Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Back in June, Ida Horner approached us to see if we wanted to do ‘Africa on the Blog’. Knowing how much the Blogmistress loves a challenge she swiftly set to work on setting up Africa on the Blog (why change a winning formula ). Given the brief of , colour it like Africa, she came up with a golden brown design on the Studiopress framework that is consistent theme on the ‘On the blog’ sites.

It’s visually stunning.

Ida in the mean time started recruiting bloggers – please welcome @naomiestment @AshantiGirl @taluta @Chocolat_a_toi @jkainja @TonyBurkson @STM95 @sportinkenya @Chiira

From start to launch it took 14 days and three of us working at it – and the first blogger posted a blog about African traditions and since then, 5 days a week there has been a huge amount of discussion on the site. Significant amounts of retweets and a tremendous amount of traffic.

I learned a huge amount from this experience – blogging about what you are really crazy about, what gets you hot and bothered is a good thing. Ida who also blogs about African development and manages ‘our girls‘ through her charity, is relentless in bringing the voices of Africa to a wider audience. To the tune of a 1000 people a week, and then some.

An example of this is the blog post The Cut, about female genital mutilation. Yeah I know, it’s been spoken about for years. This time the story was told by a man and the impacts on the community and different perspectives. Just when you think you have been de-sensitised about something and nothing can be done, a blogger gives you fresh perspective and puts the fire back into the fight against it.

I have learned about Eba, the African equivalent of tapioca or semolina. I have learned that Nigeria has a thriving film industry. I have read about what it was like to be a child in Egypt. I have read what the World Cup really did for South Africa and I saw some stunning photographs.

If this blog can change my thinking about Africa, and her people in diaspora, show me sides of Africa that I never knew existed, I think you could learn something too.

Sarah

@AfricaOnTheBlog for tweets of the blogs and African news updates or join the Facebook page to get the updates there.

It’s a privilege to work with and on a number of collaborative blogs, such as the “on the blog” brands – with Birds on the Blog proving to be a huge hit already, especially as Sarah only launched this in January! The Blokes on the Blog soon followed and has promise, and then we have a new Kent Business Buzz blog along the same idea.

To build on these and new projects, we need more bloggers. You don’t need to be a professional writer, indeed we love encouraging and enabling those of you with an interest to start blogging. And we have plenty of places to publish you! If you don’t fit a category we may just knit a new one!

So whatever your topics and level of experience, we need you!

Especially:

• Blokes - the Blokes on the Blog site includes all kinds of posts with the opinions, family and life blogs as well read as business blogs.
• Birds - already a welcome success – eclectic and readable – a strong team with guests always welcome.
• Kent business owners – a baby that we know will grow strong and popular – if you run a business in Kent, jump in.
• African heritage bloggers for a new project.
• Mums who want to blog – another “on the blog” kicking and screaming into the world following overwhelming insistence!
• Over 45s who like to let off steam – Grumpy Old Bloggers! Go on – let it out!

So if you enjoy writing and keen to spread your words far and wide, or just fancy dipping your toe in the water, then we have a use for you!

Why bother? Well it attracts people to you – they get to know you, your style, your area of expertise perhaps, or just your way of thinking. Many of us have a secret desire to write, and many of us won’t get to the book stage – but we can blog!

Either add a comment below or email hello@blogmistress.com with your ideas, available commitment or if you want to guest, on which topic, or if you just want to explore blogging for the first time. This really can be a good way to find out if it’s for you and we’re very helpful!

Guest bloggers always welcome too, so even if you just want to dip your toe in the water, get in touch. We’ll hold your hand and help all we can.

Babs

Yesterday I heard from the chaps over at ipadio that we can now post phonecasts direct into WordPress blogs – so we can now “phlog”!

So what on earth is a phonecast? It’s basically a quick and easy audio post – much shorter (usually) and  less prepared than a full podcast.

• We can “phlog” – phone in a blog instead of type it
• Broadcast a quick message
• Collect data – use ipadia for reporting
• Offer live reviews – rough guide style – for travelogues, perhaps

There is a lot more information over at their website, so if this is at all of interest to you and your business – pop over and have a play! It’s certainly something to consider and pretty cool if it can be useful for you.

Babs

Some people find this to be a stumbling block – what to write about beyond the immediately obvious topics directly related to your business/service/sector.

Offering variety makes your blog something that people will feel inclined to return to, and grab attention too.

But how on earth do you keep coming up with new topics? Well obviously with such a wide focus for the Blogmistress – we blog about more than just WordPress, but on everything that brings you to using WordPress too – and that can be small business owners, hobbyists, communities, revenue generating – and then we bring in the Internet marketing side of things too. Plus there will always be new plugins, themes, upgrades to take you through – so for us it’s easy (you should see the list of draft posts!).

Just the other week Sally Walker had a bunch of us on her webcast blog about buying a loaf of bread from Sainsburys – perhaps a little far off topic for most of our blogs but it demonstrated how social media can work for you and that we can indeed blog about anything.

A few things to consider when your inspiration runs low:

Consider inviting some guest bloggers to add a new aspect and dimension to your blog.

Team up with some business friends and share ideas, ask for what they’d like to read on your blog – just chatting, even online, will likely pop some ideas into your head.

Do a keyword search in Twitter and keep an eye on that stream (using Hootsuite or TweetDeck is helpful for this).

Have a play with the Google Keyword Tool – enter a general term relating to your blog and see what comes up – this can be a useful thing to do now and again, not only for some inspiration but to keep an eye on your best keywords too (have a look at this previous post on what your customers search for to get an idea of how to use the tool – though it has since been updated – you’ll still get the idea).

And what would you add to this – how do you tap into a rich seam of ideas for your blog posts?

Which would not be unusual, their malted loaf is a particular favourite of mine. But what on earth am I on about now, here at the Blogmistress site?

This evening t I joined Sally Walker’s webinar on blogging – for over an hour Sally went through her top tips for blogging, fielding questions from the attendees, some of whom can be mischief personified (I think you know who you are!), and her voice held out all the way through. Thanks Sally.

So what has this got to do with buying a loaf of bread from Sainsburys? One of her tips is to blog about all kinds of topics, not just pure, staid business, but to widen the scope and blog around the subject, and also include topical, everyday stuff – such as “Today I bought a loaf of bread from Sainsburys”. Each of us in her webinar agreed to post a blog and while about it see what could happen through Twitter – who knows – could this small but merry band create a trending topic? We shall see – let’s go for it and have some fun anyway. Because what we will also do is show the power of blogging and social media – comment on each other’s blog posts and generally encourage each other to blog more – this can make all the difference to new bloggers – it’s scary! And as Sally advised us, you can blog about anything, preferably in your own voice (because who’s else would you use and be considered authentic?), and that can then be useful for your business. Give it a go…

And now I really do feel the need to pop down to buy a loaf of that bread…

One thing’s for sure – I’m looking forward to Sally’s next webinar on Facebook pages.