Spice Up Your Blog

If you have been on the internet for any sizeable amount of time, you have definitely stumbled across a blog or ten. A lot of us have friends or colleagues who have blogs. But getting a free blogging account alone doesn’t make someone a writer.

A lot of bloggers tend to forget that giving excruciating details about each and every detail in their lives simply doesn’t make for good reading. Your blog must provide value to your readers even if you are talking about your life. You need to engage your readers by appealing to their emotions, or most people simply won’t stay interested long enough to read your thoughts.

That being said, let us look at some interesting ways that you can make your blog stand out from the millions of tedious, dreary and uninteresting ones in the blogosphere.

1. The art of the open letter:

You can write an open letter to your readers or to an entity like your favorite football team. Speak to them about the issues concerning you in a way that is engaging and interesting. For example:

“Dear Arsenal FC,

What does a fan need to do to have you play better? When will you finally manage to win a game this season?”

2. Let the kids play a little:

The internet has lots of wonderful community driven projects that are great fun to participate in. If you come across one of these, pitch it to your readers as a way to participate in a group activity with you.

For example, you may direct your users to something like Post Secret which requires the users to send in their secrets anonymously on handmade postcards, and then posts them on the site.

3. Bare it all:

If you are the kind of blogger who doesn’t mind sharing an embarrassing incident or a secret on your blog, you can dial this up even further. You can enhance your connection with your readers by offering them small details about your persona, such as a sample of your handwriting. If you are a bit of a singer, you can even upload audios of yourself humming a tune or two.

4. How do you get things done?

All of us have developed little tricks or ways of doing things that work for us. For example, if you have a great productivity routine or a great workout idea, feel free to share it with your readers.

5. Use some creative advertising:

Often, most people don’t know how much they could get if only they asked. Use your blog as a platform to ask your readers about services that they can offer, or even ideas to help you out in a sticky situation.

You can even use some unusual classified ads to generate some interesting feedback. For example:

“Was it you with the Erich Segal book at Starbucks this morning? For a moment, our eyes met and it felt like destiny.”

6. Be an expert:

Do you have a fantastic diet tip that helped you lose those pesky 10 lbs.? Or perhaps a great solution for the common cold that works for you every time? Tell your readers.

7. Who’re your friends?

If you have a dedicated community of readers, they might be interested in the kind of people you spend time with. Use your blog to write up little profiles of your friends, or share interesting anecdotes about them. You can even interview willing friends for the blog, and let your readers in on the details.

8. What would you do if you were Scrooge McDuck?

If you had an unlimited bank account and no reason to work another day in your life, what would you spend the money doing? Perhaps you would like to sail a hot air balloon around the world. Or you might want to hire your own crew of chefs that specialize in all your favorite foods. Share your rockstar-lifestyle wish list with your readers. Make it large.

9. Where’ve you been lately?

There are literally hundreds of web apps available for free that use your location to tell people where you have been. Use them to tell your readers where you have travelled to recently, or even compile a list of your favorite places to visit in town.

10. What do you really like?

Needless to say, nobody wants to hear another list of the things you like to do if it reads like this:
“I like to play the guitar, watch movies and play football with my friends.”

Instead, make it something interesting like:
“I like how red wine just makes everything taste better. Every time I cook something, I add red wine, and the results are usually awesome.”

11. What’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?

A lot of bloggers like to list their favorite foods. While this may be interesting if you have a diverse culinary taste, we want to do something different.

Describe in glorious detail the most fantastic meal that you ever had in your life. Leave nothing out – the aromas, the wine, the ambience and the company. If you can’t place a particular meal as your numero uno, just describe the greatest one you had most recently.

12. It’s a deal breaker!

If you have seen the sitcom 30 Rock, then you’ll remember Tina Fey writing a book on the things she considers to be relationship deal breakers – with hilarious results. Tweak this idea to write about the things that you consider to be deal breakers when it comes to romantic relationships.

13. What do you read?

If you have read an article, a post or even a great book that changed your life for the better, share it with your readers. Include snippets of the passages and quotes that kept you thinking about them for days after.

14. Be a travel guide:

If you have been to a great place recently or just want readers to know the best places to visit if they ever happen to visit your city, create a tour guide for them. Make a list of things to do and places to be when they are there. Include details about how to travel to a particular area or how to save some money on the trip wherever possible.

15. Show me those war wounds!

If you have some great stories about a scar or an injury that you suffered, share them with your readers. Your scars often tell a tale about the kind of life you’ve lived. Let them be a reminder to both you and your readers.

16. Look how much you’ve grown!

Do you have a geeky photo of you from your yearbook? Did you decide to become an athlete after being picked last for the gym team?

Share your oldest and most endearing memories with your readers.

17. Damn, the world is ending!

If the apocalypse hit, what is the first thing that you would do? Hide your magazine collection? Organize a cult of zombies to rule the world in the days to come?

Write about your emergency procedures on your blog. Tell them whom you would call first, and what you would save if you could only save one of your possessions.

18. You’re already a writer- act like one:

Maybe you’ve always harbored dreams of writing a million-dollar screenplay and living the Hollywood life but somehow never gotten around to starting it. Start now.

Use your blog as a platform to write drafts, or parts of stories as they come to you. The feedback you receive from your readers will be invaluable when you are penning your next bestseller.

19. Write a short story:

If you can’t think of a Sin-Cityesque tale filled with twists and turns every time you sit at your desk, start small. Challenge yourself to write a story in six sentences or less. This will lower your risks, and the experience and the feedback you’ll gain from your readers will be invaluable.

20. What are you afraid of?

Even though you are a 7th degree jujitsu master and all around bad-ass, does taking a cold shower with your eyes closed frighten the living daylights out of you? Or maybe you are just afraid of clowns?

Tell your readers what your greatest fears are. You might just gain some valuable insights into where they came from.

So we’ve already established that being different is almost always better in the blogosphere. Use these ideas to revitalize your blog and make it a place that readers want to revisit over and over. Make your content interesting and engaging so that your writing becomes a part of your reader’s lives. Don’t let your page be another one of the millions of “me too” blogs. Take charge, and most importantly, have fun with your writing.

20 More Unconventional Ways to Spice Up Your Blog is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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7 Blogging Commandments

In almost all professions in life, there are acceptable and unacceptable practices in carrying out a job. Doctors, lawyers and educators abide by a set of rules and guidelines when it comes to performing their duties. These rules ensure that a task is carried out with respect for others and with sound, moral judgment.

The same idea applies in blogging. The freedom to express opinions and publish them through the Internet entails a certain amount of professionalism, tact and fairness to everyone. A great future in blogging is not just guaranteed by the amount of traffic coming in to your website, but also the quality of relationships you have with your readers and fellow bloggers.

In a world where devious ways are the easier paths to follow, here are seven rules that a blogger should never forget:

1. Thou shall not steal.

As any endeavor in life, blogging requires one to be of sound integrity and genuine intentions. A blogger should have original ideas and his/her drive to blog should be a sincere desire to answer a question or resolve a problem. A common manifestation of a lazy blogger is imitating or plagiarizing the ideas of others. This can ultimately destroy a blog’s credibility and lose its readers in the process.

2. Thou shall not take your readers for granted.

The success of a blog may rely on a good combination of factors, but it is undeniable that the most important one is the readers. The readers are the most effective marketers for your blog content. More like “word-of-mouth” and “viral” methods, one reader who likes an article can share it with others, creating a wave of new visits to your site. Do not ignore their value. Nurture this by developing a relationship with them and engaging them in conversations long after they have read your content.

3. Thou shall honor your words.

Your blog should aim to answer or cater to a singular cause/idea/problem. A consistent, focused blog is key to maintaining a loyal following. Your readers should keep coming back to your content because they expect to find the same quality they did when they first visited your blog. In other words, your blog should have a brand – an identity to make it stand out and establish recall among your audience.

4. Thou shall kill.

Not in a literal way, but figuratively your content should kill. It should be creative, helpful, and make the reader remember your blog. The adage, “Content is king”, is a common motto for most bloggers, and there is a good reason for that. People are drawn to your blog or veer away from it primarily because of your content. There are thousands of articles about a single topic written every day. The challenge is to make yours heard.

5. Thou shall not bear false witness to your neighbor.

Blogging is as competitive as any other business. It is only natural that bloggers find ways to outdo each other with similar or opposing ideas and solutions. However, it is not very ethical or nice to resort to speaking ill of your competition to gain an undeserved advantage. This puts you in a bad light to your readers, and goes against the idea of creating a community of like-minded people through blogs. One should not discredit the success of others, especially if one hopes to be successful too.

6. Thou shall rest.

Sometimes blogging regularly can get one stuck in a mindless routine. This may affect the quality of your content or simply lose the interest of your readers. Most bloggers believe that publishing many articles generates more traffic. Others, however, believe that quantity is not always important, and neither is traffic. So it is important that a blogger takes time away from the computer to “reset” his/her state of mind. Some of the best ideas do not necessarily come from sitting in front of the computer. Seasoned bloggers claim to have spur-of-the-moment ideas when they go out and interact with the outside world.

7. Thou shall not make money your God.

It can’t be helped that some bloggers are after the monetary benefits of blogging. With numerous opportunities to monetize a website or blog, more and more bloggers are pulled into doing it. This is completely fine. In fact, there are many successful bloggers who have lived entirely off their blog earnings without having an alternate source of income. However, money shouldn’t be the only reason for starting a blog. It can be a pleasant by-product of blogging, but never the sole purpose. Your blog should serve your readers first, who are the reason for its success in the first place. This means that prioritizing them should be more beneficial to your blog than worrying about getting advertisers or affiliates.

The 7 Commandments of Blogging is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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Why Your Blog Fail

Successful blogging requires finding a fine balance between providing quality content, and bringing in enough revenue to make it profitable. But without a steady stream of visitors coming along to read your content, your blog is likely to fail. Here are 5 reasons why your blog is failing to bring in readers and revenue.

1. The topic is too general

The most successful blogs have managed to fit themselves into their own little niche. Finding your own niche is the key to successful blogging. Blogs that are too general not only have a hard time finding and keeping their readers, they also usually have to compete with much bigger (and more successful) blogs on the same topic. Why would a reader choose to come to your blog instead of one of the bigger, more popular blogs on the same topic? The answer is that they won’t, unless you can give them something more in-depth and specific than the bigger blogs offer.

2. The navigation is confusing

Readers want to be able to access the information they need without having to search around your blog for the appropriate section. Keep your navigation simple and easy-to-use with clear menus and links to separate subjects. Create index pages to catalogue your blog post titles into categories. Provide a help page and list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) to help users with any issues they may have, and include a sitemap to help readers navigate around your blog.

3. The layout is distracting

The attention span of a web user is very short, and keeping a reader interested for the full length of time it takes to read your content is extremely difficult. Don’t make it even more difficult by distracting your readers with animations and flashing advertisements all over the page. Similarly, stick to using a 2-column theme (avoid using more than 3 columns as these look cluttered and tend to confuse readers), and try to avoid using over-complicated menu systems at the side of the page.

4. The content is biased

Depending on the topic of your blog, you need to provide unbiased or balanced content. This may not be a problem if you blog about something with no real opposing views, but if your blog contains subject matter with a strong emotional connection, you should consider how your content will be viewed by readers. For example, a parenting blog should avoid using content that will offend or exclude some of its readership (e.g. biased or judgemental views against working mums, vaccination programs, or other controversial views). That’s not to say that you shouldn’t tackle controversial issues on your blog, but you must try to present a balanced view of the issue.

5. The ads are off-putting

Finding the right balance between content and advertisements can be a tricky task. On the one hand you want to provide your readers with quality content, but on the other hand you need to make enough money from advertising revenue to make it worth your while. Advertisements need to be placed carefully to avoid irritating your readers. If you use Google Adsense or other similar programs, you may be able to get free advice on the best places to put the advertisements for your particular blog. Experiment with different placements, colours, types, and sizes of advertisements to see how they affect your blogs performance.

5 Reasons why your Blog is Failing to Bring in Readers and Revenue is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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Top 5 Tips for Making Your Blog User Friendly

Reader usability is paramount when creating a blog. Technical specifications and attractive themes are important aspects of growing and maintaining your blog, but creating an appealing user experience is the best way to keep your visitors coming back. Here are 5 tops tips for making your blog user friendly.

1. Use headings and subheadings

Blog readers typically have short attention spans and tend to scan content before deciding whether or not to read the whole post. Including appropriate headings in your post enables your readers to scan your posts more easily. Headings and subheadings help your visitors decide which parts of your content they want to read. They also help to increase your search engine optimization efforts.

2. Pay attention to the layout

Blog posts should be categorized to enable easy access for your visitors. Try to keep your categories simple and easy to understand, using a hierarchy wherever possible. Use index pages to keep track of your categories and separate pages for static content. Remember to tag your content with appropriate labels. Sidebars, widgets, and menus should be arranged as clearly as possible, making it simple for visitors to see what you have to offer.

3. Include a search box

Visitors are often looking for fast access to specific information and don’t have the time to search through pages of content to find what they’re looking for. Providing a good search facility for your visitors is essential. Your blogging platform should have a simple search box that you can add to your blog. Alternatively, you can add a Google custom search box by pasting a small piece of code into your blog template.

4. Make it mobile

Many people now access the internet through their mobile phones, smart phones, iPads, and other mobile devices. Most normal blog themes are not designed for viewing on a mobile device; blogs may appear distorted, slow, or even unusable when viewed on one of these devices. If your blog is hosted on WordPress, make sure that you activate the function that automatically enables a special mobile theme for mobile users. Other blogging platforms should have their own version of this option.

5. Create a sitemap for your visitors

Sitemaps help your visitors to navigate around your site. Create a sitemap that helps your readers find the content they need without having to search through pages of content. Make your sitemap simple and easy to understand, using clear language when describing your content. If you prefer, there are several free software programs that will create a sitemap for you.

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Writing For A Target Audience

There is nothing worse than a boring blog post or an internet article written in a stiff, prescripted, logical manner. This type of writing lacks spontaneity. It lacks whimsy. It lacks flesh and blood. And, predictable, wooden content won’t make your readers want to return to your site to see what else you have to say.

The Easy Way to Write

The easiest formula for writing internet content is to write as if you were talking to a real-life friend or acquaintance. When you are writing for a specific person, one who fits into your target demographics, you will discover a natural flow that will entice your target audience back for more. Actually, the laziest, but most effective, style of writing springs forth whenever you are writing for a specific person, who likes what you like and knows what you know.

Your Target Blog Audience

When blogging, you should pick a target audience that consists of people like yourself. These people speak the same lingo as you. They laugh at the same insider jokes. They understand your doublespeak and innuendos. They get what you are saying. If they don’t, they will move on.

Name Your Friend or Acquaintance

While drafting your blog post, you should use the name of your targeted friend. Later, you can edit out your friend’s name and tweak your words to form an intriguing generalization. This method is the easiest way to keep your writing real. Here is an example of a first draft geared towards a younger baby boomer.

“Cherie, you missed out on the fun of being a hippie. You missed the crazy clothing, the rocking live music, and the full-on camaraderie of living from day to day. All you got was disco.”

For the actual upload, edit out any name (or names) and, if you need to lengthen your post, add more detail. Here is an example.

“All of you younger baby boomers missed out on the fun of being a hippie. You never wore purple velvet capes or fringed miniskirts to shock your parents. You never saw Jimi Hendrix pulsate his guitar while somersaulting on stage. You never experienced the full-on camaraderie of living day to day on a commune. All you younger boomers got was disco.”

Would a thirty-year-old man be able to write a trendy blog geared towards baby boomers? Would a baby-boomer woman be able to speak convincingly to a thirty-year-old gamer? You know the answer.

Your Target Audience for Online Articles

An article is more formal than a blog. When you are writing an online article, pick a topic that you know; then, write the article in a way that makes you stand out from the crowd. Any writer from the United States, India, Scotland, the Philippines, or the Falklands can copy information found on page one of Google or Bing and formulate that information into a cohesive matrix of sentences and paragraphs.

What makes you different from them? Do you know something about a topic that they don’t? If so, you should be writing that article.

Writing Outside Your Area of Expertise

Writing on subjects you know nothing about is a time-consuming chore. In the long run, you are better off avoiding articles that require a boatload of research. If you find yourself mired waist deep in gobs of information and you feel burdened by a steep learning curve, toss that article into the sea and write about what you know. Then, learn more about “what you know” to become an expert.

You Are an Entrepreneur

On some level, you must always remember that your articles and posts, no matter how obliquely veiled, are teasers or advertisements meant to sell a product or a lifestyle. Well, how do you know if you can attract an audience that will lust after that ski boat or buy into that wanderlust lifestyle?

The right answer is that you are a guy who keeps a ski boat in your garage or you are a retired woman who, finally, has enough time for travel. Alternatively, compelling blogs and articles can be written by authors who long to own a yacht or wordsmiths who daydream about accumulating enough mileage to hit Dubai, London, Auckland, and Machu Picchu. However, you should never try to con your readers into believing you are something you are not. Your words will ring hollow; and, eventually, Google will downgrade your webpage.

So, unless you love a major challenge, you should write about what you know and write for people like yourself. Consider the option of writing under a pseudonym, if you must, but bring your audience into your life. Give your readers tips and tidbits that they are unlikely to know. And, if you dole these enticing morsels out in small doses, you will amass a fan base that keeps coming back for more.

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How To Make Money Blogging?

As the internet exploded in popularity in the late 1990s, it became clear that there was money to be made online. However, in the early days of the internet boom, large companies such as product retailers were the primary beneficiaries of this new income stream. The advent of blogging democratized the online moneymaking process and allowed every day people to generate an income stream by writing and promoting products online. How exactly do these people turn a blog into a source of income? Most bloggers use some combination of advertising revenue, affiliate marketing, and selling their own products.

Blog Advertising

Advertising revenue is the most common income source for bloggers. It’s also the easiest to implement and it can provide bloggers a comfortable living if they approach it correctly. The blogger places advertisements on his or her blog in a place where the viewers will be exposed to the ads. Depending on the payment agreement between the advertiser and the blogger, the advertiser sponsoring the ads may either pay the blogger each time an ad is clicked or each time an ad is viewed. Services like Google’s AdSense make it incredibly easy to place income-generating ads on a blog; getting viewers to click on those ads is another story, and a more complex topic.

Affiliate Marketing

Many bloggers also use their blogs as a platform for affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting a particular product or service, for which the blogger is paid a commission on each sale that he or she promotes. Many bloggers actually focus exclusively on affiliate marketing and do quite well for themselves. The blogger must work as a salesperson to convince the reader to purchase a product, which makes affiliate marketing a bit more involved than generating income from advertising. Clickbank.com is the most popular affiliate marketing hub, allowing product sellers and product promoters to work together towards generating income online.

Selling Own Products

In recent years, selling a personal product has become a more popular method of revenue for bloggers. While advertising and affiliate marketing promote the products of others, many bloggers are taking the route of selling their own products, such as eBooks or instructional videos. By selling their own products, bloggers keep 100% of the profits, they control the content of the product, and they’re better able to promote the product because they know it inside and out.

Running an online blogging business is a mystery to many people, but it’s simpler than it seems. Most bloggers make the large share of their income through advertising for other businesses, promoting products through affiliate marketing, or selling their own products and services.

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Look Good and Earn With Banner Ads

Many blogs fail to seize the many lucrative rewards that site-based advertising has to offer. Often, a blog owner will do nothing more than set up a Google Adsense account and fill their blog with uninteresting textual advertising. This is a huge mistake and a waste of valuable space.

Textual advertisements are regularly overlooked or ignored completely. They can look tacky and add no element of vibrancy or visual attraction to a blog. They provide nothing apart from the slim chance of earning a few dollars a month and this is doubtful.

If a blog owner is looking for an advertising outlet that will stimulate interest and provide additional revenue they should be heading in the direction of banner advertising.

Why Banner Ads Offer Enhanced Profitability

Banner ads are interesting. People are naturally drawn to images and while textual adverts are nothing more than a boring column of more text, banner adverts naturally attract a reader’s attention.
Images catch the eye. And the purpose of an advert is for people to actually notice it. Banner adverts will be noticed and are proven to be more successful. This means greater profit for the blog hosting the ads.

Greater Flexibility

Textual adverts are very limited in size and style. Banner advertisements come in many different shapes and sizes. They can be made to fit in with a blogs overall appearance, and can be used to break up long passages of text and slot into those awkward empty areas that lack content.

Professional Appearance

A banner advertisement will always look more appealing than a textual advert. A quality graphical advert can enhance the look of a blog, if correctly designed. Many companies spend a fortune on banner design and they have moved on a long way from the days of cheap flashing neon adverts.

Modern banner ads do not detract from blog content, they flow with it and readers will appreciate a blog that provides a valuable alternative resource that is relevant to their needs.

Increased Information

Banner advertisements often contain more information that simple textual adverts. They provide images of a product and offer more than a few oddly worded lines of text. With the advancement in Flash programming, banner adverts are now able to provide high-quality visual imagery that can seamlessly glide from screen to screen.

This multi-layered function allows banner advertisements to include a large amount of information in a very small space. Readers want to know what they are dealing with before they click on any advert and this is why banner adverts always outperform text ads.

Everyone’s a Winner

By choosing the right banner adverts for their readership and ensuring that these banners are both attractive and of a high design quality, a blog can provide its visitors with relevant products or services that will serve their needs.

Not only will a blog be increasing its overall revenue, it will be enhancing its appearance by adopting attractive, appealing imagery within the site.

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EzyBlogger Featured By Local Newspaper

I cannot believe that I got featured in an article by a top local newspaper in Malaysia – The New Straits Times

The article, “Cashing In Online – Lucrative if done right” was published both online and printed under the TECH & U section.

I cannot tell you how it felt to be interviewed and featured by one of the top newspaper in my country, it is just awesome !

Furthermore I’m not a top blogger in Malaysia but I guess now more Malaysians will know about me and my blogs :)

The reporter who wrote that article found me thru my Work At Home Malaysia blog.

However, in that article he mentioned about EzyBlogger.com instead of my Work At Home Malaysia blog, fine with me.

Work at Home Malaysia blog is about how to make money online and work at home tips for Malaysians.

Here are some excerpts from the newspaper interview :-

“Can one earn good money online? Blogger Roseli Abu Bakar seems to think so. He ventured into the business of making money online in 2007 and has not looked back since.”

“Roseli now blogs through his EzyBlogger Web site, www.ezyblogger.com, which teaches people ways to make money online. He claims to earn a stable income from his online activities.”

“Roseli is one of a growing number of success stories of people who have ventured into online affiliated jobs. The Internet has evolved into a money-generating mechanism for many people, namely bloggers and Web site owners.”

The article also featured another Malaysia blogger, Lee Ka Hoong of MyBlog2Day.

Lee is a great blogger who blogged about making money online and his blog is ranked top for make money online keyword on Google Malaysia.

Life is strange you know, just 2 years ago I was out of job with no money and now I’m graded a “success” story by a top newspaper.

I must say that I’m happy with my achievements thus far and being featured in the newspaper is a REAL bonus for me.

I did work very hard to achieve what I have today.

Though I’m not making tons of money like the top bloggers, I’m making much more than what I used to earn working.

So, who said you cannot make money blogging ?

EzyBlogger Featured By Local Newspaper – New Straits Times is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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Many people are completely mystified by the explosion of new technology these days, both in the real world and in the world of the Internet.

Just navigating websites can be a daunting experience, and learning all the lingo may seem like a mission impossible.

Blogging is one of those evolving technologies, and though it may seem incomprehensible, blogging is actually a useful tool for Internet communication.

Blog Basics

The word blog originated from the term weblog, referring to a website with regular entries or posts of information in the form of journals, editorials, news articles, conversations, and sometimes graphic material like pictures or video. These posts appear on the website in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry at the top of the page and progressively older entries posted below.

In addition to the blog posts, a blog page may also contain other features such as archiving of old entries, ability of visitors to make comments on posts, related images to the subject of the blog, links to related material, and news feeds notifying a subscriber of new content to the blog. There are many blog creator systems available on the Internet, eliminating the need to know how to use HTML to create a webpage. This makes blogging accessible to everyone.

Blog Uses

A whole community has evolved around blogs, called the blogosphere. This includes all blogs of any subject, whether they’re personal in nature or business oriented. Bloggers, or people who create blogs and post in them, produce content on various subjects ranging from simple online journals to in-depth educational strategies and complex marketing tools for businesses.

The most common use for blogs is still personal, people sharing their lives or interacting with one another on specific topics, but blogs are having an impact on many other aspects of our worldwide civilization, including politics, entertainment, health care, education, and business. One of the best aspects of blogging is its ability to open up the fields of information exchange and communication. On any given topic, bloggers can express their up-to-the-minute knowledge and opinions, offering multiple unfiltered perspectives and almost limitless access to further research.

Powerful Tool

Blogging is not just a communication tool, but also an evolving method for influencing the way we live today.

Creating blogs is a simple and an effective method of expressing oneself, but even if a person doesn’t feel ready to dive that deep into blogging waters, blogging content can still be an excellent source for entertainment and education.

Not all Internet technology has to be a mystery—once demystified, blogging becomes a powerful tool to help our society step into the future.

Image Credit – Michael Karshis

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5. Newbie Bloggers – Break Free with Blogging

Some people think that blogging is for the isolated, or the dysfunctional: that it consists of alcoholic finger-jabbers or political obsessives firing their opinions into cyberspace regardless of the audience.

There are plenty of blogs like this! But it doesn’t have to be like that.

You can create and build an audience for your writing and get immense satisfaction from it.

How to begin, then?

You need first and foremost to choose your style and subject. Some generalised blogs reach a wide audience, but if that’s what you want, stick to a particular topic or group of topics. Politics is the most well-known one, but you will need the stomach for a lot of argument and debate if you choose it! Other blogs focus on domestic life or literature, or culture: whatever you choose to focus on, your blog needs an identity and readers need to know what to expect when they check out your blog. Writing on hundreds of different topics may seem like a good way to attract hits but it won’t necessarily build an audience.

You need to decide on your style: comic, controversial, laid-back, intelligent – what will your online persona be like? Although there is space for variation, if readers log on and suddenly find splenetic, drunken rantings where they expected discussion of the arts, they will not be impressed.

To build and sustain your audience, you need to comment constructively on other blogs and to link on yours. You can blog without allowing comments, but a few exceptions aside, this is not a great way to become known. You need to get your name – or online identity – known widely and commenting on well-known blogs is a great way to do this. You need to do it thoughtfully and intelligently, though. Just leaving one-liners or trolling (deliberately provoking the readers of that blog) is not helpful to you. Engaging in argument and making good points is helpful!

The most well-respected bloggers behave ethically, through not trolling, responding appropriately to comments and keeping just the one online identity if they choose not to blog under their real name. It isn’t your opinions as such which count, it’s how you behave and how you write. It is sometimes said that bloggers are the perpetually outraged, preaching to the converted. This is just not true. The best blogs involve wide-ranging discussion as well as well-written content. A blog which attracts dissent and on which well-moderated debate takes place is one which will earn a lot of respect. That doesn’t mean you can’t write your foul-mouthed outrage, just that that alone isn’t enough.

It’s also often said that you need well-written content first and foremost. This is true. But lots of great content is out there and unknown. You don’t need to be Shakespeare or a Pulitzer Prize-winner to blog well. You just need to write clearly, researching your topic and having proper support for any arguments you choose to make. Your style must be accessible. Posts should be detailed where necessary but not essay-length all the time. There’s also space for quips, random thoughts and jokes.

Joining a blogging agglomeration can be useful in building an audience. There are many of these, based on political affiliation, nationality or religion (for example). There are also blogging directories, which use your url and a few words to describe the blog, and which can be used by readers to search for the types of blogs they might be interested in. It goes without saying that the more links you have, the better.

One of the reasons that blogs do come and go is that blogging for an audience is hard work. You need to post regularly (several times a week, though not necessarily every day) and you need to keep up the quality of your posting and commenting. It can involve a commitment of a couple of hours a day or more. The rewards for this are twofold: satisfaction at becoming well-known, and financial – blogs with lots of hits can earn money from advertising and lead to the blogger being invited onto mainstream media outlets for discussions or interviews. Before you embark on this process, ask yourself: do you have the time and energy it takes?

Finally, don’t believe what you might have read elsewhere. Blogging is not dead, nor is it dying. Twitter and social networking sites are complimentary to blogging. You can, for example, post your tweets on your blog. In fact, blogging is only just coming to maturity. In the UK this year, a blogger forced a political resignation – the first time this has happened, and before the mainstream media could act. Bloggers break stories, start and maintain campaigns, try to raise awareness and keep a vast online debate going. Through the well-known blogs, people come to new art forms, read books they did not know existed, even learn how to cook!

Millions of people blog, all over the world.

Joining that community and taking part in its arguments, campaigns and laughter can be really satisfying.

Take the plunge!

Blogging for an Audience is a post from: EzyBlogger Dot Com Follow Our Updates on Facebook and Twitter

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