This document provides guidance on how to blog effectively. It covers topics like why people blog, the blogging workflow, formats for blog posts, creating useful and unique content, optimizing post length and structure, using titles and formatting for readability, basic HTML tags, useful tools, and recommended reading. The overall aim is to help people understand best practices for starting a blog and writing engaging content.

1. How to blog a workshop Tuesday, February 8, 2011

3. The blogging work flow

4. Some useful formats for blog posts

5. Useful and Unique Content

6. Post Length

7. Granular (One Topic) Posts

8. Using Titles Effectively on Blogs

9. Scannable Content

10. Basic HTML Tags

11. Useful tools to aid blogging

14. The whole point of blogging is to start or participate in a conversation

16. The whole point of blogging is to start or participate in a conversation

19. Sharing things

20. Connecting to the network

22. Sharing things

23. Connecting to the network

25. Collecting

26. Writing

28. Top fives, top tens, top anything

29. Useful links

30. Round-up

31. Opinions

33. Usefulness & uniqueness

34. Useful

35. Entertainment

36. Education

37. Information

38. Debate

39. News

40. Community

41. Unique

42. Research your readership

44. SEO

45. Quantity of Posts

46. Topic/Genre

48. Readability

49. SEO

50. Posts

51. Benefits of Granular Posts:

52. Ease of Use

53. SEO

55. Getting RSS Readers Attention

56. Loyal Readers

57. Search Engine Optimisation

58. Using Titles Successfully

59. Keep it Simple

60. Grab Attention

61. Meet a Need

62. Describe

64. Formatting

65. Headings and Sub Headings

66. Pictures

67. Borders/Blockquotes

69. <h1>An important heading</h1>

70. - <h2>A slightly less important heading</h2>

72. Search engines

73. Wikipedia

74. OneNote

75. Online bookmarking

77. Seth Godin: how to get traffic for your blog Seth's full post contains 50 tips on blogging

78. WordpressTutur: how to blog like Om Malik Raj's full post contains further points, and expands on each.

81. Copyright – This point is so important that it deserves it’s own post (perhaps someone would like to write one and I’ll link to you). But keeping it brief I’ll say this – acknowledge your sources, use quotation marks when you’re writing something that is not your own words, link to those who inspire your ideas or whom you quote and if want to publish something that is longer than a few paragraphs ask for permission first. Use your manners and you’ll also probably be within the law (my lawyer friends will kill me for that one – but in most cases I’ve found it to be true). A little more on this topic at The Etiquette of Linking.

82. Names are Important – 42% of SE searches are for product, brand and or company names. If you want to be found by people using search engines you might want to consider your use of names as keywords!

83. Quality AND Quantity – Quality of posts is so important – I don’t know any reputable blogger who wouldn’t agree with that, but a little written about tip that I’m also a believer is that most successful blogs also have large quantities of content. I’m not arguing for loads of meaningless and unhelpful posts, but one area to consider in taking your blog to the next level can be how to generate larger quantities of posts on your blog.

84. Relevancy – I was speaking with one blogger last week who told me that his strategy for keeping his blog frequently updated was to put a full day each week into writing content for his blog where he’d write 10 to 15 posts all at once. Then he’d set his posts to go off throughout the week – two per day. This is a good strategy on some levels as it does help keep your blog ticking over – but the problem this blogger runs into is that his blog is a news related blog and that writing 7 days in advance means the posts are a week out of date by the time they appear. Frequent posting is one thing – relevant and fresh content is another. If your strategy is to use advance posts it might be worth starting a blog in a non time specific niche and genre.

85. Time Specific and Evergreen Posts – Related to this last point is that some posts are more ‘time specific’ than others. Some posts are out of date within a day or two of writing them (and as a result won’t ever be looked at much) whereas other posts are more ‘evergreen’ in nature (ie they will be as useful to your readers today as they will be in a year’s time). It’s worth pondering this topic and deciding what type of posts you’re going to concentrate upon. I’ve written on this further at Evergreen versus Time Related Posts and in a mini series on Increasing the Longevity of Key Posts.

86. Establish Boundaries – One of my first ever posts was on the topic of setting boundaries for your blogging. This is both for your own sake (personal safety etc) but also for that of your readers (in that boundaries can cover what is and isn’t acceptable for your readers to contribute to discussions etc and that it’s good for them to know what to expect on your blog in terms of topic).

87. Mix up your Sources – A problem that I’ve seen some bloggers struggling with recently (and fall into the trap of myself from time to time – especially when tired or in a rush) is to get into a rut in terms of the other blogs and news sources that are used behind stories. While it will be natural to be linking repeatedly to blogs in your own field it can get to the point where every post you post links to the one place. While the blogger you’re linking to probably doesn’t mind, your readers could well get to the point where they just read the other blog rather than yours. Mix it up.

88. Using Story, imagination, emotion – I’m not going to say much in this one except to get your hands on a copy of a book called Lovemarks (aff link) which, among other things, talks about how sensuality, mystery and emotion are being used more and more in marketing. I think there are some great hints in this for bloggers.