Marketing Ideas&Management Stuffs

http://ibrahim.cn/2010/08/19/content-strategies-for-bloggers/Content Strategies for BloggersMarketing Ideas&Management Stuffs

You want to dive in and write a blog, but you feel that your ocean of ideas will soon dry up into an oasis (and you’ll need to keep your readers intrigued with updated posts so as not to lose your audience).  Where can you find ideas for your content?

Thankfully, you’re not alone.  There are hundreds of places where you can get ideas for content, from using blog directories to news articles and then some.  Let’s outline a few of the popular ones:

• Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts): Use Google Alerts to get email as soon as new content (news articles, blog posts, or web mentions) based on a particular search phrase is discovered by Google.  You can receive emails daily, weekly, or be notified as soon as Google finds the new content.  Be advised that if you’re blogging in a popular niche, you’ll be receiving tons of emails regularly if you opt in for the latter option.  If you use Google Apps for your Domain or Gmail, you might want to create Filter or rule for the handling of all these emails.

• Blogs: Chances are you’re not the only blogger covering a particular topic.  As you may know, the SEOmoz blog is not the only blog on SEO and social media marketing.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs covering the search industry.  Likewise, your industry will probably also have similar blogs.  Look at those for inspiration and get ideas.  Naturally, one of the biggest pitfalls of beginner bloggers is to regurgitate news; this isn’t a bad thing (especially if you can pump out the news as soon or shortly after it happens), but to give your blog more of a personal touch, add some opinion and insight.  Write a detailed commentary and cite your sources (linking out is critical here!).

• Blog Search: Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/) covers the popular trends within the blogosphere and is a useful search engine to see what is popular right now.  Alternatively, Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com) gives you some information based on a query and can be narrowed down to most recent posts, which is helpful for breaking news and information.  In the example below, you can see posts that were published only within the last twelve hours:

• Social Bookmarking: One of the hidden gems within the StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com) bookmarking site is the ability to search based on specific tags.  You can discover sites based on a search phrase (StumbleUpon Toolbar > All > Search) or perform a search based on tags by accessing http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/searchphrase. Similarly, del.icio.us is another social bookmarking site that can provide you with some insightful information by searching tags, such as http://del.icio.us/tag/searchphrase or http://del.icio.us/popular/searchphrase.

• News Stories: While informative posts that teach users how to do things and posts that provide vast lists of valuable information are priceless for bloggers (especially to share with a much larger audience), providing timely information is great too.  You can use any news site to find updated information in your vertical, or you can look into websites that aggregate the most newsworthy content.  For example, if you’re blogging about technology, you may find Techmeme (http://www.techmeme.com) useful.  If you’re blogging about politics, you may find Memeorandum (http://www.memeorandum.com) a godsend.  These sites aggregate both news media and social reactions through blogs.

• Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends): Google Trends is an excellent way to see what’s hot right now and can break that writer’s block by giving you some information on the popular searches that are being performed all around the world. You can also search with commas to determine public interest in a particular topic (or topics) to see what is popular (and what may not be in comparison).

Now that you have your content, you may want to emphasize the blog as a social platform.  The most successful way to do this is to incorporate relevant widgets to your site.  There are possibly millions of widgets that cover anything from sports to campaign endorsements and even engage readers in social communities themselves.  Some of the more popular widgets among bloggers are MyBlogLog (which also boasts an analytics package), BlogRush, and Romlet.

How do you draw your readers in?  It’s all about visual elements.  Even if your readers are not reading everything you write, you can lure them in with the appropriate eye candy.  A hilarious image or detailed chart will cause your readers to stop and take a second glance.  The right pictures can make a solid first impression on new readers and keep them entertained.  To locate images, use Flickr (make sure the images are Creative-Commons licensed and be sure to give appropriate credit) or use a free stock image search engine like EveryStockPhoto (http://www.everystockphoto.com).  While your great content may minimize the need for images, it doesn’t hurt to dress up your post with illustrations and make it more interesting.

As with any SEO advice, keep your blog images small for faster load times and small screen resolutions, especially as many users are starting to read blog posts on their mobile devices.  Resize them with an image editor for your blog post (don’t just force new height and width constraints; it won’t be aesthetically pleasing and will take longer to load).  If necessary, link your readers to a full image.

If your hosting plan doesn’t allow for images, you can use a service like Flickr, ImageShack (http://imageshack.us), or other sites to host your images.  Flickr is a favorite among many bloggers for other social media benefits, but figure out which image hosting site works for you and go from there.

Video is the future, so make sure to incorporate some video in your blog posts.  They can be informative, humorous, or whatever suits your audience.  Ideally, if you can transcribe the video yourself, it would be even better for SEO purposes (and not many blogs or video service providers take advantage of this).  You can use sites like YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo, Jumpcut, iFilm (now Spike), and many other video service providers to host your videos.  The sites will provide you with an embed code that you can place within your blog.

Your audience is your biggest asset, so take advantage of what they have to share with you.  As a blogger with a readership, you’re in a fortunate position and can enlist in their help when you need them.  Chances are, they’ll be eager to participate.

• Ask the readers: If you’re looking for ideas, you can always run a column where you ask the readers a question and invite their answers in comments.  You may even choose to expound upon one of the ideas written in a comment and make it a separate blog post (or series, if there are just so many great comments).  At the same time, you may want to let the readers ask you a question.  Don’t be afraid to share information about yourself and open up.

• Utilize contact forms: Ensure that you launch your blog with a contact form so that your readers can contact you in some way.  There are many plugins available that enable you to set up a simple contact form where your users can add questions and service providers can even send related pitches to your address.  After you become an established blogger, you’ll likely be contacted by traditional media for quotes and you’ll likely even be asked to provide help on consulting for related businesses.

• Keep the comments open: The biggest part of a blog from a social media perspective is the ability for community members to be participants and to have a many-to-many relationship (rather than a one-to-many relationship that is so common in traditional media spheres).  You can now share information and you can get feedback almost instantly.  Engage in the discussion wherever you’re able; don’t just stop at the blog post and ignore the comments.  Also, a word of advice: don’t make it difficult for your readers to post comments.  Everyone should be able to write something without registration.  If you are worried about spam comments, install a CAPTCHA.  If you are worried about link drops, consider adding nofollow to commented posts (though be advised that nofollow is the default on most blogs) or moderate all comments before they are approved.  Just don’t give off the impression that it’s hard for your community to partake in the conversation.

• Contests: A great way to build an audience quickly is to hold a contest.  Ideally, run a contest while you’re still growing but aren’t too small, since you wouldn’t want to disappoint yourself if there’s little interest.  Offer prizes (a free year of your service, a product offering, or in the case of an informational blog, you may be able to solicit prizes from sponsors).  People love freebies, and this is a good way to keep them hooked.

• Polls/Surveys: Engage your readers further (beyond traditional question and answer and commenting) by holding polls related to your topic. You can use a number of tools to host polls and surveys, including PollDaddy (http://www.polldaddy.com) and Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com).  You can spend one post asking your readers for their inputs and then report on the findings in a follow-up post.

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