least.

UPDATE: Now that the results are in am I not entirely sure what to think about this method. On the one hand I actually managed to predict the overall winner by picking it as number one here and had another of my five picks finishing just outside the top three. On the other hand am I not convinced by the quality of the other winners. I guess deciding who’s sense of quality to rely on is one thing you need to do before picking how to decide a winner, while another is if you will be happy with the result regardless who picks. It thus comes down to whether you rather want to be happy with who won or how they were picked. You will never be able to please everyone either way so you may as well go the route that you are most comfortable with I guess.

As to what I think about the choice between blogs with and without comments do you have to look no further than my article about why blogging can be and should be about more than mere publishing: Why You Should Blog With Community in Mind and How to do it. I do not take sides. There is no point in taking sides as that only divides. What does make sense is contemplating what you think is best and what you enjoy the most. I practically only read blogs with comments. Not only because I want my say, but because I thoroughly enjoy reading what others think as well. Even if the blogger is an authority on the subject and have put everything he or she can into communicating it is there almost always someone who can add to it in some way or another. That you would be missing on a blog without comments and I do simply not see why you should.

10 Reasons Commenting is Good For Bloggers
“Blogging is not just about saying your piece, it is also about going out and joining the conversation where it is happening. It’s about reaching out to people and exposing yourself (steady!) to new ideas. Some giving as well as all this taking back we focus on.” Chris makes a good point when stating that commenting is a great way of giving something back. Unfortunately do not many of the more prominent bloggers think that way. In fact it is mostly those who already had this philosophy when starting out who are doing so. Regardless of your status and experience should you try to meet the challenge that he poses: posting more comments each day for a week. Even if you fail am I sure you will have a great time doing so.

New Bloggers: An Idea To Get The Conversation Started
“…what do we want from our blogs? If we want comments we probably want conversation. And if we want conversation, we likely want to create relationships. And through relationships, there’s even the chance we could create community.” Dawud Miracle and I seem to think alike about a number of things and this is one of them. Try not seeing comments as the goal, but as the start of a journey. In this post, which in itself is a link post with more possible journeys built in, he seems to add a dimension to Chris’ challenge (see above) as he asks every commenter to return the favor. As you can imagine am I just thrilled when seeing someone else embracing circular communication and actually seeking to practice it.

Business Blog Design: Comments
“Being able to open up a dialogue between author and readers by leaving comments is one of the key aspects of a blog and one of the elements that make them as effective as they are. They open a door onto the interactive side of the web and give the opportunity to engage with people, start conversations and create connections.” I could not have said it better myself. Which isn’t the same as saying you cannot blog without comments mind you. Underlined is however also that not allowing comments sends the signal that you or your business are unapproachable, which is rarely seen as something positive. The tips how encourage comments and to deal with them when they start coming (including comment spam) is well worth checking out.

Got Comments? How to Get More Interaction on Your Blog
“… a company that blogs should be doing everything possible to encourage its readers to leave comments. The more input from its readers, the more valuable feedback the company can collect.” Mark Collier suggests six things that you can do to maximize the number of valuable comments on your blog. He does argue from a company point of view, but the tips can be used by any blog. I particularly like his fifth tip, which I haven’t seen anywhere else, where he suggests seeing someone commenting via a post on their own blog as something which can be integrated into your own post and thus help couple the two conversations. The other points are all valid and insightful as well.

Why You Comment on Blogs
“On most websites or blogs, the ratio of readers to commenters is gigantic. On this blog, a post that garners 40 or 50 comments is considered quite a bit, even though there are many thousands of readers. The stream of comments can take many shapes, depending on the nature of the post. And, once again depending on the nature of the post, the commenters here can seem like a fairly diverse lot. But lately I got to thinking: what kind of person comments on a blog, and why?” Having asked that and used the comments to find the answers is this the post presenting them. First of all do I like the circularity about it. Asking the readers to comment on why they comment just has something about it don’t you think? There is more to it than that, but it really seems that the obstacles sometimes are higher than the desire to comment and that you therefore really have to do everything you possibly can to encourage conversation for it to actually happen.

Blogs are sometimes criticized for being poor community platform, but truth is that they are what you make of them. The same goes for comments. As a famous Chinese proverb states does every journey start with a single step. Consider every comment you make such a step and you will be going places. As you can see is there more to the question about comments than merely if they add value to the articles, which you can only applaud regardless whether you are the writer or the reader. If you are a blogger is a blog with comments an entirely different experience than one without any. You get feedback, get to know new people and expand your reach. You get to play host for conversations or even builder of a community. As a reader do you get to have your say, get to know new people and expand your universe. You get to converse or even become part of a community. For those of us who are both writers and readers does the benefits multiply and not simply double because each of the factors reinforce each other. Last, but not least, would I like to mention Maki’s tip on How to Use Blog Comments as a Personal or Blog Branding Strategy where he helps you decide if you should focus on yourself or your blog, how to brand consistently and how you start actively engaging others through interactive commenting.

PS: Within the last couple of days have seen a heated debate on a number of the blogs that I read about a new service offering to make comments on your behalf in exchange for money. Perhaps I should be just as outraged and infuriated about this as the bloggers whom I admire, but I am not. It is not that I don’t care or that I not against it, but simply that I firstly don’t want to help promote the service (which will prove itself to be a disservice with time) and secondly believe that it is not worth debating something, which you can’t do anything about anyway. Those who came up with the idea service providing paid comments as well as everyone who would even consider using it are in my opinion outside pedagogical reach. We would therefore only be discussing this within the community of people who agree on disagreeing with it (which the ongoing discussion already proves) and regardless of how passionately we do that it wont change a thing. Since it goes against anything positive you can say about comments and commenting do I hence, this time, choose to remain silent.

After letting the concept flow for a while in my unconscious I suddenly I remembered having some great exchanges with the man dubbed “the best branding expert on the planet” a few years back. Rob Frankel (link leads to an abundance of entertaining and useful reads!) defines a brand using dimensions, which I find both intuitive and compelling. Thus tells branding in the first dimension people who you are, while branding in the second dimension tells people what you do. Branding’s Third Dimension communicates how you do what you do while the fourth dimension is about producing a memorable, compelling and powerful relevance that your prospects find intriguing. “Branding is not about getting your prospect to choose you over your competition; it’s about getting your prospect to see you as the only solution to their problem” as Rob Frankel puts it. The following articles will help illustrate what this means when talking about blog branding and why it not only is relevant, but also may decide how you are rewarded for your efforts.

Brand You Revisited
“It was true then of Web sites as it is now of blogs: anyone can have one. And because the cost of entry with tools such as Joomla, Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type, and WordPress is so much lower, many people do. What guides your choices of blogs to visit, to comment on, to subscribe to? The answer is quite simple: branding.” I had to start of with this one as I unfortunately still was very skeptical about branding when leaving my first comment to this post. Luckily did Valeria Maltoni not take it personal when I asked if personal branding isn’t just a clever way of saying reputation and doubted that the concept was more than a buzz word. Instead she provided an excellent reply and got a conversation going. Quite fitting for someone who is known as the Conversation Agent and thus in perfect compliance with both her personal and her blog’s brand.

Personal Branding and Blogging
“My own philosophy on personal branding is that it needs to be approached on two fronts – a big picture and a little picture one. On a big picture front one needs to think about the larger ‘picture’ that you’re wanting to paint of yourself. … On a smaller picture/micro level I think bloggers need to consider that every action that they take has the ability to add to or subtract from their personal brand.” What I like about this is how something big and somewhat unapproachable can be divided up into something concrete and manageable. Everyone who reads Darren Rowse regularly knows that you seldom close the page without having learnt at least one thing that you can put into practice right away.

The Biggest Question Any Blogger Must Answer
“Assuming that you’re a blogger who is interested in creating a blog that is read, well regarded, and well trafficked, there’s only one question that should preoccupy your mind at all times. That question is “what is making my blog an indispensible read?”” See how Tony Hung, who is a brilliant writer, touches upon the fourth dimension mentioned above? This article is a great read in it’s own right, but I was sadly more frustrated about not being able to find the series on branding he mentions that he will be writing at the end of the post. If you read this and know where to find it please let me know as I definitely want to read it.

Branding Your Blog for Success
“Do you get frustrated when visitors to your site don’t convert into subscribers? For many bloggers, not all, success equals an engaged and high volume readership, and/or making money from their blog. If you fall into either of those categories then you can benefit from improving the brand of your blog.” Asking questions is always a good approach to learn something new as well as making it more concrete. This article poses the seven main questions that you should ask yourself preferably even before starting your blog. Each question is answered through a series of more concrete questions and will collectively help you form your brand. Once you have formed it mentality you need to form it in practice, which is where some of the other posts can help you.

How to Effectively Brand Yourself through Blogs
“Blogs are something we all read on a regular basis, but how many of you actually use them to brand yourselves? There is nothing wrong with just reading them for news or entertainment, but why not take it a step further and leverage them to brand yourself?” Neil Patel makes an interesting distinction between branding yourself on other peoples blogs and on your own blog. Branding yourself through comments can surely go a long way, but if you take personal branding seriously you will probably need your own blog at some point as it offers many more opportunities for branding than comments do. Still if you think like I do will commenting stay part of your brand and branding even after you begin blogging yourself.

Reading these five articles as well as Chris Garrett’s series on branding and browsing Rob Frankel’s archive will not only keep you occupied for a while, but will also give you a good start when it comes to branding yourself, your blog or both. As a sort of bonus would I like to mention Differentiate Your Blog or Die, which does not specifically mention branding, but to me is about branding anyway (although it can be said to approach it from the other side). You have to to be different to everyone else, which is the same as saying that you need to be unique. Being unique is however not enough as it also have to be in a way that your visitors and readers perceive to be memorable, compelling and powerful.

Having decided to change that I researched a little and found a few gems on the subject that I want to share with you. If you haven’t made your own About page yet this is the perfect time to do so. Don’t worry if it isn’t perfect. You can always change it later, but chances are that the more you think about it and work with it the better it ends up becoming. With the help of Valeria Maltoni I was finally able to put the finishing touches on my About page (Please check it out and let me know what you think in the comments!). If you get stuck I therefore recommend asking someone who’s opinion you value and respect to have a look at it. What you absolutely have to consider, how important it is having one and how to actually make it are some of the things you can learn from the following articles.

Are You Who You Blog You Are?
“I believe protecting our privacy is critically important, especially as the personal identity and information protection is barely in its infancy. It’s up to us to choose what information we hand out, to whom, and when. Still, it is important that your About page should give us a glimpse behind the mask, whether or not you share your real name and any personal information.” Rely on Lorelle to bring up the perhaps most important point of all. This is exactly what I was struggling with the most. How much to say and how to say what I chose to say so that it is informative and helps people evaluate everything else I write. Most of my writing requires no knowledge of who wrote it, but some things are surely more easily accepted when you know the background of the writer. A must read before you even consider writing a single word on who you are where everyone can read it!

Why An ABOUT Page Is So Important
“Go read your About page now. Please. Fix it up. Tell me who you are, what you’re about, why I should care, and how I can get in touch. Cause I will … and so will a ton of other people too.” Ben Yoskovitz is quite a curious fellow who wants to know all sorts of things about you and he is not the only one. About pages are often (depending on the subjects you cover and your audience) the most visited static pages. The point is that you will miss out on opportunities if you don’t have a decent About page. Since we should embrace the opportunities that present themselves that is a compelling reason to finally get that About page written or updated.

What’s Your Blog Really About?
“As an information delivery platform, a blog only has value in what it can teach. A compelling “About” page must communicate in no uncertain terms what the reader can learn and why it’s important to them. In other words, your “About” page has to sell the blog before the blog can sell you.” If you aren’t convinced you need one and a good one at that after reading this article then you will never get it. Brian Clark is brilliant at making more points simultaneously when turning things upside down. First he makes a great introduction, then he reverses the focus and still you are in no doubt of what he means. It is thus not particularly concrete, but since the opposite is demonstrated on Copyblogger’s own About page can you always go there for more inspiration.

Adding an ‘About’ Page
“I can only speak for myself – but one of the things that frustrates me about many blogs is that they lack much in the way of information about the author/s of them. For some blogs this is more important than others (and its a personal preference thing about how much authors choose to reveal of who they are) but I find pages without an About page can be quite frustrating.” Darren Rowse mentions transparency, engagement and the opportunity of highlighting your best writing as advantages of having an About page and goes on to define what he believes it should contain, how you make it and what else you should consider. Interesting is also that he uses the dual About page approach where one is about him and one about the blog. For that approach to make sense do you have to have a lot to say though so it is not for everyone.

The 4 Essential Elements of an About Me Page
“One of the most important pages on a blog is the about me page. When someone comes to your website for the first time the chances are they are going to check out the about me page and learn all about you.” I do not subscribe to the notion that people should necessarily be able to learn all about me on my About page. However, should they definitely learn enough for the rest of the blog to not suffer from the lack of background information. Neil Patel mentions the four points that everyone seems to agree are the absolute essential when writing an About page so you can consider this a check list or reminder of what is really important when writing one. Just like Neil do I believe it makes the most sense for most blogs to combine the pages about you and about your blog into one.

I will conclude with a plea from Liz Strauss: “If You Want Me to Care, Tell Me Who You Are“. Do you agree that you have to know who someone is to care about the writing? For me I would say it actually works the other way around. I have to care about the writing before wanting to know who the writer is. If you write something that interest me in a compelling way then I will want to know who you are. Knowing who you are may then add to what you wrote, but if the writing doesn’t hold up on it’s own you can be whoever you will and it will not make the slightest difference. In fact I unsubscribed from a number of prominent blogs for that reason. That you are prominent or interesting or whatever doesn’t mean you can write whatever you want and it will be worth reading. To me the writing make the writer and I will hence always look at the written first and at the writer second. Still to actually connect with someone do you need to reveal at least a little about yourself and what better way to do it than on a well written About page?

You probably know a lot of the advice already, but fact is that you cannot read it too often and that the more you expose yourself to different explanations the more likely is it that you actually understand it. Besides is there not always agreement on what works when. An example of a basic difference is that some experts insist that you write your headline when everything else is done while others say that the first thing you should write is the headline as that basically dictates everything else. When encountering irreconcilable differences, which you cannot intellectually resolve, I suggest you experiment and see what works for you.

Education is no substitute for experience so you have to get your hands dirty at some point anyway and you may as well begin with the basics before starting to add to the equation. To give you a head start have I collected the best articles I could find on writing headlines. I usually comment extensively on the links I recommend, but since there are so many articles you need to read have I chosen to let their headlines and a short quote from each do the talking. While you certainly should read all of them do I suggest that you portion them so that you can absorb what you read and are able to actually internalize their advice. Experimenting a little between readings is thus something I wholeheartedly recommend.

How to Write Magnetic Headlines
“Your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader. Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.”

Write Magnetic Headlines With These 7 Tips
“There are two huge mistakes people make when they write headlines. Either they are too bland and don’t say enough (such as when they attempt to simply summarize), or they say too much to cover all the bases. In both cases, you will lose readers.”

5 Sure-Fire Social Media Headline Formulas That Work
“Although content is important when you are trying to leverage social media sites like Netscape or Digg, the story title used for the submission maybe as important if not more important. Here are a few types of titles that I have found to be effective.”

Top 12 Ways To Win Friends & Write Magnetic Headlines
“As a consultant who specializes in social media, I’ve learned one of the most powerful tools in gaining readers is the title or headline of your stories. Crafting a title that grabs someone’s eye, gets them to stop scanning and pay attention to your story rather than reading another one is a critical first step.”

The Best Headlines Are Not Just Written For Google or Digg
“Many people think the purpose of writing better headlines is for search engines or sites like digg. It can be. There’s no denying the importance of search engines for long-term traffic growth, or the opportunity of social bookmarking sites like digg to drive thousands of visitors to your blog very quickly. But great headlines will work for search engines, digg and your audience.”

Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media
“In an ideal situation you would be able to write a title that fits all three categories but that is rarely the case. There is a marked difference between the different kinds of readers and that’s why you need to market your content to them in different ways.”

Guide to Writing Headlines
“… clever, catchy, cute and comical can be a crime if an editor fails to temper the urge with common sense. Reasonable people may disagree on the merits of one headline or another, but good copyeditors tend to follow a few ground rules, even if they never articulate them …”

How To Write Eye-Popping Headlines While Exhausted
“There are no excuses! Is your head constantly hitting the keyboard as you pass out? Do your fingers feel like they’re made of lead? Did you just wake up with drool rolling down your chin? I know exactly how you feel, but you won’t be getting much sympathy from me.”

Who Needs Headlines?
“A lot of web copy is written by copywriters who aren’t trained in writing for the web—and much of the rest is written by people who aren’t trained writers at all. If you’re a designer who can consult intelligently on basic copy improvements, you can gain a substantial business advantage.”

Are You Writing Headlines That Sell? Stop!
“Are you stressing over writing killer headlines? Do you write your copy and then agonize, tweak, and rewrite the headline, only to rewrite it again? Do you often go so far as to publish your article or sales page even though you’re still not sure the headline is the best it can be? Well, you’re not alone. People who know how important headlines are often do overly dwell on them, and for good reason. But… it could be that you’re trying to make your headlines work way too hard.”

Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog
“If it bleeds, it leads. Punchy. Catchy. Attention-getting. Insightful. Instructive. Incentive. Luring. Fishing. Bait. Hook. These are all terms used to describe an effectively written title or headline for an article. The words chosen must provide a powerful incentive to make the reader want to read. To make them want to buy the magazine, newspaper, or book. To make them want to click the link to the online article. It must reach out and grab them and motivate them into action.”

The Sexy Art of Writing Headlines that Kill
“… as a blog writer, the half a dozen or so words of the headline just happen to be the most important half a dozen words you will write. They should be the half dozen words you spend the most time on. You can crank out the prose, but you should carefully craft that headline.”

Five Common Headline Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
“… it seems you can’t move two pages on the web without tripping across a poorly-crafted headline. While many contain one or more necessary elements, other factors are often left out of the headline, diminishing the overall power and draw of this critical aspect of your copy.”

I hope you read this because you are through reading every article above. If not go ahead and click away because although I consider myself a good communicator I am certainly no expert in writing headlines. In fact I am just at the beginning of the journey of writing better headlines myself and although I am known for never being shy about offering advice about something even if I am no expert on it will you be better off listening to some real experts before turning the process inward and turning yourself into one.

How Often Should You Publish Your Blog Posts
“I believe you should publish a post when you have something to say. Avoid letting a month go by, but if you don’t have anything to say that adds to the conversation or starts one, then relax. In fact, we’d all relax and have a better experience on the web if the panic-posting frenzy would just lighten up a little.” When it comes to blogging reason there are few people I trust more than Lorelle. You may have noticed that practically every link post I make feature at least one post from her and that is not by chance, but because she so often hits the nail on the head. This post is no different (just look at the quotation above, which beautifully sums everything up) and in fact you could do yourself no better service than to check out what else she has written (as well as those she link to!).

Shattering The Myth of Short Posts
“There’s a prevailing feeling amongst some bloggers that when you post, keeping it short is best. People have short attention spans, some bloggers have found success with bite-sized pieces of information, you don’t want to bore your readers — all kinds of reasons have been trotted out. Well, there’s some data to refute that line of thought.” Personally I just don’t like short posts very much. I do like it when people get to the point and doesn’t write more than a particular subject can bear, but writing a couple of sentences and calling it a blog post just doesn’t fly with me. If I wanted bite size bits of wisdom I would simply read a quotation book. The occasional short post is okay, but if all you do is one liners you should be twittering instead of blogging. Thankfully it seems that now there is data backing up that it is alright to actually post something it takes a little time and effort to write and read.

How Long Should a Posts Be?
“I believe a blog can be successful based around both short and long posts. Check out sites like Engadget or Gizmodo for short post sites (often newsy based ones like short posts) or Read Write Web or Steve Pavlina for longer, deep and/or analytical ones. I think the key is to develop a rhythm in the style and focus of your blogging so that readers come expecting to get what you offer them.” I am tempted to say “no kidding”, but I respect Darren Rowse too much to do so. However, his examples just goes to show that this isn’t black or white. It is mostly gray and gray matter(s) if you will. Equally important is that you neither have to post like Engadget nor like Pavlina to enjoy success. In fact you can enjoy success posting as you choose, which is fine by me as I will rather decide for myself. What does matter is that you read Darren’s article as he is a lot more concrete than I am.

The noisy tragedy of the blog commons
“Without friction, without a gate on the clutter, we clearly face a commons problem. Here, though, instead of people taking too much of a shared physical good because they have nothing to lose, the problem is surplus. By writing too much, too often, we’re trouncing on the attention of the commons.” Since the amount of information you can produce in digital form is practically limitless is there no natural limit to blog posting. Since high frequency is even rewarded is there furthermore a motivation to produce as many posts as you can. However there are limits and very real limits at that to how much information people can digest and this may end up being our best bet on the future of blogging. That is at least Seth Godin’s hope as I understand it and naturally one which I share.

Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore
“Daily posting shows that you are serious about blogging, generates traffic and drives reader loyalty, as readers come back daily to check your new posts. You cannot be successful if you do not go by the rule, right? RIGHT?” Not quite to put it mildly. Eric Kintz takes much the same stand as Seth Godin above, but takes it even further. Listing 10 points explaining why you should be aware not to post too often he makes a compelling case for being aware that a too high a frequency may end up being what holds you back at some point. Since he makes some very good and specific points without actually falling into the trap of telling you what to do this will get you thinking or at least it should.

I told you to begin with that there is no definitive concrete answer. If you are still in doubt about what is right for you I suggest you either just blog as you can or that you experiment a little with when you write, how you write, how often you write and how much you write. In my experience will you soon learn what suits you. Once you have found what suits you try sticking to it even if that means continuing to mix everything up. How much success you have with it depends not only on how well it suits you, which will show in your posting, but also what people come to expect from you. Once you start creating expectations you better live up to them. Hence is it sometimes better not to set everything in stone, but add some flexibility to your blogging. Ultimately will using quality instead of quantity as your guide serve you both better and longer.

PS: I am sort of sorry about the headline. I can understand how some people could misinterpret it and think this post would be about something different entirely, but as I wrote it I happened to like the ambiguity and decided to stick with it. If you came for the wrong reasons I can just hope you learned something regardless…

Liz phrased the intention behind the group project like this: “The more ways, the more metaphors we find to help folks understand, the more businesses will see the value. And imagine our friends and families will understand the power and reason behind what we’re doing. They say a picture is worth 1000 words. Use a few hundred to draw a picture that they’ll never forget.” The response was overwhelming and a lot of bloggers sent in their posts. Since it may be too much for most to check them all out I pruned the list and picked what I believe is the best 5 (in that particular order):

1. 10 reasons why blogging is like dating
“Hey, did you know that learning about what works and what doesn’t work in blogging is a great way to polish your dating skills, too? It’s true! At its core, creating a successful blog is about communicating well, connecting with your audience, and putting on your best face . . . each of which are great romantic ideas for improving your personal relationships, as well.”

2. 7 Ways That Blogging is Like Opera
“You don’t get anywhere in the opera world without a beautiful voice that is used correctly. Using your instrument poorly over the long haul will damage it and it’s difficult to fix once you get nodules on your vocal chords. In the same way, quality writing plays a vital role in a blog’s long term success. Good bloggers are always working on becoming better writers and more effective communicators.”

3. Kayaking as a Metaphor for Blogging
“Analogies and metaphors are fantastic tools for conveying new information to the inexperienced. Teachers routinely introduce new material by tapping into their students’ prior and/or related knowledge on the new topic as a bridge to grasping the new concept. Drawing on relevant figurative language can help a learner get to the “aha moment” much more quickly.”

4. Blogging Metaphor: Blogging Is a Large City with Hundreds of Small Neighborhoods
“To me, blogging is a large city filled with hundreds of small neighborhoods. When you first start to blog, it’s like moving to a new city. Perhaps you already have family and friends in your new home; a new blogger who has friends or associates who are blogging starts out like you – already part of a small community. But maybe you moved because of your job, and you don’t know anyone in the strange city that is now your home. A new blogger who steps into the blogging world without any established relationships starts out like you.”

5. Blogging Metaphors: Bridge-Building
“See, like a bridge, a blog is a connector between here and there. “A connector? A connector of what?” you may ask. Well, the obvious answer is “people” – but there’s so much more to it than that. Blogging also connects ideas, minds, hearts, cultures… yep, now you get the idea.”

These are really outstanding reads so be sure to check them out. In fact there are plenty of other great posts so while you are at it do try to find the time and browse The Complete Metaphor Project Listing and Winners.

You will mostly have visitors who by chance come across your site, who enter through a specific post, who may be on the lookout for something else and who really don’t have all the time in the world to check everything out. In the words of Samuel Johnson: “Few have strength of reason to overrule the perceptions of sense, and yet fewer have curiosity or benevolence to struggle long against the first impression: he who therefore fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities.” Thankfully is there help to get.

10 Minute Blog Tips: Making a Good First Impression
“You have seconds to make a good first impression. That first glance might make all the difference between a subscription and the loss of a return visitor. Design makes a big difference, as in colours and graphics, but layout could make the biggest difference. What you put and where. Today’s tip: 10 minute blog tweaks that make a good first impression.” Chris Garrett asks 4 questions concerning the layout to see if he is making a good first impression, but more importantly does he suggest you get the opinion of others. No matter how hard you try will you never be able to be entirely objective and since you (probably) made the layout to begin with you really aren’t the best to judge what impression it makes on someone who have never seen it before.

Building Blog Relationships: Making a Good First Impression
“There are two types of first impressions, two chances you get to encourage someone to click through to your blog and stay there. The first impression comes from search engine search results, feeds, social bookmarking services, and what other bloggers have to say about your blog and blog posts. The second impression is what the visitor sees when they get there.” Interesting take on how many first impressions you get although not entirely logical. I would rather talk about external and internal first impressions for example. At least that would not confuse how many firsts you can have and at the same time help explain the difference. The point is very valid though. As mentioned in the introduction do you really have very little control over the visitor and this is an example of it. Lorelle goes on to develop this topic with her usual insight and care so do read on there.

Blog Relationships: Fishing With Lures and Bait
“… the first impression a reader may get doesn’t always come from the front page or even any page on your blog. It often comes through search engines, feed lists, and links from other bloggers. By the time they get to your blog, they may have already formed an opinion with what they have found. Now that they have arrived, it’s up to you to live up to that opinion or work harder to earn it.” After laying the foundation in the previous article is this the article where Lorelle gives you sound and practical advice about how to deal with first impressions, make the most of them and move people past them. Converting visitors into readers I like to think about it is a lot about expectations and consistency. What good is that you make a great first and second impression just to let people down by the third? Hence should you never promise more than you can keep and never create expectations you cannot fulfill. Not even to make a great first impression.

5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang
“Just imagine how disappointed you’d be after crafting a killer headline for your post, only to lose readers with an opening that failed to carry the momentum. A great headline mixed with a lame opening is like inviting someone into your house, only to slam the door in their face as they approach.” Moving on to the actual content Brian Clark explores how the first impression goes beyond the headline. Obviously the headline should draw the visitor in, but if he or she isn’t confirmed when reading the first paragraph then it really is of no use. How you write a great first paragraph is not only explained, but also brilliantly demonstrated. Don’t miss the bonus tip btw. as that may be even more important as the opening when it comes to creating a regular readership.

How To Elevate Your Visitors
“They say that the headline is the most important part of your online copy. But your deck and lead copy are just as important. These often make up the the section called “above the fold,” which is the topmost section of your website’s page, without any scrolling. … it’s the first screen your visitors see when they hit your site.” Writing about copy Michel Fortin gives a lot of good advice and offer great insights. In this case he uses the elevator speech to make his points, which among others are to be specific and to keep things as short as possible. You cannot adapt every copy writing advice to blogging, but in general most make sense and can be helpful. Thinking about it is using the elevator as setting a great analogy to blogging since it highlights that we are there for different reasons, get in and out at different places and times, never know who we will meet and what the journey will bring and not least that you never get where you want to go if you fail to push the right buttons.

I am very well aware that I do not follow all of these tips and suggestions myself. There is only so much you can do in one day as the saying goes. You simply cannot follow every piece of good advice you get nor is it absolutely necessary to do so. In fact you should read everything critically and think about whether it makes sense at all and more specifically if it makes sense to you. If not you shouldn’t use it. However most of the suggestions here do make sense to most and probably only have to be adapted to fit your blog as well. This may take longer, but will also work better in the end. Execution of an idea is often as important as the idea itself and sometimes even more so.

If you want to help me see what you see and thus help me make this blog better then please comment below. All constructive criticism is more than welcome!

Dear Emperor: A Test for Your Next Link Post
“Oh Emperor. Your link shows a quality and relevant relationship that you want to share with your blogdom. It is your seal of approval, your vote for someone’s content. Your readers and your search bots pay attention. They see the folks that you endorse, even when you don’t.” I like this post a lot although I am somewhat in doubt about if everyone understands the literary reference made. Even if you don’t know which fairy tale Liz Strauss is referring to is the moral of the story clear enough, but you probably won’t enjoy reading it as much as if you know. Since I commented on the post with the answer can you take a guess and then see if you are right at the end.

Make Your Link Lists Matter
“Good bloggers understand that a link is a letter of recommendation for their readers to click away from their blog to visit another that they know will be so good, it will make the reader want to come back to their blog for more.” Very good point and one often overlooked in the linking discussion I think. There are a lot of good reasons for linking out, but if you send people away it better be for what they will consider a good reason. If you can say it all better then do so and only link if someone actually adds to what you write or cover aspects that go beyond the scope of your blog. People will note if your recommendations make sense and only return if they do.

Finding Value w/ Daily Links
“When I first began blogging, I thought daily links were a lazy way to publish a post. It almost stopped me from subscribing to some feeds. When I show these posts to others, their initial reaction is similar. Yet, I find myself gravitating to these postings first. Those who publish these types of posts are providing tremendous value to their audience.” I agree. I know a lot of bloggers still don’t consider link posts content, however is it in my opinion not only content, but some of the most valuable as well as it broadens your horizon and expands your world if done right. I cannot count the number of excellent articles and blogs that I have found this way and I for one certainly wouldn’t be without them.

Free Link Love – To Get It, Give It Up!
“Those of us who have been in the SEO biz for a while tend to want to direct and manipulate the PageRank on our sites. You know the tricks. However, things are very different with blogs and, if you want yours to rank well, you need to let go of that concept. Blogs are all about linking freely, not just to other posts and pages within your own site, but also out to other websites and blogs.” Isolating yourself and trying to keep on to your visitors for dear life is the best way to end up in isolation. Your visitors will leave whether you want them to or not even if you send them through a link jungle of internal links. Internal links are highly useful if you have enough complementary content, but to open your blog to the world you need to connect the two and that is exactly what external links can do for you.

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Lots of Link Love
“Good link love, bad link love, do we really care who links to us? A savvy blogger would say yes and no. Based on the 80-20 rule of business – 80% of your traffic will come from only 20% of your links (by my stats, it’s less than 20%).” The Pareto Principle is probably right on the money here as well, but it has the problem that you most often cannot tell which 20% will be the best over time and that you wouldn’t be able to get the 20 best percent without the rest. If you get 80% or more of your traffic from 20% or less of your links are you in my mind focusing to narrowly and should be looking to put your link eggs in more baskets to make you less vulnerable. Hence, the more links the merrier and this link post is a great starting point.

Go ahead and educate yourself and learn, but remember that if you want to continue the journey through the Blogosphere seeing the world with my eyes you will have to return and see where you can go next.