The Word is not enough

Once you have the embryonic start to your blog you need to look to optimisation, choose your keywords with care to ensure that you are aiming at your specified target audience.  Aim for trackbacks and/or permanent links for your articles.  This gives a stable link for comments and articles from like minded bloggers to connect to your work.  Not only does this help your blog to grow this also builds links something that helps enormously when optimising your site for peak performance.  This article should be read in conjunction with Making Yourself Heard in the Virtual World and Blog Optimisation Saturation of the Fittest. These articles conjoined give a more in depth view of how best to approach the art of blog writing and giving yourself a web presence.

Allow time on a regular basis to research your articles and so include possible links that will help reinforce the topic you are discussing, also this will help build your web awareness through the key positioning of these links, if you choose to write on a subject prominent within the media the chances for possible links are phenomenal.  Good well written linking articles will help improve your advertising prospects should you consider this as a form of revenue for the future of your blog.  Advertising within your blog comes down to preference, there is a lot to be said for the potential revenue that can be drawn in through advertising remember positioning, size and specific content of any advertising media will ultimately be your choice should you take this route.  This is your domain therefore you have final say as to area allowance you choose to allocate for advertising.

Prolific articles help build your web awareness as a greater amount of subject matter is available for the search engines to locate.  This coupled with quality links as mentioned above helps build your profile within the blogosphere.  If you have tips or techniques that have helped you achieve high rankings within your chosen topic please share this knowledge within the comment string.

When one writes Blog articles the act of the written word can help one grow in a multitude of ways.  You grow as a writer, the mere fact that your work will be available for scrutiny on a global scale helps build a better author out of you, or at least I feel that it should.  Giving voice to an opinion through the media of blogging allows you to build self-awareness and gives the chance for you and the reader to interact on a variety of levels.  Through the addition of comments, you the author are given the chance to interact fully with your readership.  Participation through the comment trail gives the chance to build narrative greed within a set of articles that could ultimately lead to a series to be visited for reference whenever needed.  Most bloggers will admit that some of their best work grew from the lively debate begun through a comment to an originating article.  To write an article one must be prepared to take the feedback in the good nature it is meant. Criticism should be seen as positive and the chance for the seedling article to metamorphose into a possible series from the comment strains that evolve from the original piece.

Comment and feedback allows for lively debate, once your readership grows you open up the chance of business connections through networking or even advertising revenue once the traffic through your blog reaches significant levels that will make the advertiser interested.  Monitor your blog statistics regularly to ensure that you have good statistical data to show any would be advertiser why your blog is a good billboard for their company.  A strong readership with well written articles, regular comments and feedback help build reputations, these are all aspects that will help your blog develop.   For most aspiring writers the medium of the weblog gives the perfect chance to showcase ‘published’ work. 

Please feel free to add your comments to allow this article to grow in maturity and content...

Blog Optimisation – Saturation of the fittest

Successful blogging is as much down to organic optimisation as it is to the writing of the articles.  Writing prolific articles is one thing getting them noticed across the web is something else entirely.  There are a wealth of books, websites and articles written advising about getting your blog noticed.   The thrill of watching your web awareness rise is addictive.  Blog aggregators help with submitting your blog to directories to give you further presence.  Examples of blog aggregators can be found at www.technorati.com or www.blogexplosion.com .  Other ways to optimise your blog is to aim for blogger referrals; readers that subscribe to a regular blog will normally take the recommendations of that blogger to heart.  Message here aim for recommendations from your peers. Trackback is a mechanism of communication between blogs that allows permanent links between articles published on different blogs much like the idea of reciprocal inking within websites.  Once a trackback has been set up you are notified through your blog administration with a brief description of the article your work has been linked to.  This is a good tool to use to further your conversations and encourage comment and feedback.  Often your viewpoint can become stale; the injection from another interested party can continue a healthy debate.

Blogging can easily become a full time occupation, what may start as the dream to write can grow into a need to populate an array of topics which propagates into an aim for ‘web domination’ or simply organic saturation of your market.   You need to be fit in mind, body and soul to help bring your venture to fruition.  You become an author of your own destiny, using the power of persuasive prose to populate your given subject area.    For further information on this subject you good look at the book shown below:

Net linguistics or the explanation of language

How topical!  Following on from my post ‘Power to the Pen;’ BBC News ran an article discussing much the same topic where LJ Rich Blogger discussed the idea of net linguistics (21/04/09). It was a pleasure to hear Laura-Jane extol the virtues of the well written word.  The news article began with the horror statistics that very few teenagers know how to address or even write a typical letter these days.  With the introduction of email, text and blogs, the art of written language has been dissected to such an extent that it is unrecognisable as the same linguistic process. Derrida and his plea for La Différance would feel his work had been futile when viewed within the aesthetics of linguistics as considered today. 

Once again the need for speed and the accessibility of space leads to the condensing of letters to their confining parameters.  Twitter offers only just 140 characters each post, the need for language condensability becomes obligatory to get your point across. Mobile text message programmes offer up to a maximum of 6 message blocks that can be sent at any one time, again the need for abbreviations to be introduced into common language has arisen from the dexterity of use of a keypad coupled with the constant clamour of speed to reply as soon as possible. Linguistic rules need to be implemented to ensure that the art of language is not lost on the younger generation. Abbreviated net speak or net linguistics need to be kept within the confines of that arena perhaps a glossary of net etiquette for net linguistics should be circulated within blogging domains. Please accept my ignorance if such an article already exists.    we are left wondering if the art of grammatically correct language will go the way of the forgotten applications our fore fathers used to pass down to us such as crafting techniques. 

Comments welcomed.  Thread to be continued...

Making Yourself Heard in the Virtual World

If you feel passionate about something shout it from the roof tops, power of free speech.  On the surface this sounds like a brilliant idea but when we look more carefully at this statement we need to consider political correctness, we do not want to offend another in what we write.  It is one thing to write in a thought provoking way it is quite another to take a stance and suggest that it is the definitive thought of the many. 

Blogging gives you the chance to voice your opinion for others to see ‘virtually hear’ you can quite literally ‘make yourself heard within a virtual world’ learning to promote your blog helps your virtual voice to become louder, you can assume you have ‘made it’ when your voice becomes a crescendo. Blogging can filtrate the web the same way a conventional website does, through links, organic optimisation, word of mouth advertising, the list is long but not inexhaustible. 

Forums give you a chance to voice an opinion these could be considered the prequel to the blog, the blog being the natural progression. Would you agree?

As with all forms of the written word you need to know your target audience, interaction proves you have provoked a response your virtual voice has been heard and responded to.  Sometimes you need to choose a niche market that will create a dedicated following.  This could be derived from loyal readers or from the community that your blog is aimed at.  Aiming your writing at a particular niche allows for specialist authorship.  Continuing a strand from a dedicated theme helps to promote brand and gives the author greater credibility as their knowledge is communicated to their readership through a contained string.   As a blog evolves the introduction of contextual advertising such as AdSense will give a better result as the controlled topics allow for more defined topic advertising. In the same way a niche topic blog is seen as more attractive to advertisers that wish to use direct advertising to boost their sales.  This is turn helps with organic search engine optimisation as the search engines like to see topics that relate closely within their pages.  The more you get to specialise within your niche market the more likely you are to post as your knowledge base grows and your research will deepen within the topic.

A well defined, expertly written blog allows for future expansion into neighbouring topic areas when you have created a dedicated following that have similar interests.  The more focused your topic area the more likely your conversion rate should you be aiming at a sales generated market - a true test that your voice has met that crescendo, and can be seen to shout across the virtual world.

Power to the Pen

Let your fingers do the walking with a twist!  Literally walk your fingers over your keyboard to give the power of a ‘virtual pen’.  The written word is a powerful tool, it can weald pain and sadness as well as humour and joy.  Thank you two little words when uttered mean the world yet write them down give them substance and the receiver has a permanent record.  Royal Mail has used ‘I saw this and thought of you’ slogan to encourage the British public to put pen to paper , email and the world wide web gives everyone the chance to spread joy through the ‘net’. 

Mobile phones have encouraged everyone to ‘text’ with a whole new language evolving. I am sorry but I cannot join the multitude the written word needs to be punctuated perfectly be it written on paper, word processed or typed into a mobile phone keypad.  People are not only losing the art of conversation they are losing the basic learned process of writing.  We hear the cries of teachers when marking scripts children migrate the ‘text speak’ into their written language, heresy we cry.  This reflects society’s constant clamour of further precious time. A snatched minute here an extra half an hour there rush, rush, rush. Is it any wonder that this urgency has filtered through to the use of written language itself?  Ultimately will our quest for precious extra minutes make the written word illegible?  Shorthand was designed for speed this does not resemble the language it derives from.  Will language itself go the same way?  Answers on a post card, responses welcomed.

This thread will be continued ...

To blog or not to blog

Now that is the question.  Do you write your own personal blog or is this a task for the professional?  There are many points to consider when entering the ‘blogging arena’. 

• Time available for article writing
• The aim of your blog
• Your target audience often considered in conjunction with the above
• Length of composition
• Preferred subject matter – personal, business, humour or specific message orientated

The suggestions above are by no means an inexhaustible list; just a few ideas to consider when approaching the idea of a blog. Once you have decided on the chosen arena for your audience it is easier to choose whether you write for yourself or if you take the commissioned author route.  Professional blogging is now recognised as a career, lets face it blogs have been considered for writing awards. As with all forms of writing it is a case of having the faith in your conviction and just going for it.

If you feel that you do not have the time to produce your own blog there are a vast array of freelance bloggers that are happy to produce copy for you, myself included.  Typing ‘blog writing’ into Google will give you a plethora of choices.  This can have a knock on effect, where originally you felt you could not write an article a small amount of surfing can give you a choice ‘to blog or not to blog’ or alternatively this will be a mine of ideas for future topics you can write on. 

Ideal book to refer to for beginning blogging shown below:

I will re address this topic on a regular basis and welcome comments. Reciprocal links are welcomed.