The following is an answer from Andy Wibbels from Six Figure Blogging and Blog Wild responding to my one question interview question of what he’d do differently if he had to start his blog over again.
I would have been keen on keywords from the get-go. I sorta kinda knew they were important and sorta kinda thought I should use them but not using them effectively from the start earns me a big D’oh! award. For example, I wrote a post on my personal blog a long time ago about hunky CNN weatherman Rob Marciano and it has turned into a mini-fan club. Everytime there is a hurricane or a tropical storm, the comments roll in on where Rob is today, what he’s wearing, if he looks like he’s been working out… I’m still not where I want to be keywords-wise for either of my blogs, but I think it is a mindset that the earlier you adopt, the better. Stop talking about yourself and start talking about your topic in relevant, topical, real-world keywords and language – be finable, be searchable.
Also crucial is an email newsletter. Newbie/luddites still think inside the inbox. RSS adoption is growing but ‘real people’ are still wanting information in their email.
I also would have been less nuts about wanting to be the first to blog on a topic. As my near-sightedness increases, I’m trying to spend less time at the computer. I’m reading more (gasp!) and focusing on summarizing the trends that I see online and offline for the benefits of my clients and colleagues.
“I also would have been less nuts about wanting to be the first to blog on a topic. As my near-sightedness increases, I’m trying to spend less time at the computer. I’m reading more (gasp!) and focusing on summarizing the trends that I see online and offline for the benefits of my clients and colleagues.”
Thanks for the insight. I have been professionally blogging for 4 months and for the first 3 months tried to blindly follow everything in the rule book: write many comments in other blogs, post 5 articles daily, email to other bloggers, give trackbacks etc. In the last month, I have been focusing on ‘summarizing the trend’ and the result is magical. In the last 4 weeks, my two entries got linked in Boing Boing, One in Fark Sport and another in the main page of Fark, I got a link from BBC. Now, I spend more time on analysing the trend of my field and then write.
This is the best response yet, I think. Especially the bit that razib noted.
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Great response. I, too, wished I was more enlightened on keywords from the very start. But if you don’t stumble, you’ll never learn :)
Hmmm…stumbling is a full time job. My hobby is learning from mu mistakes.
Thanks for the insight Razib. If you can make your posts current you can do well. I’m still posting on all the basic tools, services, and inspirations I’ve used since I began working full time online.
-Terry
The summarisation / feature point is a good one. I suppose it works for several reasons:
It demonstrates that you have more knowledge about your subject;
It proves you can write clearly and succinctly;
It gives people more information, maybe with opinion, in one article than they get from other sites that report news in 5.
I’m looking to increase the amount of this type of writing. Of course, there’s a place for telling your niche news in an interesting way, but the bigger articles, particularly evergreens, are great for reputation and traffic.
Great response.
Good insight! While I rarely talk about my personal life, I work hard to keep my posts interesting and on-topic. I’m still not seeing incredibly huge numbers of hits per day, but then again, my blog is less than two months old.
I haven’t worried much about keywords, but I’ll have to start. I also plan an email newsletter but worry that the newsletter content will just mirror my blog content and no one will be interested – so I’m open to ideas!
Good post!
Was checking my feeds for the first time this week and was glad to see my question pop-up! Thanks folks for your feedback…
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