Category Archives: On Blogging

Some thoughts about blogging.

Three Things to Consider when Blogging for Business

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Some thoughts.

A while back, I was interviewed by a local newspaper reporter about my blog. Being the newspaper’s “business advocate,” he was most concerned about blogging for business.

That’s actually a good topic of discussion for anyone who blogs and operates a business. (That includes me, since I actually own and operate two active businesses: my writing “business” and Flying M Air.) So I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about blogging for business here.

Purposeful Content

One of the first things to think about when blogging for business is content. You have a few options:

  • Publish content that has nothing to do with your products, services, or industry. I’m not sure why you’d want to do this in a pure business blog. (I do it here, but that’s because this blog wasn’t created to support my business.) It could provide enough interesting content to attract visitors and some of those visitors might develop an interest in your products or services. But if you propound opinions — especially political opinions — that are unfavorable to some visitors, you could actually damage your company’s reputation and lose potential (or worse yet, existing) customers. I think Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com committed this sin; I recall reading a bunch of mailing list messages urging other readers to boycott GoDaddy.com because of something Parsons had said in his blog. (I decided to boycott the list instead and dropped my subscription.)
  • Publish content of interest to your customers that isn’t directly related to your products or services. This is something I do with this blog. My customers (the folks who buy my books) are obviously interested in topics my books cover. But what of related topics my books don’t cover? When I write an article about blogging for business, the article may appeal to some of the folks who have bought my WordPress book, since that book covers blogging software. But it goes beyond the scope of that book to offer additional helpful information. (At least that’s the goal.) It also appeals to bloggers using other blogging platforms that I haven’t written about or don’t even know about. Those people are not going to buy my WordPress book. When you publish content like this, it makes your blog a place for people to get valuable information. These people may be customers or future customers. Or they might be people who will recommend your site to potential future customers.
  • Publish support content for your customers. This is probably the best and most useful thing you can do with a blog — provided your Web site doesn’t already have support information in an easier to reference or search place. Some good examples include the blogs for FeedBurner, Tumblr, and Google advertisers. I do this on my blog by publishing clarifications and corrections to my books in the various Book Support categories and answering reader questions in Q & A.
  • Publish pure marketing content. I’m talking about information about new products, special offers, and links to product reviews. This is obvious business stuff and I do it on both of my business-related sites. Here, I’m sure to mention when a new book has hit bookstore shelves or if one of my Informit articles is published. On Flying M Air’s Web site, I have a What’s New category where I list new tours and excursions as they are released and a Special Offers/Be Spontaneous! category where I release information about limited-time offers. But in all honesty, although Flying M Air’s Web site is blog-based, I don’t really consider it a blog. You can find better examples of this on many business-related blogs, including the ones listed in the previous bullet point.

If you don’t consider content first, you might find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to publish. One of my publishers went through this exercise with its blog. It turned the blog over to a single person who had a single focus of interest. The resulting entries appealed only to a small group of visitors and did a pretty good job of alienating others, including me. The project has since been turned over to someone else and the content is more well-rounded.

Writing Style

One of the things I don’t like about some blogs is the writing style used by some bloggers. (Fortunately, I don’t see much of this because I seldom visit a blog more than once if I don’t like the way it’s written.) Some people write as if their company’s legal department is looking over their shoulder. Or their fifth grade English teacher. Or their boss. Or their teenage son.

A blog’s writing style should set the tone for the entire blog. Here are some examples of what I mean:

  • Authoritative. You’re the expert and your words prove it. But be careful with this one. If you make a solid, authoritative statement and it’s wrong, your blog’s comments will fill with corrections — some of them worded in a very nasty way. And if people rely on what you tell them and have problems, you’ll wish your legal department was looking over your shoulder as you were writing.
  • Friendly and helpful. This is my preferred approach. I try to write as if I’m talking to a friend, offering suggestions, advice, assistance. You might not know all the answers, but here’s what you know — or are pretty sure about. Is the information helpful? If so, great! If not, well, keep checking in; you might find something more helpful in the future.
  • Hip, cool, groovy. (Am I dating myself here or are those words back in the current vocabulary?) You’re part of the “in crowd” and you know your readers are, too. You use current slang and make reference to people, places, or things in popular culture. Grammar isn’t important, spelling goes with the current trend. If you want to appeal to others who communicate this way — especially young people who are influenced by current fads — this is the way to go. But be aware that it’s likely to alienate everyone else (including me).

These are just some examples. The best thing to do is come up with a tone that’s comfortable to you. If you pick the wrong tone, your readers will probably know it. And they’ll wonder what else is fake about your blog’s content.

Branding

Another thing to consider is the presentation of your company’s blog. Everyone in business these days knows how important branding is. While you might think it’s okay to throw a blog up on wordpress.com or blogspot.com, formatting limitations are likely to make it impossible to give your blog the same branding elements as your Web site. If this is important to you, you’ll need to take the time and effort (or hire someone else to take the time and effort) to set up a fully customizable blog that can include your company logo, colors, fonts, and images.

In my world, Flying M Air is a perfect example. When I had my company’s brochure redesigned by a real designer (imagine that!) nearly a year ago, I decided to use the color scheme, shapes, designs, and existing logo as branding elements that I’d use on my Web site, business cards, and other presentation and marketing materials. That meant rebuilding the site from the ground up — which turned out to be a bit of a challenge, given that I wanted to use WordPress as my publishing platform. (WordPress is heavily reliant on CSS and I know just enough about CSS to be dangerous. I documented the task in a 7-part series on this site, if you’re interested in reading about my experience.) The resulting site supports my “brand” and is clearly identifiable as “official” Flying M Air material.

Conclusion

These are just a few things to think about when setting up a blog for your business. I’m sure if you brainstorm a bit, you can come up with more. (After all, I’m no expert!)

And brainstoming is probably a good idea if you’re getting ready to launch a business blog project. Get everyone who will be part of the blogging team involved. Talk it over together. Come up with a plan.

Just remember that every plan should be flexible, allowing for change as change is needed.

Got some advice to share? Use the Comments link.

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Tumblelogs

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I discover a new, abbreviated form of blogging.

One of the things I’ve noticed about my blog is that a high percentage of the entries are extremely wordy, full of stories or opinions or information that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, compiling, formatting, and publishing. And it seems that most serious blogs are the same.

Enter, the tumblelog, which has apparently been around since 2005. This short-form blog is ideal for quick and dirty entry posting. In fact, that’s what it’s supposed to be for.

From Wikipedia:

A tumblelog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.

I first heard of tumblelogs on either the TWIT or MacBreak Weekly podcast. Leo Laporte and other members of those two podcast teams use Tumblr to create and publish their tumblelogs. Curious, I went to check it out for myself. And, on the FAQs page there, I got a the analogy that sold me on trying it for myself:

If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.

It might be nice to have an online scrapbook, I thought. I decided to sign up for a free Tumblr account and give it a try. The result is the unimaginatively named Maria’s TumbleLog, which can be found at tumblelog.aneclecticmind.com. (And yes, you can host a tumblelog on Tumblr’s site; I just got fancy and set mine up with my own custom domain name.) Since then, I’ve added entries that include photos and quotes. I’ve also set up my account to automatically create links to new articles in a number of feeds — including the one for this WebLog.

Although I like the ease at which entries can be added to my tumblelog, I don’t like the fact that there’s no offline composition tool. But I think that’s because I’m worried about composition — a task that simply doesn’t apply to tumblelog entries. Entries are extremely short and to the point: a photo with a caption, a quote with the name of the person being quoted, a link all by itself. While it is possible to create a standard text entry, I’m going to try hard not to — unless I can keep it to 100 words or less. That’s not an easy task for me — writing more has always been easier than writing less.

Will anyone read my tumblelog? I don’t know. Do I care? I don’t know that, either.

Right now, the idea is too new to me. I’m more interested in experimenting with this form of expression and seeing whether I can stick to it.

I’ve been blogging for 3-1/2 years now; it’ll be tough to branch some of that energy off to a similar yet very different form.

In the meantime, I’d be very interested in hearing from others with tumblelogs. Use the comments link. And be sure to include a link to your tumblelog in the form so other readers and I can check it out.

Reading Feeds

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I just don’t have time.

A while back, I started using endo, a feed reader application, to keep up with new content on a few sites. At first, I was able to check in once or twice a day and the number of unread articles never exceeded 20. But then I got busy with other things and couldn’t check in regularly. Now the unread article count is over 500 and I dread wading through what’s there.

What’s In It For Me

I find that about 50% of the material on the feeds I follow is simply not the least bit interesting to me. Unfortunately, those articles are spread out among all the feeds I follow — about two dozen of them. (If I find more than 75% of the content from a single feed uninteresting, I simply unsubscribe.) Those are the easy articles to go through. It takes only a few seconds to read the title and scan through the first paragraph or summary before I hit the up arrow key and move on to the next unread entry.

Of the remaining 50% of the content, about 80% (or roughly 40% of the whole) is mildly interesting and worth a good read. I sometimes link to these articles using del.icio.us bookmarks to generate the This Just In category links entries you might see online here. In fact,that’s how you can find out whether I’ve been reading Web-based content; if there’s a Links post in the morning, I was reading Web content the day before. The more links in the post, the more I read and enjoyed. This takes time, of course, because I have to read through these articles to really appreciate them.

The remaining content (if you’re following the math, that’s 10% of the total content for the feeds I follow) are what I call “keepers.” A keeper is an article that is worth reading not just once, but at least twice. It’s worth keeping a link to — perhaps even bookmarking for future reference. (I’m very stingy with my internal bookmarking.) These articles trigger ideas for writing in my own blog, for expanding on the thoughts of the source blogger to add fresh content to the blogosphere. They also give me ideas for other projects or things I can do to change my way of working to be more productive. This is the real time sucker and the reason I can’t keep up with the feeds I subscribe to. I don’t want to miss these articles. I want to find them and give them the time they deserve. Unfortunately, I just don’t have enough time to give. So I don’t give any; I wait until — well, what?

Why I Don’t Have Time

Currently, I’m under contract to write two books. One is about halfway finished; the other hasn’t been started yet. I’m using up all my big blocks of time at my desk these days, writing about Excel 2007 for Windows. I’m also writing articles for FileMaker Advisor and Informit. And I’m writing blog entries — or trying to — at least once a day.

I’m also preparing for a big “trade show” in Scottsdale — Big Boys and Their Toys Luxury Men’s Expo. I’ll be parking my helicopter on the show floor for two days, handing out brochures and signing people up for my multi-day excursions. So I’m preparing for that by ordering new brochures and logo hats, arranging for booth furniture and electricity, and trying to find two energetic and dependable people to help out with the booth. (If you live in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, have a neat and presentable appearance and an interest in helicopters, and want a job for the weekend of March 17-18, contact me.) And in the evening, I’m sitting in front of my computer, turning hundreds of photographs and hours of video into a DVD of destinations to show at our booth.

Between all that, I’m flying helicopter charters. I did two on Sunday, I have one today, I have one on Thursday, and I have another one on Saturday. This is revenue my little company sorely needs to cover the cost of things like this trade show, so turning down flights like this would not be a good idea.

Does that give you an idea of how I’m spending my time? Can you see why I don’t have time to wade through the hundreds of accumulated posts that have accumulated in endo?

Well, enough whining for today. Time to get back to work.

And if you’re wondering how much time I used up writing this, it was less than 30 minutes. My morning coffee time. Thank heaven for multitasking.

Using Google AdSense Channels

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Article now available on Informit.com.

My latest Informit.com article, “Using Google AdSense Channels” is now online.

From the article’s intro (written by editors, not me):

Google’s AdSense program is a very popular advertising option for blogs and web sites because it’s easy to use and can generate revenue with minimal effort. Maria Langer explains how to use the Channels features in AdSense to track which of your ads are earning the most revenue.

This article should be of special interest to bloggers and traditional Web site webmasters who try to raise revenue using the Google AdSense products.

There are two other Informit articles in the pipeline. Keep checking in; I’ll let you know when they’re released. Or check my Informit.com books and articles page for yourself to see what’s new.

Being a Responsible Blogger

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With regular readers comes responsibility.

This morning, I noted that the feed for this blog has exceeded 100 subscribers. The 100 mark is a milestone for any blogger, and it’s no different for me — even though I’ve been at it for some time now.

I’ve been blogging for over three years and my blog doesn’t exactly follow all of the “rules” of blogging. I’m talking about the “stick to one topic” rule and “blog multiple times a day” rule. People say rules are meant to be broken, but that’s not why I break these rules. I just blog the way I want to blog and don’t really pay attention to the rules.

My Original Blog as a Separate Entity

My blog started out as a separate entity from my personal Web site, a way to share whatever I was thinking about or doing with people who might be interested. It was a personal journal, slightly filtered for the public. It was a way for me to record my life so I’d have something to look back on in the distant future. I didn’t care if anyone read it and was often surprised when someone I knew commented about something I’d written in my blog.

Back in those days, my blog wasn’t something I worked hard at; the entries just came out of me, like one-sided conversations with friends. Perhaps it has something to do with my solitary work habits — many people gather around the “water cooler” at work to trade stories about their weekends or opinions about world affairs. There’s no water cooler in my office and no co-workers to chat with. My blog may have been my outlet for all these pent-up stories.

Blog + Site = ?

A little over a year ago, I combined my blog with my personal Web site. I did it to make my life a little easier. I’d already decided to use WordPress as my Web site building tool. Why not just make my personal blog part of the site?

My Web site has been around in one form or another since 1994. I built it to experiment with Web publishing and soon expanded it to provide a sort of online résumé and support for my books. Support for my books often meant additional tips and longer articles about some of the software I’ve written about. This is fresh content of interest to people who use that software, even if they don’t buy or read my corresponding books. Since writing this content is relatively easy for me, I have no problem offering it free to anyone who wants it (as long as they don’t steal it and pass it off as their own; see my © page).

One of the great things about blogging software is that it automatically displays the newest content on the Home page and archives older content by category and date. In the old days, I’d have to manually create new pages for every article I wanted to put on my Web site and then add links to them. It was time consuming, to say the least. Sometimes too time consuming to share even the quickest little tip with visitors. So I didn’t publish very many articles. But the time-consuming, hand-coding aspect of my site is gone, and it takes just minutes to put any content online, whether it’s a link to an interesting podcast I just listened to about iPod microphones or a multi-part series of articles explaining how to use WordPress as a content management system.

What’s odd about the merging of the two sites is that my personal blog entries now commingle on the Home page with my book support entries. So these 100+ subscribers are seeing (and possibly reading) all kinds of stuff coming out of my head. (Now that’s a scary thought!)

My Responsibility

As my blog/site audience grows, my responsibility to provide good content for readers also grows.

The way I see it, when only a half-dozen people read my blog regularly, it was okay to bore them with stories about my horse eating corn cob stuff out of the bottom of my bird’s cage or rants about the quality of “news” coverage. Now, with over 100 regular readers, I need to think more about what would interest my audience and concentrate on producing the articles they want to read. (You can help me by voting on this poll.)

And that’s when blogging becomes work. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does take more effort on my part.

And it may push me far from the original purpose of my blog: a journal of my life. That’s something to think about, too.

The Other Blogs

I just want to take a moment here to comment on some of the other blogs I’ve seen out there. The vast majority of them are a complete waste of bandwidth. Some exist to echo the sentiments of others and show very little original thought. Others are complete blather, written in a style that makes me mourn for the failure of our educational system. Like chat room comments. Ugh. I don’t see why people waste their time writing this crap and really can’t see why people waste their time reading it.

But there is a small percentage of blogs that provide good, informative, or at least interesting content, written in a way that’s easy to read and understand. Those are the blogs that serious bloggers should be reading and learning from. Those are the blogs we should try to emulate, not by simply copying or linking to content, but by adding our own original material to the blogoshere.

That’s my goal and my responsibility as a blogger. If you’re a blogger, is it yours, too?