Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

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.

Writing a blog isn’t rocket science.  It can be formulaic if you want, it can be as complex as you make it. The more complex something is, the less it’s likely to happen. That’s why we are not all rocket scientists. Looking after several multi author blogs one of the things the bloggers say from time to time is – What do I write and I have run out of things to write.

Crowdsourcing via twitter, Facebook and Forums really comes into it’s own here. People who know you through the forums, often make excellent suggestions as to what to blog about next.

Let’s say you have plenty of inspiration, how do you actually write a blog?

I like to think of it as a story and in the blog you tell that story. It’s readable, it hooks you in, you learn something and you get to give immediate feedback in the form of a comment. If only books were that good

What sounds better?

Yesterday I did 6 deliveries for 4 new customers in a white transit van

or

Yesterday was a busy day for our same day courier business. We had 4 brand new customers to deliver for and they all had different requirements meaning our organisational skills were tested – you will be pleased to know they were not found lacking!

I can expand and say how I came about those customers, what sort of things they needed to have delivered, what items they were and if it was a confidential delivery, I can say that too. The blog will show future customers and regular readers you know what you are doing, or you don’t know what you are doing.

If you don’t know what you are doing, don’t blog about it as a factual blog. Make it a “what if” blog…

What would happen in your business if you took on 4 diverse customers from a variety of backgrounds? How would you cope? Is it some businesses can deal with multiple customers better than others? Let’s explore that further, the multiple customer thing. In this scenario your blog is asking for advice and if you tweet it out or share it on Facebook, you may get comments that will help you.

Back to writing that blog…

• Tell the story and tell it as best you can.

• Be as open and as honest as your business allows.

• Just write.

In telling the story you describe the features of your business and how a client has benefited from them, the story aspect makes it readable, the blog and your company become memorable by default. Having to read lots of facts and figures is more palatable if it is part of the blog. A list of figures will get glossed over and some of the impact of them lost. Experiment, tweak, test – see what works for you and your readers.

Being open and transparent, is a good thing, your readers will identify with it and you become a credible source of information to them. Over time this will enable you to build a strong relationship with them and they will trust and recommend you and your blogs.

Just write. Seriously. JDI. So many would be bloggers spend hours worrying over the colour of their blog, spelling, what to say – it’s displacement activity. Do you think this post looked like it does now whilst I was writing it? It was one huge block of text and when I finished. &00 ish words and no capitals and very little punctuation. I started adjusting, tweaking  and formatting it. Remember the power of JDI, don’t get over zealous and edit the life out of your blog and if you make a typo or spello, it is not the end of the world. If someone comment s to correct you, they are engaging. It may not be the type of engagement you want. But it’s a start.

Despite what people will tell you, you will get better with practice. You will cringe at some of your early stuff – even if it’s very good. Writing blogs is like using a muscle it gets stronger with use. So use it.

Sarah

Useful further reading

• Six @ Six: 6 Pioneers in Corporate Blogging
• Promoting Personal vs. Professional sites and posts
• Win Copies of John Jantsch’s “The Referral Engine”

Moving from a WordPress.com blog to your own domain is said to quite easy and it is, to a degree.
There isn’t a lot of information available online, for some strange reason it’s a closely guarded secret and some of it is wrong or misleading (so I found out when I tried it).

Lots of us start out with a free wordpress site, if your blogs domain ends in .wordpress.com then you have a free one. These are great for learning how to blog and practising on before you decide whether or not to go the self hosted route. WordPress place advertising discreetly on these blogs and they get the revenue which is only fair, they are hosting your site and it does cost money to do so.

In my case my blog was to become part of the Essex Virtual Town Hall, and I needed to control the advertising that was on the site. So it had to be moved to it’s own domain on my hosting.

What did I do?
I exported all my blogs postings from WordPress into a file on my desktop, just in case.
Then I set up my WordPress blog on it’s own domain and then imported all the blogs to it.

See simple. Pah, what about all those broken links when I deleted my site from the free wordpress site?

The solution is out there, and we have it here too. This document can be distributed freely with links etc, it explains how to move your wordpress blog without breaking all the links you have built up. you can download it from here, it’s written by Blogwell.com

how-to-redirect-a-wordpresscom-blog

Wished I had found it before I had imported mine, but it works fine so I am not complaining

Anyone else tried it? What did you do?

Sarah

It can be hard to formulate a comment sometimes when you are reading a blog, and if I can’t make a comment and I like the blog the next thing I look to do is share the content as a way of saying thanks to the writer.

I recently discovered Facebook sharing   this button when added to your site allows the post to be posted to your Facebook profile so those that see your status updates might like it and have a look. I have used this one a lot lately and now I look for it more when I am looking to share posts.
If you want to try it, you can download it from here and then upload it to your plugins  http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/facebook-fb-share-wordpress-plugin.zip

I still love the most popular plugin that Babs installs on every Blogmistress blog, the TweetMeme button that little green button will tweet the blog from your twitter account sharing it with your followers and helping to attract people with similar interests to you. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/ It’s not just me who loves it, it’s installed on 100,000 other websites who want to make sharing their content easier.

But what about sharing buttons? How do they work for you? You see, many sites have the addthis sharing widget and I have never used it, not once, not ever. Even though I can still share on Twitter and Facebook using it, for me there is something about the button that just makes me want to press it!

More enticing is Sexy Bookmarks, anyone use that? I saw it on someone else’s site (and I forget who, as I look at so many) and it said “Caring is Sharing” and then there is a drop down box with just about every share site in the world on it! They also have one that says “sharing is sexy”. How can you not use that?

Last, but by no means least – has anyone installed a Google Buzz button yet? I tried it on one of my blogs, but it conflicted. If you use it – how does it work for you? Love it or Loathe it?

Sarah

We all know everyone just scans on the internet, they don’t read in the same way as how you read a book.  What can you do to make your blog a resource and appeal to all types of readers? How do you engage them for longer?

I discovered Zemanta 18 months ago, and I love it. It’s a powerful little tool that gives your blog the edge in terms of images, links and related posts.

How do we use Zemanta?

When you are writing a blog, you have other things to think about aside from the actual words. Sometimes you need good images, other times you need to quote from another blog and sometimes you will need to add references or links to explain uncommon terms or a particular point in more detail..

Zemanta does all of this and more . It can be downloaded into Firefox and then used on any blogging platform, but not forums. It can also be used in email such as Gmail.

Firefox download.

When you have download it into Firefox, it will appear in a column on the right hand side of your screen. As you type your blog post it will start to make suggestions so it’s dynamic and ‘listening’ to your words.

Adding an Image – When you add an image from elsewhere on the internet, it’s probably subject to copyright and needs certain things even if you have permission to use it – like accreditation and /or a link back to the owner. When Zemanta is downloaded, in the right hand side tool bar will be thumbnail suggestions of suitable images. Right now it’s showing me the firefox logo as a suitable match to the text I have typed so far. If you have a Flickr account, then you can add images from that when you set it up.

Images are also searchable – just take a look at this little box here – you don’t even have to leave WordPress to search!

If you are typing your blog posts int he visual section, you can drag and drop the image to where it suits you and set defaults so that the selected image is always on the left or always on the right, whatever you prefer.

In text links. Underneath the text box as I type is a list of suggestions that may need explaining, so far thumbnail, copyright, Zemanta, and Firefox are all appearing.

Tags – When I have finished typing I can move back to the right hand side toolbar and have a look and see what tags it suggests for the post, if I like them then I only have to click on them and they will be added.

The ones boxed in orange in the image are the ones I have chosen to use. In each section the option selected is highlighted with an orange box making it easy to know which you have selected.

Related articles – if you don’t use a plugin on WordPress for related links, or use another blogging platform, then Zemanta will also suggest related articles that you can add yourself.

If you click the ” my sources” tab, you can suggest where to get related links from – It can be other blogs you own, or blogs you like by your favourite bloggers. Again it’s all in the right hand tool bar. It allows you to link to other blogs with ease and in time, your blogs will be added and people will link to your content if they like it – it can be a good traffic builder

At the end of every blog post you will see a little orange icon, saying get Zemified (or similar). On this post it’s a blue ‘reblog’ button If you click this it will allow you to take parts of this post and link back to it, in other words it makes things very easy to quote extracts from this blog and any others you find with the little orange icon.

No blog is an island, it needs to link out and reach other blogs and it needs other blogs to link in to it, to grow both readers and traffic. This little orange button helps create a good link with the source credited, enabling your blog to reach out to others.

The last nifty little trick Zemanta has up its sleeve is very useful to those bloggers that want to monetise their blogs, it allows you to add your Amazon Associates ID. Then if you write book reviews or movie reviews, it will add to the list of in-text links the most suitable Amazon links for you to use. It has the default for it’s own Amazon account, so if you are planning to use this you will need to add your own details as soon as you can. I don’t mind not having my Amazon account added, as Zemanta is a free tool to use, giving them my Amazon revenue is fine with me.

A quick video, showing you just how easy it is to use.

Zemanta in 60 Seconds from zemanta on Vimeo.

And as you can see, it has added its own links giving the video the correct accreditation.

Let me know how you find it; I couldn’t do without it now.

Sarah