Blogging & RSS
Blogging: A Long-Term Strategy
Becoming a popular blog rarely happens quickly. Building popularity takes time; not days, but months or even years. Some of the most popular blogs took years to build-up their presence. Achieving ‘Top-Tier’ blogger status requires a corporate commitment to invest long-term in the necessary resources before even beginning the ‘blog-trek’.
Someone within your organization should be designated as your corporate ‘voice’. The approach in blogging is not to push products and services, but engage in a humble, personal dialog with potential customers over time, building brand awareness and trust. What is your inspiration, your motivation and focus around your blog?
1. Have your target audience in mind when you write. If you confine yourself to a couple topics that you end up beating to death, you’ll be left uninspired. You have the freedom to venture off a bit. Your target audience has needs. Write to them. Focus on your main area of interest and branch off onto related topics.
2. Keep a running tab of ideas for your blog. Remaining inspired over the long-term is essential to any long-term blogging strategy. Staying motivated to blog regularly can be difficult. However, if you don’t even have the idea on which to write about – you’re especially challenged.
A HELPFUL TIP: Generate more posting ideas that you need. Nothing wrong with tapping into a self –generated creative storehouse of ideas when you’re not ‘feeling it’. You can’t always count on motivation to be there 24/7.
3. Connect with your readers at human beings, not as data points. Passion for what you’re writing about comes through in your blog. Treat your readers like a number and your readership may dwindle.
Remember: One additional feed count means someone is taking the time to read your blog. Getting to know your readers, and learning how to help them is critical to success. Responsiveness is key. If someone posts a comment, try to respond immediately. Be active with your comments. The connection with your readers will be rewarding on many levels.
4. What are your long-term goals and how do you focus on short-term goals in the meantime? Be realistic with your time and your goal setting.
Take a staged approach. Focus on building up your readership to 100, then 250, then 500 etc. Setting sights on 10,000 readers by year-end can be discouraging.
5. Monetize your blog. It may take several attempt at topics, tone and direction of your blog, but keep at it and hitting on a profitable niche can boost your enthusiasm and your bank balance. Write about a worthy cause, compile an eBook, get involved.
6. Work backwards from your goal. Breakdown the steps needed to achieve success . If you’re goal is X number of thousands of subscribers, then focus on the subscriber base increase.
7. Track performance and milestones. As you view your log of progress, you may be able to relate categories or types of posts to jumps in subscriber additions. Track important events like a top-tier blogger commenting on your post or when a key blog links back to you.
When in need of motivation, refer back to this progress log and get an enthusiasm’ jump-start’ to continue your blog trek.
8. Keep a balanced blogging pace. Fixation or obsession with blogging can impact other parts of your life. Plan for a less stressful but steady blog stream rather than a complete extended vacation from blogging. A long quiet period without any posts from you can shrink your blog subscribership fast. Stay consistent. There’s a rhythm to blogging that should fit comfortably into your lifestyle. Adhere to this philosophy and you can go the distance. Burn out, and it will be tough to build it back up.
9. Creative Storehouse. For those times when you’re just not ‘feeling it’, be prepared. Build up a reserve of ideas – a week or month’s worth. It’s like having an emergency bank account for unexpected circumstances. You’ll be prepared.
RSS – It Really Is Simple
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, enables websites to distribute content beyond what someone views in their browser surfing the web. A feed allows a subscription to receive automatic updates on a regular basis via all kinds of online avenues like a news reader, web portal or even email. Your feed content can also be integrated into podcasts, news reports, headlines, social media ‘widgets’, mobile phones and the like. RSS taps into the anywhere, anytime philosophy enabled by our World Wide Web and mobile devices.
XML feeds can be expressed via RSS or another common app called Atom. Most consumers of content care less about the protocol that delivers their new content and more about just getting that content. A cool feature of FeedBurner, called SmartFeed, creates a ubiquitous platform off of which a feed may be read from any type of subscriber device.
CarbonFoot Interactive will partner with you to ensure you content can be propagated easily throughout the World Wide Web and use reporting tools to gauge the success or your content syndication and glean insights for your business on the consumption of that content – leading to recommendations for more or similar valued content for potential customers to consume.
