Blog Analysis – My first blog broke a lot of the blogging rules
When I wrote my first blog, I did not really have a clue what I was doing. I had been studying the social media space for a few months and put together everything I knew into a word document. Then I decided, maybe I can publish it as a Blog. So that’s how my first blog post was born. By some lucky accident and even though I broke a lot of the blogging rules, the blog was published by an American social media website, www.socialmediopolis.
I dived in to the blogging world so to speak and now I’m catching my breadth and want to make my blog more compelling, readable and attractive. To this end, I have read a great book called ‘Blogging for Creatives’ by Robin Houghton. This book is a great practical guide to blogging, the different blogging platforms, and lots of blog examples. So I’ve decided to compare my first blog post and see how it ‘fitted’ into the general rules of blogging
1. Headline to grab the reader - My first blog post had a decent Headline. Could I have made it better? Definitely!
2. Pick a topic you care about - My first blog did talk about a subject I care and am passionate about, Social Media for Business, so I think this came across and connected to the reader.
3. Content – A blog post can be a text, video, photos or audio or a combination of all of these. - My first blog post was text only. Now I am investigating how to do audio and video to mix it up for my readers.
4. Make it short and frequent– Keep it short, approx 250 words is plenty. Some exceptions including recipes and tutorials apply - Oh dear, my first blog post was 1,857 words. My poor, poor readers. I apologise to you all. As for frequency my next blog post came 4 months later. I felt I had to have something really compelling to offer my readers before I published anything. Now I have to blog little and often instead of long and infrequent. That is a big challenge!
5. Readability - reasonably sized clear font on a pale background, no background graphics beneath the text, generous line spacing. Basically make it as easy as possible for people to read your blog post - My first blog post was pretty easy to read but generally a bit boring to look at . It had no bells and whistles. Again this is an area I am now working on by changing the template and theme of my blog to make it look more attractive
6. Tags and Labels should be put into your blog posts so people find blogs related to the topic they want to read about - My first blog had no tags or labels. I now have added these labels to my blog posts as it makes it easier for people to find. This is pretty easy to do. Tags and Labels are basically words and phrases that identify and describe your blog content. By adding these tags and labels your blog post will be found by search engines also. In Blogger which I use, there is a section called 'Post Settings'. Click on this and a section called 'Labels' comes up. For this blog post, I will add the following labels 'blog' 'blogging', 'blogging tips', Blogging for creatives by Robin Houghton and 'social media'. Put in as much as you can, but you are restricted to a certain number of characters you can use.
7. Easy to share – My first blog post did give my readers an opportunity to share it with others, though I did not realise this and did not encourage them to do so. At the end of my blog post, on the bottom left of the page, my readers can share my blog post by email, blogger,Twitter,Facebook and Google +. Thank you to any of you who shares this with friends or colleagues!
How does your blog compare with the 'rules'? Learn anything new today?. I would love to hear your comments
If you would like to start a company blog but do not have the time, email me at murchumar@hotmail.com or give me a call 00 44 7594 969529.
