I will not focus on micro-optimizations like changing your call to action from blue to orange. Instead, I’ll concentrate on the major wins.

Tip 1: Find out who your readers are

Try to gain insight into who your users are so that you can understand what kind of problems they face and how you can help them.

Tip 2: Make your posts as useful as possible

The guiding light for your writing should be bringing as much value as possible to your readers. This is why knowing who they are and what problems they face (aka Tip 1) is so important.

When you are writing a post, ask yourself, who is this useful for? Am I solving a real problem here?

Tip 3: Focus on a topic

It is tempting to write about everything that interests you, but in my experience, one achieves the greatest amount of success as a blogger when focusing on a particular topic.

This makes sense when you think about it. People discovering your blog thanks to a particular article are likely to be interested in articles on the same topic.

Tip 4: Make it obvious what you are all about

Related to the previous tip, not only should you focus on a particular topic, but you should also make it obvious what your blog is about.

Use your domain name, site header, sidebar, anything really, to get people to immediately understand the subject matter of your blog.

Don’t leave people guessing.

Tip 5: Be vulnerable

Although you want to be an authoritative voice, don’t forget to be human, honest, and even vulnerable.

In the same vein, feel free to share your doubts, questions, and even tales of what went wrong. It won’t likely damage you.

Quite the opposite, it can really help you and your blog to be more relatable.

Tip 6: Be bold and opinionated

While you should be honest and even vulnerable, don’t be afraid to also be bold and opinionated.

If you are passionate/certain/serious about something, have the courage to boldly show it.

Tip 7: Don’t mock anyone

The easiest way to get people to dislike you is to waste time mocking others.

You can criticize people, but if you come across as a bully, you’ll lose nice people in favor of those who thrive on drama and gossip. Not a worthwhile trade.

Tip 8: Write at least once a week

As with all endeavors in life, the more you write the better you’ll become at it. Especially in the beginning, practice as much as you can fit in your schedule, and make sure you publish at least one article per week.

If you run more than one blog, consider consolidating (something I’m now considering myself) so as to increase your output frequency.

One blog that publishes three articles per week is apt to have a far better outcome than three blogs, each publishing once a week. 

Tip 9: Create series

Consider writing small guides and other longer content that can be split across a series of posts. These tend to do well in helping you grow your following.

People who liked the first part of a tutorial are likely to want to read the rest. Make sure you prompt people to subscribe via email or feed (though less adopted these days) to receive updates on the series.

You can even do reoccurring series where you write a given type of post ever so often. For example, a weekly round-up of articles within your niche that have recently caught your eye. 

Tip 10: Write epic content

I know it takes a lot more time and investment but, as I mention in my book, nothing is as rewarding to readers (and Google) as epic content. Content that is radically useful and extensive, covering a given topic with a great deal of attention.

You can think of these types of posts as guides or mini-books of sorts. I’m talking about 3,000-10,000 words. Chances are, you won’t be able to publish a post this size every week, but if you do pen entries in this size range periodically, you are likely to grow your blog much more quickly.

They are also backlink magnets, as other people are more likely to link to your epic content than they are to your smaller posts.

Tip 11: Read other bloggers

The best way to improve as a blogger is to study those who are successful at it. Use your feed reader to subscribe to the best bloggers in your niche. Read what they write and how they write.

Feel free to incorporate those elements that jump out at you into your own writing. Also, staying abreast of sites in your niche is a great way to help ensure that you don’t run out of ideas for topics to cover on your blog.

There you have it. 11 tips that can truly transform your blog. The hard part is putting them into action. Not because they are complex – indeed, they are quite simple. 

However, simple isn’t always easy. You will still need to put in the hours and work required to succeed, but doing so is certainly possible.

The post 11 Tips for Becoming a Better Blogger appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Technical bloggers tend to be busy professionals. So much so that I often hear remarks such as, “I would love to do so, but I simply don’t have the time needed to blog”.

Some even start a blog, only to stop updating it after the initial enthusiasm wears off.

“I don’t have time” is a lie

The truth of the matter is that you have the time. In fact, you have the same amount of time as the most brilliant and prolific people you can think of. 24 hours per day.

The difference is in how you choose to allocate your time. When people say, “I don’t have time to blog” they don’t mean that. What they are really saying is, “Everything I’m currently doing throughout the course of my day is a higher priority to me than blogging”.

With a few exceptions, that’s a lie. If you analyze the average day of most people you’ll find plenty of genuinely wasted time. (And I don’t mean time that is intentionally allocated for relaxation, which is entirely justifiable.)

Few amongst us have their day so finely organized that they genuinely allocate all of their time to doing more important things. Proof of this comes from asking people about exercising. Many will tell you that they don’t have the time, yet it can be easily argued that exercising should have a higher priority than many things that we do in the course of our daily lives.

There is a gap between what we should prioritize, or even willingly admit that we intend to prioritize so as to hit our goals, and what we actually end up spending our day doing.

What gets scheduled gets done

For the sake of this post, I’m going to assume that blogging is something that you, consciously, consider to be worth prioritizing to some degree. Obviously, it won’t come before things like your current job or your children, but it should rank higher than watching TV or casually surfing the web for at least one day a week.

The first step in finding time to blog is to make it a priority in your mind. View it as something that’s important enough that you can wholeheartedly commit to it. You should care enough that you feel a little sad if you fail to follow through with it.

The second step, and this is the real secret, is scheduling a time to blog in your calendar.

Don’t blog when you feel like it. Don’t blog solely when you’re inspired. Simply set a regular time each week in your calendar and do it.

For example, if you post once a week, create a two-hour event in your calendar. That’s usually enough time to write at least one post.

Set calendar reminders so you don’t forget. I like to default to a 1-day reminder, a 60-minute reminder, and then another one at the actual scheduled time.

This way the day beforehand, I’ve already started thinking about ideas for my post in the back of my mind.

An hour beforehand, I’m reminded that I need to wrap up whatever else I’m doing to get ready for my scheduled blogging time.

When said scheduled time arrives, my calendar app goes ding, and I’m ready to start writing.

If you finish your post sooner, start another. Fill those two hours with purposeful, dedicated blogging.

You can do it

As you write, new ideas for additional posts might come to you. If this happens, be sure to jot them down in an idea file (be it digital or paper). It’s always nice to sit down for your scheduled blogging time and have a list of post ideas to choose from.

If you’re genuinely a super busy person, it’s okay to do one hour instead of two. And if you are so busy that you struggle to find 60 minutes during the weekdays, dedicate an hour on the weekend instead.

If you post more than once a week, you might want to have two or three writing sessions of an hour apiece scheduled throughout the week. Even then, we’re still talking about very manageable amounts of time.

Blogging with any degree of seriousness is work, make no mistake about it, but it can – and should – be enjoyable.

As time goes on, you will most likely start to reap many benefits from creating great content. This, in turn, will further fuel your passion for writing about the subject matter of your interest.

The post Finding Time to Blog appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Those of you who use WordPress will probably know that there are countless plugins to achieve just that. That in and of itself is a problem, however. Which plugins do you choose?

For mathematics, you can visit:

/wp-admin/admin.php?page=jetpack_modules

and activate Beautiful Math in JetPack from there. You’ll need JetPack, of course, but I recommend you install it regardless of this feature, as it houses many useful features.

At that point, you’ll be able to embed mathematical formulas by specifying code between [ latex ]xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ[ /latex ] tags (without the surrounding spaces of course).

For code syntax highlighting, I like to use the plugin Crayon Syntax Highlighter.

You can see what its output looks like in the post I mentioned above.

I realize not everyone uses WordPress, but I thought I’d share a quick and handy tip here today for those who do.

The post Embedding Code and Formulas in Your WordPress Posts appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter. For example, if I’m searching for the answer to the question of how much hydrogen peroxide should you give a dog to induce vomit if they accidentally eat some dark chocolate[1], then an answer from 5 or 10 years ago is still very likely to be perfectly fine. The same is true of most history related question.

For better or worse though, I’m most apt to google for something about programming and/or technology (including electronics), so fresh information is normally the most relevant kind to me. I know for a fact that I’m not the only one who goes hunting for dates in posts as a sign of their relevancy.

A lot of popular bloggers have began to intentionally hide dates from permalinks and their pages to breath new life in their historical archive of posts. When you spent a long time writing a quality post, you really hope that it will be read and appreciated for a long time as well, and not quickly dismissed simply because it was published four years ago.

So should you date your posts or intentionally opt not to leave any clues behind?

Hide the date, and your visitors will stay on your site longer at the cost of frustrating some of them. Show the date, and others will leave right away. On the plus side though, they won’t be frustrated by not knowing whether the content is new or not.

It’s entirely up to you of course, but I have personally chosen to take a hybrid approach on this blog. I hid the date from the permalink as I think it makes the URL structure much neater. However, I have left the post template alone, and as such it includes a small date underneath the title.

This compromise allows me to address the user who wants to be informed about a post’s age, while at the same time not throwing it in everyone’s face right in the URL. Striving for honesty and usability is generally a good strategy that pays off in the long run.

If you choose to pursue the same approach, all you really have to do is change the permalink structure. In WordPress, this can be accomplished by going to Settings -> Permalinks and selecting Post name before saving changes.

Alternatively you can choose Custom Structure and input /%postname%/ for the permalink.

What’s your approach? Do you disclose the dates of your old posts?

The post Should You Disclose the Date of Your Posts? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

https://technicalblogging.com/a-new-blog-a-new-adventure/#.Tu9uCXN5vmM

My first assumption was that this was some sort of hash used by the WP Super Cache plugin, but even disabling that didn’t get rid of the issue. After investigating the code a bit, I was able to track the issue to a window.location.hash call in a JavaScript file that’s used by the Add This plugin.

Comparing the Add This settings of my various blogs, it immediately became clear that this annoyance was caused by having Track address bar shares checked. Unchecking that option got rid of the extra #. hash string.

Here are the full Add This settings I now use for this blog:

This enables Facebook, Twitter, Google+ counters within posts and pages, but not on the homepage or on other archives/categories.

Should you be experiencing this same problem, unchecking that particular setting, as you can see here, is all you need to do to remedy the issue.

The post Getting Rid of Random Characters Appended to the URLs of Your WordPress Posts appeared first on Technical Blogging.