Posts Oct 272007
Notes from my presentation at Podcamp Perth on October 27th 2007, which is here Blog Fodder : what do I put in ?
1. Look at your blog
- What type of blog is it?
- Tagline
- “About” page
2. Look at your audience
- What audience?
- Sitemeter
- Google analytics
- Google webmaster tools
- Statistics on your hosting service
- What are they searching for when they get to you ?
- Squeaky bras
- Fear of beetroot
- What time is the Australian Idol replay ?
- Geek t-shirts Perth
Where are they coming from? Domain? Location?
- Who do you want in your audience?
3. Who are you?
- What do you want to write about?
- Would you read your own blog?
- Is the voice of your blog human?
- How much of yourself do you want to show ?
- Your privacy. Others’ privacy.
- Findability – forever
- What other online conversations are you part of?
4. Some types of blog posts – from ilibrarian 18 Different kinds of blog posts
- Breaking News
- Opinion
- Resource/Link List
- Ideas/Inspiration
- Aggregate List/Guide
- Review/Analysis
- Humorous
- How-to/Tutorial
- Interview
- Case Study
- Snarky or Contrarian
- Diary Entry
- Video
- Images
- Charts & Graphs
- Surveys
- Scholarly Articles
5. If you have bloggers’ block
- Leave it
- Get a Life
- Really…leave it
- Prewrite posts
- Read other blogs
- Tell a story
- Make a list
- Find a meme
- Set a public challenge
- Set a posting schedule
- Go off topic…and bring it back
- Write a post for the searchbots
- Ask questions andsummarize (twitter and Facebook)
- Invite a guest blogger
- Work in another medium and embed it in your blog:
- Take a photo
- Draw a picture
- Do a slidecast
- Create an audio file
- Make a video
SO … If you want stuff for your blog…Find your VOICE…Know the TYPES OF BLOG POSTS….Know how to deal with BLOGGERS BLOCK….PLAY
[...] Kathryn Greenhill [...]
Kathryn, the types of blog posts that you list are quite useful and interesting – as are the suggestions for blogger’s block. Thank you for posting your presentation. For blog statistics, I recommend using Feedburner to measure the number of subscribers (RSS) to your blog. The service is free and was recently bought by Google. Feedburner also shows the incoming pages, outgoing clicks, the number of unique visitors, and the search phrases that led to the blog.
Okay I have an important question – bloggers block. You say walk away when nothing to write. I have the opposite problem meet so many amazing people in the last 3 weeks of conferences but don’t know where to start. What do you do when the information is overwhelming you? Walk away? Or write drafts?
Isabelle. Yes, Feedburner is useful. I have a “subscribers” badge on my sidebar, but once read that you shouldn’t put one on until you had about 300 subscribers – seems a bit much to me.
Sue – I’m just like you…too much to say. I usually write drafts, and restrict myself to a max of about 3-4 posts a week – unless really exciting things are happening. Funny thing is, only about a third of the things I prewrite as drafts make it into the main blog….Last week, however, I used a pre-written post from Feb that was waiting for a fact check that I never got around to doing…
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