Posts Tagged ‘blogging’
by Regnard Raquedan on December 31st, 2009
One of the books I’ve read in 2009 that I think is very helpful to bloggers is “Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click” by Susan M. Weinschenk. Although the title suggests a focus on web design, there’s a chapter there that talks about three triggers that enables web folks to”speak” to the unconscious mind. It may sound like psychobabble, but the the thing is, it is grounded on psychological research.
The three triggers are danger, food, and sex. If you notice, these are the basic elements that fire-off red flags in our collective instincts. This is because the way our brains are configured due to millions of years of evolution. All three items relate or our self-preservation instincts.
The premise is that the brain is hard-wired to get immediately attracted to words, images, and videos that pertain to danger, food, and sex. And if people are aware of these content, there is a higher likelihood that interest will be developed and the desired action, which is clicking (if it’s a hyperlink), will follow.
Here’s a few suggestions in incorporating the triggers:
- Danger - Make the wordings of your links to be more active and, if appropriate, place “threatening” images or images that convey cautionary measures.
- Food – The author of the book says that people pay attention to food (and that’s why there are plenty of food bloggers out there). If possible, place food items or benefits people can derive from your blog and blog posts.
- Sex – I’ve mentioned this is in the past and that sex is always a powerful attention getter.
2010 is just around the corner and it may be a good new year’s resolution to make your content more interesting. Just rememebr the three key triggers: danger, food, and sex.
Happy New Year!
Categories: Blogging Tips, Opinion
Tags: blogging, clicking, content, Interesting, tips
by Regnard Raquedan on December 24th, 2009
In the spirit of the holidays, it’s a good time to focus on the warm, fuzzy feeling of giving.
But as a blogger, how do you get into the whole “spreading the wealth” business?
But let’s get some things straight first: for a lot of professional bloggers, the content being written is focused on a particular niche. So try putting yourself on your readers’ shoes and ask the question “What’s in it for me?”
This may sound too mercenary-like (and the last thing about the holidays), but think about it– why should your readers care about your blog? If your blog is one thing that leads to benefits, such as wealth, a better life, or more informed way of doing things, then there are reasons people will come back.
So, as a blogger, be generous in pointing the benefits and making sure your readers know that there is a benefit to reading your posts. Here are three ways to highlight the benefits:
- State the Obvious – If there’s a benefit your readers should find worth getting, say it! This may entail having an approach that’s more direct to the point and being clear with the benefits. Apple is very good in this because they are able to put the key benefits of their products very concisely.
- Reinforce with Images – Blog posts will always look a little shinier and spiffier with images (provided the image will provide the proper context.) The images can also reinforce the tangible benefit your readers can derive.
- Make the Benefit Scarce – Create a sense of scarcity with what you are offering because people respond to loss and scarcity in a more natural way than abundance. If you think the information contained in your blog post is only good for a season, then make it clear.
Remember, make the benefits clear, obvious, and worth getting. The benefit for you may be a better performing blog.
Happy Holidays!
Categories: Blogging Tips, Opinion
Tags: blogging, content, Interesting, tips, writing
by Regnard Raquedan on December 22nd, 2009
I won’t be surprised if 9 out of 10 people who came to this blog post spent around 10 seconds looking at the picture above. It’s just human nature to be attracted to content that convey sexual messages.
As a blogger, it would be good to consider that nature of people when writing blog posts. From the age old “Sex sells” mantra to sensational headlines, there is wisdom in putting a little spice to make thinks interesting in blogs. Sex is just one of this things that raise a flag in people’s brains.
But the picture above is really an extreme example of audience titillation– the image really has no place in a blog about blogging (or maybe not). But my point is that find the right amount of sexiness in the proper context. Here are a couple of ideas:
- Provocative images – Haven’t you ever wondered why a company like GoDaddy, a domain and web hosting seller, uses models like Danica Partick in its advertising and marketing campaigns? If you ask me, it’s really for audience titillation. Placing a provocative image in your blog post that related to your topic may provide that spark.
- Sensational Headlines – Following the “Man Bites Dog” adage, a crafty and clever headline with the proper innuendos may pique the interest of the most indifferent of readers. Instead of saying “Blogger Wins Award,” a sexy version could be “Female Teen Blogger Grabs Top Spot”.
Of course, sexifying your blog posts doesn’t mean that all ounces of decency are thrown out of the window. Just the right amount and right context, coupled with the ethical considerations will make your blog spicy and sexy.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Opinion
Tags: blogging, tips, writing
by Regnard Raquedan on December 15th, 2009
One of the most common tips top bloggers give to novice bloggers is to blog about something they are very passionate about. But as we all know, people’s interest level fluctuates and is rarely constant. Today, you may be so inspired you could write a new treatise on food blogging, tomorrow, you could barely even write a word about cupcake.
So how do you avoid that kind of inconsistency? The answer may be found outside your notebook computer.
It has been found that moods can affect work and an improvement in a person’s mood results in a positive outcome at work very often. There have been studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Ohio State University’s Fisher School of Business that strongly suggests that mood you bring to work sets the tone for the rest of day and affects productivity.
Mood improvement differs for person to person, but here are a few tips that may help bloggers:
- Blog in a comfortable place – Blogging on the go can be exciting but really stressful. In order to come up with a quality post, try to find a place where you can site comfortably and has good lighting.
- Take a little break – So you’re a blogging junkie, but that doesn’t mean you should be in front of your computer 24/7. Little breaks can be a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively.
- Work in your own machine – Have you tried blogging in someone else’s notebook? It feels like you’re visiting a foreign country if you ask me. Try as much as possible to bring your own machine if you’re blogging actively and on the go.
- Avoid blogging right off the bat – Athletes always warms up before competition and there’s wisdom in that. Some bloggers may find it refreshing to watchthat funny viral YouTube video before opening WordPress or Blogger.
Like I’ve said, ways of improving one’s mood vary. But one thing is clear: a better mood will result in better, more enjoyable blogging.
Categories: Blogging Sense, Blogging Tips, Interesting
Tags: blogging, self-improvement, tips, work
by Regnard Raquedan on December 3rd, 2009
No one is questioning the speed of technology today– what may be innovative today may be junk tomorrow (or worse, junk by lunch time. ) Blogging is no exception.
One of the impending casualties of the blogging space obsolescence is live blogging. Yeah, there was a time when people blogged real-time in their respective blogs and kept updating one single post in rapid succession to cover an event. A couple of years ago, as blogs were slowly gaining prominence, live blogging was the apex of covering an event live via blogging.
But due to the emergence of microblogging and platforms such as Twitter and Plurk, live blogging is on its way to extinction. Microblogging is fast and automatic, making the process of constantly updating a blog post cumbersome and clunky. Add to that the proliferation of third-party sites and apps that support micro-blogging, live blogging can be officially be considered a dying art.
But before we say “good riddance” to live blogging, I believe it can still have a place in the blogging ecosystem. Remember that one key limitation of microblogging is the number of characters (e.g. Twitter’s 140 character limit). Live blogging is essentially free from this constraint. Another is the multimedia aspect of live blogging, such as the ability to post audio and video streams into a blog post.
Live blogging may not be hottest thing right now, but I believe it still has a use in specific situations to keep it from becoming completely obsolete.
–
UPDATE: Nah, I change my mind. Live blogging is dead.
Categories: Blogging Sense, Microblogging
Tags: blogging, Microblogging
by Regnard Raquedan on November 20th, 2009
Ask a marketer about social media and they will sing praises, especially with the attention blogs, micro-blogs, and user-generated content apps are getting in mainstream media. But ask a marketer what’s the one thing that they will make them pause about going forward with social media and they will probably say “There are no credible metrics readily available.”
Well, that type of reply is not unfounded. I’ve talked to a lot of marketing folks and they say that they would be more comfortable if there was a data source on the metrics of social media sites like blogs. This is perhaps borne from the orientation of the senior marketing executives’ reliance on Nielsen for media data on traditional media.
Why are these metrics important? These numbers are needed to justify the effectiveness of the campaign and determine the Return on Investment (ROI) of marketing activities. Of course, when it comes to ROI, the higher the better.
So, how do we answer the age old question of where to obtain readily available metrics for blogs?
These days, it’s not that hard because most blogs install analytics tools like Google Analytics to collect data on basic stats about the blog. If these analytics tools are not installed, it’s easy to install them. Things get iffy when it comes to industry-wide data because there’s still no universally accepted source of data. (Well, maybe Google will make something like this in the future.)
Just remember, metrics are important to measure performance with quantitative goals. But If you ask me, you can be a successful blogger without wrapping yourself around the numbers.
Categories: Blog Statistics
Tags: blogging, tips
by Regnard Raquedan on November 4th, 2009
From the web design perspective, the relationship most bloggers have with their blog’s design is quite limited. More often than not, bloggingfolk use web design templates designed and developed by another person so the determination of the blog’s look and feel aspect becomes more like a shopping task.
But once the template has been selected, one big assumption oftentimes arises: This template works in all browsers.
Blog templates are never 100% working, especially with some broken browsers (*cough*IE6*cough*) still out there.
It’s good practice to test the browser yourself with the common browsers. You can start with Internet Explorer (version 7 and 8 if possible) and Mozilla Firefox. These two browsers would already comprise almost 80% of browsers out there. For good measure, you can also check on Google Chrome and Opera Browser. To be sure, you can refer to your blog’s stats (if available) to see which browser the majority of your readers are using and test your blog’s template.
If you don’t want to install extra browsers in your machine, there’s always BrowserShots, a web site that will take a snapshot of your sites using different browsers.
Just remember not all browsers are created equal and a blog template not working could spell the difference between a successful blog and a lemon.
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: blogging, tips
by Regnard Raquedan on October 16th, 2009
This may sound familiar to some bloggers: You’ve been blogging for almost a year now in a pretty uncrowded niche. You’ve been thinking of nice topics to blog about and your writing is pretty OK. But when you look at your web traffic stats, you see something that doesn’t even reach 300. So what do you do?
Maybe you haven’t tried these five things to help your blog traffic:
- Invest some cash on advertising – You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to get some advertising on the web. Pay Per Click advertising is pretty flexible when it comes to budgets. Or try to put banner ads on a popular blog. (Ideally, that blogger is a friend of yours. :P)
- Promote via micro-blogs – There’s a school of thought that micro-blogging (read: Twitter) is killing blogging. While it’s arguable, but if you have a healthy number of followers, try to tweet about your latest blog post.
- Tell your friends – Don’t underestimate the power of the offline social network. The common irony is that bloggers often tell the online world about their blog but not their offline friends.
- Alter your writing style – You don’t have to take writing classes, simple alterations to your writing to make it easy to absorb. Focusing more on web usability can also help your new writing style.
- Change your blog theme – Blog themes are not expected to blow anyone away, but it should facilitate the reading of blog posts. Maybe your blog template is as cluttered as your closet– better change it ASAP.
Your blog may not be the Boing Boing’s or the Huffington Posts of the world, but trying other things to get people to notice it can help your voice be heard.
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: blogging, tips, traffic
by Regnard Raquedan on October 14th, 2009
A blogging platform used as a content management system (CMS) is not really new. This blog has outline several reasons why WordPress as a CMS is feasible. Open source systems like WordPress are ideal for such an application because of the inherent “hackability” of the app to be shaped into other uses. But what about closed systems like Google’s Blogger?
Here are two situations wherein Blogger may be a possible CMS for you:
- When you’re pressed for time – You can purchase a domain name and use it on a Blogger blog very quickly. Themes for Blogger is also available and easy to implement.
- When user management is not crucial – The thing with Blogger is that, as of now, there are only two levels of users: Authors and Administrators. If you’re the one who will be managing the content, then Blogger is OK.
Undoubtedly, making Blogger as a CMS is a challenge. Unlike WordPress, there is no “Page” content type, only generic blog posts. Also, the URL’s of Blogger posts are automatically generated. This feature makes it hard to create pages with specific titles reflect on the URL.
To make Blogger into your CMS, a few simple steps are needed:
- Remove all gadgets, expecially the archive and label
- Download a Blogger template with a navigation menu and removes the post date.
- To manually remove the date header in the post, go to “Edit HTML” in the Layout editing section. Make sure that “Expand Template Widgets” is checked and look for “<data:post.dateHeader/>” and remove it
- After writing the site’s content, take note of the URL. Edit the template’s navigation bar to direct to the post’s URL.
Blogger may not be the most elegant of CMS solutions, but there are select situations that it might work.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Blogging Tools
Tags: blogging, tips
by Regnard Raquedan on October 8th, 2009
One of the things social media promised is the proverbial “conversation”– an authentic feedback mechanism where the publisher and reader become participants in a discussion. The way it goes is that the blogger/writer will post something and the readers who are compelled enough will respond with a comment and the blogger respond to it correspondingly.
But what if the reader who comments is a spammer?
I’m sure at some point, a blogger will receive seemingly authentic comments that actually are spam. This sophistication means that spammers are staying away from “Buy XXX drug” and moving to intelligent responses.
So how do you deal with it? Here’s a couple of suggestions:
- User better comment moderation tools – There’s Disqus and Intense Debate to help you moderate the comments. The interfaces and features of the two tools are much better the default WordPress or Blogger moderation tools.
- Turn off blog comments completely – While this is the ultimate “last resort,” this may be the feasible option for bloggers that don’t have the time to mark or moderate comments or when the volume of the spam comments have become unmanageable. In my experience, I turned commenting off for a few weeks, then turned it on again and the spam attacks subsided considerably.
Responding to relevant and authentic comments is one of the joys of blogging. But when the conversations become fake, it’s becomes the blogger’s worst nightmare.
Categories: Blogging Tips
Tags: blogging, tips
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