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.

A frustrating answer, I know. But let’s inch our way to a better assessment of what exactly it depends on.

Advantages of small posts

Small posts (let’s say those that hit below 500 words) have several advantages:

• You can write them quickly.
• People have short attention spans already and social media is training us to quickly jump from one story to the next one. No serious commitment is required on your readers’ part, so more visitors might read them from top to bottom. (Though most people skim on the web regardless of post size.)
• They keep your blog full and mailing list warm since, in the example of the ten posts above, you could easily be covered for a month even if you were to publish more than once a week.
• You can go wide and relatively quickly address a variety of subjects with your blog.
• They can be laser focused, and with some decent on-page SEO optimization, possibly rank well for a given topic. And since you can write more of them, you may be able to rank well for a variety of keywords, bringing some good traffic your way via an array of different subjects.

Advantages of long content

Now for long content (1500 words and more):

• You can cover a topic in-depth, making you post truly useful to your readers.
• Long content is a catalyst to establishing a deeper relationship with your readers.
• In an ocean of 140-character tweets and 280-word posts (the average for WordPress.com), your blog can stand out with its in-depth content. On a side note, I find it amusing that Twista could sing the length your average short post in around one minute.
• Google will love you. Changes to the ranking algorithm over the years have increasingly favored long content posts. Yes, you may have fewer articles to rank with, but those that you do have are much more likely to rank favorably.
• Long copy sells. In the world of digital marketing, it’s an old adage that long content sells much better than short content. If your post is promoting a service or product of your own, well-crafted long content will help you achieve greater conversion goals.
• Long content, due to its nature, has lots of long-tail keywords to rank with.

Write Pillar Content

Ultimately, it’s the old wide vs deep argument. Fancy restaurant vs quick snack (or less charitably, fast food). Some blogs succeed with short content. Others rely on long posts.

No matter what you decide to do, I highly recommend that you take the time to craft a special kind of content. I’m talking about Pillar Content, such as extensive evergreen guides.

These typically sit at 3,000–15,000 words, are divided into multiple sections (so much so that they need their own table of content), and stay relevant for years.

Here are three examples of pillar content:

• Everything you wanted to know about SQL injection (but were afraid to ask) (~4,200 words)
• The Ultimate Guide to Pokémon Go (~3,800 words)
• Scott Hanselman’s 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows (~9,200 words)

It’s a fair amount of work certainly, but they are a blogger’s secret weapon. Posts like this can help you establish yourself and your blog as an authority on the subject. People will love you for the right pillar content. It’s not rare for pillar content to be shared, linked, and referred to hundreds, if not thousands, of times. A reaction that is rarely encountered in response to short posts.

Since they take so long to write, I suggest that you keep your blog “alive” with intermittent shorter posts, while you work on your periodically occurring pillar content.

Over time, people reaching your pillar content via search engines and social media will be more likely to become fans, subscribing, and in the process get more content of all sizes from you.

The post Short vs. Long Content Posts appeared first on Technical Blogging.

The common objection

A common objection I get, particularly from people just starting out in their careers, is: “But I’m not an expert”. Fellow programmers are especially partial to this thought pattern.

Listen, I get it. Unless you’re strongly affected by the Dunning–Kruger effect, you know full well the limits of your knowledge.

It can be intimidating to put yourself out there, facing criticism, ego bruising honesty, and the reality of potential unpleasantness from people on sites like Reddit or Hacker News.

But I would argue that the potential rewards from blogging are so vast, that it is worth facing our insecurities and the potential for criticism in order to experience such positives.

Criticism can be unintentionally useful even when it wasn’t intended to be constructive. You posted some code and someone mentioned that there is a better way to do it? Yeah, they weren’t friendly about it, but you just got a free code review and an opportunity to learn a more effective way.

This post is not about the benefits you get from blogging, however, so let’s see what you can blog about when you are objectively not an expert.

What to blog about as a novice

• You can use your blog to document your process of going from novice to expert in a given field. Document your journey.
• Review what you are reading or watching, assuming it’s relevant to the topic of your blog. You don’t need to be an expert to do that.
• Post your notes online as you learn more about the topic from various sources.
• Leverage the blog to ask questions and open a conversation with the community. More experienced people might find your queries and share their expertise.
• Blog about what you understand. It is said that the best person to teach someone X is someone who is just at X + 1. An expert might overlook how tough certain stumbling blocks are for beginners. Not you, since you just learned about a given topic that confused you only a few days or weeks ago.
• Express your opinions and impressions, even if they happen to be “first impressions” due to your novice status.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t need to be an expert to have an interesting blog that is read by people within your technical community.

In fact, sometimes getting to watch a blog “grow up” can be quite interesting, helping you build a large and lasting audience of readers who root for you.

The post But I’m not an expert appeared first on Technical Blogging.

As Woody Allen famously said, 80% of success is showing up. He is right, you know. I believe that’s the case when it comes to blogging as well. Showing up on the blogging front means posting new content on a regular basis.

However, after following a predictable trajectory, in the long run many – if not most – blogs end up being abandoned.

A blog usually starts with a bang. The author is hyper-motivated. They’ll publish a series of posts, share their blog with family and friends, get some good feedback, and then… Then life gets in the way, web traffic disappoints one’s lofty expectations, posting becomes less frequent and more sporadic, monetization efforts fail or fall very short of the mark, and so on until a blogger pretty much gives up on their site entirely.

But wait… they’ll be back here and there with an apology post for not having posted much lately, then they’ll publish a little more before, sooner or later, disappearing entirely.[2] Life, after all, keeps getting in the way, and it’s not like all of us can retire off of this blogging thing.

That’s the usual path to blog despair.

Several months ago I received the following email:

I just finished your book and loved it. I also read your blog from time-to-time. Why did you stop blogging?

The subject was “y u no blog”. Why I no blog, indeed. You see, if you follow the steps within my book you can avoid the predictable pattern of blogging abandonment that happens to most people.

Blogging is a river, not a lake. The constant stream of new content that you post on your blog is what gives it an edge over other forms of content publishing. It’s part of what hooks readers to follow you, rather than just consuming the existing content with no expectation regarding what is coming around the bend next.

Blogging’s nature is also a curse. That strength quickly becomes a weakness if you fail to produce new content.

Amusingly enough, I myself failed to follow my own advice. My pattern of abandonment was slightly different, however.

Thanks to my blogging expertise, I still managed to monetize my “semi-abandoned” blogs quite well. They continued to bring in a decent side, passive income. They still, relying on existing content, managed to keep a steady traffic of new visitors.

Lack of blogging success is not what lead me personally to stop blogging on a frequent basis. A lack of proper organization did. This was compounded by the fact that I run a multitude of blogs. So the degree of organization required to pull it off is much higher in my case.

Sure, I can sit here and blame the number of blogs I run. I can blame being particularly busy with my day job, I can blame the beautiful weather we have in the Okanagan, I can blame my recent renewed focus on my health. What about the government? Yeah, sure, let’s blame them as well.

The real reason is me. I failed to blog regularly not due to lack of time. We all have the same 24 hours in any given day. I failed to blog regularly because I prioritized other things instead. Including some things that weren’t actually worth my time.

In short, I didn’t have my shit together[3]. I often also fell prey to black and white thinking. “Yeah, I could write a random post now, but I want to get back into blogging when I can do so regularly”. And so over time, months, and then in some cases, years quickly passed me by.

The buck stops here.

After significant research into productivity, time management, and personal development I can finally say that I’m headed in the right direction. It’s a process of course, but I’m well into it and am now organized enough to pull off the multiple blogs regular posting trick.

I’ve already rebooted this blog (posts go live on Monday), and my programming blog (posts go live on Tuesday). Math Blog will also be rebooted this week.

I have another project under wrap, too, which specifically relates to said topics of goal setting, the systems needed to achieve them, personal development, and the general topic of attaining success. I will announce the specifics here when ready, so stay tuned.

Back to the topic at hand, here are seven key suggestions to avoid the abandonment phenomenon:

1. Set a frequency (publicly disclosed or not) of at least two posts per month.
2. Be predictable by always posting on the same day(s). Even better, have an editorial calendar.
3. Schedule in your calendar a time for writing posts. I find that two hours are generally sufficient for a good post. If you finish a post in less time, use the remaining time to write more.
4. Schedule your posts in your content management system (e.g., WordPress).
5. Keep a cache of a few posts to be used if an emergency that prevents you from writing that week arises.
6. Have an idea file accessible from anywhere (e.g., on your Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Docs) in which you keep adding future post ideas and headlines that come to mind.
7. Consume content that is relevant to your blog. Resources such as books, blogs, videos, courses, magazine, etc. This will stimulate your imagination and help you devise new ideas for topics that are worth sharing with your users.

In the near future, I’ll discuss some of these key ideas and provide step by step instructions where relevant.

The post Avoid the Abandoned Blog Phenomenon appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I define Buzz Blogging as a style of blogging with the following characteristics:

1. Headlines that are purposely intended to induce curiosity (i.e., click-bait);
2. List-based posts, with the number of items included in the title;
3. Media heavy content, with a small amount of commentary for each item;
4. Posts that are either funny or make big promises about their usefulness (but rarely actually deliver on them).

An example of such a headline would be, “25 tips to be more productive – #4 will change your life”. Heck, who doesn’t want to be more productive or even change their life (for the better)? And now we are all curious as to what number four is. So the post gets clicks, and is shared far and wide on social media.

These lists are often compiled from Reddit threads, posting photos without much attribution in the process (or, and let’s not even go there, copyright permission from the photographer).

From the blogger’s perspective these types of posts have several obvious advantages:

1. Buzz posts are usually quick and easy to write;
2. They get clicked;
3. They tend to appeal to a broad audience, including international audiences who might struggle with more text-heavy posts due to language barriers;
4. They tend to go viral, as people mindlessly browse and share Buzz posts on Facebook, Twitter, etc;
5. They are like potato chips: you can’t stop at just one. The typical reader of Buzz posts is in “casual surfing” mode so they generally click on similar types of posts that appear on the sidebar or at the bottom of the page.

We could argue that they’re the new “infographic” of the blogging world. However, unlike infographics, you don’t even need a designer make such posts.

It might be tempting to apply these principles to your own blog. However, before you jump on the bandwagon, I urge you to consider the negatives of such an approach:

1. Buzz Blogging over-promises and under-delivers. The typical reader of a technical blog will notice and start to consider your blog to be “fluffy” at best, and as junk that isn’t worth their time at worst.
2. If you are using third-party pictures without the proper license (e.g., Creative Commons) you are liable for copyright infringement. Unlike BuzzFeed who can fight or intimidate Joe Photographer, you might end up having to pay up (and rightfully so).
3. It wastes an opportunity to connect with your readers on a deeper level, while at the same time arguably making the blogging world even shallower.

When it comes to penning great posts for today’s audience, I think that the following guidelines will give you a fair compromise and serve you well:

1. DO write enticing headlines;
2. DO NOT write misleading headlines or ones that promise the moon (your average post isn’t going to change most people’s lives);
3. DO make lists;
4. DO NOT transform your blog in a constant list fest;
5. DO use media content (photos, videos, audio) generously;
6. DO NOT skimp on the actual textual content of the post. Long text will always have a SEO advantage over Buzz posts which are, in reality, intended to be flash in the pan that relies on viral/social traffic.

What do you think? Will you give into the temptation of Buzz Blogging?

PS: I’m back.

The post Should You Give into Buzz Blogging? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Sure, if I Googled for a specific question and your blog came up on the first page of results, I might read what you have to say, but unless you can provide a compelling, convincing and satisfying answer to that lingering question before I close my browser tab, I’m likely gone forever.

This means your site needs to answer this key question within a few seconds or, at best, a couple of minutes. That’s a challenging task for sure. You can’t write an essay trying to convince someone that they should stick around, subscribe to your site, or take a keen interest in you, because chances are a given reader will leave before they’ve even read that post. Therefore, as is often the case in life, first impressions really do count.

I’m not claiming you need a gorgeous looking blog, though having one certainly doesn’t hurt either. What I’m talking about is answering the pressing question at hand by presenting an obvious answer. You’re aiming for an answer that can be inferred immediately upon visiting your blog.

The following are a few variables that can be used to answer the important question that this post’s title asks.

Your content

The most frequent interaction visitors will have with your blog is through a random post. If your content is good, readers may naturally assume you talk about that particular topic on an ongoing basis and appreciate the way you’ve covered it.

Providing value to the reader in each and every post, ensures — above all else — that the user will feel a rapid connection with your blog and a have justified reason to care about it.

Your blog title

Explicit is better than implicit. Your title should explain to the user what your blog is about. Obviously there are some popular exceptions of sites that have succeeded with seemingly meaningless titles, but you are unlikely to be a statistical outlier like those sites. As such, why not do yourself a favour and opt for a great name that really explains what your site is all about from the get-go?

Take any advantage you can get to convey the essence of your blog through your title. “John’s Personal Blog”, for example, doesn’t mean anything to me, the viewer. Why should I care, and what is the site actually about? “John’s Travel Adventures” is a better starting point (assuming I’m interested in travel).

Your tagline

Your blog’s tagline should sell your blog to the reader. You want it to not only continue to explain what your site is about, but to also introduce some form of benefit to your visitors. For this site, mine is:

Grow your audience and make money online by sharing your knowledge.

Assuming you are interested in gaining popularity through technical writing or in making extra cash by blogging, this should sound appealing to you, the reader, and succinctly provide you with an answer regarding why you should care about it.

In the example of John’s travel blog, a tagline like, “How I travel throughout the world on a shoestring budget” would narrow the focus of the site to a certain type of travel. If a visitor falls into this audience, they would likely care about John’s site because they also would enjoy traveling around the world on the cheap.

Your about

What’s in it for them? Your sidebar blurb (if any) and your About section should do a detailed job of explaining what your blog is about, what you cover within it, and what benefits it will bring to your readers. My About starts with the following two paragraphs:

Technical Blogging is a blog dedicated to relentlessly helping bloggers and entrepreneurs succeed online.

Our aim is to provide you with all the practical information you need to start and grow a successful technical blog (as opposed to a personal blog about your kids).

Note how this isn’t really about me. It’s about the reader and what I can help them with.

I then go on to include a Who is this for? section which explicitly tells the reader if they’re the right audience for the type of content I intend to unleash to the world. Finally, the page ends with a list of reasons why you might want to trust me on the topic of blogging.

Don’t forget to include a picture of yourself to connect at a more “primal” level with your visitors. Including a small picture of yourself within the sidebar is also a good idea (only a few people will check out your about page).

Your ‘start here’

A powerful way to guide the user towards a deeper understanding of why your blog is worth paying attention and subscribing to is provide them with more than just the specific article they landed on.

On some blogs you might have seen a link within posts that says something along the lines of, “If you’re new around here, check out our Start Here page”. From there the viewer will be sent through a rabbit hole of some of your best, and most organized, content that provides both the bigger picture and immediate value to the reader. (See this page for example.)

Get these fundamentals right to better answer the “Why should I care about this blog?” question your visitors will have. Then integrate opportune calls to action to subscribe via RSS, email, etc. You will grant yourself a higher degree of conversion from random viewers to regular readers. It really is as simple as that.

The post Why Should I Care About Your Blog? appeared first on Technical Blogging.