BloggersWalk

Besides the monetary investments needed to start a blog, probably the biggest investment you need to make is time. In all the time that I spend to get BloggersWalk clicking, creating informative posts is probably what takes up the most time. After all, content is king right? So, my goal recently has been trying to cut the amount of time I invest on writing content while not losing quality.

Ask Questions
There are many types of blog posts ranging from daily ramblings to product reviews. Regardless of the type, a technique that can be used to efficiently write up posts is asking questions. These questions can range from simple questions asking yourself on what you did today, to a common question in a niche you are dealing with, such as what is the best blogging platform when starting out. This is the spark that gets your post going. Most blog posts have a definite point that it is trying to get across; usually these questions help in focusing the blog post into delivering a specific point.

“Blueprint” a Post
You know how architects create a blueprint before working on a building? The theory is a bit similar. Before you start writing your first draft, plan something out. If you’ve got some scrap paper, it’ll do. All you have to do is make a simple outline on how your finished post will look like. You can do this in two ways. For every post, you can make a new blueprint from scratch where you plan everything out. Another way, which is the one that I often do, is creating a general template where all you have to do is fill out what point will go where. Basically, you would need pre-made template. I keep a simple template that I just fill out quickly: an introductory paragraph, a few paragraphs with my points, and a concluding paragraph.

Research for Quality
Remember how a blog is a compilation of useful information? Unless you know about everything in the world, research is necessary. This can include some important quotes or statistics relevant to your post. At first, researching will be quite time consuming. However, once you gain a lot of experience, you’ll know where to go to find the information you need. Although this step is not always necessary, once done, it can certainly boost the quality of your post.

Seek Feedback
Always seek feedback. Feedback can come in the form of comments and emails from the readers, and maybe even some of your friends. You can’t be perfect alone. If you do want to increase the overall quality of your blog and the posts, constructive criticism is necessary.

Analyze the Results
In my opinion, this step is crucial in growing your blog. After you make a post, with your favorite statistics analyzer (in my case AWStats, Google Analytics, and a few others work), monitor and see which posts are popular and which aren’t. There’s a reason why one post receives many times more visitors than another. See how your popular post is different or better than your not as popular post.

To be honest, I don’t go through this list every time I make a blog post. However, it is a little guideline that I do follow quite often. If you can’t be bothered to go through all the five steps, you can also implement portions of it. In my case, some posts, I will post without any second thoughts, but seek feedback later on from some of my fellow bloggers.

Do you have any tips that you could share with the BloggersWalk community on writing quality posts? If you don’t mind, please do share your tips!

Ever since I began reading I have always loved material that was concise and to the point. Studies even show that people can easily consume written material if they are broken up into paragraphs containing 3-4 sentences. However, the best of them all has to be the list.

Lists are both clear and concise. Unfortunately, not many bloggers use this. This could be because the majority of the blogs on the web right now are personal blogs. However, even these personal blogs could use lists. In fact, lists help in preventing you reader from deviating.

In my case, my trackers (and I use way too many and stare at them way too long) show that my blog posts using lists are way more popular than those that don’t. Sure I don’t have many on BloggersWalk yet, but my other blogs also show a similar trend. Thus, it seems pretty safe to assume that lists work better. Let’s see why.

1. Short, BUT Informative
Rarely do you see long lists. If they were that long they would be paragraphs. The whole point of lists is that it gives the important information while taking out all the fluff. Readers like that as it saves time and energy.

2. It’s Not So Boring
Although some long lines of constant words are quite interesting to read, this is on a rare scenario. Most of the time, the really long posts are simply boring. The reader gets quickly bored of all the unnecessary information thrown at them. Lists don’t do this. You NEVER want your readers thinking that your blog is boring!

3. Organizes the Material
You know how lists usually go from 1 to X? Most of the time this number has some meaning behind it. Personally, I’m not dazzling at this one. I usually just number whatever comes to mind. However, lists usually are supposed to help you organize your material in any specific order you may have.

4. Helps With Persuading
As a blogger, you are often giving some sort of an information. In the case of this information being a trick or an opinion, lists are really good at persuading your visitors in seeing your opinion. This is because your points are thrown at your visitors one after another. Hopefully right now, I’m persuading you that lists are a good thing to implement in your posts.

5. Easy to Compose
Lists are often easy to create and write. You don’t need to have an awesome talent in your language. All you need to be able to do is be able to deliver your points in the most simplest manner possible. After all, that’s what lists are–giving your say in a quick but informative manner. This is what makes lists easy to create and implement in your blog posts.

Lists keep your posts clear and concise. If you are by any chance a high school student preparing for the SATs, you probably know this. In your writing section, you select your answers based on the following order: correct > clear > concise. As a blogger, assuming that your posts are correct and logical, what makes the difference between you and the average Joe is clarity and conciseness. Lists help you tremendously in achieving this.

Are you a big fan of lists? You think lists are stupid? Have your say about this post and leave a comment please!

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts that were of excellent quality, but looked unprofessional due to some mistakes here and there. Before hitting the “Publish” button, you can prevent these little mistakes and make your overall blog a lot better. This simple checklist might seem like an extra chore, but if you are serious about blogging, caring about your blog’s professionalism is important. Don’t you agree?

Spelling and Punctuations
What puts me off the most are spelling errors. To bring your blog posts to the next level, professionalism is important and a part of it is spelling things correctly. WodrPress and Gooogle should be fixed. Even a simple re-read over your blog post can help a lot. In the case of WordPress, it comes with a built-in spell checker. Clicking the spell check button and looking for the underlined words take at most a minute. Punctuations are also a key thing to watch out for. The most frequent punctuation error is forgetting to put a period. Again, a re-read can help immensely.

Organization
To be honest, I’m still struggling with this one, but am trying to improve. Organization. I’m still a blogger that is just writing the points as they come into my mind. Currently I have a post that is queued which discusses organization in further detail. However, as that post is not up yet, I’ll make a brief point here. Before posting, you should already have a general idea on what your finished post will look like. Instead of having that blueprint in your mind, draw one out on a paper. See what the best order of the paragraphs is.

Making Line Breaks
Studies show that people can read easily when they see a block of text that is about three to four sentences long. Again, this is not me and I have a tendency to write really long paragraphs. However, when I read a few blogs, I do notice some really long paragraphs which could’ve been two or three paragraphs. See how you can make smart line breaks to help your visitors. Remember, an important aspect of blogging is serving your readers well.

Link Out When Possible
Specifically, a web log (to different itself from other versions like photo logs) is a source of information. If you visit Wikipedia, you will notice that the majority of the articles there link out to other references. Readers love this as they want to know the most information possible. Linking out shows both the blogger’s professionalism and an awareness of the topic discussed. By linking out to related sites or posts, your post becomes more close to being THE post on the Internet for whatever you happen to be blogging about in that post. The best example of this is Wikipedia’s articles. In most of their articles they will link whenever possible.

Read It Out Loud
My experience tells me that this is the most effective last check-up to do before hitting the “Publish” button. It helps me find grammatical errors and other minor flaws in the post. I’m not a grammar whiz, so I will have a few grammatical errors that I couldn’t find. Nonetheless, at least eliminating those that I do know of always helps.

These are a few of the areas that I’m working on. I won’t say that I do it for all of my posts, but I do go through this short checklist with most of my posts. It helps immensely as I am able to catch the errors that do slip through on my first write. As a student, you are always told to write a first draft, revise it, then maybe think of the final draft. Why publish the first draft with blogs? If you cared for your blog, you shouldn’t be satisfied with a first draft, but strive for the excellent final draft.

Did I miss anything? Do you have your own little checklist that you go through before hitting the “Publish” button? Why don’t you share it with the rest of the community by putting it as a comment?

Entrecard is a great tool for bloggers. While I knew of it since long ago, I only decided to try it out yesterday, as you can see from my Entrecard widget on the side. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically like a little business card for your blog, and you go around blogs with the Entrecard widget on it, dropping your card in that blog. Every card you drop and card dropped on you equals one credit, which can be used for various purposes, such as for money and contest prizes. However, if your blog is relatively new like this one, it might be a wiser choice to save up on your credits and spend big on advertisements.

On the side, if you see a 125×125 ad that is not BloggersWalk ad, it is someone advertising on this site using their Entrecard Credits (EC). So basically, with your ECs, you can advertise on any of the blogs listed on Entrecard, assuming that the blog owner approves your advertisement.

So, you’re probably thinking, “I knew all that stuff. Why should I read more?” Well, if you’ve got more than enough ECs, then I guess you don’t have to read any further. However, if you’re just earning your ECs by dropping 300 a day and getting a few drops, reading more couldn’t hurt. Content may be king, but without effective advertising, what good could it be? Anyways, so, how do you use your cards effectively?

Don’t always advertise in your category!
This might seem a bit weird, but usually, those who are pioneers are those who win. Usually the sheep, or the ones following, don’t. What does this mean? So, if you run a blog about making money online, the perfect category to advertise would be the “Make Money Online” category. However, looking at the categories avaliable on Entrecard, Internet Marketing, Computers and Internet, Web Development, and a couple others could also work. Now, I’m not saying you should completely ignore your category as an ad on John Chow would be cool. Still, advertising at different categories could prove to benefit you as you could expose yourself to those “untapped” visitors as opposed to the John Chow visitors that already believe that JC is the best and probably won’t even give you a good look.

What days are the most effective?
You know how the stores are full during the Holiday season? With websites, it’s pretty much the same. You’ll have a specific day when there will be a lot of visitors. Also, these statistics are pretty consistent. So what do you do? Although not guaranteed, I believe that if you kindly asked a blogger about the blog’s traffic stats, they should give it to you. Of course, you would also have to express your desire to advertise. With these statistics in your hand, there should be a couple obvious days when the hits are quite high. Find the right day, PLAN AHEAD, and make sure that you get your ad in. Due to the nature of Entrecard, the blog owner may accept yours later, thus, resulting in a wrong day, in my opinion, it’s worth a shot. Especially with the bigger blogs, you’ve got a great chance.

Make your ads catchy!
You know the saying, “Sex sells”? Well, the concept is similar. Make your 125×125 advertisements catchy! A few days ago, I was talking to this blogger who was running an MMO blog and he said that he was using a banner that showed a monthly income of $4000+ USD. However, he doesn’t earn that much in reality, but with the help of those numbers, he does receive a lot more visitors. Making your ads catchy is a basic, but not many people utilize it. My ads could also get a lot better! You need something “viral”, something that will get people to WANT TO click! Sounds simple, but it isn’t.

Don’t forget, ECs can be converted to money too!
If you think there isn’t a great place to advertise, don’t force it! Remember? EC can be converted into real cash! Simply convert it and if you want to advertise in a site that does not have the Entrecard widget, just personally get in touch with that blogger to see if there is any ad space opening.

Analyze the incoming traffic!
Analyzing where your traffic is coming from is so important. This should be an obvious thing, but unfortunately, not many people do it all the time. With whatever stat recording program you have, see where the traffic is coming from. See which blog that you advertised at is working right. Entrecard is cheap and since you get 24 hours at one site, you should easily be able to test quite a few sites. If one works well, try that blog out again. Impressive again? Well, you know which one to stick with then!

These are probably simple tips and may or may not be beneficial to you. However, after a day of a lot of reading about Entrecard and lurking around in their forums, these are just a few tips I thought would work for me. Have you tried any of these? Think some of these might not work?

Feel free to drop a comment as we can’t always be perfect!

One of the key successes behind many big blogs is the comments. Personally, I can’t imagine a blog without comments. It is what differentiates a good blog and an excellent blog. It is also what brings your visitors back, especially if the blogger personally replied to their replies. However, I do realize that even if you post tens and hundreds of quality posts, you may not get so many comments. Here are 7 tips to increase your comment rate.

1. Make your post welcoming!
Maybe your visitors just can’t comment on your post because they don’t see any room to do it. Try to blog in a way so that your post is a quality post, but at the same time, it is provoking the users to make a comment. Blog like it is your forum, just that when blogging, you’re the one responsible for creating all the threads that people reply to. To do that, you need to make your posts welcoming. Even a “What do you think?” line at the end of every post will significantly increase the comment rate.

2. Comment on other’s blogs!
A good portion of blogging is social networking. So what does this mean? You need to go read other’s blogs and make comments in those blogs to form some sort of a network. Usually, if you comment in these blogs, these bloggers will come visit your blog too and probably make a comment. They probably won’t only come once, assuming your content is good, but will come again and again and make more comments if possible. Good?

3. Using a SPAM protection
I have seen quite a few blogs with quite a lot of spam in the comments. Many blogging softwares have ways to deal with problems like spam. For example, WordPress comes right out of the box with a plugin called Akismet. Why not use it? From a visitor’s perspective, I wouldn’t want to make a comment when the five comments above me are spam advertisement links.

4. Moderate the comments
In addition to using a spam protection modification, you need to moderate your comments one by one too. These plugins cannot block all spam. Especially those that were commented by a human, but just sucks. Now, I’m not saying delete all these comments, but a little moderating will take care of a lot of spammy comments and increase the overall quality of your blog. Wouldn’t you want to comment in a good blog?

5. Do-follow is great!
Do-follow is an awesome plugin for WordPress. There are actually quite a lot of variations you can select from. What’s great about this? It is a small reward for those that make comments, by removing the evil “rel=”nofollow”.” If you’ve noticed many blogs that do do-following tend to have a lot of comments!

6. Reward the best
In addition with the do-follow plugin, a show top commentator’s plugin can encourage people to continously make comments. Why? Wouldn’t you make quality comments if a huge blogger said that s/he’ll give you a sitewide backlink on the sidebar in exchange? I certainly would and I’m sure most blog readers would too.

7. Threaded Comments
Threaded comments are an awesome way to get a lot iof comments coming in. It allows a user or you to comment on a specific comment. Brian’s Threaded Comments (BTC) is one of the more widely used plugins, but there are also good variations of the plugin doing the same job. Not only does this allow a healthy and an easy to follow discussion, but especially from the visitor’s perspective, it can be warming to see the blogger making personal replies. I guess that concludes to another potential returning visitor.

After writing this post, I wondered what the title of this post should be, as I think up a title the very last. In my many candidates, one of them was “Blog Like It’s Your Forum!” In fact, I mentioned the “a blog is like a forum” idea in the my first point. It truly is! You need to really begin the discussions!

So, try these tips and tell me how it works. If you’ve got more than these 7 tips, why not share it with me and the rest of the BloggersWalk readers by making a comment below?

It is widely known that when you meet someone, their first impressions are what lasts the longest. This seems to be true with blogging too. In a few seconds you are either going to make that visitor a constant follower of your blog or just another person surfing by. Here are a few things that I have been trying out to start getting some regular visitors.

Anything BUT! Default
The default theme is doable regardless of the script you are using. However, the blog is like the makeup that you have on and the clothes that you are wearing. Certainly a normal person will look once again at a Vogue model than an ordinary person, at least in terms of looks. With blogs, it is similar. Any free, premium, or custom theme will be at least some sort of an improvement from the default. I personally believe that this is one of the biggest factors to consider when working on your blog’s first impression.

The Content
A log should have some sort of content. At first, all blogs lack quality content. However, with constant and regular posting, this can be overcome. In my opinion, this is the hardest part when working on your blog’s first impression. Nonetheless, it is one of the more important factors as quality articles among the junk seems to always receive recognition.

Minimizing the Advertisements
There are clearly two types of people when it comes to blogging: those that blog without making money and those that do make money. Making money is fun, exciting, and certainly an attractive aspect of blogging. However, a blog full of advertisements is unaesthetic. Flash banners screaming “You’re the 1,000,000,000th visitor! Claim your prize!” and “iPod at only $10 USD!” certainly degrades your blog’s level. Anyone who cares about their blog should avoid this. While a small degree of advertisements are okay, an excessive amount that would surely distract the user from the content of the blog should definitely be avoided.

Visibility of the Most Recent Post
I can’t stress how important this is. I am an avid blog-surfer, and read many random and sometimes even totally off-topic blogs. However, from time to time, I hit a blog and I just am overwhelmed by everything around it that I really don’t know, can’t find, or just can’t focus on the most recent post! If you want your bloggers to read your blog posts, make sure that it is there, available, and easily accessible.

Visibility of the RSS Feed Icon
This isn’t too big of an issue lately with the themes rolling out. Still, it is important to note the positioning of your RSS feed icon. It is your opportunity to make a random reader into a subscriber. Feed subscribers will probably come back sometime. A random surfer probably won’t.

These are just a few things that I’ve been focusing on lately and I have to admit, the traffic is certainly increasing. Sure, I don’t have much content yet nor is this some unique blog, as yes, it is yet another blog about blogging. Nonetheless, these little techniques seem to be clicking correctly for me at least.