InSights Group » blogging

Blogging with authenticity

Carol Palmatier — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:29:24 +0000

This is a guest post by writer and editor Carol Palmatier.

A good blog post starts with an authentic voice. Your writing, especially on your blog and in your social network, has to sound like it’s coming from you. Picture yourself talking with a friend over coffee.

If you find the act of writing in your own voice a challenge, just let it flow…put your words down as they come to mind, with no thought to grammar or style. Then ask someone you trust to review it. Hopefully this person is a grammar geek and catches all the little somethings that escaped your attention while you were pouring out your wisdom. If not, hire an editor to clean it up. It won’t cost much for a standard blog post, and it’s worth it.

Another trick that works for some of my clients is to record your voice as you speak your blog post. It’s often much easier to speak in fluent sentences that to write that way. Let it flow, then send the tape to your editing friend or ghostwrite to turn into a brilliantly written words. This way, your voice will come through loud and clear. That’s where authenticity begins and ends.

Blogging tips from expert bloggers…

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 02:30:54 +0000

Here are some helpful hints from bloggers across the web.

To make you laugh

Katie @ InSights Group — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:00:11 +0000

Do you like social media? Well we do! What better than to enjoy our love and get a laugh with it. Check out these three social media related comics.

Secret Sauce Assignment

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:39:31 +0000

Fill in the blanks:

My company, __(insert name of company)__, is developing __(a defined offering)__ to help __(a defined audience)__ __(solve a problem)__ with __(secret sauce)__.

After you have filled it out, go and watch the video in this blog post about it, http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/03/madlibs-pitch-adeo-ressi-founder-institute/

Rewrite your tag line and compare your notes. How did it turn out?

Is your blog hiding?

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:00:31 +0000

I recently found a website that had a blog. But I didn’t know that at first. Because “Blog” was not a menu item. Well, it was, but it was a second-level menu item, buried at the bottom of a number of other items. The parent menu item was “Tools”. So I guess I found the blog only because I was curious about what “Tools” meant.

Your blog should be front and center, on your Home page. It’s the most important single part of your website. It’s the part that establishes your credibility as someone who knows what they’re talking about. It’s the part that brings people back to read more. It’s the place where you can let people know your latest thoughts and opinions. It’s the place where they can find interesting and useful information. It’s the place where you can develop relationships.

Don’t hide your blog.

This is a guest post by Tom Harris. Visit his awesome and amazing website here.

Where to host your blog – even if you know you want wordpress

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 15:00:29 +0000

There are basically two hosting options for WordPress blogging software:

1) Host it for free using wordpress.com.
2) Find a hosting provider and pay a monthly fee (this is called “self-hosting”)

Option 2 is the best choice by far. Here’s why:

WordPress.com free hosting does not allow you to use any custom or commercial themes; you can only choose from the limited number of themes they make available. (a theme provides the “look” of your blog)
You cannot modify themes in any way.
WordPress.com free hosting does not allow you to upload plugins (plugins provide various optional useful features to WordPress).
You are not allowed to sell ads on a free WordPress.com site.
With WordPress.com free hosting, you have no control over your blog site; you must live by their Terms and Conditions. Your blog is not really yours, and they can shut it down if they don’t like something that you’re doing.
The default URL for free hosting is “yourdomain.wordpress.com” rather than “yourdomain.com”. This means that you’re using someone else’s domain rather than your own, and you don’t really “own” the address. Furthermore, Google will not recognize the site as belonging to you, and you will get no search engine ranking benefits.

The only advantages of free hosting with WordPress.com are:

It’s free.
It’s stupidly simple to set up a site, and there are no maintenance or technical considerations.

These “advantages” are not worth the price you pay in other areas.

Self-hosting provides the following advantages:

You can use any themes that are available from any source.
You can have someone modify your theme to change the look and functionality of it.
You can upload any plugins you want to add functionality to your site.
You have full control. You can do whatever you want with your blog, because it’s yours. Nobody can impose any of their rules on you.

Considering that self-hosting costs less than $10 a month, this is an easy decision.

Hosting companies that offer WordPress hosting provide very simple installation processes and good support. Check out www.bluehost.com.

This is a guest post by Tom Harris. Visit his awesome and amazing website here.

Why should you even have a blog?

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:38:21 +0000

There are tons of reasons to have a blog. Here are a few.

It Gives Users a Reason to Come Back

If your website content never changes, visitors will read what they want to once and leave and probably never be back. But if you’re writing new content all the time, they have a reason to come back. And if your content is interesting, they may even become loyal readers (and fans).

It Gives You a Reason to Create New Content

Once you’ve established a blogging habit, you’ll want to keep doing it (the definition of a habit, after all). If you don’t have a blog, adding new content is difficult and may involve redesigning your site. Blogs are simple; they manage themselves. All you have to do is to keep pouring content into them.

Blogging Helps You Think and Improves Your Creativity

By disciplining yourself to blog frequently, you are making yourself create new ideas, think new thoughts, and explain things in new ways. Blogging will keep you out of mental ruts. New ideas will emerge, and you may even find yourself changing or redefining your business model.

Google Loves Activity

Did you know that Google gets bored easily, and if it finds nothing new when it checks your site, it probably will stop checking? But did you know that Google sees each new blog post as a separate page, and more pages and more content equals more attention from search engines? Want to get found? Write more stuff, and do it often!

This is a guest post by Tom Harris. Visit his awesome and amazing website here.

How soon will I see my post on the social media sites with automation?

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:06:30 +0000

Keep in mind with the automation, there is usually a time delay between when the post is made and when it shows up on the various sites. They usually sweep (and you can control this in settings of each control panel) in 1-2 hour increments, so if you post one minute after the sweep, it will be an hour or so before the post automates through. On the other end, if you post at minute 59 of a 1 hour cycle, it will post within the next few minutes.

When someone subscribes to my blog should it have pretty formatting like my website?

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 18:57:01 +0000

A little bit – not too much. Here’s why:

The strategy for the formatting vs. not on the daily blog subscription is that when it looks too “formatted” then people assume it is a sales message (through their internal filter) since we scan through our email in box so quickly. When it comes across as text, we are more likely to perceive it as an actual message. Subscribe to Seth Godin’s feed and see how it comes through. It’s more about the content than making it look a certain way. Ultimately, this is up to you. I am a proponent of simple.

If you use the service and would like to make a few of those changes, Feedburner does allow for a bit of html customization with the addition of a header, and choose a background and text color.

In this case less is more, and if you content is good it’s more about the message than the formatting.

Reasons your company should blog…even if nobody reads it…

Sandi Maki, InSights Group — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:00:52 +0000

We’ve been telling our clients for quite a while now that a blog is a must have in a company’s marketing mix. There are reasons, fresh content, Google likes it, sometimes you’ll hit on something a customer or client wants to see, when you automate Facebook and Twitter will get a link back to your site, blogging helps you clarify your message (with yourself) and I could go on and on.

Here’s another list of 10 reasons why your company should blog.
So my question to you is: are you?